Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (28 page)

Ann's favor.
 
And to Brad's utter amazement, she won their latest court

skirmish.

When the judge awarded custody of the children to Loni Ann, she glanced

fearfully at Brad, wondering what he would do.
 
She saw his face

darken, the veins stand out on his neck, and a pulse beat fiercely at

his temples.
 
He was in the blackest rage she had ever seen, and she

had seen many.
 
After the judge left the bench and disappeared into his

chambers, Brad toppled to the floor like a felled tree.
 
Tt seemed at

first that he had had a heart attack or a stroke.
 
But he got to his

feet in a few moments, apparently fully recovered.
 
It may have been

that he was so angry he had blacked out.
 
Brad had never lost before.

Nor would he soon lose again.

After Loni Ann won custody again in court, the original reason for

Brad's marriage to Cynthia dissolved.
 
He seemed totally uninterested

in her now.
 
She had also discovered that Loni Ann was nothing like the

neglectful, promiscuous woman Brad had described to her.
 
At that

point, Cynthia just wanted out of her marriage, and she had to find a

way to do it with as few repercussions as possible.

Cynthia had finally come to the realization that her main attraction

for Brad had been her house, her money, her stability.
 
If she stayed

with him, she might lose all three.
 
Yet even though she could now see

him in the clear light of day, she would always soft-pedal how bad

things got.
 
There were argumentsþover her boys, over money, over

almost everything, it seemed.
 
Brad broke Cynthia's collarbone,

although many years later, Cynthia would downplay the violence in their

marriage.

"It wasn't his fault, it was mine.
 
I pushed him and he reacted."
 
they

separated on September 17, 1975, and Cynthia filed for divorce on

November 26.
 
Brad moved into an apartment in Bellevue and Cynthia

didn't expect to see him again.
 
But she would learn, unhappily, that

no woman simply walked away from Brad Cunningham.

In their divorce settlement, the division of property should have been

simple.
 
They had signed prenuptial agreements specifying that they

would retain their individual assets as they were when they went into

the marriage.
 
Among other things Cynthia had owned a yellow 1973

Volvo, which she had financed through a credit union.
 
Of course, she

had also paid for the 1973

Volkswagen camper.
 
According to the prenuptial contract, they reverted

to her.
 
She also wanted him to repay the money she had lent him, plus

accrued interest.

By May of 1975, Brad and Cynthia were living apart, and she was again

using the name Marrasco.
 
She had gone into the marriage with few stars

in her eyes, hoping that love might grow with familiarity.
 
She knew

the marriage might not last, but she had never dreamed that she would

be caught in a spider's web where she would come to fear Brad, with his

.38

Colt "Detective's Special" and his awesome temper.

All Cynthia wanted was to have her serenity back and to keep what she'd

had before the marriage.
 
She and her now teenage son Nicholas were

going on with their lives.
 
The older boys were grown and out of her

home.

She had her master's degree and she could still teach school.
 
But

Cynthia would learnþjust as Loni Ann had learnedþthat Brad was a man

WtlO felt betrayed if someone tried to rob him of what he considered

his.

Furthermore, he would prove to be a tremendously sore loser.

Some time after their separation, Cynthia and Nicholas had moved from

the big house she once owned and were living in a luxurious apartment

overlooking a private golf course when Brad slipped back into their

lives.
 
In an oddly childish show of power, he stole Cynthia's vehicles

twice in one day.

Cynthia had an appointment with her attorney on May 22, 1975, at his

Bellevue office.
 
At 6:45 that morning, she found that her Volvo was

missing.
 
She had no choice but to drive the Volkswagen camper.
 
But

when she left her lawyer's office, she found that the camper had

disappeared too.
 
She was pretty sure that her vehicles had not been

random targets and she thought she knew who had taken them.

Brad.

Cars were almost as important as children to Brad, once he had them in

his possession, he didn't like to let them go.
 
Later, when he was much

richer, he would own whole stables of Mercedes cars and usually some

"macho" vehicle like a Unimag or a Humvee, plus a couple of

motorcycles.

In this case Brad neither owned nor needed them, but he knew Cynthia

would be terribly inconvenienced without the Volvo and the camper.

