Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer?

by Ann Rule

  And it was Cheryl Keeton: she may have been subservient around Brad, but she insisted on keeping her own name. She had fought hard for her law degree and it mattered to her that she be a lawyer under her own name. That was the one stand she took with Brad. Otherwise—even in areas where Cheryl had a great deal of expertise—she invariably deferred to Brad’s decisions, from large issues to relatively small things.

  Cheryl and Dan had owned the SummerFun, and Cheryl was an excellent sailor. She had taken classes and she knew the Coast Guard rules. Brad had owned sailboats too, but she was the more competent sailor. Still, it was Brad who captained the thirty-six-foot sailboats he often rented.

  Susan remembered accompanying Brad and Cheryl on one sailing trip to the San Juan Islands in the late 1970s, before they were married. They intended to moor at Friday Harbor on San Juan for the night, but they arrived late and found the harbor already jam-packed with boats. While Cheryl and Susan were craning their necks, looking for an empty slip where they might tie up, Brad suddenly dropped anchor right in the middle of the shipping lanes.

  At first Cheryl was bewildered. It was such a dumb and dangerous thing to do. Then she showed a flash of her old spirit and demanded that Brad pull up the anchor and get them out of there. But Brad only turned on her and said, “Shut up! This is where we’re going to stay.”

  Susan expected to see the Cheryl she had always known, the one who would fight for what she knew was the right thing to do. Instead, she was shocked to see her sister break into tears. “I was scared myself,” she remembered. “You couldn’t drop anchor in the shipping lanes. We could have gotten killed.”

  Implacably, Brad went about dropping the sails and acted as though he was going to stay right there all night. Susan was as frightened by her sister’s helpless sobs as she was by the thought that their sailboat was probably going to be sliced in two when darkness settled over the harbor. At length, when he was sure that he had made his point, Brad grudgingly raised the sails, hauled up the anchor, and moved on to safer moorage.

  This nightmare sailing trip was only the first of scores of frightening incidents that Susan witnessed with the man who had taken over Cheryl’s life. She wondered why her sister stayed with Brad, why she married him. Yes, she was pregnant with his child, but that wasn’t really forbidden in 1979. Yes, he was handsome, and it seemed as though he was going to be very rich—Cheryl had never lived in homes as nice as those she shared with Brad—but he was so mean sometimes. Susan was, of course, only thirteen and couldn’t really understand the relationship between her sister and Brad.

  Cheryl had always loved Seattle, from the very moment she arrived at the University of Washington. If it had been up to her, she would have lived in Seattle forever. In 1979 her law practice was embryonic, but she had great confidence that it would grow. She was happy about the baby she carried, too, and was sure she could manage both motherhood and a career if she planned her time well. And she had always been remarkably good about planning her time. She was due to deliver in the fall of 1979.

  Brad was nothing if not fertile. All of his wives—except Cynthia, who was in her forties when they married—had conceived almost at the beginning of their sexual intimacy, and he was always proud. Brad seemed pleased that Cheryl was pregnant.

  Cheryl may have worried a little that summer and fall. Only two years before, she had watched Brad become disenchanted with Lauren and desert her when she was pregnant. Cheryl had given up everything to be with Brad then, and had gone against even her own moral code. She had let herself be swept away from her first marriage; she had been a willing partner in deceiving her husband and her friend. If Brad could betray Lauren, could he not betray her?

  It was a fleeting fear, washing over her from time to time and then departing. Brad had a terrible temper and insisted on having his own way, but he was under a lot of pressure getting his growing real estate empire together. Cheryl continually made excuses for his behavior. And from the very beginning of their marriage, she always believed that things would get better. She deferred to Brad in all things and had faith in their future together. She had given up so much to be with him that it was crucial for her serenity to believe that theirs was a true love match that would last forever.

