Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (27 page)

move before trying for the court order," Loni Ann recalled.
 
"He

contended that he was not interfering with my attending the

university.... If I wanted to attend school .
 
. . fineþthe children

could live with him.
 
The court order was denied.
 
Then he filed for

custody a second time."

Actually, Brad had never intended that Loni Ann should have Kit and

Brent.
 
He just needed some time to build a life in which he felt he

would have a better chance of having the children awarded to him.

When he had done that he initiated legal action to gain full custody of

his children.
 
Even his own parents were never quite sure why.
 
Loni

Ann was a good mother, and Brad could be an impatient, punishing

father.

But Brad wanted his children, and the struggle to possess themþactually

to repossess themþwas, in Loni Ann's recall, "desperate .
 
. .

emotional." Brad had warned her an.v number of times that if she ever

left him, he would take the childrcn from her.
 
Still, he had let them

go with her and she had begun to hope cautiously that Brad's threat to

fight her for the childrcn had been empty.
 
Now she realized he had

only been biding his time.
 
There was nothing he could do to her that

would hurt her more than taking her children and he knew it.

Brad had married again.
 
Rapidly.
 
He told associates that he felt he

would have a much better chance of gaining full custody of Kit and

Brent if he was a married man.
 
Because he knew mothers were awarded

custody more often than single fathers, Brad's second trip to the altar

was probably nothing more than a marriage of convenicnce.
 
His second

wife, Cynthia Marrasco,* was fifteen years older than he was and as

different from Loni Ann as she could possibly be.
 
A teacher, divorced

after a long marriage to a wealthy attorney, Cynthia lived in a

luxurious six-bedroom estatelike home in an upscale suburb of

Seattle.

She was a striking woman with black hair.
 
One of Brad's sisters

thought Cynthia resembled their mother, Rosemary, a great deal.

Cynthia was over forty and Brad was only twenty-five, but he seemed

older because his presence was larger than life and he was tremendously

self-confident.
 
At first glance, they did not appear to be the

mismatched couple that they were.
 
She was very attractive and looked

younger, and he could have passed for a man in his thirties.

Cynthia had three sons, of whom the youngest, Nicholas,* was in grade

school when she met Brad through their mutual interest in real estate

ventures.

Because she was so devoted to her own boys, she could empathize with

Brad's passion to get his children back.
 
He seemed utterly bereft

without them.

Brad told Cynthia he was worried sick about Loni Ann's complete

disregard for Kit's and Brent's well-being.
 
He said he had seen some

small children playing alone in a park and had walked over to see if

they were okay.
 
"They were my own children," Brad moaned.
 
"And Loni

Ann's out there on the highway hitchbiking with them.
 
Can you imagine

the danger that puts them in?"
 
Cynthia was appalled.
 
She already had

the perfect home for raising children, and Brad had the prospects, she

believed, for a splendid future in the business world.
 
Together they

could make a team that would help Brad regain custody of his children,

and he would help her raise her three boys.
 
Beyond that, she felt they

would work well together in business.
 
Beginning in March 1973, Cynthia

lent Brad money every two or three monthsþto help pay his child support

and for investments.
 
By January of 1974, he owed her almost fifteen

thousand dollars.

There are few women facing their forties alone who would not have been

dazzled by the attention Brad paid to Cynthia Marrasco.
 
After their

wedding ceremony on June 4, 1974, which was legal if not lavish, Brad

moved into Cynthia's lovely home.
 
But the idyllic melding of families

that Cynthia had pictured never materialized.
 
Almost from the

beginning, her own sons were resentful of this young man in his

twenties who suddenly appeared in their lives, moved into their home,

and started ordering them around.
 
Brad wasn't that much older than

Cynthia's oldest son and he certainly wasn't a tactful, considerate

father figure, he was impatient and mercurial.

Cynthia did her best to make the marriage work.
 
Brad had often talked

about how much he liked to camp out and about his love for the Yakima

area.
 
Cynthia bought a Volkswagen camper and all the gear needed for

outdoor trips.
 
The few good times they had together were their camping

trips.
 
Unconsciously, perhaps, Brad was emulating the family he had

grown up in.
 
