Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer?

by Ann Rule

  Sara had arranged for a restraining order to keep Brad from being present when she went to the house in Dunthorpe to collect her belongings. She had paid for this house and she was willing to let Brad and the boys live there while she continued to pay for it, but she found that he had stationed a private investigator at the house to be sure she didn’t remove items that Brad considered his.

  “March 6, 1990: . . . I was totally stunned. . . . Brad had removed an incredible amount of my stuff from the house. . . . All my cancelled checks and registers from 1985 on were gone . . . files, a basket of paid bills and papers that needed to be filed. . . . He must have been up all night going through things and packing them into [his] pickup or car.”

  Brad had also demonstrated an uncanny instinct for taking things that had sentimental or special meaning to Sara: “He had removed all the placemats, my Waterford goblets, most of the wine glasses, all of the bottles of wine (including presents to me . . .) and all of the cookbooks. The kitchen, though, was the most cleaned out. Both drawers of utensils were gone.” It was odd. She had asked Brad for an oak cabinet and said the boys could have whichever TV and VCR they wanted. Brad had left those but taken the cabinet.

  The next day, a very shaken Sara had an appointment with her psychologist. “Dr. T. thought that Brad’s statements about John Burke trying to kill me and not ever being alone were a direct warning to me,” she wrote in her journal. “[He told] me not to let Brad find me in those situations where he might be tempted [to kill me.] I was scared when Brad had said that to me, but became even more fearful for my safety after discussing it with Dr. T.”

  Brad gave two weeks’ notice to Rhonda, their baby-sitter. He told her he planned to stay home with the boys and he needed to rent the guest. house to make money. He changed all the locks on the Dunthorpe house. And Rhonda told Sara that she had overhead Phillip and Michael talking. “Rhonda said . . . Phillip was telling Michael that Mom doesn’t like Dad anymore and Mom hired people to kill him,” she noted in her diary. When Rhonda tried to tell the little boys that wasn’t true, Michael took Phillip to their room and shut the door.

  Sara realized that Brad had begun to wipe her from the boys’ minds in a most terrible way, just as he had systematically erased Cheryl from their memories. Now, it was Sara who was not “Mom” any longer; she was an evil person who was trying to kill Dad.

  “March 9, 1990: . . . First Interstate Bank called me, saying that Brad . . . wants a copy of my financial statement. . . . Brad went to AAI and asked for my deposits. They told him they were not at liberty to give them to him. . . . At U.S. Bank, the Broadway Bakery Account is $2758 overdrawn.”

  Sara soon learned it was worse than that. A bakery employee with loyalty to Sara told her that many bills had gone unpaid for at least three months, even though she had provided money to Brad to pay them. The total of these bills—combined with unpaid salaries—was over twenty thousand dollars. Furthermore, Brad was negotiating to lease the Broadway Bakery premises—even though it was Sara who owned the property.

  In an affidavit Sara drew up, she would list Brad’s machinations that began when he realized she was truly going to divorce him. “Upon the Respondent learning that I was filing this proceeding, he failed to deposit the receipts from the bakery or from the delicatessen. . . . I do not have any idea what happened to the money or how much money he took. He also immediately took large amounts of money from my credit cards on cash advance. . . . I have now learned the Respondent has taken equipment that is encumbered with debt . . . it can [not] be sold or used to reduce the debts I am personally responsible for. I know he has a fax machine, a copier, an espresso machine and a coffee grinder (a large commercial model). . . . Respondent has left a van at the bakery in a parking lot that is in danger of being towed. . . . I have paid $27,000 in recent months over his being accused of killing his former wife. . . .”

  Sara realized that she would probably have to sell the Dunthorpe house. It was the only way out of the morass of debts Brad had piled up. But the money drain was not her biggest concern; she was worried sick about Jess, Michael, and Phillip. Rhonda was still there and she told Sara that the boys were wearing old clothes she had never seen, that no laundry had been done, and they had no toys to play with because they came to the guest house after school, instead of the big house, and Brad had locked all their toys up. Michael wasn’t practicing the piano and botched his piece at his recital. Sometimes Brad didn’t come home until late and the boys had to sleep on Rhonda’s couch.

