Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (41 page)

weren't killing anything, they were just tiny boys, but that's what

Brad brought back for souvenirs of their trip.
 
It used to just make

Cheryl crazy."

On one of the trips in August 1983, Brad sent back a postcard to

Cheryl.
 
It was addressed, "Wife Cunningham," and the message was one

word, written in huge letters: "SEX."
 
A card from Jessþbut written by

Bradþsaid, "I'm really getting bigger.
 
I take care of Michael almost

all the time, especially at night so Dad and Shun can go out drinkin'

and dancin'.
 
Dad said I did real good."

It was, of course, a joke.
 
Jess was only three.
 
In October, Brad

wrote a letter to Jess for his fourth birthday, apologizing for not

being there.
 
He sent three gifts.
 
The first was a "tooth" from Brad's

backhoe that had broken off when he was digging a waterline to a house

he was renovating on property he and Cheryl had purchased in Tampico.

"You can keep this on your shelve [sic] downstairs to remind you of our

backhoe."

The second present was shell casings.
 
"These are spent bullets from

one of Dad's rifles.
 
A pack of wild dogs came into Tampico last week

and started raising havoc.... Daddy shot two of these wild dogs near

your house, and these are the bullets' from my gun....

"I hope you had a nice and happy birthday.
 
I love you very, very, very

much and promise to see you again some day when things are better.

"Love, "Dad" Cheryl was all alone with the little boys for week after

week.

Nevertheless, she continued to make excuses for Brad.
 
When he missed

one of the boys' birthdays, she said, "Daddy can't be here because he's

making money," or "Daddy can't call you because he doesn't have a

phone."

If Brad was making money, Cheryl saw none of it.
 
And as 1983 waned, so

did her hopes for a happy ending.
 
If she sometimes felt she was being

punished for taking away another woman's husband, no one could blame

her.
 
She was living at the edges of hell with a man who had become a

stranger.
 
Instead of things getting better, they were growing

immeasurably worse.

Cheryl knew Sharon well enough by this time that she no longer tried to

mask her true emotions.
 
She was afraid.
 
On November 18, 1983, the

Friday night before Cheryl's third son was born, the two women met for

dinner at Bellevue Square.
 
Sharon could see how miserable and

terrified Cheryl was.
 
they sat in a quiet booth while Cheryl poured

out her fears.

She was as pregnant as a woman could beþnine full monthsþ and she

trembled and cried softly as she tried to tell Sharon how bad things

were in her marriage.
 
A no-nonsense person herself, Sharon could not

understand why Cheryl clung to a marriage that seemed more like a

prison sentence.

"How can you live like this?"
 
she asked Cheryl.

"I don't have a choice."

"You always have a choice.
 
You don't have to live like this."

Cheryl tried to explain.
 
"No, you don't understand.
 
If I leave ,

he'll kill me."

"Cherylþ" "No, really.
 
He has always threatened that if I ever left

him, he would kill me."

"Cheryl, you're an attorney.
 
Those kinds of things just don't

happen.

You could stop him."

"No.
 
If I ever tried to get custody of the boys," Cheryl said, her

voice choked with tears, "he would kill me.
 
The only thing I could do,

Sharon, if I ever got custody of the boys, is to leave the country and

change my name.
 
I'm between a rock and a hard place.
 
If I don't get

them away from him, their lives are in danger.
 
They're not safeþhe has

enemies everywhere.
 
they won't live to be adults.
 
And if I try to get

custody, he'll kill me probably."

Sharon didn't like Brad, he was as abrasive and supercilious as anyone

she had ever met.
 
She had come to think of him as evil.
 
But whae kind

of intrigue was he into where someone wanted to kill him and his

sons?

There was no d'oubt in Sharon's mind that Cheryl believed he had

enemies.
 
But was it really true?
 
And was it true that he might kill

her if she tried to get custody of the boys?

On the Monday following Cheryl's tearful unburdening to her good

friend, she presented Brad with another son: Phillip.
 
He now had six

children by three wives.

Brad's first two children, Kit and Brent, were, for the moment, safely

out of his reach.
 
Their mother, Loni Ann, had her bachelor's degree in

physical education, she was teaching in high school and working on her

master's in kinestheo-therapy.
 