Rosie and Sanford's home life was marked by argument and

punishmentþbut their times out camping were always happy and without

strife.

Now, when Brad appeared in custody hearings for Kit and Brent, he

would have the advantage of being a married man living with his wife

and three stepsons, while Loni Ann was a divorced woman and a student

who lived in low-rent apartments, usually with another young woman so

that she could make ends meet.
 
And it WGeS true that she had

hitchhiked with her toddlers.
 
Someone had poured sugar into her gas

tank so she couldn't drive her car and she had no choice but to

hitchhike.

Loni Ann could not afford an attorney for the custody battle, so she

was represented by a lawyer from Legal Aid.
 
Brad had his own attorney

and clearly felt he would win.
 
He had lined up his new wife, his

father, and other witnesses prepared to give such cogent testimony

against Loni Ann that he was sure it would convince the judge that he

was the more competent parent.
 
He was apparently doing very well in

business, and he certainly dressed the part of a successful man.

Rosemary Cunningham agonized over how she was going to testify.

She loved her grandchildren, and she had been witness to Brad's vicious

discipline of them when he brought them to family reunions.
 
"When the

children didn't want to eat something on their plates," she recalled

privately, if not in court, "he would force them to eat it until they

threw up on their plates."
 
In the end, thinking of the children and

pushing down her own fear of what Brad might do to her, Rosemary

testified for her former daughter-in-law, saying she thought that Kit

and Brent should be with Loni Ann.

Sanford Cunningham equivocated, he said that he thought it was six of

one and a half dozen of the other.
 
He didn't think it mattered which

parent had custody.

Brad had lost one good witness he wanted, Susan, his younger sister.

"I moved away from home when I was sixteen, and I hadn't even seen Brad

for more than five years," she said.
 
"I moved because we all always

had to take sides against each other, and I refused to take sides."

Now her father and brother wanted twenty-year-old Susan to take sides

once more.

"Brad and Dad approached me and asked me to testify against my mother

in Loni Ann's custody hearing.
 
They wanted me to say that my mother

was a homosexual."

That, Brad and Sanford figured,.would undermine Rosemary's testimony.

Her father and brother had spent a whole day with Susan, saving how

happy they were to see her, buying her lunch.
 
But Susan knew what they

wanted, they wanted her to help them destroy Loni Ann and her own

mother in one fell swoop.

Susan refused.
 
"I testified instead about the time that Brad beat

Mom," Susan said, "and I was out of the family from then on."
 
When she

chose to help Loni Ann, she ended, in essence, her own connection to

the males in her family.
 
Her father had always felt that "money meant

there was a reason" to do something, and he apparently believed that

money could also enticeþor punish.
 
He used money for revenge against

Susan for her betrayal.
 
"I was out of his will," she said.
 
"So was

Ethel.
 
He left us each a hundred dollars, and everything else went to

Brad."

Loni Ann presented a very effective case.
 
Despite Brad's continual

attempts to convince her that she was "stupid garbage" who would be

insane to think about going to college, she testified that she was

doing quite well in her classes where she was studying physical

education.
 
She wanted to be a teacher or a coach.
 
She admitted on the

stand that it was difficult to get by, she had very little money.
 
Yes,

she usually had to split her rent with another woman or a family.

Loni Ann had learned that Brad had tried to get to her housemates and

have them testify against her.
 
Her first roommate told her that Brad

had offered to pay her to lie about Loni Ann during the custody

hearing.
 
She had refused.
 
"I wanted you to know what he was

planning," the woman said.

Another woman with whom Loni Ann had lived just prior to the hearing

moved out abruptly one day while Loni Ann was at school in Portland.

She turned up again as a surprise witness for Brad in the custody

hearing and she wouldn't meet Loni Ann's eyes.
 
But her testimony did

not mesh with the written affidavit she had given earlier, and she

waffled under cross-examination.
 
During a recess, an officer of the

court overheard Brad berate Loni Ann's ex-roommate, "You didn't say

what you agreed to say."
 
The woman later admitted on the stand that

she had lied about Loni Ann's competency as a mother.

Suddenly, for the first time in a long time, the tide turned in Loni