Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (22 page)

the basically dull decor of the Elks Club.
 
It didn't matter.
 
The

dancers were sixteen and seventeen and the future lay ahead without a

blemish or a shadow.

All the boys from Evergreen had short hair, they had yet to succumb to

the hippie craze for long hair that was sweeping America.
 
The girls'

hair was swept up into bouffant styles several inches high, lacquered

in place by enough hair spray to keep it immobile in gale force

winds.

The dance was a milestone in their young lives, a night they would

never forget.
 
And encircled by Brad's powerful arms, Loni Ann danced

to Elvis Presley s "Love Me Tender" and fell absolutely, utterly in

love.

She could not imagine then how she could ever bear to be away from him,

even though she knew she might lose him.
 
She was still in high school

and Brad was going off to the University of Washington.
 
She tried to

sound philosophical about that as she ended her long message in his

yearbook.

i .
 
. . All your high school is over.
 
Now, you'll go to college and

be a Big Man and 111 just be a little junior at Evergreen or Holy

Names.
 
I really hope that it won't change anything.
 
If it should,

just remember that no matter what there is a crazy little Catholic girl

who thinks you're about the most wonderful person in the world...."

Longvless, Washington, 120 miles south of Burien, was designed to he

the perfect cityþactually part of a twin city, no one in the Northwest

ever refers to either Kelso or Longview singly, but always to

"KelsoLongvieah7."
 
From the ridges of rolling hills covered with fir

trees on down to the flats along the Columbia River, Kelso-Longvievv

seemed the ideal spot for a metropolis.
 
The great river passes below

the twin cities on its way west to the Pacific Ocean.
 
And a high

bridge connects l.ong l view to Oregon where that state's far northwest

corner pokes into what seems as though it should have been part of

Washington State in the first place.

Neither Kelso nor Longview ever lived up to the grand dreams of the

pioneer founders.
 
In fact, in May of 1980, it seemed that

Kelso-Longview itself might cease to exist at all.
 
When Mount St.

Helens literally blew its top on May 18, powdery gray ash clogged the

Toutle River's banks ten feet deep, and Spirit Lake near the peak of

the mountain threatened to cascade down and wash Kelso and Longview out

to sea.
 
Only a natural dam formed from debris stopped the torrent.

For months afterward, travelers along 1-5 tromped on their gas pedals

when they approached the twin cities, nervous that a wall of water

might still be a threat.

Cheryl Keeton was born in October 1949 and grew up in Longview in a

neat, cozy little house on a tree-lined street only a few blocks from

Long Park.
 
And in the summer of 1967, like Brad Cunningham, she had

graduated from high school and was about to enter the University of

Washington.
 
Slender, beautiful, dark-eyed, and extremely intelligent,

she was a small-town girl who seemed to have everything.
 
She had dated

Dan Olmstead* since she was fourteen, and although Dan, two years older

than Cheryl, had attended Whitman University, he was switching to the

University of Washington in Seattle so they could be together.

Cheryl's family life was complicated as she was growing up but she had

always coped with change serenely.
 
She was a girl who fixed her eye on

a goal and headed straight for it, and it was virtually impossible to

distract her.
 
Only later would her relationships become convoluted and

interwoven, old strands braided back into new ones so that it almost

seemed as if some terrible blueprint was being traced, some irrevocable

plan set into motion.

Her mother, Betty, would divorce her father, Floyd Keeton, and remarry

twice before Cheryl was grown.
 
Her father would also marry again, and

eventually Cheryl had five half brothers and sisters.

Betty Keeton Karr McNannay had always looked years younger than her

true age, she was a tall, attractive woman with a good figure and long

brown hair.
 
Most Christmases, she got a new fur-trimmed coat, and she

always looked like a model as she posed for somebody's Polaroid

camera.

From the time she was fourteen, Betty had worked in some aspect of the

medical field.
 
She began as a nurse's aide and next became a licensed

practical nurse and a certified alcohol counselor.
 
Eventually, she

would work as a psychiatric security nurse at Western Washington State

Hospital in Steilacoom, an institution for the insane.

Betty's first, young marriage was to Floyd Keeton, a tall, well-built

man in his twenties with a crew cut.
 
He was a half dozen years older

than Betty and she was barely nineteen when Cheryl was horn.
 