  Brad took Cheryl to a Cunningham family reunion on Whidbey Island that summer. His relatives found her pleasant and pretty, but quite shy. It was a description that would have baffled her own family who knew Cheryl as strong and assertive, even take-charge. But with Brad, it was almost as if Cheryl “knew her place.” “One time Brad brought Cheryl to the reunion,” a Cunningham cousin recalled, “and she kind of stood on the sidelines. When I found out later that she was a lawyer, I was amazed. She didn’t say one word about what she did for a living. She was just a quiet, pleasant woman.”

  Cheryl had gloried in her pregnancy. She didn’t mind at all that her usually slim, perfect figure was temporarily swollen. She proudly wore a tight one-piece bathing suit and posed for pictures when she was over seven months pregnant. She smiled for another camera as she balanced a wineglass full of milk on the top of her gravid belly.

  Jess Cunningham was born in October of 1979. A handsome dark-haired baby boy, he was the image of his father from the start. Cheryl was thrilled to be a mother. It was difficult for her to think about leaving Jess during the day while she went to work. But after ten weeks of maternity leave, Cheryl had to go back to her law practice on January 2, 1980. They needed her salary.

  Jess went to stay with Sharon McCulloch, a day-care provider who had once been a first-grade teacher. Her husband was a teacher too. Cheryl and Sharon had already become good friends when Sharon had occasionally taken care of Jess in the first months after his birth. Cheryl felt secure that Jess was in good hands. But she missed him during the hours she was at work.

  “Jess was always happy,” Sharon remembered. “So was Cheryl. Cheryl laughed a lot when I first knew her. I’ve raised forty children, but Jess was always special to me. I first started taking care of him when he was two weeks old, and I had him with me more than a year.”

  At this time, Brad and Cheryl were living in Laurelhurst, a long-established upper-middle-class neighborhood near the University of Washington. They had bought the house before they were married, with Cheryl owning 29 percent and Brad 71 percent. Set above a terrace of shrubs, the house was white with a big bay window and a wide porch under a sloping roof. Cheryl loved that house, but Brad wanted to live on Bainbridge Island, a half-hour ferry ride across Elliott Bay from Seattle. Cheryl argued that the commute from Bainbridge to her office would add at least two hours to her day and would mean that much more time away from Jess. Still, Brad loved the automatic cachet of living on Bainbridge Island. And if that was where he wanted to live, that was where they would live.

  Occasionally Brad picked Jess up from Sharon McCulloch’s. Somehow Sharon could not bring herself to like him, although he was quite handsome and exuded sexual energy and charm when he wanted to. “He had compelling eyes. He had this whole stud image,” Sharon remembered. But she found him remote and imperious, and he treated Jess like his property. She noticed that he never called the baby by name. “It was always, ‘Is my son ready to go?’ He struck me as extremely possessive, and I was always under scrutiny.” Cheryl explained to Sharon that Brad was very particular about Jess, and that he insisted on being informed about any changes in Jess’s schedule and in his diet. “If I even fed him cereal without Brad’s permission, Cheryl had to justify it to Brad,” Sharon said.

  Susan McNannay continued to visit her sister after Cheryl married Brad and although she was only in junior high school, she was a very intelligent and observant girl. She wondered a little bit about her new brother-in-law when she found a stash of magazines under Brad and Cheryl’s bed. “They were porno magazines with pictures of young girls in them,” she recalled. “That Christmas, Brad wrapped up a Playboy and put his name on the card and put it under the tree. It embarrassed Cheryl when he opened it. I d
on’t know why he did that, but holidays never meant anything to Brad.”

  Brad ignored Cheryl’s family when they visited. “He sometimes didn’t even speak to us when we were in his home,” Susan said. “He respected my father, though.” And Brad put up with Susan, possibly because Cheryl insisted, possibly because Susan became a handy baby-sitter. She went along on trips to Palm Springs and she often went with Cheryl when she visited her natural father in Vacaville, California. Susan had been a big part of Cheryl’s life from the moment she was born, and she would continue to be.

