Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (73 page)

"W7V, 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 Jessþthey 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 uhis Thursday.
 
we have no way of

getting back home.

we have no money.
 
Could you send some money and airplane tickeas so we

can get home?

Singed lsic) by, Jess Phillip Sara didn't respond.
 
She knew that Brad

had either dictated this sad little letter or written it himself,

imiLating 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 armþthe bruise she had seen when she took a shower

with him four days after Cheryl's murder.
 
Brad had explained it easily

enough.
 
"Ohþthat.
 
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 iunszle gym in

the park blocks.
 
There never had been.

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 himþor 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 himþfeared him so much that she didn't want to give a deposition

in his presenceþLoni Ann Cunningham was about to give her own

deposition.
 
It was, perhaps, the most terrifying thing she could

imagineþshort 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 l

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