Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer?

by Ann Rule

  Loni Ann could not afford an attorney for the custody battle, so she was represented by a lawyer from Legal Aid. Brad had his own attorney and clearly felt he would win. He had lined up his new wife, his father, and other witnesses prepared to give such cogent testimony against Loni Ann that he was sure it would convince the judge that he was the more competent parent. He was apparently doing very well in business, and he certainly dressed the part of a successful man.

  Rosemary Cunningham agonized over how she was going to testify. She loved her grandchildren, and she had been witness to Brad’s vicious discipline of them when he brought them to family reunions. “When the children didn’t want to eat something on their plates,” she recalled privately, if not in court, “he would force them to eat it until they threw up on their plates.” In the end, thinking of the children and pushing down her own fear of what Brad might do to her, Rosemary testified for her former daughter-in-law, saying she thought that Kait and Brent should be with Loni Ann.

  Sanford Cunningham equivocated; he said that he thought it was six of one and a half dozen of the other. He didn’t think it mattered which parent had custody.

  Brad had lost one good witness he wanted, Susan, his younger sister. “I moved away from home when I was sixteen, and I hadn’t even seen Brad for more than five years,” she said. “I moved because we all always had to take sides against each other, and I refused to take sides.” Now her father and brother wanted twenty-year-old Susan to take sides once more. “Brad and Dad approached me and asked me to testify against my mother in Loni Ann’s custody hearing. They wanted me to say that my mother was a homosexual.”

  That, Brad and Sanford figured, would undermine Rosemary’s testimony. Her father and brother had spent a whole day with Susan, saying how happy they were to see her, buying her lunch. But Susan knew what they wanted; they wanted her to help them destroy Loni Ann and her own mother in one fell swoop.

  Susan refused. “I testified instead about the time that Brad beat Mom,” Susan said, “and I was out of the family from then on.” When she chose to help Loni Ann, she ended, in essence, her own connection to the males in her family. Her father had always felt that “money meant there was a reason” to do something, and he apparently believed that money could also entice—or punish. He used money for revenge against Susan for her betrayal. “I was out of his will,” she said. “So was Ethel. He left us each a hundred dollars, and everything else went to Brad.”

  Loni Ann presented a very effective case. Despite Brad’s continual attempts to convince her that she was “stupid garbage” who would be insane to think about going to college, she testified that she was doing quite well in her classes where she was studying physical education. She wanted to be a teacher or a coach. She admitted on the stand that it was difficult to get by; she had very little money. Yes, she usually had to split her rent with another woman or a family.

  Loni Ann had learned that Brad had tried to get to her housemates and have them testify against her. Her first roommate told her that Brad had offered to pay her to lie about Loni Ann during the custody hearing. She had refused. “I wanted you to know what he was planning,” the woman said.

  Another woman with whom Loni Ann had lived just prior to the hearing moved out abruptly one day while Loni Ann was at school in Portland. She turned up again as a surprise witness for Brad in the custody hearing and she wouldn’t meet Loni Ann’s eyes. But her testimony did not mesh with the written affidavit she had given earlier, and she waffled under cross-examination. During a recess, an officer of the court overheard Brad berate Loni Ann’s ex-roommate, “You didn’t say what you agreed to say.” The woman later admitted on the stand that she had lied about Loni Ann’s competency as a mother.

  Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, the tide turned in Loni Ann’s favor. And to Brad’s utter amazement, she won their latest court skirmish.

  When the judge awarded custody of the children to Loni Ann, she glanced fearfully at Brad, wondering what he would do. She saw his face darken, the veins stand out on his neck, and a pulse beat fiercely at his temples. He was in the blackest rage she had ever seen, and she had seen many. After the judge left the bench and disappeared into his chambers, Brad toppled to the floor like a felled tree. It seemed at first that he had had a heart attack or a stroke. But he got to his feet in a few moments, apparently fully recovered. It may have been that he was so angry he had blacked out. Brad had never lost before. Nor would he soon lose again.

