Read Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? Online
Authors: Ann Rule
Tags: #General, #Murder, #Social Science, #True Crime, #Criminology
however, he continued to attack Cheryl's morals, her family's morals,
and the police who had investigated her murder.
He offered up many suspects for the jurors to consider.
Jerry Finch of
course, a "persistent" older man who was "bugging" Cheryl, her many
other lovers.
He even suggested that her brother, Jim Karr, was not
above suspicion.
In the days ahead, he promised to reveal more
possible killers.
There was missing evidence, Brad suggested, and he listed items he
would request continually throughout his trial: a grocery receipt for
seventy-seven dollars' worth of groceries allegedly purchased by Cheryl
at the I.G.A on Sunday, September 21, 1986, the groceries, a garage door
control, fingernail scrapings from Cheryl, phone records, exterior
photos of the Toyota van, a bedroll allegedly given to Jerry Finch, a
"gold ring" found on Cheryl's belt.
The long Monday finally ended, but Brad was not yet finished with his
opening statement.
There was more lost evidence to be considered, lost
years, the secret lifestyle he insisted that Cheryl livedþwith cocaine,
illicit lovers, nude beaches, intrigue.
All of his innuendos were
completely alien to everyone who knew Cheryl.
And when they walked out
into the autumn afternoon, the trees around the courthouse were aflame
with color and it felt good to leave Brad's ugly accusations behind.
Judge Alexander warned Brad again the next morning that there were very
few attorneys in Oregon qualified to defend a murder case.
"You are
way, way off," he admonished.
"You have to follow the same rules they
do.
If you say something in the opening and then can't prove It,
you're opening yourself up for trouble."
He explained once again that
Brad was not to try his case during his opening statement, he was only
supposed to be outlining what the jurors could expect to hear and
see.
Brad stood in place at the lectern as the jury filed in the next
morning.
He was calm and gracious, speaking often of his financial
affairs, but, jarringly, the emotion evoked as he recalled lost
business deals seemed greater than when he spoke of his lost wife.
In
March 1993, he said, he was at his "nadir" financially.
The jurors,
none of whom appeared to be millionaires, appeared nonplussed by all
his talk of "million-dollar loans," "tax loss carry-forward," and
"bankruptcy."
They had agreed to sit on a murder jury and the defendant scarcely
mentioned the murder.
After he explained his status as an executive with U.S. Bank, Brad
frowned, remembering the period after Cheryl's murder.
"After Cheryl's
death, we were all very scared .
. . fear that the children would be
stolen þby Betty, or by Washington County.... I tried to stay available
to the police in case they wanted to arrest me."
He said that he and
his sons had endured a "tough" existence in Yakima that fall and
winter.
In late January he had finished building the barn, and "at
Sara's request, I moved back.
Then Brad began to talk about Sara Gordon.
Aware that she would be a
chief witness against him, he also had to impugn her morals.
He said a
C.P.A. told them that Sara could use his tax loss carry-forward, but
only if they were married.
This, he claimed, was the main reason for
the marriage.
"We weren't real compatible," he confided to the jury
Again boasting of his accomplishments, he told the jury about the
"dilapidated" building that he turned into the Broadway Bakery, and how
he found the formula for Svmptovir.
"I'm interested in chemistry and
math," he said.
"I was the guinea pig for Symptovir.
I started the
FDA process .
.."
From Brad's viewpoint, virtually nothing in his life had been what it
seemed to be.
He was the fall guy, the patsy, who had always struggled
against great odds.
He said that he and Sara learned after marriage
that the tax loss carry-forward could be used only against hrs
income.
The reasons for their marriage were gone.
Sara was not fair with his
children.
Yes, he admitted, he had had an affair with Lynn Minero his
bakery manager, but he blamed that too on Sara, because she had moved
out of their Dunthorpe home, deserting him.
It was Jim Avers, the Oregon State Police investigator, who was
basically responsible, Brad suggested, for Sara's change of heart about
testifying against him.
Ayers had encouraged Sara to "recall" the
bruise allegedly present on his arm after the murder.
"Sara and Ayers
broke into the house," Brad said, "and took pots, pans, bedding, a
computer Cheryl's wedding ring, a necklace that the boys had given
Cheryl for Mother's Day."
