by Ann Rule
25
Cheryl had hoped that having Brad out of her home would bring some modicum of peace into her life. And it was true that when he finally moved out, he stopped playing “musical chairs” with the furniture. But Cheryl was still saddled with all his debts.
Just before their separation Brad had bought himself a huge, exotic, and expensive motorcycle, a Huskvarna. It was a racing bike, absolutely “top of the line.” Brad wasn’t a motorcycle racer, and he kept the Huskvarna in the garage, unused. Cheryl begged him to sell it, along with other costly “toys” he had purchased and never used. She was desperately worried about money. Each week she felt she was deeper in debt.
Cheryl called Susan on February 28, and Susan could hear new panic in her voice. “Brad’s not going to be reasonable about sharing custody after all,” Cheryl said. “He told me he’s going to fight me for the kids. He’s been telling everyone I’m a nymphomaniac—he’s trying to tear me apart. I need you to stand up for me.”
Susan assured Cheryl that she would be there for her, and tried to tell her not to worry about Brad’s threats and lies. Brad had always been that way; nothing had really changed. But that was the problem. Even though they were now separated, he still had the power to send Cheryl into an emotional tailspin. It took every ounce of her strength to keep him at bay, and every time she felt a little thrill of hope, something happened to dash it. She and Brad made an uneasy truce in March and worked out a tentative agreement about their children. Brad would have their little boys from 7 P.M. on Friday until 7 P.M. on Sunday. The divorce itself lay ahead.
Brad, who always fortified himself with lawyers, had already consulted his own attorney of the moment, Jake Tanzer, who would be only the first of three lawyers he hired and dismissed during his divorce proceedings. Tanzer was a highly respected Oregon attorney who had been at various times a deputy D.A. in Multnomah County, a Court of Appeals judge, the Solicitor General of Oregon, and an Oregon Supreme Court justice. He was in private practice in 1986, but he was not a divorce attorney. He told Brad that he could find himself an attorney who was fully versed in divorce litigation, and at less than half the price. But Brad wanted Jake Tanzer. Brad’s charm and convincing ways extended even to lawyers, and there would be many who were chagrined that they had ever met him. Few were ever paid.
Cheryl knew that getting out of her marriage wasn’t going to be easy. And she was fully aware that gaining custody of Jess, Michael, and Phillip would be even harder. Every time there was a period of relative calm between her and Brad, she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For years she had had fear systematically implanted in her mind like tiny grains of radioactive material, so many little glowing seeds that being frightened was almost normal for her. Cheryl was afraid of the “enemies” that Brad talked about, of the assassins who were out to get him and his family since he brought his suits against the Houston firms he blamed for his financial downfall. But now, finally, she feared Brad himself more. She had never seen the invisible killers; she had seen Brad in a rage.
Things began to happen, small but ominous things. In March, Cheryl was convinced that someone had tinkered with her Toyota van. She was almost afraid to drive it. The brakes seemed mushy, and it had suddenly begun to die in traffic for no reason at all. She got it to a garage where a mechanic said someone had messed up her carburetor so that the mixture of gas and air was way off. She asked Brad for all of the Toyota keys, but he never gave them back to her.
Brad had the tires for her van; he had stored them when he put snow tires on the van the previous fall. In Oregon, studded snow tires have to be replaced with regular tires by April 1. That date was rapidly approaching and she needed her almost-new tires back. She didn’t have the four hundred dollars it would take to replace them. And she didn’t have the money to pay the fine she would get if she kept driving on snow tires after the cutoff date. She called Brad several times, asking that he bring back her tires. Brad returned her calls and spoke with her secretary or her legal assistant, and he was more than charming. But when Cheryl came on the line, his voice changed to a venomous pitch. He was much too busy to bother with her tires and would she get off his back?
