Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (66 page)

finding and convicting the guilty person or persons diminishes in

inverse proportion to the time that passes after the crime is

committed.

Given a choice, detectives want to catch the killer in twenty-four

hours.
 
They feel fairly comfortable with forty-eight hours.
 
After

that, they wonder if they will ever solve the case.

Mike Shinn was reopening a murder case that was almost three years

old.

He wasn't a criminal attorney, and he wasn't even a crime buff.
 
All he

really had to bring to this project was a new point of view a brilliant

legal mind which he hid beneath a somewhat sardonic wit, and an inborn

refusal to give up long after anyone with common sense would have

thrown in the towel.

He had his own "negatives."
 
Not only had too much time passed since

Cheryl's death, but he knew the Washington County District Attorney's

office was not particularly happy to have a civil attorney take on a

case in which they had exhausted all possibilities.
 
It was akin to an

internist striding into an operating room, seizing the scalpel from the

surgeon already in the middle of an operation, and saying, "Let me do

itþI think I see where you're going wrong."
 
Human nature being what it

is, D.A. Scott Upham and Mike Shinn were probably not fated to be best

buddies.

Criminal prosecution works under different guidelines than civil

trials.
 
To prove a case criminally, the judge or jury must be

convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant is guilty.
 
That

is, a reasonable man, after hearing the evidence and the testimony of

witnesses, could come to no other conclusion.
 
A civil case is proved

by a preponderance of evidence.
 
A judge or jury weighs the evidence

presented by each side and decides which has the most compelling

argument.
 
Thus, it follows naturally that a civil case is easier to

prove.

In the end, after all the investigation by the Oregon State Police and

Upham's own office, they had concluded that they did not have enough

evidence to charge Brad with Cheryl's murder.
 
That did not necessarily

mean that Upham and his staff or Jim Ayers and the other detectives who

had followed Cunningham's movements with keen interest for the past

three years believed he was innocent.
 
They felt in their gut that he

was guilty.
 
But they doubted that they-had enough firepower to prove

guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
 
If they arrested him and tried him,

and he was acquitted, they could never try him again.
 
Double jeopardy

would attach.

All detectives and prosecutors can cite cases where they know full well

that a man, or woman, is guilty but is still walking around freeþ and

probably always will be unless he or she commits another crime.
 
It is

not one of their favorite topics.
 
Brad was still walking around free

and Shinn hoped to uncover something that everyone else had missed, but

he didn't really think he would.
 
Only Perry Mason did that, and Shinn

had never been able to second-guess Mason.

Shinn started with nothing but a three-ring black binderþthe summary of

the police investigation of Cheryl's murder in 1986 and 1987.
 
If he

was lucky, somewhere in that list of witnesses and law enforcement

personnel he might find someone whose perception and recall would help

him in his civil case.
 
"I didn't really expect to find new witnesses,"

he said.
 
"I hoped to expand on the witnesses who were around.
 
Maybe

my style was different, I could analyze differently, and my philosophy

was different.
 
I had the advantage of coming into this case fresh."

To reinterview people who had not been very receptive to interviews in

the first place was going to take some innovative and empathetic

private investigators.
 
As he always did, Shinn went to experts for

advice on how to find the best.
 
"Steve Houze is one of a handful of

the best criminal defense lawyers in Oregon, and I asked him who he

would recommend as an investigator," he said.
 
"I told him about the

case, and that, although this was a civil case, it was going to be

almost like prosecuting a homicide.
 
I need an investigator who's used

to doing criminal work."

Houze pondered Shinn's question and then said, "Well, the very best

investigator in the state is Chick Prestonþbut you can't have him

because he's working for me."

"Later," Shinn said, "I found out I'd played football against Chick

when he went to Whitman University."

"Second," Houze said, "would be Connie Capato, but she's working on the

Dayton Leroy Rogers case right now."

Shinn grimaced.
 
Rogers was a suspect in the serial murders of Portland

prostitutes whose bodies, their feet neatly severed, had been found in

a lonely Oregon forest.
 
Fortunately, Connie finished her work on that

case in time to help Mike Shinn.

