Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer?

by Ann Rule

  Almost instantly, Trudy Dreesen had become one of Brad’s staunchest supporters. Even though she had not seen him for longer than she could remember, she was there for him now. That was the kind of woman she was, and her husband Herm backed her up.

  The Dreesens and Brad’s other loyal supporters understood that he was hiding his boys to protect them. But there were others—Cheryl’s family and friends—who felt he was determined to hide them from the police for fear that one or all of his sons might have some memories of the night of September 21, memories that he hoped time would erase completely.

  Brad’s eighteenth-floor apartment in the Madison Tower stood empty. When his rent came due on October 3, Sara paid the twelve hundred dollars. On the seventh, she made his car payment. He had enough problems without having to face eviction or repossession of his Suburban. U.S. Bank owned his Cabriolet now.

  On October 3, 1986, Sara testified before the Washington County grand jury, which was still looking into Cheryl Keeton’s murder. The ordeal she herself was undergoing was obvious. Twelve days after Cheryl’s death, she didn’t know where Brad or the boys were. She didn’t know if they were alive or dead. Sara was a small woman to begin with—one hundred pounds was a good weight for her—but she hadn’t weighed that much for months; now she was down to about eighty-five pounds, and there were dark circles under her eyes.

  She answered the grand jurors’ questions about her contacts with Brad on the night of September 21, and she told of her calls to him after he left her at Providence Hospital, calls that went unanswered. She did not tell them about the purple bruise she had seen beneath Brad’s arm when they showered together on September 24. He had explained that to her satisfaction.

  “I answered everything they asked,” she said later. “I didn’t volunteer information.”

  Sometime later that month, Brad got in contact with Sara. “He told me that he had taken the boys on a ‘journey.’ Later, he said that he took them to Salt Lake City and he was looking for an ‘underground system’ so that Cheryl’s family could never have them. He told me he knew he would be taking a chance because even he might never be able to find them.”

  After a few weeks, Brad had picked Michael up from Jean Count and met the other boys at the Bainbridge Island ferry dock where Florence Chamberlain brought them. Apparently he had decided against sending his boys into long-term hiding, or maybe he never found the “underground system” he was looking for. He brought them back from the “journey” and made new plans. One thing was certain; he refused to stay in the Portland area, or even in the State of Oregon.

  Brad and Cheryl had purchased property east of the Cascade Mountains in Tampico, Washington, in the early 1980s. The little crossroads town west of Yakima was located between the Cowiche Mountains and the Lost Horse Plateau. Sanford Cunningham had lived there until his death, and Brad had been drawn to the area. He had taken most of his wives to Yakima County to hunt or to camp. After he lost the real estate project in Houston, he and Sanford had started their abortive businesses together there—the gas station, laundromat, and car wash.

  He and Cheryl owned two large parcels of land in Tampico, on which Brad had grown hay and built a barn and sheds. He fancied it had potential as a working ranch. There was a small house on the property, a rental, and the larger shell of what Brad would always call “the family home.” It was presently nothing more than exterior walls and a roof. This Tampico property was the refuge that Brad ran to around Halloween 1986.

  Even though the previous tenants had trashed the place, he and the boys moved into the rental house. Brad, Brent, Jess, Michael, and Phillip were now living in a tiny house with cheap vinyl floors, urine-soaked carpets, and scarred walls. The place needed new wallpaper and cabinets too. It was a radical departure from the lifestyle that Brad had become accustomed to—the huge homes and sumptuous apartments.

  Brad was down but far from out. He had the twenty-three-thousand-dollar severance pay from U.S. Bank, Sara had paid all his legal bills and his monthly obligations for September and October, and he was not unskilled as a carpenter. He bought supplies and quickly refurbished the rental house. It was anything but elegant, but it was warm, clean, and comfortable. Jess, Michael, and Phillip were glad to be with their father, to sleep consecutive nights in the same beds in the same house, and to begin to trust that they would not have to move on soon again. The Cunningham boys were living in their own house, literally in their own house. Since they too qualified as tribal members, Brad had borrowed money from the Colville tribe in his younger sons’ names to buy this property.