Ironically for a lawyer, Cheryl had scarcely any money for legal help in her divorce. In the early spring she retained the best—on the understanding that she would obtain her divorce “on a shoestring budget”: Cheryl herself would do as much of the legwork as she could. The woman she retained was one of the finest family-law attorneys in Portland, Elizabeth Welch.
“Betsy” Welch had graduated from the University of Chicago Law School and worked for the American Bar Association for some years after graduation. When she moved to Portland, she became a deputy district attorney in the Multnomah County Juvenile Court, specializing in child neglect and abuse and in the termination of parental rights. She worked for five years as the administrative assistant to Neil Goldschmidt, the mayor of Portland. Then she was appointed a Circuit Court judge. When she lost an election, she returned to private practice where she specialized, as always, in children—the rights of children, and the untangling of the traumatic situations in which husbands, wives, and children often found themselves. By 1991 she would once again be a judge—a District Court judge in Multnomah County.
Elizabeth Welch was the perfect lawyer for Cheryl: she was kind, she was smart, and she was a fighter. She also had a wonderful sense of humor, but that was not something she would be called upon to use. The early days after Brad moved out had been, as Cheryl feared, only deceptively calm. He was now gathering a head of steam and was preparing to roll over her, just as he had flattened every one of his other wives. From this point on, every issue, every procedure, every heating, every order was marked by delay, fights, and tugs-of-war.
The divorce should not have been that difficult. The only issue to be decided was child custody. There was no money to fight over: Brad had his ongoing bankruptcy action in Seattle, and Cheryl could barely keep her head above water financially. No, they were fighting over Jess, Michael, and Phillip. And Brad knew full well this was the one area where he could terrorize Cheryl.
“This case was at the upper end of the acrimony scale,” Betsy Welch would recall, “probably as high as any I have ever been involved in. Both of the people were very bright . . . very strong-minded. . . . Nothing ever went through easily. Nothing. . . . Every single issue was disputed . . . nothing could be resolved amicably.”
Welch tried to count up the number of court appearances in the divorce and had difficulty doing so. Whatever the judge decided, the orders always had to be redone over and over. Brad fought Cheryl over day-care, schools, support payments, everything she wanted and needed for the boys.
It was ugly.
During that awful spring of 1986, Brad waged a relentless paper war against Cheryl. He flooded her with letters, typed in perfect business form:
Dear Cheryl,
Enclosed is a photocopy of my recent statement from Texaco. I have paid this bill in full. I would appreciate your reimbursing me $40.91 for your personal and business use. Together with the Mobil card use, you owe me $107.85. . . .
Dear Cheryl,
Please accept this letter as my written request to have you return to me all my framed photographs from your office that were mine prior to our marriage. If you insist on keeping these, you may purchase them from me for $210.00. Please advise. . . .
Dear Cheryl,
. . . after the court order I returned to you each and every item I had (the keys to our Toyota van, the house keys.) I thought I had the garage door control, in fact I thought it was last seen in Phillip’s diaper bag. I said I would replace the control if you could not find it. I will not pay to have the garage door control unit reprogrammed. Further, in the event you are planning to have the house door locks re-keyed, do not plan on me paying for that either. . . .
Dear Cheryl,
. . . I will attempt to work with you on getting the regular tires on the van. However, I woul
d appreciate your returning my snow tires as soon as possible.
Brad’s letters to Cheryl were quite civil on the surface, but the veneer was thin. They piled into her home, sometimes several a day. There were scores of them. He signed them “Cordially,” or “Thank You,” or “Sincerely.”
Brad fought desperately to wrest whatever he could from Cheryl. He attempted to get the thousand-dollar damage deposit for the Gresham rental. He insisted that he had paid the deposit from “my separate funds.” Since Cheryl had been supporting the family for two years at that point, that claim was questionable. The landlords finally wrote to Brad’s attorney and said they were writing a one-thousand-dollar check to both Brad and Cheryl. “If one tries to cash it without the other, then a crime has been committed!”
