Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (23 page)

was.
 
He was a jock and she was a scholar.
 
Brad had pledged Theta Chi,

the fraternity whose chapter house was next to the Gamma Phi house.

Occasionally the two houses had exchanges, casual social evenings.
 
And

many years later, Brad would claim that he and Cheryl had dated once

while they were in college.
 
It is impossible to prove or disprove

that.
 
She was going steady with Dan and it would have been unlike her

to date someone else.

More probably, Brad and Cheryl had only passed each other as they

walked to class, their heads bent against the relentless Seattle

rain.

Cheryl's life had been pretty much charted since she was in junior high

school, and a big, cocky football player had no place in her plans.

Brad Cunningham was not her style.

Not then.

Brad s lifetime dream had been to play football for the University of

Washington Huskies.
 
And he had made it.
 
He pledged Theta Chi, and

Burien and Evergreen High School seemed far away, although he continued

to date Loni Ann Ericksen all through his freshman and sophomore

years.

Then in February 1969, Loni Ann missed her period.
 
She was a senior at

Evergreen by that time and she was thrilled to be going steady with

Brad, being with him was the pinnacle of all her dreams and hopes.

Sleeping with him had, of course, always been a prerequisite for any

girl who wanted to date him, but like the other girls who had yearned

for Brad, Loni Ann hadn't minded.
 
She loved him.
 
More than that, she

idealized him.
 
If she should be pregnant, she told herself, it

wouldn't be the end of the world.
 
Even though pregnancy without

marriage was not socially acceptable in 1969, it was not nearly as

disgraceful as it had been a few decades earlier.

Loni Ann, stuck back in high school, had been petrified that she would

lose Brad to some college girl.
 
Now she was almost relieved to think

she might he pregnant.
 
It would mean that she and Brad would get

married.
 
At least, she hoped they would.
 
She already felt like part

of his family, she baby-sat often for Brad's sister Ethel, and she was

alwa,v.s welcome at Sanford and Rosemary's house.

With the passage of a few more weeks, there was no doubt that Loni Ann

was pregnant, due in October 1969.
 
When she told Brad, he didn't seem

upset.
 
They agreed to get married in March, and they chose the United

Methodist Church for the ceremony.
 
It was right on Ambaum Boulevard in

Burien, only blocks from the house where Brad grew up.
 
He was twenty

and Loni Ann seventeen.
 
They made a great-looking couple.
 
He was so

big and handsome, and she was slender and pretty.

Already a perfectionist, Brad took charge of the wedding and had every

detail planned ahead of time.
 
He wanted his wedding and reception to

go like clockwork.
 
And it almost did.
 
Brad and Loni Ann knew that

their friends would tie balloons, crepe paper, and cans on their car,

but Brad wasn't about to drive down the street making a spectacle of

himself.
 
He was too conscious of his image.
 
He would not be looked

down upon, and he would not be laughed at.
 
So he had stashed a

motorized golf cart in back of the church and he and Loni Ann were

prepared to zoom right out of the reception in the church basement to a

non-decorated car.
 
Brad had figured out how to escape the ignominious

pelting of rice and chorus of raucous comments.

nFAD RY CTINCFT Loni Ann embarrassed Brad, however, before they even

made their getaway.
 
When she tossed her wedding bouquet to a group of

squealing bridesmaids and single girls, she miscalculated and threw it

too high, and it got caught on a low-hanging telephone wire.
 
It was

only a small flaw in Brad's perfect plan, but he was furious.
 
With one

clumsy throw, Loni Ann had ruined his smoothly choreographed wedding

and reception.

The damn bouquet teetered on the wire while everyone tried to poke it

and shake it down.
 
Loni Ann didn't know why it made such a difference

to Brad, hut it did.
 
She apologized a dozen times, and finally he told

her to forget it.
 
They would not let her bad aim ruin their

honeymoon.

Loni Ann looked forward to a wonderful life with her new husband, and

with the baby she carried.
 
They rented a small unit at the Mark Manor

apartments midway between Burien and White Center, and both of them

worked hard.
 
Although Brad had his three scholarships, that income

wasn't enough for the way he wanted them to live.
 
He did construction

work when the Washington Huskies weren't in training or playing.