  To her relief, Sara was once again part of Brad’s life, and of the boys’ lives. Perhaps they had a future after all. When Sanford died the previous July, Sara had worried about how his widow, Mary, would manage, and she had bought the Prowler trailer that belonged to Brad’s father, deliberately paying Mary way over book value. Now, Sara parked the Prowler in Tampico, next to Brad’s little house.

  The boys still believed that their mother had died in a car accident, and Brad felt they were much too young to know the truth. They were his children, and Sara didn’t try to interfere with his decision about what to tell them and when.

  Every chance she got, Sara spent time in Washington with Brad and the boys. She either drove east on Highway 84 alongside the Columbia River, crossing the river to head north on Route 97 into eastern Washington, or she caught one of the little commuter airlines into Yakima. “When I visited,” Sara remembered, “Brad and I slept in my trailer, and Brent and the little boys slept in the two bedrooms in the house.”

  Brad told his youngsters that their mother was gone but now he had found them a “new mom.” “He wanted them to call me Mom,” Sara recalled. “And he always referred to Cheryl by her first name, so they began to call her Cheryl too. He told me that he didn’t think the kids would miss Cheryl at all.”

  It was true that Sara had never seen the boys cry for their lost mother. She was concerned that they seemed never to have gone through a grieving process. It was almost as if Brad had them under some kind of mental control. There was no question that they admired him and she never saw him punish them physically. But she wondered at the “excessively long time-outs” Brad enforced. Often one son or another was ordered to stand in the corner, arms at his side, with his nose an inch or two from the wall, and instructed not to waver. Even Phillip, who was not yet three years old, did his time at the wall. “If they moved, Brad extended the time,” Sara said. “It might start at ten minutes’ time-out and end up being an hour.”

  Sara wasn’t present at the supper table in Tampico one night when one of the boys suddenly asked where their mother was. Had she heard Brad’s reply, she would have been horrified. Brent was at the table and stopped eating when he heard his father’s reply. “Your mother’s turning to dust. Now eat your supper.”

  A month or two after Cheryl died, Sara accompanied Brad and the little boys to Bunker Hill Cemetery outside Longview. They were still confused about where Cheryl had gone. It was a raw day and it wasn’t easy to find Cheryl’s grave. It did not yet have a marker or a tombstone on it. Finally they located it far up at the top of the hill, near the section that had been there for a hundred years. Brad pointed to the grave and told the boys their mother was buried there in the earth. Michael looked at the spot and Sara heard the five-year-old boy ask, “But how can she breathe?”

  It was arduous for Sara to make the trips to Brad’s house in Tampico. She had to arrange her on-call schedule very carefully and she couldn’t cut down on her work. She had been meeting not only her own financial obligations but Brad’s too, plus his legal expenses. Still, she had fun when she was with Brad and the boys. It snowed early in Yakima County that year, and they made popcorn and hot chocolate after they played in the snow.

  Brad was resolute that he would never move back to Oregon. He told Sara he could never get work in Portland—there was too much media interest in him there. He was making a life for himself in th
e Yakima area. He was taking care of his boys and building a shed for one of his tractors, and he had joined the local volunteer fire department. If and when he moved, it would not be back to Portland. “He wanted me to move my practice to Seattle,” Sara said. “He wanted me to leave my family, my friends, my patients—my security—in Portland and start all over again in Seattle. I made some inquiries about openings for anesthesiologists in Seattle—but I didn’t want to go.”

  Despite her love for Brad and his sons, living with the aftermath of Cheryl’s murder wore on Sara. Although she believed absolutely that Brad had had nothing to do with her death, she had never really gotten over the memory of those first few weeks of terror, of their moving from place to place to escape the unseen forces that Brad insisted were stalking them. Brad had come into her life at Easter and made it wonderful, but by Thanksgiving it was hard for her even to remember those happy, carefree days. When Cheryl died, much of Sara’s joy had died too.