  Brad seemed so confident and strong, but Susan noticed that he was absolutely terrified of natural disasters—earthquakes, floods, hurricanes. “When Mount St. Helens erupted in May of 1980, Brad freaked out,” she remembered. “He made Cheryl take Jess and go to Canada until he thought it would be safe to come home.” Brad was a man who needed to control everything and everyone in his life. Natural disasters were among the few forces over which he had no control at all.

  Sharon McCulloch had seen Brad’s need to control both his son and his wife all too often. In March 1981, a few days before Cheryl and Brad moved from the Laurelhurst house to Bainbridge Island, Cheryl asked Sharon if she could keep Jess a few hours later that evening. They wouldn’t be moved out of the house until at least 9 P.M. and then Cheryl had to clean it for the new owners. Sharon said she would be glad to keep him all night—Jess was sleeping peacefully and wouldn’t know the difference. Cheryl was grateful. That way she would be free to clean and they wouldn’t have to wake the baby up and haul him out into the chill night air.

  At midnight, however, Sharon woke to a knock on the door. It was Cheryl and she was crying. “Brad’s in the car,” Cheryl said. “He says I have to take Jess home right now.”

  “But he’s been asleep for four hours,” Sharon said.

  “I’m so sorry,” Cheryl said. “But I have no choice.”

  The Cunninghams didn’t live on Bainbridge Island long—only a matter of months. Brad had been negotiating with executives at the Seattle Trust and Savings Bank for a substantial loan that would allow him to work with them as a partner in commercial construction in another state. By the second year of his marriage to Cheryl, he had begun a pattern of traveling most of the time. He had done market studies in Colorado, Alaska, and Texas to determine where there was the most need for apartment and office complexes.

  “I went to Denver, to Alaska, and to Houston. I did a complete market study in Houston,” he said years later. “This is what I do. . . . Actually the bank approached us. Seattle real estate wasn’t viable. Cheryl and I had a million dollars in the bank already—in cash and CDs. The bank offered us a full construction loan—and then they would take fifty percent of the profits.”

  During the first half of 1981, Brad drove rental cars slowly through cities that looked ripe for building projects. “I had a little tie device that was always activated for me to dictate into. I took pictures, I estimated rental density.” He returned again and again to Houston, exploring the empty lots and acreage of that green and humid Texas city. The demand for office space in the Houston area was voracious. Tall buildings with mirrored glass windows were springing up like mushrooms, shining obelisks and domes and towers against the Texas horizon, more every month, and still there weren’t enough. Brad could almost see his own reflection in those mirrored windows. Houston it would be.

  Armed with his market study, Brad conferred with Seattle Trust officers and went away with a million-dollar start-up loan. Brad and Cheryl both signed the loan, but it didn’t matter. Washington is a community property state and his debts were her debts. Brad hired the firm of Baker and Boggs to help him get a license to do business in the State of Texas. He was exhilarated. “I like the State of Texas!”

  Eventually, Brad would engage a huge construction firm in Houston. His company was about to build massive office buildings in Houston, and Brad bragged that he would control six hundred million dollars.

  Cheryl was pregnant with her second child, due to deliver in late September. She wanted very much to stay in Washington for the birth, to have her own obstetrician, but Brad insisted that the time was ripe for them to move to Houston. They had the loan, he was negotiating on property, and he had bought a house for them, a very expensive house that was already under construction. It all seemed too fast for Cheryl but, as always, she went along with Brad’s plans. Everything they owned was packed into a moving van.

  Cheryl went into labor less than a week after they arrived in Houston. Brad was with her for part of her labor and he insisted on taking pictures of her while she was in the transition state. She asked him not to; she didn’t look her best, and she was in pain. Cheryl later told her friend Sharon McCulloch that she thought Brad was “a ghoul” and that she was embarrassed by the camera’s intrusion. Michael Keeton Cunningham was born on September 26, 1981, and after his birth Brad activated the time-release shutter on his camera and posed happily with Cheryl, Jess, and their new baby. Brad didn’t visit the hospital again until she was ready to come home.