The young Cunninghams first summer, 1969, was a memorable one for its

cataclysmic and extraordinary events.
 
Astronaut Neil Armstrong took

man's first steps on the moon on July 20.
 
Eight days later, Mary Jo

Kopechne drowned in Senator Ted Kennedy's car when it plunged off a

bridge on Chappaquiddick Island.
 
And on August 9, Charles Manson's

followers carried out his grotesque orders to kill and turned Roman

Polanski s home into an abattoir.

Most memorable of all, perhaps, was the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair,

which began on August 15.
 
Almost half a million young people gathered

on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, to listen to The Grateful Dead,

Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Janis Joplin, Jimi

Hendrix, and dozens of other musical groups and performers.
 
But while

much of America's youthful population was caught up in peace and love

and, most particularly, Woodstock that summer, Brad Cunningham had

other things on his mind.
 
He didn't want to dress like a hippie or

camp out in a muddy field listening to rock stars in the rain.
 
He was

more comfortable in a three-piece suit.

Brad had always been a young man in a hurry and he didn't act like a

college boy.
 
He could not have cared less about peace and love and the

end of all war, and he had far more important interests than whether

the Washington Huskies won the game on Saturday.
 
He still liked

football well enough, and he took pride in keeping his huge body toned,

but his ambitions had changed and football was no longer his main

focus.

Brad hadn't made football history at Washington.
 
He was a little fish

in a big pond and there were dozens like him.

Twenty-five years later, a man who had played for the Huskies was asked

about Brad.
 
He searched his mind and finally a memory dawned slowly.

"Yeah, I remember him," he said.
 
"He was the crook."
 
" He didn't

explain his cryptic remark further.
 
But Brad had always been a

braggart, and in college he liked to refer to the "big boys" he worked

for.
 
He was still attending the University of Washington, but his

scholarships were a mere pittance compared to what he was making at

Gals Galore,* a topless tavern that was a major draw in the north end

of Seattle.
 
It was rumored to be run by organized crime interests.

Perhaps it was, or perhaps that was only one of Brad's exaggerations.

While Seattle has never been a big mob town, there have been some

"families" whose business interests were suspect.

Brad began at Gals Galore as a bouncer, but a month later he was

promoted to business manager.
 
He was smart, and he was a quick study

but Loni Ann wondered about his rapid rise in the girlie tavern.
 
He

was certainly making a lot more money than he had working construction

during vacation.
 
And when he dropped off the squad, he told Loni Ann

that the coach told him he was making too much money at his outside job

to keep his scholarship.
 
Maybe that was true.

Besides that, Brad's personality made it impossible for him to be a

team player.
 
College football was only a stepping-stone for him, a way

to pay for his education.
 
And he didn't need that any longer.
 
He had

his future all planned, and he and Loni Ann were not going to be living

in a crummy apartment for long, not if things worked out the way he

believed they would.

When she looked back, Loni Ann recalled that the first six months of

her marriage to Brad were quite happy.
 
She had always realized that

Brad was a little self-involved, that he wanted his own way, but it

wasn't that big a deal to her.
 
She had won the boyþthe manþshe loved

and she was determined to be the perfect wife.
 
To supplement their

income, Brad and Loni Ann served as assistant managers of the apartment

house where they lived.
 
She cleaned apartments after tenants moved

out, and he handled the books and the landscaping.

Kit Ann Cunningham was born in October of 1969, the month that her

father turned twenty-one.
 
She was an exquisite dark-eyed baby girl.

Brad showed her off proudly to his family and friends.
 
Loni Ann was

surprised and delighted to see what a proprietary attitude he took with

his first child.

But something began to go wrong in the young Cunningham marriage in the

first month after Kit's birth.
 
Brad had sometimes gotten impatient

and short-tempered with Loni Ann during the two years they had dated,

and over the first six months of their marriage, but he had never hurt

her physically.
 
It had never even occurred to her that he might.
 
She

was a strong, athletic girlþbut she was no match for a man who could

block a 250-pound guard and drop him where he stood.

The first hairline cracks in the structure of their marriage appeared

that fall.
 
Brad seemed to delight in degrading and embarrassing Loni

Ann.
 
He told her repeatedly that she was 'really stupid."
 
He said he