  Sara was having second thoughts. “It wasn’t just that he wanted me to move my practice to Seattle,” she said. “He did things that upset me. He showed up at Providence Hospital one night looking like a street person. He was dirty, scroungy—he needed a shave. I was embarrassed.”

  Never once did Sara complain about how much money she had spent on Brad. Money in and of itself had never mattered to her. People did. It was the complete upheaval of her life, her belief system, that made her rethink her decision to marry Brad.

  Brad seemed unaware that she was backing away. He and the boys went to McMinnville for Thanksgiving dinner at Sara’s sister’s house and they had a pleasant time. Later they spent the night at Sara’s apartment in the Madison Tower. Brad had long since given up his own apartment. Regretfully, Sara had made up her mind that she couldn’t continue with Brad. After the boys were tucked into bed, she told him gently that she wanted to break up with him. “Brad pleaded with me not to leave him,” she recalled. “He told me that he would have a very hard time finding another ‘partner’ at that stage in his life.”

  Sara would not be dissuaded. She had agonized over her decision for a long time before she told him. She had fallen in love with a handsome, charming, self-confident, successful bank executive. She barely recognized that man in Brad anymore. She was shocked to learn he was nearly broke. He had spent the twenty-three thousand dollars U.S. Bank had given him to buy out his contract in September, spent it in two months! He seemed to have no discipline and no brakes on his behavior. It was true that he had bought building supplies to fix up the house in Tampico, but even so, he should have had half of that money left.

  They went to bed, finally, with Brad still refusing to let Sara go. He loved her. He needed her. Some time later, Brad shook her awake. “Sara,” he said, “if something happens to me, will you take care of my kids?”

  “Yes,” she answered sleepily. “Of course.”

  The next time Sara woke up, Brad was gone. She looked around the apartment and couldn’t find him. Alarmed, she got dressed and went down to the garage. His Suburban was gone. Where would he go in the predawn hours?

  Sara paced the floor of her apartment as Brad’s sons slept, unaware. Brad was gone for three or four hours. And when he came back, he looked terrible. He looked like a broken man. “I was going to jump off the fourteenth floor,” he told her hoarsely. “I didn’t have the nerve. I went out on the freeway and was going to drive into a pole or something—”

  “Why?” Sara asked.

  “I couldn’t live without you. I can’t get a job. I’m being harassed by the Oregon State Police. What do I have to live for?”

  Sara stared at him, wondering if he meant what he was saying. But, finally, she believed him. There was no way she could walk away and leave a man in such desperate straits. Brad needed her. The boys needed her. “All right,” she said. “I’ll stay with you for one year. But I’m not going to leave Portland. If you don’t get your life together by then, I’ll leave you.”

  Brad smiled at last and folded her into his muscular arms.

  35

  Sara realized that if they were all going to be together, they would need larger living quarters. Her apartment and Brad’s tiny house 190 miles away would do only as stopgap measures. Counting Brent, there would be six of them when they merged their families. Sara started looking for a house big enough for herself, Brad, and his four sons. Eventually they settled on a beautiful estate in Dunthorpe, an upscale area in Lake Oswego. There was a huge gray house, a guest house, and a sweeping lawn where the boys could play. It would need some remodeling, but it was well worth the quarter-million-dollar asking price.

  Brad and his sons moved back to the Portland area in February 1987. He pointed out numerous things that he didn’t like about the Dunthorpe house. The kitchen needed modernizing, and he felt a sweeping circular driveway would suit their estate better. Brad did some of the work himself, grading the driveway before a contractor paved it. He was quite adept at operating heavy equipment.

  “He took the cabinets out in the kitchen,” Sara said, “and tore down the kitchen wall.” Mostly, however, she hired carpenters, electricians, and plumbers to do the work. In the end, it cost her one hundred thousand dollars to remodel the Dunthorpe estate to Brad’s specifications. She also agreed to finance a 1988 Whitewater Jet boat that Brad felt would be fun for all of them.