  After Loni Ann won custody again in court, the original reason for Brad’s marriage to Cynthia dissolved. He seemed totally uninterested in her now. She had also discovered that Loni Ann was nothing like the neglectful, promiscuous woman Brad had described to her. At that point, Cynthia just wanted out of her marriage, and she had to find a way to do it with as few repercussions as possible.

  Cynthia had finally come to the realization that her main attraction for Brad had been her house, her money, her stability. If she stayed with him, she might lose all three. Yet even though she could now see him in the clear light of day, she would always soft-pedal how bad things got. There were arguments—over her boys, over money, over almost everything, it seemed. Brad broke Cynthia’s collarbone, although many years later, Cynthia would downplay the violence in their marriage. “It wasn’t his fault, it was mine. I pushed him and he reacted.”

  They separated on September 17, 1975, and Cynthia filed for divorce on November 26. Brad moved into an apartment in Bellevue and Cynthia didn’t expect to see him again. But she would learn, unhappily, that no woman simply walked away from Brad Cunningham.

  In their divorce settlement, the division of property should have been simple. They had signed prenuptial agreements specifying that they would retain their individual assets as they were when they went into the marriage. Among other things Cynthia had owned a yellow 1973 Volvo, which she had financed through a credit union. Of course, she had also paid for the 1973 Volkswagen camper. According to the prenuptial contract, they reverted to her. She also wanted him to repay the money she had lent him, plus accrued interest.

  By May of 1975, Brad and Cynthia were living apart, and she was again using the name Marrasco. She had gone into the marriage with few stars in her eyes, hoping that love might grow with familiarity. She knew the marriage might not last, but she had never dreamed that she would be caught in a spider’s web where she would come to fear Brad, with his .38 Colt “Detective’s Special” and his awesome temper.

  All Cynthia wanted was to have her serenity back and to keep what she’d had before the marriage. She and her now teenage son Nicholas were going on with their lives. The older boys were grown and out of her home. She had her master’s degree and she could still teach school. But Cynthia would learn—just as Loni Ann had learned—that Brad was a man who felt betrayed if someone tried to rob him of what he considered his. Furthermore, he would prove to be a tremendously sore loser.

  Sometime after their separation, Cynthia and Nicholas had moved from the big house she once owned and were living in a luxurious apartment overlooking a private golf course when Brad slipped back into their lives. In an oddly childish show of power, he stole Cynthia’s vehicles twice in one day.

  Cynthia had an appointment with her attorney on May 22, 1975, at his Bellevue office. At 6:45 that morning, she found that her Volvo was missing. She had no choice but to drive the Volkswagen camper. But when she left her lawyer’s office, she found that the camper had disappeared too. She was pretty sure that her vehicles had not been random targets and she thought she knew who had taken them.

  Brad.

  Cars were almost as important as children to Brad; once he had them in his possession, he didn’t like to let them go. Later, when he was much richer, he would own whole stables of Mercedes cars and usually some “macho” vehicle like a Unimag or a Humvee, plus a couple of motorcycles.

  In this case, Brad neither owned nor needed them, but he knew Cynthia would be terribly inconvenienced withou
t the Volvo and the camper. In her police report, Cynthia named “Bradly Cunningham, my estranged husband,” as a possible suspect. She warned the King County Police officers who took the report that Brad routinely carried a Colt .38.

  “All I want is to have my vehicles back,” Cynthia said quietly. “I don’t want to file charges.”

  The officers saw that she was obviously afraid of her ex-husband. Informed that she was setting the judicial process in motion by filing a complaint, Cynthia finally acquiesced. She had precious little choice. If she didn’t file the complaint, she feared she would never see the Volvo or the Volkswagen again.

  Later that May afternoon, Brad himself walked into the King County Police’s south precinct to report that his .38 pistol had been stolen. He was surprised and outraged when he was arrested and booked on two charges of “Grand Larceny—Auto.” Faced with the very real probability of spending at least one night—and maybe more—in the King County jail, Brad admitted that he had taken Cynthia’s vehicles. It was a divorce thing, he explained, just the bad feelings and reprisals that happened in a lot of marriages. He was certainly no criminal, he said with a grin, and he would be glad to tell the officers where the “stolen” car and camper were.

