Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (33 page)

chair and look at his watch until his time was up, relishing Lauren's

anguish as she waited beyond the thick oak door?
 
Once Lauren had

believed she knew everything there was to know about Brad, now she

realized that he had revealed only an infinitesimal portion of his

personality to her.

If Lauren had hoped to "erase" Brad from her life, she had failed

miserably.
 
The next step of the visitation schedule with Amy as

outlined by Judge Soderland was that Brad would come to Lauren's

horne.

He could stay with Amy for up to two hours, but he was not allowed to

take her off the premises.
 
"By the time she was two," Lauren

remembered, "he could take her for a couple of hours in his car

somewhere, and that would gradually increaseþwhen she was three, he

could take her for a day and a half, and so forth."

For those first two years, Brad visited regularly.
 
The divorce

proceedings and property settlement were finally resolved and Lauren

was given some interest in Sylvan Habitat, although she never did find

out what had become of her missing car.
 
Brad paid her $250 a month in

child support.
 
After a while, Lauren no longer felt the absolute

terror she had gone through when her little girl was a baby, hut she

was still uneasy whenever Brad visited Amy.
 
She always had a lingering

concern that he might take her away.

Lauren knew that Brad had married Cheryl, and that she was pregnant.

She herself had begun to date the man she would eventually marry, Dr.

Ian Stoneham,* a psychiatrist.
 
Soon after their wedding when Amy was

two, she and her new husband planned to take a sabbatical to New

Zealand.
 
As they prepared to leave for the other side of the world,

they discussed howþor whetherþthey would inform Brad of their

departure.

Lauren talked with her attorney, who pointed out that there was nothing

in her divorce decree that specifically prevented her from taking a

sabbatical.
 
"We both know how litigious Brad is," he said.
 
"My advice

to you is to put a letter in the mailbox at the airport saying he can

exercise his visitation in New Zealand, and tell him your address

there."

That was exactly what Lauren did.
 
And Brad was, predictably, very

angry.
 
He went before a judge and obtained a court order that

stipulated he had the legal right to go to New Zealand and take Amy

away from Lauren.
 
He arranged with his father to accompany him.

Sanford bragged to everyone that his son was treating him to a

wonderful trip to New Zealand.
 
He didn't mention the purpose of the

trip.

The nightmare was beginning again for Lauren.
 
On Mother's Day 1980,

Brad arrived in New Zealand and phoned her.
 
She was taken completely

by surprise.
 
"I am on my way down," Brad said.
 
"Tell me where to meet

you.

I have a court order in my hand that says I can take Amy."

"Take her where?"
 
Lauren asked, horrified.

"Back to the United States."

Lauren suspected that Brad had deliberately timed his trip so that he

would arrive on Mother's Day, giving his demands an extra sadistic

twist.
 
Because Amy had always visited with her father for just an hour

or two at a time, she really didn't know him.
 
And once again Lauren

lived in fear of having her child spirited away.
 
She didn't think that

Brad truly cared about Amy, but Amy belonged to him, and Brad didn't

let his possessions go easily whether he really wanted them or not.
 
He

was the most aggressive man Lauren had ever encountered.
 
Years later

she would describe his dominant characteristics.
 
"He is very used to

getting what he wants and having things the way he wants them.
 
And he

gets very frustrated when somebody tries to get in his way."

There are few forces stronger than maternal love, that visceral

protective stance that grips mothers within minutes of their giving

birth.

There was no way Lauren could let Brad take Amy.
 
"I called my attorney

and he appealed the court order and managed to have it overturned, but

there was a period of time in New Zealand when I was once again

extremely anxious about leaving Amy in the room alone at night, for

fear Brad would come and try to take her .
 
. . I think it was an

intuitive sense."

Lauren and her husband soon returned to the United States, and as the

years passed Brad continued his child support, but his payments became

erratic and Lauren and Amy saw less and less of him.
 
He had other

interests, and he had begun a third family.
 
By the time Amy was five

or six, Brad gave Lauren one large check a year, and after a while he

sent no money at all.

Rather pathetically, although Lauren had never actually met Rosemary,

Brad's mother stayed in contact with Amy by mail and always remembered

her granddaughter at Christmas and on her birthday.
 