  Brad had apparently been correct in his assumption that he couldn’t get a job in Portland. “He tried for banking jobs,” Sara said. “He had a good interview at Rainier Bank but he said U.S. Bank quashed that.” So they soon settled into a pattern. Sara was the breadwinner and Brad was the househusband. She left for work early each morning, and Brad gave the boys breakfast and took care of them until the sitter arrived. Brent went to Lincoln High and Jess was in first grade, but Michael and Phillip were still too young.

  Sara changed her bank account at First Interstate so that Brad’s name was on the checks and he could sign them. Now she was not only paying for child care, dental and medical care, and all the other expenses for Brent, Jess, Michael, and Phillip, she was also paying Brad’s support payments for Kait to Loni Ann. Indeed, she was paying for everything, even $210 a month on the baby grand piano that had impressed her so much when Brad first took her to his eighteenth-floor apartment in the Madison Tower. Michael was taking piano lessons. That alone made the piano worthwhile for Sara.

  Brad’s contribution was to write the checks and sign them with his flamboyant signature.

  A year passed and although Brad had not really “gotten his life together,” he and Sara were married on November 27, 1987. She was his fifth wife; he was her fourth husband. She was determined to make this marriage work. She truly loved Brad and she cared for his sons as if they were her own.

  Brad still couldn’t seem to find a job, nothing in keeping with his education and talents. He had overseen a six-hundred-million-dollar project in Houston, and he had been a top bank executive in Portland. He couldn’t very well lower himself to taking an ordinary job. He and Sara decided that he should go back to college. He registered at Portland State University in 1987 and 1988, and Sara paid his tuition and expenses. Brad had no income at all. The Houston lawsuit continued to wend its weary—and expensive—way through the courts in Texas. Vinson and Elkins had taken the case on a contingency basis. If and when there was a judgment in Brad’s favor, the law firm would take a large chunk of that.

  Beyond Sara’s support, Brad had another money source to tap: Cheryl’s estate. He submitted a budget for the cost of raising Jess, Michael, and Phillip—which included money to pay him for child care. He told Bob McNannay, one of the trustees of Cheryl’s estate, that he needed just under four thousand dollars a month for the boys’ expenses. He said he had to pay for their medical and dental bills, clothes, food, shelter, and for child care. He didn’t mention, of course, that Sara was already paying for all of that. When McNannay resisted and John Burke backed him up, Brad sued Cheryl’s estate. In essence, the estate
that she had set up for her sons then had to pay legal expenses to protect itself, but at least Brad wasn’t able to penetrate the trust.

  He had another ingenious financial scheme. There was no question that he had suffered crushing business losses for years, and he said he had talked to a C.P.A. who told him that Sara could take advantage of those losses. She would have the benefit of “two million dollars in tax loss carry-forward,” Brad said, and would pay considerably lower taxes than if she hadn’t married him. There would even come a time when Brad would claim that Sara married him only because she wanted his tax write-offs.

  Nineteen eighty-seven was the first year they filed their income tax jointly. However, Brad told Sara that he learned on the very last day of the year that his tax loss could only be used against his income. He told Sara that a C.P.A. suggested that she pay Brad a salary of fifty-five thousand dollars on December 31, 1987. The sum was supposed to be returned into her account. Sara did what she was told to do. “I signed a lot of signatures I shouldn’t have signed,” she would say years later. “That was certainly one of them. . . .”

  Shortly after their marriage, Brad suggested to Sara that she adopt his youngest sons. He said that she was their mother now, and there was no reason why she shouldn’t cement her emotional bond with them legally. She agreed readily. Sara loved Jess, Michael, and Phillip as much as she could love any child she gave birth to. In March 1988 she legally adopted the three little boys.

  New birth certificates were issued. Now Sara’s name appeared on the line for “Mother.” There was no longer any mention at all of Cheryl Keeton, the mother who had given birth to the boys and loved them so deeply. It wasn’t Brad’s idea, and it certainly wasn’t Sara’s. She never wanted to replace Cheryl as the boys’ mother; it was simply the way Oregon adoption law is written. But it was a little sad to see Cheryl’s name erased from her sons’ lives, Sara thought, as if she had never existed at all.