For a woman who had truly begun to

believe that she was irretrievably stupid, she was doing remarkably

well in college.
 
Her course work involved memorizing all the muscles

and tendons of the body and how they worked, and she had no trouble at

all doing that.
 
Loni Ann was smarter than anyone had realized.
 
No

matter what Brad had done to destroy all traces of self-worth in his

first wife she had survived and had even begun to thrive.
 
Her goal was

to work with patients with sports injuries and in general

rehabilitative medicine.

Loni Ann's other goal was to get as far away from the Northwest and

Brad as possible.
 
She was grateful to have her daughter back after the

nightmare months Kit had spent with Brad in Houston.
 
She was going to

need counseling.
 
They were both going to need counseling, untold years

of therapy, so they would no longer be afraid and would no longer feel

like "garbage."

When Phillip was born, Brad came over from Yakima and visited Cheryl

briefly.
 
Mary Hiller, one of her friends, recalled that he bought a

new puppy for the boys.
 
"That was the last thing Cheryl needed with a

new babyþa puppy to look after too!"

Now that Brad was the father of three more boys, all under one roof, he

didn't seem nearly as obsessed with keeping his other children under

his thumb.
 
Lauren Stoneham was vastly relieved when he didn't exercise

his visitation rights with Amy in anything more than a sporadic

fashion.
 
But her relationship with Brad was no longer overtly

adversarial, and he sometimes called and talked to her as if they were

close friends.

Lauren was certainly not going to bring up the past and Brad seemed to

have forgotten the agony he had put her through.
 
He filled her in with

more details about his high-stakes court battle in Texas, blaming the

officers of the construction company, the architect, and the bonding

company for the delays that had thrown him into bankruptcy.
 
In his

usual convincing manner, he told Lauren that if they had listened to

him and met their commitments in getting the buildings done, his

current financial disaster would never have happened.

Brad explained that he had filed for Chapter 11 protection because he

still had all of his assets, he just had to find a different way to tap

into them.
 
But if he did recoup any money, Lauren didn't hear about

it.

After 1983

Brad never paid her any more child support for Amy.
 
That was fine with

Lauren, they didn't need it.
 
And it was a relief to know that Brad was

no longer pushing for his parental rights.

Cheryl was the primary parent to Jess, Michael, and the newborn

Phillip.

As her friend Sharon later said, "Cheryl parented those boys

essentially alone."
 
She was also the primary breadwinner in her

marriage.
 
Brad was always goneþto Yakima, to Texas, to Canada, and to

any number of other places.
 
He had mysterious missions connected with

the financial fiasco in Houston, he was setting up a business for his

father in Yakima, but, beyond that, Cheryl was never really sure why he

had to be away so often.
 
The map on the wall bristled with pins, as

she patiently showed her little boys "where Daddy is."

Nineteen eighty-four was a year of separations and strained reunions, a

year of despair and even of occasional hope.
 
Cheryl was afraid of Brad

and of the truth she acknowledged in moments of solitaryþbut searing

þevaluation of her marriage.
 
She realized at last that he was fully

capable of killing her if she crossed him.
 
She knew that all of the

energy and brilliance and charm that had once bewitched her could just

as easily be turned against her.
 
And it wasn't only Brad.
 
He had

warned her that there were mysterious forces stalking not only him but

his whole family.
 
He could handle himself, but he didn't want his sons

to pay a tragic price.

Brad kept Cheryl continually off balance, constantly afraid.
 
And vet

part of her still loved him.
 
Only a woman who has been battered either

physically or emotionally can understand why.
 
The bad alternated with

the good.
 
And when things were good, they were tremendously good.

There is no creature on earth more persuasive than a contrite wife

abuser, and no woman who wants to believe more than the abused wife.

have beautiful summers and rainy winters.
 
Seattle has Mount Rainier

and Portland has Mount Hood, snowy mountain peaks to gaze at, and both

cities are built around water.
 
In one way, Portland seemed an even

better place for Cheryl to live, it was an hour closer to her old

hometown of Longview, old friends, and her family.

Tentatively, she broached the subject to Brad.
 
To her surprise, he