Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (16 page)

knew what her sister had wanted.
 
Cheryl had had a presentiment of doom

and she had confided to Susan that she wanted to be cremated.
 
"They

released Cheryl's body to us right after the autopsy that first night,"

Susan remembered.
 
"It sounds terrible, but we were so upset at the

funeral home that we got the giggles.
 
I think we were too shocked to

cry, and I know Cheryl would have understood.
 
She always used to say,

Buy me flowers when I'm alive," and we were trying to do what she would

have wanted.
 
We arranged for the cremation as Cheryl wanted."

But Cheryl's father's sisterþIdaþwas horrified when she heard that

Cheryl was going to be cremated.
 
"She told us that no way' could they

permit that," Susan said.
 
"They were Southern Baptists and they didn't

believe in cremation."
 
Aunt Ida put up such a fuss about it that

Betty, Susan, and Julia didn't have the energy to fight her.
 
"Cheryl

was gone and we were having such a hard time about losing her that we

just couldn't deal with all the family stuff," Susan remembered.
 
"They

went and picked out a coffin.
 
It was an awful bright pink.
 
That

wasn't Cheryl.
 
Actually, she would have laughed at the very sight of

it."

At least Cheryl's mother was able to stand firm that there would be no

viewing at the funeral.
 
On Wednesday, September 24, both sides of

Cheryl's family along with representatives from Garvey, Schubert

attended her services.
 
"It was awful," Susan recalled.
 
"Cheryl would

have hated that pink coffin so much.
 
It was raining cats and dogs.

And even so, Julia got stung by a bumblebee."

Cheryl was buried in the Bunker Hill Cemetery, several miles north

along the Columbia River from Longview.
 
It had been established in

1889, and its gates were guarded by giant cedars.
 
Her grandmother Edna

Keeton, whom she had loved so in life, was next to her.
 
Her

grandfather Keeton was nearby.

But it was too soon, far too soon for Cheryl to be dead.

Jess, Michael, and Phillip, the sons she had loved more than life

itself, were not present at Cheryl's funeral.
 
Nor was her estranged

husband Brad.
 
Later he complained that Bunker Hill Cemetery was so out

of the way that it was impossible to find, and that no one in Cheryl's

family had made the slightest effort to inform him of her funeral

arrangements.
 
Some time after Cheryl's funeral, Brad did take their

sons to Bunker Hill Cemetery and show them their mother's grave.

A week after the "pink funeral" in Longview, Cheryl's coworkers from

Garvey, Schubert and Barer had a private memorial service for her.

They gathered at The Meeting Place at Seattle's historic Pike Place

Market.

"We talked about the Cheryl we knew," Greg Dallaire recalled.
 
"Even

attorneys whom she'd opposed got up and talked about what a fine lawyer

and fine person she was.
 
We had a kind of closure."

Garvey, Schubert was not a criminal law firm.
 
Like everyone else,

Cheryl's coworkers expected that the police investigation would come to

a successful conclusion, and that someone would be arrested soon and

prosecuted.

Cheryl's blue Toyota van remained parked at the Jim Collins Towing yard

at 12090

S.W. Cheshire Court in Beaverton.
 
On Tuesday, September 23, 1986, two

O.S.P criminalistsþSenior Trooper Greg Shenkle, an expert in fingerprint

identification, and Julia Hinkley (who was married to O.S.P Sergeant James

Hinkley)þprocessed the death car there.
 
Shenkle also processed

Cheryl's purse and its contents.

Fingerprints are, and long have been, one of the most valuable

resources for detectives.
 
If Shenkle got lucky and Cheryl's killer had

left prints inside the van or on her property, they could identify him,

or her, through the AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System)

easily.
 
Unless, of course, Brad Cunninghamþwho had had reasons to want

Cheryl out of his lifeþwas her murderer.
 
His fingerprints would have

an evidentiary value of zero, they would be expected to be there.
 
He

had told lien Ayers he had driven the van often, the last time six

months before.

Shenkle looked through Cheryl's purse and found two phone cards, one

for 503-555-3939 and one for 503-555-2637.
 
He also found credit cards:

Sears, Nordstrom, American Express, Visa, First Interstate Bankcard,

and several gasoline cards.
 
Credit cards are often fertile areas for

fingerprints, but only Cheryl's prints were on them.