Connie Capato had come to the field of private investigation by a

circuitous route.
 
At one time she had considered becoming a nun but

found that the religious calling was not for her.
 
She liked people,

she was good with people, and for her the "calling" of the P.I. was a

better way to connect with them.
 
Along with Connie, Shinn hired

another female P.Leslie High, who worked in Connie s business, CLC

Investigations.

When it came time to file the complaint and serve Brad with the

official notice, Shinn didn't know where he was living.
 
"Somebody had

heard he was working for a doughnut shop or something.
 
Eric Lindenauer

thought that was hysterical because he'd known Brad as this hotshot

bank executive.
 
I was sitting in the Y' in the sauna room one day,

going through the Downtowner, and there's a picture of Brad.
 
It says,

"New Guy on the Block," and there's Brad with this new Broadway

Bakery.

So that's how we found him," Shinn said with a laugh.
 
"With great

detective work.

So I called Connie's office and said we needed someone to serve the

complaint.
 
She said she'd send Leslie High over, and I said, Maybe

you'd better send a guy...."

" When slender little Leslie showed up, Shinn had his doubts.
 
"This

case has some elements of dangerþthat's why I asked for a guy," he told

her.

"This guy you're serving a complaint on is suspected of murdering his

wife."
 
Her eyes sparkled, and she said, "Oh, really?
 
That's

interesting."

"Yeah, it's interesting, but it might be dangerous Are you sure?"

Leslie was sure.
 
Shinn arranged to have a male P.I. follow Brad when

he left the Broadway Bakery after Leslie had served the complaint.
 
And

Leslie promised to return to Shinn's office and report on how Brad had

reacted to the news that he was being sued in civil court for

responsibility in his former wife's death.

She was back in a short time.
 
"I went in the bakery," Leslie

reported.

"It's a really nice little place.
 
And there was this long, cafeteria

kind of line you stand in, and Brad Cunningham was at the end of the

lineþ" "Yeah?"
 
Shinn asked expectantly.

"So I got to Brad, and he said, Can I help you?"
 
and I told him I had

some papers for him.
 
I handed them to himþ" _ "Yeah?"

"He read them."

"Did he say anything?"

"Yes, he did.
 
He said, Thank you," and then he looked at me and said,

Would you like a muffin?"

" For weeks after that, Brad Cunningham was referred to in Mike Shinn's

office as "the muffin man."

A civil suit accusing a man of murder was not the kind of story that a

newspaper would ignoreþand the Coregonzan and the wire services did

not.

The headlines hit "July 1989.

LAWSUIT BLAMES HUSBAND FOR SPOUSE"S DEATH Portland, Ore.
 
(AP) Family

and friends of a slain lawyer have filed a S15 million wrongful death

lawsuit in Multnomah County Circuit Court against her estranged

husband.

Court documents say that for months before she was bludgeoned to death

on September 21, 1986, Cheryl Keeton had feared she would be killed by

her estranged husband, Bradly M. Cunningham, a developer, entrepreneur

and banker.

But neither Cunningham nor anyone else has ever been charged in

Keeton's death.
 
Despite an investigation that a prosecutor called

exhaustive, the homicide case remains open.

Portland lawyer Michael Shinn filed affidavits and court documents to

support the lawsuit Monday....

The wire services quoted an outraged Brad Cunningham who said that the

lawsuit was clearly an abuse of the legal system, the result of a

"vendetta" against him by John Burke, the personal representative of his

wife's estate.
 
He said that his three sonsþnine, seven, and five, who

lived with him and his new wifeþbelieved that their mother had died in

a car wreck.
 
"It's very upsetting to me that the system will let

someone go and file something like this," Brad told reporters.
 
"It was

bad enough to live through the death of my wife, and now we have to

live through this .
 
. . just when we thought life was normal again."

When Shinn's legal assistant read the paper, she was appalled.
 
She had

no idea what he had undertaken, and she didn't like it when she found

out.
 
"I'll never forget," Shinn said.
 
"She read the article in the

paper and she walked into my office with her hands on her hips.
 
She

just looked at me and said, What have you done?"

" And within a few days, she resigned.