In her police report, Cynthia named "Bradly Cunningham, my estranged

husband," as a possible suspect.
 
She warned the King County Police

officers who took the report that Brad routinely carried a Colt .38.

"All I want is to have my vehicles back," Cynthia said quietly.
 
"I

don't want to file charges."

The officers saw that she was obviously afraid of her ex-husband.

Informed that she was setting the judicial process in motion by filing

a complaint, Cynthia finally acquiesced.
 
She had precious little

choice.

If she didn't file the complaint, she feared she would never see the

Volvo or the Volkswagen again.

Later that May afternoon, Brad himself walked into the King County

Police's south precinct to report that his .38 pistol had been

stolen.

He was surprised and outraged when he was arrested and booked on two

charges of "Grand LarcenyþAuto."
 
Faced with the very real probability

of spending at least one nightþand maybe moreþin the King County jail,

Brad admitted that he had taken Cynthia's vehicles.
 
It was a divorce

thing, he explained, just the bad feelings and reprisals that happened

in a lot of marriages.
 
He was certainly no criminal, he said with a

grin, and he would be glad to tell the officers where the "stolen" car

and camper were.

He said the Volvo was over in Bellevue a half block from Cynthia's

attorney's office.
 
The Volkswagen camper was on the sixth f,!oor of

the parking garage of the Pacific Building where his office was

located.

Detective Gary Trent of the Bellevue Police Department checked for the

yellow Volvo and found it just where Brad said it would be.
 
It was in

perfect shape.
 
Seattle Police detectives went to the Pacific Building

parking garage.
 
The Volkswagen camper was parked there.
 
However, the

steering wheel was immobilized with a chain and lock.
 
Brad had the key

to the Volvo and the key to the locked steering wheel in his

possession.

He surrendered them easily enough, and the two vehicles were returned

to Cynthia.

The police looked upon the double "auto theft" more as a symptom of

post-marital rancor than as felonies.
 
They were annoyed that Brad

Cunningham had made thoughtless, childish abuse of their time, but

since neither vehicle had been damaged and Cynthia didn't want to push

prosecution, the matter was apparently settled amicably.
 
But the day

was not over.
 
At five that evening, Nicholas looked out the window of

his apartment and saw his stepfather walk up to his mother's Volvo,

unlock the driver's door, jump in, and drive the car away.

Once again, Cynthia called the police.
 
And once again, she stressed

that she didn't want to irritate Brad by pressing charges.
 
She just

wanted her Volvo back.
 
Police located it at Brad's apartment, but it

wouldn't start.
 
He had removed both the coil and distributor cap

wires.

The officers drove Cynthia to a garage to buy the parts she needed to

get her car going.
 
It was annoying, certainly, but police had seen

divorcing couples play far worse "tricks" on each other.
 
One

Washington State man had been so furious when his wife was awarded

their home that he rented a bulldozer and systematically leveled the

house and everything in it.
 
In comparison, a day's spree of car hiding

didn't seem that pathological.

Human behavior rarely reveals itself all at once.
 
Most people grow

stronger in one area, weaker in others, perhaps more compulsive in

still others.
 
An old adage say.s that "what we are when we are old is

only a progression of what we have always been."
 
If you were a mean

kid, you will probably be a mean old man.
 
Brad Cunningham had always

had tremendous charm, intelligence and business acumen.
 
But long

before he was thirty, he had demonstrated decidedly negative aspects of

his personalityþparticularly when it came to his relationships with

women.

Two tries at matrimony revealed that he required an inordinate amount

of control in a marriage, and that he did not give up those things that

he felt ,elonged to him easily.

At his center, moreover, he seemed to have a mean streak, snaking

through everything he did and everything he was.
 
He had tormented his

cousins and smaller children from the time he was a boy.
 
He had

charmed, seduced, and walked away from teenage girls who idolized

him.

He had always appeared to consider women lesser humans, mere lowly

females put on earth to help him achieve what he wantedþ

whether it was to climb higher in business or to become a father,

whether he needed sexual satisfaction or, in the worst of

circumstances, a punching bag.