Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (29 page)

He was, of course, only twenty-six, and there was the possibility that

he was simply immature, given to temper tantrums and petty revenge.

His mother hoped so.
 
Despite the physical harm he had done to her,

despite the way he had sided with his father and helped to betray her,

Rosemary Cunningham still loved Brad.

He was her only son.

Loni Ann continued going to college and in 1978 graduated with a

bachelor's degree in physical education.
 
Brad paid child support for

Kit and Brent only sporadically.
 
By 1983 he ceased any contact at all

with his children.
 
There were no phone calls, no birthday cards, no

Christmas presents.
 
Nor were there any child support payments.
 
Loni

Ann was going on with her life, but emotionally Brad had almost

destroyed her.
 
She would gladly have traded his support money for

peace of mind.

She never knew when Brad might turn up again and try to take her

children, or just what revenge he might have in mind.

Cynthia received her final divorce decree from Brad on February 9, 1977

and the property settlement agreement was signed on March 6. Brad

offered her six thousand dollars in cash.
 
He said he was unemployed

and his yearly income was only five hundred dollarsþbut that his father

had agreed to lend him the money to pay Cynthia.
 
He said he planned to

go to school in Colorado.

Cynthia agreed to the settlement, with the proviso that if it turned

out that he had lied about his assets, she could have the agreement set

aside.

Cynthia Marrasco had self-esteem going into her marriage with Brad, and

she soon found it again when he was finally out of her life.
 
She

remarried, this time with great happiness.

She never saw Brad again.

Part IICheryl

,: Brad was a marrying man.
 
There were to he five women who became

Mrs.
 
Brad Cunningham before he reached his thirty-eighth birthday.

And for each he wasþin the beginningþthe perfect man.
 
Except for his

second engagement, which was by its very nature expedient and hurried,

his courtships were exquisitely planned.
 
He was a prince, the kind of

husband many women long for.
 
He was handsome, charismatic, ambitious,

and more and more successful each year.
 
He still had the biceps of a

college football player, but he was smoother, more urbane and

cosmopolitan.
 
He drove the best cars, he knew the best restaurants,

and many women who were intimate with him remember him as a superb

lover, attentive and intuitive, patient when he needed to he, wildly

passionate later.

Moreover, what woman's heart wouldn't go out to a father crying for his

lost children?
 
None of Brad's new fiancees ever considered talking

with his former wives to learn more about him.
 
Why on earth would

they?

When Brad described the women who had come before them, he made his

ex-wives sound so despicable and immoral that they all wondered how he

could have been so stoic and long suffering.
 
He had stayed in the

marriages, he assured them, "for the children."
 
His exwives had been

"alcoholic," "drug addicts," "bisexual," "tramps," and "lousy

mothers."

Lauren Kathleen Swanson* was a gorgeous, willoG^w woman, the prettiest

of all Brad's women to date.
 
Born "January 1949, she grew up in

Redmond, a once rural suburb east of Seattle, and went on to enter the

University of Washington in the same freshman class as Cheryl Keeton

and Brad Cunningham.
 
Along with Cheryl, Lauren pledged Gamma Phi

Beta.

Indeed, she and Cheryl were great friends as well as sorority

sisters.

Lauren majored in education, and when she graduated in 1971, she began

a teaching career.

Lauren's and Cheryl's friendship grew during their four years in

college together until they were very close, probably best friends.

Lauren knew Dan Olmstead too, she had met him when he came to pick up

Cheryl at the Gamma Phi house.
 
After they all graduated, Cheryl

married Dan and the Olmsteads became part of Lauren's immediate social

circle.

Although Lauren was still single, she often joined Cheryl and dan and

several other young couples for parties, dinners, and boating trips.

Cheryl and Dan had a sailboat they dubbed the .S'zlmmerX'un, an(l they

and their friends had many great times sailing On Puget Sound.

At first Lauren shared rent with a number of friends from her sorority

in one of the big old houses that abound near the university.
 
Later

she had her own apartment On Eastlake Avenue a few miles away.
 
.She

had met Brad Cunningham at the University of Washington and talked with

him from time to time since his fraternity, Theta Chi, was next door to

the Gamma Phi house.
 
