Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (46 page)

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 nymphomaniacþhe'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 bestþon 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 childrenþthe 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

judgeþa 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 hearing, 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 Cherv I 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 Mobile 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 X210.00

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 paving for that either....

Dear Cheryl, .
 
. I will attempt to work with you on getting the

regular tires on the van.
 
However, I would 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 anymoreþ he said he

took care of them."
 
Cheryl was relievedþuntil she went down to the