  Cheryl later confided to Sharon that that period in September in Houston was “the worst in my life.” Her mother, now Betty Troseth, flew down to help out, and Cheryl was glad to have her there, but Brad didn’t care for Betty and he treated her rudely.

  With two babies now, Cheryl agreed that she would stay home and care for Jess and Michael. At some point she would certainly resume practicing law but, for the time being, it was Brad’s career that was the more important. It had been hard on Cheryl to move to Houston. But there was no question that she would follow Brad wherever he wanted to go. “I’ve got to go,” she had said to Susan. “My child is going and that’s my family.”

  Houston was nothing at all like the Northwest, and Cheryl longed for Seattle with its clear, clean air. Houston was hot and humid, day and night. In Seattle there was always a coolness at night, even if it had been ninety degrees during the day. In Houston the air was like a soaking hot blanket. There were bugs and critters that Cheryl had never seen. The music on the radio was different—mostly country. Restaurants featured chicken-fried steak and hot Mexican food instead of salmon, clams, and crab legs. Houston was a different world.

  However, they weren’t there for more than a few weeks before everything started to slide. The move to Houston had cost ten thousand dollars, they had put thirty-four thousand dollars down on their new home, and Cheryl had quit her law practice. They hadn’t even unpacked when Seattle Trust and Savings Bank executives called Brad with stupefying news. They had changed their mind about the million-dollar loan. “It was only a few days after Michael was born,” Brad would recall. “They said they had new management and didn’t want a project that far away.”

  Brad had assured Cheryl that the Texas move was a good thing, a vital step on their way to financial independence. Now the balloon had burst and they were still committed to buying a billion-dollar property. Moreover, Brad’s boast of a million dollars in the bank was undoubtedly inflated. In reality he had credit lines often or fifteen thousand dollars. He vowed to sue Seattle Trust and Savings, and Cheryl drew up a letter of “Detrimental Reliance,” formally charging the bank with leaving them in such a tenuous position.

  “We had to get a new loan,” Brad recalled. And he did. Few entrepreneurs could be as convincing as he was. Even with his back to the wall, he was able to persuade a Texas bank to grant him an open-ended $4.4 million loan. He was back in business and, in Brad’s mind, the huge commercial complex he visualized—Parkwood Plaza—was as good as finished.

  While Brad busied himself putting the project together, Cheryl was delighted to be raising Jess and Michael, and she was proud of Brad. Their two little boys were as different from each other as they could be. Jess was very bright and active. He looked just like Brad. Michael was just as intelligent, but he was a calmer, sweeter baby. Or maybe it was because second babies just seem easier. “Mikey” looked like his mother.

  * * *

/>   Brad Cunningham would have a dozen excuses for the financial disaster that Parkwood Plaza became. His huge loan had built-in dangers; it had to be repaid whether his project was finished or not. And many years later, Brad would blame the construction companies he hired, the bonding company, and the grim outlook for the Texas economy. He took no personal responsibility for failure whatsoever; if it had been up to him, Parkwood Plaza would be, today, a booming concern.

  “The Parkwood Plaza project started out fine in February 1982,” he would later testify. “It was under construction and bonded by March. The architect started recommending ‘withholds’ from construction draws; the construction company hadn’t done the work. We had problems by May or June.” He said that he himself discovered flagrant violations—such as high-voltage power lines buried much too shallowly under the concrete floors. “The contractor put 440-volt lines eight inches underground when they should be two feet under. . . . I’m going to go ahead and tell you the truth. I was leaving one day for the airport and I saw workers unloading pipe on concrete, breaking the pipe. I told the contractor not to install the pipe. When I came back, I crawled under and saw broken pipes installed. I took a camera. I didn’t trust the contractor. . . .