After his sophomore year, Brad didn't live in the

fraternity house, of course.
 
He was married to Loni Ann and a father,

and working at Gals Galore.
 
Lauren had always rather liked Brad and

found him attractive.
 
Sometimes she wondered how his life had turned

out.

Then in 1976, five years after she graduated, she met Brad again.

In the mid-1970s, the Madison Park area of Seattle was in transition.

Located on the west shore of Lake Washington, it was crisscrossed with

some of Seattle's most expensive streets, but it ran out of high-end

real estate as Madison Street headed west up the long hill toward

downtown Seattle.
 
There the neighborhood decayed into time-battered

wooden houses, small ethnic grocery stores, and taverns.
 
For decades

it had been a question of which ambiance would prevail.
 
But by the

seventies, Madison Park had begun its climb to utter desirability.

Singles were flocking to the funky taverns and trendy restaurants that

were popping up close by the shores of Lake Washington at the east end

of Madison Street.

Lauren and Brad ran into each other there one night at the Eted Onion,

a popular tavern.
 
Balancing drinks, they swiveled through a laughing

crowed to find a booth where they could hear each other talk.
 
Brad

told her that he was divorcing his second wife, who, he .said wryly,

had turned out to be a major disappointment.
 
He didn't go into

detail, but Lauren noted how sad and moody he seemed about his had luck

in love.

Like almost all women, Lauren found Brad fascinating.
 
He was even

better looking than he had been in college and he sounded as though he

was doing wonderfully well in the business world.
 
She was delighted

when he asked her out.
 
They were soon dating steadily, and in a

whirlwind courtship they were engaged just a few months later.
 
Lauren

introduced Brad to her circle of friends, and so it was that he met

Cheryl and Dan Olmstead for the first time.
 
The two couples rapidly

became very good friends and socialized often.
 
Brad was fun and he was

obviously a real mover and shaker in business.

After Cheryl Keeton had graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of

Washington and married Dan Olmstead, he began law school while she took

a job doing actuarial work for an insurance firm.
 
She would follow Dan

to law school as soon as they could afford it.
 
It was what they had

always planned to do, Cheryl had never foreseen anything different in

her life.
 
.She and Dan would get started in their careers, and at some

point they hoped to have a family.

In the meantime, Cheryl remained close to her family in Longview and

continued to play second mother to her half sister, Susan McNannay.

Betty and Bob McNannay had separated and were in the process of

divorce.

Cheryl adored Bobþshe always hadþand she was impatient with her mother

for leaving him.
 
Susan, who was Bob's only child, was eight or nine

then, and she was the light of Bob McNannay's life.
 
She stayed in the

ranch house in Longview with her father.

Susan spent any number of weekends with Cheryl, doing "girl things."

Bob would put her on the train that ran up from Portland, and Cheryl

would pick her little sister up at the King Street station in

Seattle.

In the years that followed, Betty would marry two more times, hut she

would always remain friends with Bob McNannay.
 
And Cheryl would look

upon him as a father figure until the day she died.

Susan would remember that Cheryl's marriage was happy and

comfortable.

Dan adored her and she had really never known any other man.
 
But she

married so young and when she walked out of the church in September

1971, Susan recalled, her sister had "cried and cried."

Cheryl had a degree in economics.
 
When she worked at Unigard Insurance

as a financial analyst, she met another would-he law student who would

become one of her most devoted friendsþa very tall, darkhaired man

named John Burke.
 
Cheryl and John were never more than friends, but

she could not have had a better friend.

"Cheryl and Dan lived in a little studio basement apartment just

outside the University District at first," Susan remembered, "and later

they bought a house on North Forty-fifth."
 
But with the wisdom that

came when she herself was a grown woman, Susan realized in retrospect

that Cheryl had worried that her marriage wasn't strong enough for her

to have children.
 
She put off thinking about it, concentrating instead

on her career.
 
She and Dan had been sweethearts all through high

school and college, and she wanted their marriage to work.
 
"The women

in our family don't have a great track record in our marital history,"

Susan observed.