Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (112 page)

That vote was eight for guilty and four undecided.
 
They didn't vote

again until forty-five minutes before they returned with their

verdict.

At that point, just as everyone waiting was beginning to panic,

Wilcoxen counted eleven guilties and tore up the twelfth, his ownþhe

knew he had voted guilty.
 
It had been a long hard afternoon for them,

and many of the women had cried because of the tremsendous

responsibility they felt.

For all of Upham's research into Brad's checkered financial background,

he later learned that the jurors "didn't give a hoot about all the

bankruptcy stuff and they weren't impressed by the DNA."
 
None of them

had cared for Brad, but they knew they couldn't render a verdict on

whether they liked him or not.
 
What had really made up their minds was

the testimony from the silent witness.
 
Cheryl's last note and her

conversation with her mother right before she left the house to go to

meet her killer were the two pieces of evidence that the jurors had

found totally convincing.

In five hours, it would be Christmas Eve.
 
The snow had all disappeared

and the air was cold and smoky with fog.
 
Cheryl's family headed toward

Longview for their eighth Christmas without her but, somehow it would

not be so bad now.
 
Celebrants wandered back to the Copper Stone, still

almost stunned that it was over and that it was okay.
 
Scott Upham,

Mike McKernan, and Jim Carr had a beer, and Upham enjoyed a good

cigar.

Mike Shinn and Upham shook hands as Shinn complimented Upham on his

remarkably convincing final arguments.

By tomorrow, everyone who had been together daily for months would be

scattered, off to their real lives in three states.

On January 6, 1995, the group reassembled for the last time.
 
Brad was

to be sentenced that afternoon for the crime of murder.
 
Now that he

had been convicted, Upham could present witnesses about prior bad acts

he had committed and reveal incidents and behavior that might affect

the length of his sentence.
 
Two women from his past, women Brad had

not expected, were in the courtroom.
 
Dana Malloy took the witness

stand, a glamorous figure with masses of long blond hair, dressed in

what looked to be a thousand-dollar outfit.

She was so frightened to be there, less than a dozen feet from Brad,

that her voice was barely audible.
 
Even the sound of a reporter's pen

on paper drowned out her words.
 
Brad's life with Dana had been a

secret thing and the jurors had never heard about how he indoctrinated

her into the world of topless dancing.
 
Now, with Upham's gentle

urging, she told it all.
 
The nights in Houston, the times the little

boys were left alone, and Brad's bizarre actions and threats, how he

had told her that a psychic had predicted she would commit suicide.

When Brad rose to cross-examine his former mistress, Dana looked at him

with apprehension.
 
She had reason to.
 
He immediately set out to

characterize her as working for the "Seattle Mafia."

"I tried to set you and your mother up in your own business space as

cosmetologistsþdidn't l?"
 
he asked.
 
"I was concerned for your

safety?"

She stared back at him.
 
"No."

Brad reminded her that he had found her and her lover, Nick Ronzini,

having sex and he had thrown them out of his apartment.

"You're twisting everything around," Dana said.

"And I put your things down the hallþ?"

"No.
 
You took everything I owned and put it in the Dumpster," she

said.

In the back of the courtroom, a new spectator, a very tall, slender

young woman with black hair and round European-style black sunglasses,

leaned forward, listening intently.

Brad insisted that Dana had been told exactly what to say by the Oregon

State Police and the D.A."s office, and she would not agree.
 
Nor would

she agree that he had hired the Blue Moon Detective Agency to find her

only because he was worried about her and thought something had

happened to her.
 
Brad was determined to show that Dana was a

prostitute, but Judge Alexander stopped him, saying that her job had

nothing to do with her credibility.

"You make over two hundred thousand dollars a year, don't you?"

Brad pushed on.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Dana said.

Finally Dana's voice rose to a pitch everyone in the courtroom could

hear.
 
"Brad, do you really want to get into this?"

Apparently he did not.
 
Dana looked at Brad with an almost unreadable

expression.
 
"I thought you were God," she said quietly.
 
It was

obvious she no longer did.