Cheryl asked again for the return of “the four standard tires with rims for Toyota Van so I can replace the studded tires on the van by April 1.” Then one day her assistant said cheerfully, “Your husband called and said you didn’t have to worry about your tires anymore—he said he took care of them.” Cheryl was relieved—until she went down to the parking area of Garvey, Schubert and found all four of the studded tires on her van had been slashed. They had, indeed, been “taken care of.”
Within a very few days after Cheryl hired Betsy Welch and even before Welch could file the necessary documents for her divorce, Cheryl called her, very upset, and said that Brad had announced he would be moving back in with her—at his attorney’s suggestion. As a general rule, that was good advice, and Welch knew it. There is no rule or law that says a spouse who has moved out of the home cannot move back in. In child custody cases, the parent who moves out acknowledges that the parent left behind with the children is providing acceptable care. In a disputed custody, this gives the parent who remains the upper hand.
Brad had lost too many custody battles. Even Loni Ann, whom he had seen as the weakest link in his chain of women, had prevailed in court and had been awarded Kait and Brent. Lauren had controlled his visits with Amy. He had let his first three children go, finally, because he had Jess, Michael, and Phillip—three bright, handsome sons who looked so much like himself. He was not about to let Cheryl have them. They were his trophies, his prizes. They reflected his boundless ego, miniature versions of himself who would validate his manhood, his potency, and his power.
Betsy Welch immediately called Brad’s current lawyer and explained why she felt it would be a fruitless and emotionally damaging move for Brad to return to Cheryl’s Gresham house. But Brad did exactly what he had threatened to do. When Cheryl got home from work on the Friday evening of a long holiday weekend, she found him in her bedroom. She was horrified, and she was angry, but she was helpless to get him out. Betsy Welch could not go into court until Tuesday morning to ask for an order to remove Brad. Cheryl knew he wasn’t there for anything more than to reestablish his legal beachhead. “It was a very long, confrontive, unpleasant weekend,” Welch recalled.
Cheryl asked him to go, but Brad refused to budge. At one point, he took Jess with him and locked them both in the master bedroom for hours. He would not allow Cheryl in to get her clothes, her makeup, or anything else she needed. The boys were frantic, Cheryl was frantic, but Brad stayed put, as if he had never left his “home” at all. Although the house had six bedrooms, Cheryl slept on the couch in the recreation room so that she could watch the stairs from the master bedroom; she was afraid Brad might leave with the boys.
It was a ghastly three days, and Cheryl wondered hopelessly if Brad actually intended to take up their sham of a marriage. He acted as if he was home again for good, and the thought was almost more than she could bear. Knowing that he would listen in to all her phone calls on the bedroom extension, she nevertheless called her mother. Trapped in the house with Brad, she had to have someone to talk to. As they discussed the situation, Betty made a bad joke about ways to get rid of Brad. “Maybe we should just poison him,” she said. “I think I read someplace that a woman did that to an abusive husband, and they let her go . . .”
Neither mother nor daughter realized what a devastating impact their conversation would have on Brad. He looked at everything from his own point of view—the point of view of a man who had virtually no sense of humor, who believed that the end (his end) justified the means (any means), and who considered women spawn of the devil.
26
Even though Brad had told her that he had to spend the weekend with his sons, Dr. Sara Gordon was blissfully happy, delighted with the new man in her life. She had no idea of the hell Cheryl Keeton was living in. Brad seemed to Sara to be very kind, very honest, and quite remarkable. Often she marveled at her good fortune in finding such a man. Within weeks of their meeting, she was as anxious as he to have his divorce finalized. She was just as concerned as he was about his poor children who had to spend so much time with the woman Brad had described to her as a slut and an incompetent mother. She knew that Brad was only doing what he had to do to save his sons.
Of course, Brad had never intended to leave Sara or the comforts of his new apartment permanently. Once he had proven that he could move back in anytime he pleased, he left Cheryl’s house and returned to the Madison Tower.