  From Rhonda and the boys’ piano teacher, Sara learned that Brad was telling people that she had left him for a doctor, that she didn’t care anything about the boys, and that she was happily vacationing with a new lover. It wasn’t true. She was working double, triple shifts to forestall financial disaster. An affair with another man was the last thing on her mind.

  Brad’s attorneys were going after Sara for huge monthly support for him and the boys. He claimed the only income he would have was $350 from the rental of the guest house, while his monthly expenses were $11,422—including $450 a month for the Volvo lease, $590 a month for payments on a new truck (with camper), $439 for his boat payment, and $5,000 for his legal fees. Married to Sara, Brad had become accustomed to an even higher standard of living than he had enjoyed with Cheryl.

  And he had no intention of lowering it. Brad felt it would be “demeaning” for him to have to submit bills to Sara’s attorney. He requested through his attorney that Sara simply keep his checking account solvent so that he could continue to write checks. She thought not.

  Sara willingly continued to make the twenty-five-hundred-dollar house payment, all insurance payments—including medical insurance for Brad and the boys—all taxes, the bakery payment, and all other monthly obligations. She also paid Rhonda eleven hundred dollars a month for as long as she stayed. At least Sara knew that Rhonda cared about them. She asked only for a temporary restraining order to keep Brad away from her Riverplace neighborhood and from Providence Hospital.

  On March 12, 1990, Sara signed her newly drawn will, four years and one month after Cheryl Keeton had signed her hastily prepared will. The language in Sara’s will bore a somber resemblance to that in Cheryl’s.

  “I declare that I am married to Bradly M. Cunningham. A proceeding is pending in the Multnomah County Circuit Court to dissolve our marriage. I have intentionally made no provision for my husband in this will.

  “It is my intention that my husband Bradly M. Cunningham not receive any assets by virtue of my death. I have three children, Jess K. Cunningham, Michael K. Cunningham, and Phillip K. Cunningham. . . .”

  Sara set up a “Sara Gordon Trust Fund” that would be administered by members of her family and was to benefit her three adopted sons.

  Brad let her see the boys only once; Sara was ecstatic. When they were together, it seemed as if they had never been apart and that somehow, someway, she was still their mom.

  On March 30, 1990, Rhonda called Sara to tell her that the boys weren’t in school. “They aren’t here and I called the school. Brad told them he was taking the kids to Seattle for a few days and they might be back to school by Wednesday.”

  Three days later, when Brad and Sara were to appear at a support hearing, he didn’t show up and Sara learned that Brad had called Michael’s school and said he wouldn’t be back. Period. Sara wasn’t sure where Brad and the boys were. On April 11, someone called her at the hospital—at 7 A.M.—and said he was her attorney, Bill Schulte, calling collect. Hospital operators had permission to put Schulte’s calls through. But when Sara was paged and picked up the phone, she heard only a dial tone. She called Schulte and he assured her he had not called her—collect or any other way.

  The Dunthorpe house was empty. On April 21, Sara had the front door rekeyed so that she could get in and clean the house before she listed it with a realtor. She had to fax a copy of a court order to a Dunthorpe security officer in order to get into her own house. The agreement was tha
t he would let a realtor with a prospective buyer in to see the house—but when he tried to get in, he found all the locks had been jammed.

  Brad called Jack Lang,* the security man, from Houston, threatened to sue him for trespassing if he let realtors in, and said that he was going to change the alarm code. Lang called his attorney, who advised him not to let anyone into the house since ownership was in contention.

  In the last week of April 1990 Sara got a phone call at Providence Hospital. It was Jess, and her heart convulsed when she detected that he was crying. His first words to her were, “Mom, why do you have to sell the boat and the house?”

  “Jess,” Sara said urgently. “Where are you?”

  “Texas.”

  “When are you coming back?”

  “I think when school is out . . .”

  “I love you and I miss you very much,” Sara said. “I thought you were coming back sooner.”