After an

acrimonious divorce from Floyd, Betty married James Karr and gave birth

to a second daughter, Julia, and to a son, Jim, who were five and six

years younger respectively than Cheryl.
 
Betty divorced Karr when Jim

was six.
 
Betty was working as an LPN, and Cheryl walked little Julia

and Jim to and from school and looked after them until their mother got

home.

Betty met Bob McNannay, her third husband, when she was hired as his

secretary at the Port of Longview.
 
McNannav was about a decade older

than she was, forty-two, and still a bachelor.
 
He was intelligent and

kind and had a great sense of humor.
 
He would spend thirty-seven years

working for the Port of Longview, becoming its general manager for the

last fourteen years before he retired.

Betty married Bob McNannav in October of 1963 when Cheryl was two days

from her fourteenth birthday.
 
Julia was nine and Jim eight.
 
They all

got along fine.
 
Cheryl trusted Bob McNannav.
 
and valued his

opinion.

Betty's welcome mat was always out to her children s friends, and their

home was full of parties and games and people.
 
There was often an

extra placeþor two or threeþset at Betty's table.
 
her kids grew up

happy.

Cheryl had always been a dedicated student, determined to go to

college.
 
Bob McNannay admired her ambition and her brains.
 
"She was

my daughter," he said later, as close to his heart as any natural child

could be.
 
McNannav often found Cheryl sound asleep over her studies,

and he would wake her up and send her to bed.
 
She graduated when she

was only seventeen," he recalled.
 
"Her mother thought she was too

young to go to the IJniversity of Washington.
 
I told her Cheryl would

be fineþand she was."

Cheryl was a senior in high school when Betty gave birth to her last

child, Susan McNannay.
 
Bob had longed for a child of his own, and he

doted on the little girl, the whole family did.
 
Susan was seventeen

years younger than Cheryl, who adored her baby sister.
 
She and her

boyfriend Dan lugged Susan around with them wherever they went.

Sometimes, when they took Susan to the store, they pretended that she

was their baby.
 
Nobody doubted that they were her parents, even though

they seemed very young to have a baby.

Cheryl graduated from high school fifth in her class, she was coeditor

of the school paper, The Lumbertack Log She was pretty and brilliant

and happy.
 
Susan grew up idolizing her older half sister.
 
Cheryl was

always there for her, "a third parent, really," she recalled years

later.

As warm and loving as Cheryl was, Susan always viewed her as the

strongest member of her family emotionally.
 
"Cheryl was always in

control, even with our family.
 
She never lost an argument.
 
She always

had the last word," Susan said.
 
But she stressed that Cheryl wasn't

bossy, she was just blessed with great common sense and

determination.

Cheryl's natural father, Floyd, had moved to Vacaville, California, and

remarried.
 
Cheryl remained close to him, her stepmother, Gabriella,

and her half sisters Debi and Kim.
 
From the time she was small, she

had spent time every year with her father and his family in

California.

She was especially attached to her grandmother Edna Keeton.

Cheryl wasn't afraid of much, she was self-confident and had every

reason to be.
 
She was smart and she was nice, but few people ever won

an argument with her.
 
She wanted to be an attorney one day, and no one

doubted that she had what it took.
 
But Cheryl was a romantic, too.

Her all-time favorite song was "Send In the Clowns."
 
Susan, who would

grow up to be one of her closest friends, said that Cheryl loved Kurt

Weill's Threepenny Opera.
 
She played the album over and over again.

But "Mack the Knife," a song of betrayal and swift bloody murder, was

not one of her favorites.

Cheryl began her freshman year at the University of Washington in the

fall of 1967, and even though she was more studious than most of her

Gamma Phi Beta sorority sisters, she made a lot of friends.
 
There was

a warmth and a vivacity about Cheryl that attracted people to her.

For all of her life, she would be considered a cherished friend by

dozens of people.
 
Many women who are as attractive as Cheryl was and

smart to boot have difficulty initiating friendships with other

women.

Not Cheryl.

Everyone liked her.

Cheryl majored in economics, continued to go steady with Dan Olmstead,

and worked so hard in college that she probably didn't have much time

to attend football games.
 
During her years at the University of

Washington, it was unlikely that she had any idea who Brad Cunningham