Both of them aware of the inflammatory possibilities in the divorce action they were handling, Jake Tanzer and Betsy Welch worked together to find the best solution not only for Cheryl and Brad but especially for Jess, Michael, and Phillip. Apparently, each of the parents loved the boys, and the opposing attorneys hoped that a psychologist could help establish which of the dueling parents—if either, and if not both—should have custody of their sons. They needed to know who was the “primary” parent. Where would the little boys fare better? With their mother? With their father?
Tanzer suggested to Betsy Welch that they contact an expert who was not under the aegis of the family court to be sure they had the most unbiased evaluation possible. Dr. Russell Sardo, quite probably the leading clinical psychologist in the family counseling field in the Portland area in the mid-eighties, agreed to consult. He would attempt to establish whether Brad or Cheryl was the primary parent. Dr. Sardo would talk to each of them separately, administer the MMPI (the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) to both, and then visit with Jess, Michael, and Phillip and hope to get a fix on the family dynamics. After extensive testing and multiple interviews, Sardo would then deliver copies of his report to Jake Tanzer and Betsy Welch.
Dr. Sardo spoke first with Brad, on March 23, 1986, and found him very verbal and quite comfortable in communicating. His body posture was relaxed—as if he were a man whose career had been full of high-powered meetings, as, indeed, it had been. Brad explained to Dr. Sardo that he and Cheryl had been married for six years and separated for one month.
“I am the children’s primary parent—I always have been,” Brad said with assurance. “My wife loves the children very much, but I don’t think she likes them. She is not a natural parent; the children were my idea.” Brad stressed that he had been the one who longed to have children in their home, while Cheryl had always seen her legal career as her main goal in life. Although he assumed that Cheryl’s profession would equip her to be a superior litigator and make her a trained negotiator, Dr. Sardo wondered if he might not be speaking to the “skilled negotiator” of this family.
Brad was very glib and dynamic. And his description of Cheryl’s parenting abilities was devastating. He told Sardo that she was not a nurturer, she had no patience, she was “overreactive and loses control,” and she was critical and condemning when dealing with her small sons. He said that Cheryl often yelled at the boys, calling them “fuckers” and “little assholes.”
Cheryl’s career took precedence over everything else in her life, according to Brad. She was always gone and it was his perception that Cheryl found it very difficult even to be around the children—unless, of course, she had someone to help her care for them. Brad sighed as he told Sardo that Cheryl just didn’t have the inclination or the skills to
cope with the complete care of Jess, Michael, and Phillip.
“Perhaps ‘hedonistic’ would describe Cheryl,” Brad said. And he went on to describe her as “a very sexual person” who had been “promiscuous.” Dr. Sardo listened quietly now as the man sitting in his office tried to wipe out his wife with words. The Cheryl Keeton that Brad sketched sounded, indeed, like a selfish, dissolute woman who wouldn’t be a good mother for any child. But Sardo had listened to a thousand couples argue over their children, and he had long ago learned to reserve judgment until he had heard both principals out.
Smiling expansively, Brad went on to say that he, on the other hand, had been absolutely faithful in his marriage. As remote as such a possibility might be, he said he actually hoped for a reconciliation. He wanted nothing more than to be back with Cheryl and his children in a solid family unit. It had always been Cheryl who wanted the divorce. He felt, further, that she was seeking custody of their three boys not because she wanted them, but “because she is combative.”
Sardo was a little bemused by Brad. He was, at the very least, a very complicated man. Sardo found him quite intelligent and sophisticated, and yet he caught inconsistencies in Brad’s statements, jarring discrepancies that a man of his obvious brilliance should have noted and censored before they ever passed his lips. Although Brad had stressed early in the interview how scrupulously faithful he had been throughout his marriage, he suddenly reversed himself and described a period when he and Cheryl had had an “open marriage.” During this time, Brad admitted, he had had an affair with their nineteen-year-old baby-sitter. It hadn’t lasted too long, and he had told Cheryl about it.