Using various colored powders and oblique angles of light to highlight

latent fingerprints, Shenkle then processed the Toyota van inside and

out and lifted several latent prints around the driver's-door window on

the exterior and several more inside.
 
He even found one in blood on

the outside passenger door handle.
 
A print in blood is the best

evidence he could hope to find.
 
Shenkle drove to Olympia, Washington,

Brad's home state capital, carrying the fingerprint exemplar he had

taken from the door handle.
 
He held his breath as he compared the

whorls, loops, and ridges to Brad's known print exemplars.
 
But the

print proved instead to be from the right thumb of Randall Blighton,

the man who had risked his life to get Cheryl's van off the Sunset

Highway.
 
He had already told police that he touched the passenger door

when he looked to see if the person inside was all right.

There are some prime spots where fingerprint technicians find useful

prints, spots criminals don't usually think of when they wipe a crime

scene clean.
 
Shenkle tried them all, including the rearview mirror.

He performed his arcane alchemy on items he found in the glove

compartment: a Mobile oil receipt, a Texaco gas receipt, a lightbulb,

several matchbooks, a map, Cheryl's pen, a glasses caseþeven a pack of

chewing gum.

Many of the prints didn't have enough points to make a match to

anyone's fingertips.
 
Not surprisingly, several were Cheryl's.
 
And, as

expected, some were Brad'sþone on a map in the glove compartment and

one on a temporary registration.
 
That meant nothing at all, since Brad

and Cheryl were still living togetherþand both driving the vanþ until

February or March.

Julia Hinkley had been a criminalist with the Oregon State Police or

almost two decades.
 
She was an expert in electrophoretic toxicology

and crime scene photography as well as in the collection and

preservation of evidence.
 
By her own estimate, she had worked on

hundreds of homicide investigations.
 
"I'm there to assist the police,

and to collect and preserve evidence," she said succinctly.
 
She had

also attended several hundred postmortem exams and reconstructed "many,

many" crime scenes.

Hinkley had been present at Cheryl's autopsy the day before she

processed the Toyota van.
 
It was she who had received the blood

samples and the rectal, oral, and vaginal swabs taken from the

victim.

She had also received the bags from Cheryl's hands, samples of her head

and pubic hair, the dark hairs caught in her left hand, and a few stray

hairs and fibers found clinging to her shirt.

Cheryl's body had already been transported to Longview for burial when

Hinkley joined Shenkle at the tow yard to process the victim's van.

Finch and Avers were there too, and Greg Baxter, all hoping that

something might be recovered that would bring a quick solution to this

case.

First, Hinkley took photographs of the Toyota van.
 
Then she shone a

high intensity light at an oblique angle to try to pick up any trace

evidence not visible in direct light.
 
There is an irony in the

aftermath of murder.
 
The ambiance is calm and impersonal, as if

maniacal violence had never occurred in the now silent, empty crime

scene.
 
There is no longer any need for haste.

Quietly, meticulously, Hinkley worked her way around the van inch by

inch.
 
She saved a hair from the driver's door And a hair that adhered

to dried blood on the steering wheel.
 
She would bag and label every

possible shred of evidence.
 
She divided the van into six sections and

vacuumed the contents of each section, sealing and labeling the bags.

She noted clumps of dark hair, and everywhere she worked there were

massive amounts of dried blood.
 
Back at the Oregon State Police crime

lab, she would carry out painstaking forensic tests on the items she

bagged as she looked for some telltale marker Cheryl's killer had left

behind.

Fear traveled with Brad and Sara wherever they went that first week.

Brad warned Sara that they had to be careful not to develop a pattern

in their movements.
 
The people who were stalking them would pick up on

that instantly.
 
So some nights while Brad and Sara stayed at Gini

Burton's, they hid the children at Sara's sister Margie's house.

Jess had testified at the Washington County D.A."s office for the grand

jury, and Brad had fired Susan Svetkey for allowing his son to talk to

Jerry Finch.
 
It was all such a nightmare, having a six-year-old who

had just lost his mother subpoenaed to testify.
 
Meanwhile Sara was

continuing to work, trying to keep them all together emotionally and

physically and to keep her own feelings on an even keel.
 
It wasn't

easy.
 
Every time she managed to achieve some sort of equanimity about

their situation, something happened to throw her off balance.

On Thursday morning, Sara and Brad took a shower together in Gini's

bathroom.
 
The warm water splashed over them and it almost seemed as if

they could wash away all the tragedy and the ugliness of the past few