  He said the Volvo was over in Bellevue a half block from Cynthia’s attorney’s office. The Volkswagen camper was on the sixth floor of the parking garage of the Pacific Building where his office was located. Detective Gary Trent of the Bellevue Police Department checked for the yellow Volvo and found it just where Brad said it would be. It was in perfect shape. Seattle Police detectives went to the Pacific Building parking garage. The Volkswagen camper was parked there. However, the steering wheel was immobilized with a chain and lock. Brad had the key to the Volvo and the key to the locked steering wheel in his possession. He surrendered them easily enough, and the two vehicles were returned to Cynthia.

  The police looked upon the double “auto theft” more as a symptom of post-marital rancor than as felonies. They were annoyed that Brad Cunningham had made thoughtless, childish abuse of their time, but since neither vehicle had been damaged and Cynthia didn’t want to push prosecution, the matter was apparently settled amicably. But the day was not over. At five that evening, Nicholas looked out the window of his apartment and saw his stepfather walk up to his mother’s Volvo, unlock the driver’s door, jump in, and drive the car away.

  Once again, Cynthia called the police. And once again, she stressed that she didn’t want to irritate Brad by pressing charges. She just wanted her Volvo back. Police located it at Brad’s apartment, but it wouldn’t start. He had removed both the coil and distributor cap wires. The officers drove Cynthia to a garage to buy the parts she needed to get her car going. It was annoying, certainly, but police had seen divorcing couples play far worse “tricks” on each other. One Washington State man had been so furious when his wife was awarded their home that he rented a bulldozer and systematically leveled the house and everything in it. In comparison, a day’s spree of car hiding didn’t seem that pathological.

  Human behavior rarely reveals itself all at once. Most people grow stronger in one area, weaker in others, perhaps more compulsive in still others. An old adage says that “what we are when we are old is only a progression of what we have always been.” If you were a mean kid, you will probably be a mean old man. Brad Cunningham had always had tremendous charm, intelligence and business acumen. But long before he was thirty, he had demonstrated decidedly negative aspects of his personality—particularly when it came to his relationships with women. Two tries at matrimony revealed that he required an inordinate amount of control in a marriage, and that he did not give up those things that he felt belonged to him easily.

  At his center, moreover, he seemed to have a mean streak, snaking through everything he did and everything he was. He had tormented his cousins and smaller children from the time he was a boy. He had charmed, seduced, and walked away from teenage girls who idolized him. He had always appeared to consider women lesser humans, mere lowly females put on earth to help him achieve what he wanted—whether it was to climb higher in business or to become a father; whether he needed sexual satisfaction or, in the worst of circumstances, a punching bag.

  He was, of course, only twenty-six, and there was the possibility that he was simply immature, given to temper tantrums and petty revenge. His mother hoped so. Despite the physical harm he had done to her, despite the way he had sided with his father and helped to betray her, Rosemary Cunningham still loved Brad.

  He was her only son.

  Loni Ann continued going to college and in 1978 graduated with a bachelor’s degree in physical education. Brad paid child support for Kait and Brent only sporadically. By 1983 he ceased any contact at all with his children. There were no phone calls, no birthday cards, no Christmas presents. Nor were there any child support payments. Loni Ann was going on with her life, but emotionally Brad had almost destroyed her. She would gladly have traded his support money for peace of mind. She never knew when Brad might turn up again and try to take her children, or just what revenge he might have in mind.

  Cynthia received her final divorce decree from Brad on February 9, 1977 and the property settlement agreement was signed on March 6. Brad offered her six thousand dollars in cash. He said he was unemployed and his yearly income was only five hundred dollars—but that his father had agreed to lend him the money to pay Cynthia. He said he planned to go to school in Colorado.