In his rambling opening statement Brad pointed his finger at many
enemies and spoke of his despair after Sara abandoned him.
He and his
sons had only an old VW bus that his aunt Trudv gave them.
"We had to
have a garage sale to live," he said, hanging his head.
"We made about
five thousand dollars."
Suddenly, Brad returned to Cheryl's rampant promiscuity and added that
she also disposed of assets in their bankruptcy.
He seemed about to
launch a still longer attack on his dead wife when Alexander warned him
that he had far exceeded the time limits and legal parameters of
opening statements.
When Brad paid no attention to the admonition
Alexander interrupted the verbal torrent.
"That's enough, Mr.
Cunningham.
Please take your seat!
Sit down!"
Judge Alexander explained to the jury that they had yet to hear one
word of evidence.
They were to go hack "to ground zero.
Start
fresh.
Wait until you hear testimony.
Listen to what is acceptable.
Disregard the vast majority of what you have heard."
Brad wanted Mike Shinn banned from the courtroom.
He might want to
call him as a witness.
"I'm going to permit Mr.
Shinn to stay," Alexander said.
And so it began, the whole sequence of Cheryl Keeton's life and death
passing once again through a courtroom.
Sometimes it would rain
relentlessly outside the Washington County Courthouse, and sometimes
the sky was clear blue.
There were unseasonal snow storms, but inside
the courtroom, no one knew.
Participants and gallery alike were all
caught in a window of time, a window that existed not in 1994 but in
1986, when the weather was warm and the sun had just set behind the
Coast Range mountains.
Again, Randall Blighton told of finding Cheryl's van crosswise on the
Sunset Highway, again Tim Duffy, the paramedic, recalled trying to save
Cheryl.
Witnesses who once lived on 79th Street returned.
Oregon
State Police troopers, detectives, sergeants, lieutenants,
supervisors.
Cops.
Medical examiners.
Attorneys.
Dr. Russell Sardo.
Most of the
gallery knew the witnesses by sight.
It was akin to seeing the same
movie for the fifth time, only this time the film would have an
ending.
Cheryl's family all testified, and Brad cross-examined Betty Troseth
savagely.
He had begun his character assassination of her during his
opening statement, saying that she drank and caroused and that some of
the men in her life had sexually abused Cheryl.
He asked her again
about the alleged abuse, and Betty looked not at him but through him as
she said she never heard of it.
"Do you recall making the statement that you wish you'd had four
retroactive abortions?"
Brad lashed out.
"Mr. Cunningham, let's not have any more outbursts like that," Judge
Alexander cut in, telling the jurors to disregard the remark.
Once again, Cheryl's mother had to live through the last conversation
she ever had with her oldest child, her pain achingly obvious.
It had not been a good morning for Brad.
Karen Aaborg testified about
the money he gave her to spirit his sons away, so far away that even he
could not find them.
Perhaps worse for Brad, she recalled the phone
calls she had overheard between Brad and Cheryl, and his saying, "I'll
kill Cheryl.
I'll kill her."
"I remember it pretty vividly, because he said it with such passion,"
she said.
Karen also remembered the time in February of 1986 when Brad
returned to Cheryl's home after he had moved out.
"He was trying to
make it so miserable for Cheryl that she'd ..
eave.
After the jurors left for lunch, Alexander turned to Brad.
"If you
ever had a chance with this jury, you just ruined it," he said quietly,
referring to Brad's attack on Betty Troseth.
"You're so convinced that
you're right that you're not listening to the advice I suspect these
lawyers [Hunt and Lyons] have given you."
Any real lawyer knew the cardinal rule of defense attorneys: you do not
attack the grieving family of the victim, and you do not portray the
victim as a loose womanþno matter what she may have been in life.
Brad had made devastating remarks about Cheryl, and several female
jurors darted looks at him that were no longer unreadable.
There was a buzz in the courtroom when Scott Uphamþnot Bradþ called
Jess Cunningham as a witness that afternoon.
Tall and handsome Jess
looked very much like his fatherþbut with a gentler when.
Under
Upham's matter-of-fact questioning, Jess explained that he was a
freshman in high school, and that he and his three brothersþMichael,
Phillip, and Brentþall lived with Sara.
He admitted that being in