Scott Upham asked Dana about the times Brad had followed John Burke,

Cheryl's old friend and the administrator of her estate.

"Did he say he wanted to kill John Burke?"

After a long hesitation, Dana said, "Yes."

Upham wanted to be sure that Brad stayed in prison as long as possible

under the guidelines that were extant for the crime of murder in Oregon

in 1986.
 
He had another surprise witness, Ronald O. Marracci, a

private investigator whom Brad had hired in the summer of 1994, only

months before his trial for murder.
 
He testified that Brad had paid

him two thousand dollars at forty dollars an hour, and paid by check.

"What did he want you to do for him?"
 
Upham asked.

Marracci said that Brad had hired him to buy a truck, a camper, a

.30.30 rifle, and some handguns.
 
He said he would need all those

things when he was acquitted of murder and got out of jail.
 
He planned

to pick up his three sons and travel with them, and, of course, they

would need the truck and the weapons.
 
It was Sara's worst nightmare,

although she had not known that Brad was actually making preparations

to disappear with the boys.

Upham rose to ask for the stiffest sentence possible.
 
"The pattern

started early in his life," he said.
 
"He has very little regard for

other people or rules.
 
He will do anything he has to to get what he

wants.... He should not ever be allowed to be free.
 
As he sies here,

he has no family.
 
He has no friends.
 
He has a character disorder and

it can't be fixed."

Brad also made a brief statement, "I would not benefit from longterm

incarceration," he said, "because I am a caring person."

Unfortunately, Judge Alexander was bound by statute and he could not be

sure that Brad would never be free.
 
He could sentence him to life in

prison, but the only discretion he had was to raise the mandated

ten-year minimum to twenty-five years.
 
He set the minimum at

twenty-two years.
 
Brad would not be eligible for parole until 2014,

and if he was still alive, he would be sixty-eight at that time.

"That the attack was premeditated and carefully planned, the

viciousness of the attack, Mr. Cunningham's total lack of remorse, and

repeated false statements by Mr. Cunningham" were all factors

Alexander took into account.
 
The only mitigating factor he found was

that Brad had no prior criminal record.

Brad assured the judge that he would appeal his sentence within thirty

days.

As the spectators filed out, the tall young woman in the back row moved

out into the hall.
 
The mention of Dana's possessions being thrown into

a Dumpster had been all too familiar to her.
 
It was Kit Cunningham,

who was now twenty-five.
 
Despite her father's predictions .
 
I in

Houston that she would never amount to anything, Kit had grown up to

be a willowy beauty, a model in Paris.
 
She had come back to witness

her father's downfall and to tell him in personþadult to adult þwhat

she thought of him and his treatment of the frightened little girl she

had once been.

As she had with all Brad's children, Sara had opened up her home and

Kit was staying with her.
 
Later, she visited Brad in the visitor's

area of the jail and blasted him with the pent-up emotion of many

years.

Brad asked not to stay in the Washington County jail any longer than

necessary.
 
He was anxious to move down to Salem to the Oregon State

Penitentiary.

That request was granted.

l

AFTERWORD Sara wanted to buy something happy to celebrate the fact

that she and her sons would no longer have to be afraid.
 
When she

learned of the guilty verdict, she chose a figure of Santa Claus in his

workshop, executed to precise scale with toys and ornamenes and

sugarplums.
 
It was a symbolic purchase that meant they would be

together not just for the Christmas of 1994 but forever.
 
And as the

months passed, the rift between Sara and Jack Kincaid narrowed and it

was obvious that they too would be together when the time was right.

Sara still works in the anesthesiology department at Providence

Hospital.
 
On weekends, she usually attends baseball games and other

events the boys are involved in.
 
Brent Cunningham lives with her and

his brothers and goes to school.
 
When Sara cannot be there, he is with

Jess, Michael, and Phillip.

Scott Upham is involved in another convoluted murder case, but he and

Mary Ann Upham finally managed to break ground on their new house in

May 1995.

Jim Carr was involved in a horrendous accident in February 1995, when a

felon speeding from a police chase slammed broadside into the

driver's-side door of his car.
 
He is recovering after emergency

surgery.