Ms. Brown Goes Down

When last heard from in these pages (“LBJ, The Movie?” October), Madeleine Brown of Dallas was still claiming to have been President Lyndon B. Johnson’s mistress and had even published a book pressing her claims-Texas in the Morning: My Secret Life with LBJ. She was working with a Los Angeles film producer on a movie project that would place LBJ at the center of a bizarre murder conspiracy.

Now Brown’s battered credibility has taken another blow. In October, she was convicted by a Dallas jury for forgery. During a five-day trial, prosecutor Colleen Murphy showed jurors that Brown faked die signatures of her aunt and uncle, Guy S. and Jesse Mae Duncan, on a will. The jury also heard evidence that the Duncans, who were staunch Baptists, would not have left Brown money because they would not have approved of her alleged extramarital affair with LBJ.

The will named Brown executrix of the estate, valued anywhere from $100,000 to 5300,000. Eventually, Brown and her son, supposedly LBJ’s progeny, received more than $69,000 from the estate. (The son died of cancer in 1991.) Brown was charged when the real will came to light.

State District Judge Pat McDowell sentenced Brown to 10 years probation and ordered her to pay a $500 fine. He also has indicated he will order Brown to pay restitution to Gary Dalton, one of the beneficiaries of the real will. McDowell says he is considering an order that any proceeds from the sales of Brown’s LBJ book should go into an escrow account to fulfill the restitution order. “I’m not sure it’s enforceable under the law,” says McDowell. “But I don’t want her to profit from this fraud.”