  “Why, Mom?” Jess repeated, obviously coached. “Why are you selling our house and our boat?”

  “Your dad can tell you why, Jess.”

  “Why can’t you?” he asked.

  “We have to sell them, honey, because we need the money.”

  Sara thought she heard ten-year-old Jess mutter something like “bullshit” and he hung up on her.

  That wasn’t like Jess. Sara’s hand rested on the phone and she frowned. The phone rang again a few minutes later. It was eight-year-old Michael.

  “Where are you living, Michael?” Sara asked.

  “Texas.”

  “Do you live in a house, Michael?”

  “No, we don’t have enough money.”

  “Are you in a hotel?”

  “No, in an apartment.”

  Sara rushed to tell him that she loved him and missed him and his brothers. But Michael asked about the house too. How could she sell their house? She repeated what she had told Jess—they needed the money. Now, she was sure he was being coached. She could hear Brad’s voice whispering to Michael.

  And then Michael said, “You make thirty thousand dollars a month!” and hung up on her.

  Both the boys sounded so angry; they were almost yelling at her.

  Things got worse. The leading realtor in Lake Oswego told Sara there was a “big problem” with showing the Dunthorpe house. Apparently, Brad was back in Oregon. He had confronted a real estate saleswoman at the house and said he planned to move back in, and she was not to do anything about listing it or selling it. All the women in her agency had had a meeting and they agreed that they didn’t feel safe handling Sara’s property.

  Brad was making it virtually impossible for Sara to sell her own house and attempt to recoup some of her losses. He was also keeping everything of any value. The computer that she had paid for had been removed on Brad’s orders, “to be cleared of Brad’s information.” Bill Schulte was supposed to pick it up from the dealer but somehow it was never ready. Eventually, Sara learned that the sixteen-thousand-dollar system had “been sent to Houston.”

  The Volvo station wagon was in Houston too. She had stopped paying for the car Brad was driving, but she was still legally responsible for the debt. Sara felt if she could just get it back and turn it in to the bank, she might be able to cut her losses some. Brad finally dumped it in Houston. Sara eventually had it brought back to Oregon; it was less than a year old but it was dented and run-down, far more than it should have been for such a new vehicle. To unload it, Sara had to pay the dealership the five-thousand-dollar difference between its book value and its actual worth.

  On May 21 Sara received a message from the sales manager at the Volvo dealership. “Brad Cunningham called me . . . because he said he is restrained from talking to his wife. He said she caused their Volvo to be repossessed and there were some items of personal property in the car: children’s clothing, children’s toys, and baseball cards. . . . He’d like her to try to get them back.”

  None of the boys’ possessions had been left in the Volvo; Brad’s call was simple, almost childish harassment. He was never averse to using his sons to manipulate Sara. Two days later, she received a Federal Express overnight letter from Vinson and Elkins. Inside there was a single lined sheet, printed laboriously in what seemed to be a child’s hand.

  Dear Mom,

  We get out of school this Thursday. We have no way of getting back home. We have no money. Could you send some money and airplane tickets so we can get home?

  Singed [sic] by,

  Jess

  Phillip

  Sara didn’t respond. She knew that Brad had either dictated this sad little letter or written it himself, imitating a child’s handwriting.

  That bleak spring, something made Sara walk to the park blocks near her former home, the Madison Tower. She remembered the huge purple bruise under Brad’s upper arm—the bruise she had seen when she took a shower with him four days after Cheryl’s murder. Brad had explained it easily enough. “Oh—that. I was playing on the jungle gym in the park blocks with the kids on Sunday while you were sleeping. I slipped at the top, and I caught myself on the bars on that arm.”

  Now, in the spring of 1990, Sara saw that there was no jungle gym in the park blocks. There never had been.

