Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (35 page)

who needed to control everything and everyone in his life.
 
Natural

disasters were among the few forces over which he had no control at

all.

Sharon McCulloch had seen Brad's need to control both his son and his

wife all too often.
 
In March 1981, a few days before Cheryl and Brad

moved from the Laurelhurst house to Bainbridge Island, Cheryl asked

Sharon if she could keep Jess a few hours later that evening.
 
They

wouldn't be moved out of the house until at least 9 P.M. and then

Cheryl had to clean it for the new owners.
 
Sharon said she would be

glad to keep him all nightþJess was sleeping peacefully and wouldn't

know the difference.
 
Cheryl was grateful.
 
That way she would be free

to clean and they wouldn't have to wake the baby up and haul him out

into the chill night air.

At midnight, however, Sharon woke to a knock on the door.
 
It was

Cheryl and she was crying.
 
"Brad's in the car," Cheryl said.
 
"He

say.s I have to take Jess home right now."

"But he's been asleep for four hours," Sharon said.

"I'm so sorry," Cheryl said.
 
"But I have no choice."

The Cunninghams didn't live on Bainbridge Island longþonly a matter of

months.
 
Brad had been negotiating with executives at the Seattle Trust

and Savings Bank for a substantial loan that would allow him to work

with them as a partner in commercial construction in another state.

By the second year of his marriage to Cheryl, he had begun a pattern of

traveling most of the time.
 
He had done market studies in Colorado,

Alaska, and Texas to determine where there was the most need for

apartment and office complexes.

"I went to Denver, to Alaska, and to Houston.
 
I did a complete market

study in Houston," he said years later.
 
"This is what I do....

Actually the bank approached us.
 
Seattle real estate wasn't viable.

Cheryl and I had a million dollars in the bank alreadyþin cash and

CDs.

The bank offered us a full construction loanþand then they would take

fifty percent of the profits."

During the first half of 1981, Brad drove rental cars slowly through

cities that looked ripe for building projects.
 
"I had a little tie

device that was always activated for me to dictate into.
 
I took

pictures, I estimated rental density."
 
He returned again and again to

Houston, exploring the empty lots and acreage of that green and humid

Texas city.
 
The demand for office space in the Houston area was

voracious.
 
Tall buildings with mirrored glass windows were springing

up like mushrooms, shining obelisks and domes and towers against the

Texas horizon, more every month, and still there weren't enough.
 
Brad

could almost see his own reflection in those mirrored windows.
 
Houston

it would be.

Armed with his market study, Brad conferred with Seattle Trust officers

and went away with a million-dollar start-up loan.
 
Brad and Cheryl

both signed the loan, but it didn't matter.
 
Washington is a community

property state and his debts were her debts.
 
Brad hired the firm of

Baker and Boggs to help him get a license to do business in the State

of Texas.
 
He was exhilarated.
 
"I like the State of Texas!"

Eventually, Brad would engage a huge construction firm in Houston.

His company was about to build massive office buildings in Houston, and

Brad bragged that he would control six hundred million dollars.

Cheryl was pregnant with her second child, due to deliver in late

September.
 
She wanted very much to stay in Washington for the birth,

to have her own obstetrician, but Brad insisted that the time was ripe

for them to move to Houston.
 
They had the loan, he was negotiating on

property, and he had bought a house for them, a very expensive house

that was already under construction.
 
It all seemed too fast for Cheryl

but, as always, she went along with Brad's plans.
 
Everything they

owned was packed into a moving van.

Cheryl went into labor less than a week after they arrived in

Houston.

Brad was with her for part of her labor and he insisted on taking

pictures of her while she was in the transition state.
 
She asked him

not to, she didn't look her best, and she was in pain.
 
Cheryl later

told her friend Sharon McCulloch that she thought Brad was "a ghoul"

and that she was embarrassed by the camera's intrusion.
 
Michael Keeton

Cunningham was born on September 26, 1981, and after his birth Brad

activated the time-release shutter on his camera and posed happily with

Cheryl, Jess, and their new baby.
 
Brad didn't visit the hospital again

until she was ready to come home.

Cheryl later confided to Sharon that that period in September in

Houston was "the worst in my life."
 