  Cynthia agreed to the settlement, with the proviso that if it turned out that he had lied about his assets, she could have the agreement set aside.

  Cynthia Marrasco had self-esteem going into her marriage with Brad, and she soon found it again when he was finally out of her life. She remarried, this time with great happiness.

  She never saw Brad again.

  PART 3

  Cheryl

  17

  Brad was a marrying man. There were to be five women who became Mrs. Brad Cunningham before he reached his thirty-eighth birthday. And for each he was—in the beginning—the perfect man. Except for his second engagement, which was by its very nature expedient and hurried, his courtships were exquisitely planned. He was a prince, the kind of husband many women long for. He was handsome, charismatic, ambitious, and more and more successful each year. He still had the biceps of a college football player, but he was smoother, more urbane and cosmopolitan. He drove the best cars, he knew the best restaurants, and many women who were intimate with him remember him as a superb lover, attentive and intuitive, patient when he needed to be, wildly passionate later.

  Moreover, what woman’s heart wouldn’t go out to a father crying for his lost children? None of Brad’s new fiancées ever considered talking with his former wives to learn more about him. Why on earth would they? When Brad described the women who had come before them, he made his ex-wives sound so despicable and immoral that they all wondered how he could have been so stoic and long suffering. He had stayed in the marriages, he assured them, “for the children.” His ex-wives had been “alcoholic,” “drug addicts,” “bisexual,” “tramps,” and “lousy mothers.”

  Lauren Kathleen Swanson* was a gorgeous, willowy woman, the prettiest of all Brad’s women to date. Born in January 1949, she grew up in Redmond, a once rural suburb east of Seattle, and went on to enter the University of Washington in the same freshman class as Cheryl Keeton and Brad Cunningham. Along with Cheryl, Lauren pledged Gamma Phi Beta. Indeed, she and Cheryl were great friends as well as sorority sisters. Lauren majored in education, and when she graduated in 1971, she began a teaching career.

  Lauren’s and Cheryl’s friendship grew during their four years in college together until they were very close, probably best friends. Lauren knew Dan Olmstead too; she had met him when he came to pick up Cheryl at the Gamma Phi house. After they all graduated, Cheryl married Dan and the Olmsteads became part of Lauren’s immediate social circle. Although Lauren was still single, she often joined Cheryl and Dan and several ot
her young couples for parties, dinners, and boating trips. Cheryl and Dan had a sailboat they dubbed the SummerFun, and they and their friends had many great times sailing on Puget Sound.

  At first Lauren shared rent with a number of friends from her sorority in one of the big old houses that abound near the university. Later she had her own apartment on Eastlake Avenue a few miles away. She had met Brad Cunningham at the University of Washington and talked with him from time to time since his fraternity, Theta Chi, was next door to the Gamma Phi house. After his sophomore year, Brad didn’t live in the fraternity house, of course. He was married to Loni Ann and a father, and working at Gals Galore. Lauren had always rather liked Brad and found him attractive. Sometimes she wondered how his life had turned out. Then in 1976, five years after she graduated, she met Brad again.

  In the mid-1970s, the Madison Park area of Seattle was in transition. Located on the west shore of Lake Washington, it was crisscrossed with some of Seattle’s most expensive streets, but it ran out of high-end real estate as Madison Street headed west up the long hill toward downtown Seattle. There the neighborhood decayed into time-battered wooden houses, small ethnic grocery stores, and taverns. For decades it had been a question of which ambiance would prevail. But by the seventies, Madison Park had begun its climb to utter desirability. Singles were flocking to the funky taverns and trendy restaurants that were popping up close by the shores of Lake Washington at the east end of Madison Street.

  Lauren and Brad ran into each other there one night at the Red Onion, a popular tavern. Balancing drinks, they swiveled through a laughing crowd to find a booth where they could hear each other talk. Brad told her that he was divorcing his second wife, who, he said wryly, had turned out to be a major disappointment. He didn’t go into detail, but Lauren noted how sad and moody he seemed about his bad luck in love.