  42

  In her affidavit to obtain a restraining order against Brad, Sara had stated what she had come to believe with growing horror. “I have been married to the respondent for slightly more than two years. Prior to our marriage, my husband was the subject of an investigation concerning the murder of his fourth wife, Cheryl Keeton, in September, 1986. The Grand Jury did not indict him. He has now been sued in the Multnomah County Circuit Court for causing Cheryl Keeton’s death. . . . Because in the past I had a belief that he did not cause Cheryl Keeton’s death, I married him. My belief now is not so certain, and I am in great fear of my husband. . . .”

  Sara had her attorney, Bill Schulte, on her side, and she had begun to trust Mike Shinn again, although she had asked in vain to have Brad excluded from the room when she gave Shinn a deposition. “I remember what happened to Cheryl within days of the deposition she gave when Brad was in the room,” she said. Brad was present, but Sara never looked at him.

  Mike Shinn had consulted with a Portland psychiatrist, Dr. Ron Turco. Turco was an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health Sciences University and he was particularly qualified as a consultant to Shinn. Not only was Turco a psychiatrist, he was also a commissioned police officer. He had testified on the psychopathology of a number of defendants, and he willingly agreed to look over the material Shinn had gathered thus far on Brad Cunningham. After he read carefully through the huge file, red-flagging scores of pages, Turco warned Shinn that men like Brad were extremely dangerous.

  “How do I find him—or at least more about him?” Shinn asked, brushing aside Turco’s warnings.

  “Go to his women. Get them to talk to you,” Turco said. “I think you’ll find most of his secrets there.”

  Shinn was doing exactly that in preparation for his court action against Brad. And he would have no paucity of witnesses. Quite apart from his five wives, Brad’s past was teeming with women.

  On March 21, even as Sara was acknowledging that she didn’t really know the man she had married, and that she not only no longer loved him but feared him—feared him so much that she didn’t want to give a deposition in his presence—Loni Ann Cunningham was about to give her own deposition. It was, perhaps, the most terrifying thing she could imagine—short of actually confronting Brad in a court of law. Mike Shinn, Diane Bakker, and Brad’s attorney, Forrest “Joe” Rieke, traveled out of state to depose Loni Ann. She was much too frightened of Brad to come to Oregon. She had finally agreed to a videotaped deposition on neutral ground.

  The camera caught Loni Ann as she waited for the questions to begin. She was a pretty woman, slender, with thick brown hair. She wore a purple sweater, which only added to the pallor of her face. She looked for all the world like a mouse that had been backed into a
corner by a cat just before a kill. Almost two decades had not diminished her fear of Brad one iota.

  Joe Rieke, a big-boned man with a deep gravelly voice, began the tape with his objections. His client Brad Cunningham objected to Loni Ann giving testimony on his alleged “prior bad acts”; such remote information should have no legal import in the civil action against him in Cheryl Keeton’s murder and should not be used to find some propensity for violence on Brad’s part in recent years.

  “Secondly,” Rieke said, “my client asserts all marital privileges that exist with respect to statements made by him to this woman during the course of their marriage.” Rieke promised that each statement Loni Ann made would be judged on whether it had been privileged communication during her marriage to Brad.

  In response to Shinn’s questions, Loni Ann forced herself to go back over her life with Brad ever since she had first met him in 1967 at Evergreen High School. Her marriage to him had lasted four years and two months.

  “When you married Mr. Cunningham, were you in love with him?” Shinn asked.

  There was a long pause. It was clear that Loni Ann had to search far back in her mind to remember if she had once loved Brad. Finally she said, “Yeah . . .”

  “Did that change during the course of the marriage?”

  “Yes.”

  Loni Ann said that her divorce had been obtained after she filed on grounds of “cruel and unusual treatment.” Asked to explain, she said, “He was physically abusive, he was violent . . . he was emotionally abusive . . . he was sexually abusive.”

  Loni Ann described her shock, her fear, her shame over the abuse that Brad had heaped upon her eight months after their wedding. As she related incident after incident, a haunted look washed over her face. “He said I was really stupid—he couldn’t understand how he could have married someone as stupid as I was. . . .” Her voice was laced with unshed tears and old terror when she told of the night Brad had left her on the edge of an embankment over a river—left her, she was sure, to step forward and drown.