Her mother, now Betty Troseth,

flew down to help out, and Cheryl was glad to have her there, but Brad

didn't care for Betty and he treated her rudely.

With two babies now, Cheryl agreed that she would stay home and care

for Jess and Michael.
 
At some point she would certainly resume

practicing law but, for the time being, it was Brad's career that was

the more important.
 
It had been hard on Cheryl to move to Houston.

But there was no question that she would follow Brad wherever he wanted

to go.
 
"I've got to go," she had said to Susan.
 
"My child is going

and that's my family."

Houston was nothing at all like the Northwest, and Cheryl longed for

Seattle with its clear, clean air.
 
Houston was hot and humid, day and

night.
 
In Seattle there was always a coolness at night, even if it had

been ninety degrees during the day.
 
In Houston the air was like a

soaking hot blanket.
 
There were bugs and critters that Cheryl had

never seen.
 
The music on the radio was differentþmostly country.

Restaurants featured chicken-fried steak and hot Mexican food instead

of salmon, clams, and crab legs.
 
Houston was a different world.

However, they weren't there for more than a few weeks before everything

started to slide.
 
The move to Houston had cost ten thousand dollars,

they had put thirty-four thousand dollars down on their new home, and

Cheryl had quit her law practice.
 
They hadn't even unpacked when

Seattle Trust and Savings Bank executives called Brad with stupefying

news.
 
They had changed their mind about the million-dollar loan.
 
"It

was only a few days after Michael was born," Brad would recall.

"They said flley had new management and didn't want a project that far

away."

Brad had assured Cheryl that the Texas move was a good thing, a vital

step on their way to financial independence.
 
Now the balloon had burst

and they were still committed to buying a billion-dollar property.

Moreover, Brad's boast of a million dollars in the bank was undoubtedly

inflated.
 
In reality he had credit lines of ten or fifteen thousand

dollars.
 
He vowed to sue Seattle Trust and Savings, and Cheryl drew up

a letter of "Detrimental Reliance," formally charging the bank with

leaving them in such a tenuous position "We had to get a new loan,"

Brad recalled.
 
And he did.
 
Few entrepreneurs could be as convincing

as he was.
 
Even with his back to the wall, he was able to persuade a

Texas bank to grant him an open-ended million loan.
 
He was back in

business and, in Brad's mind, the huge commercial complex he

visualizedþParkwood Plazaþwas as good as finished.

While Brad busied himself putting the project together, Cheryl was

delighted to be raising Jess and Michael, and she was proud of Brad.

Their two little boys were as different from each other as they could

be.
 
Jess was very bright and active.
 
He looked just like Brad.

Michael was just as intelligent, but he was a calmer, sweeter baby.
 
Or

maybe it was because second babies just seem easier.
 
"Mikey" looked

like his mother.

Brad Cunningham would have a dozen excuses for the financial disaster

that Parkwood Plaza became.
 
His huge loan had built-in dangers, it had

to be repaid whether his project was finished or not.
 
And many years

later, Brad would blame the construction companies he hired, the

bonding company, and the grim outlook for the Texas economy.
 
He took

no personal responsibility for failure whatsoever, if it had been up to

him, Parkwood Plaza would be, today, a booming concern.

"The Parkwood Plaza project started out fine in February 1982," he

would later testify.
 
"It was under construction and bonded by March.

The architect started recommending withholds from construction draws:

the construction company hadn't done the work.
 
We had problems by May

or June."
 
He said that he himself discovered flagrant violationsþsucll

as high-voltage power lines buried much too shallowly under the

concrete floors.
 
"The contractor put 440-volt lines eight inches

underground when they should be two feet under.... I'm going to go

ahead and tell you the truth.
 
I was leaving one day for the airport

and I saw workers unloading pipe on concrete, breaking the pipe.
 
I

told the contractor not to install the pipe.
 
When I came back, I

crawled under and saw broken pipes installed.
 
I took a camera.
 
I

didn't trust the contractor....

"When the buildings didn't meet plans or specs, it gave the permanent

lender a way to back out.
 
Around June fifteenth or twentieth, the

construction company fired all the architects.
 
I hired 3-D