She and Lauren

corresponded, and Rosemary had Amy's name added to the roster of the

Colville Indians.
 
That way, she too would be eligible for tribal

benefits.
 
It was through Rosemary that Lauren learned that Brad was

not a quarter Colville Indian, as he had told her, he was actually half

Indian.
 
His Indian heritage was something he apparently had tried to

minimize.

As was the existence of his mother.

Cheryl never really got over her guilt about what she and Brad had done

to Lauren.
 
Betraying a friend was completely atypical of her.
 
Her

natural inclination had always been to be there for her friends, to

help them, and certainly never to destroy them.
 
That she could have

been a party to Brad's desertion of Lauren when she was pregnant was

almost unbelievable.
 
But Cheryl had never felt as powerful an emotion

as the love and commitment she felt for Brad.

Her half sister Susan was only eleven or twelve when Cheryl met Brad,

but even she had sensed that Cheryl's marriage to Dan Olmstead was in

trouble.
 
"I remember I was in Seattle in October 1977, because my

uncle had brain surgery," Susan said.
 
"Cheryl was working for Brad at

the Austen Company, and he took us out to lunch in his Mercedes.

Brad's jaws were wired because he'd had plastic surgery on them.
 
I

remember that, and I remember that I knew somehow that Cheryl and Brad

were having an affair."

It seemed impossible, because Cheryl and Dan had been together so long

that their names were practically hyphenated when the family referred

to them.
 
Susan couldn't remember a Christmas when Dan hadn't been

there.
 
He was part of their family.
 
And he remained part of the

family, but now he came to visit alone.
 
When Cheryl took Susan for a

drive that Thanksgiving and told her she was getting a divorce, Susan

knew who had caused that divorce.
 
It was the man with the Mercedes who

had taken them out to lunch a month beforeþthe man with the wires in

his jaws.

Brad Cunningham.
 
Susan was not surprised, and yet she was surprised.

"Cheryl was so dignif ed Things had to have a certain order.
 
She had

been so disgusted when Mom left Dad, but .
 
.."

There were other changes that Susan noticed.
 
Cheryl had always been so

confident, so in charge, so confrontive.
 
But now, when she was with

Brad, Susan saw that she was different than she had ever been.
 
She had

become passive, she deferred to Brad on any and every subject.
 
She

adored him, she respected him, she loved him passionately, but Susan

wondered sometimes if Cheryl might not also be a little afraid of

Brad.

After living together for a little over a year, Cheryl and Brad were

married in March of 1979, a year after Lauren had given birth to Amy.

Cheryl was two months pregnant at the time of her marriage, and she was

eagerly looking forward to becoming a mother.
 
Cheryl and Brad said

their vows in a simple service at the home of friends, and Cheryl's

family was not invited.
 
Like all of Brad's weddings, save his first

formal ceremony with Loni Ann, it was a legal ceremony but it certainly

wasn t romantic or sentimental.

In retrospect, Susan could recall no "honeymoon period" at all in her

sister's second marriage.
 
Cheryl seemed happy, yes, but Brad was not

the lovey-dovey groom, not even for the first month or so.
 
It seemed

almost that Cheryl was part of some plan Brad had, and now that he had

accomplished the business of marrying her, there was no point in

wasting time on romance.
 
Of course, it was Brad's fourth marriage in

ten years, perhaps he had no energy for all the typical stages of

married life.
 
He had a tiger by the tail in his real estate

endeavors.

He hinted that he was on the verge of making millions of dollars in a

new project in Houston, Texas.
 
And Cheryl had her law degree.
 
She

graduated from law school with a shopping list of honors, she was in

the top ten percent of her class and received the "Order of the

Coif."

She was a beautiful young woman and he was a handsome man.
 
If ever

there was a couple slated for success, it was Brad Cunningham and

Cheryl Keeton.

And it was Cheryl Keeton: she may have been subservient around Brad,

but she insisted on keeping her own name.
 
She had fought hard for her

law degree and it mattered to her that she be a lawyer under her own

name.
 
That was the one stand she took with Brad.
 
Otherwiseþ even in

areas where Cheryl had a great deal of expertiseþshe invariably

deferred to Brad's decisions, from large issues to relatively small

things.