Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (71 page)

boys.

She still believed they needed a father who was not in prison.

Later that same day, Sara met again with Lynn Minero's husband, Gary.

She must have felt she was being pulled in a dozen different

directions.
 
Gary needed money too, Lynn was no longer working at the

bakery and that put him in a bind.
 
He said he needed X3,500, but only

for sixty days, he would pay her back X5,000.
 
Although the guilt was

not her own, Sara knew it was Brad's deviousness that had destroyed

Gary's marriage, he had small children, and his wife was clearly

besotted with Brad.
 
Sighing, she wrote a check for Gary's living

expenses.

"We talked nonstop for an hour and I guess my overall reaction was one

of relief because he confirmed almost everything that my instincts had

been telling me about Brad and Lynn's relationship.... Anyway, he asked

Lynn if she was involved with Brad and .
 
. . she broke down and told

him everything.
 
Things had started out with messing around in the

office.
 
She said they started having intercourse in the middle of

December.... They usually went to the Red Lion Motel."

There were many more encounters, all the times when Brad had been away

"on business."
 
According to Gary, Lynn blamed the affair on Sara.

Brad had told her what "tight control" Sara kept over him.
 
Sara and

Brad had always talked two or three times a day "but he had come to

resent the checking up on him.
 
Brad had told Lynn he didn't love me he

couldn't stand to be around me, and he wanted her to leave Gary for

him.

Gary was concerned for my safety because Brad had told Lynn, Don't

worry about Sara.
 
I'll take care of her," with no mention of working

through a divorce with me."

"2-27-90: .
 
. . Brad came home around 8:00 and did very little

talking.

Brad and the boys went to bed.... They were all in our bedroom and Brad

locked the door.... I went to the apartment to sleep.... The next day,

I decided to go ahead and file for divorce.
 
I didn't sleep very well

at all at the apartment and decided to just stay at the hospital every

night after that."

On February 28, Sara called her attorney Bill Schulte and told him

about the past two days.
 
She mentioned that she had given Brad's

attorney a check for fifteen thousand dollars and had promised to

guarantee Brad's legal fees in the civil suit.
 
Schulte was appalled.

For the first time in a long time, Sara had a championþsomeone on her

side.

"Schulte went over to Rieke's office and said I wouldn't guarantee the

fees....

Schulte was told that I had been having an affair with "this doctor in

Baker" and that we [Brad and I] had always had a very open sexual

arrangement."

Sara called Betty Troseth to tell her that she was leaving Brad.

She wanted Cheryl's mother to know that if anything ever happened to

Brad she would look after Jess, Michael, and Phillip.
 
Betty felt a

familiar chill.
 
She told Sara about the pervasive fear Cheryl had

lived with in the last months of her life, of her belief that Brad

would kill her.
 
In the end, it had done Cheryl no good to be on

guard.

Betty said she was frightened for Sara, and for the boys too.
 
She

warned Sara to be very, very careful.

Sara wrote, perhaps naively, "I look forward to the time when this

whole mess is over with, and I can find out from Betty what Cheryl was

really like.
 
Of course, Brad has not painted a very flattering picture

of her to meþjust like he painted a bad picture of me to Lynn.

Betty said the first time she met me, she thought, Oh no, there's

another Cheryl."
 
It will be so good for the boys, especially Jess and

Michael, to know what Cheryl was really like."

When Brad found out that Sara would no longer guarantee his legal fees,

he began another fervent campaign to win back her love.
 
He used pleas,

and he issued threats and warnings.
 
"Friday, 3-2-90: My case in

surgery was cancelled.
 
Thank Goodness!
 
Had one conversation with

Brad.

He called me and said Burke and Shinn have won.
 
He loves me and wants

to talk with me.... He said Schulte doesn't like him and might affect

my feelings toward him.... Brad called again, says he's lost 32 pounds,

pleading with me not to get a divorce.
 
There's no good reason that our

marriage should end.
 
He can't take another battle, another hassle in

his life right now."

Brad warned Sara that "adversarial divorces" could have attorneys' fees

running over one hundred thousand dollars.
 
"He says Rieke will not

defend him if I don't guarantee the legal fees.... He always loved me,

but with the knowledge of what I was doing," he sought comfort from

Lynn.... It was due to the stress he was under from Shinn.... He said

he never had anything [sexually] to do with Lynn.... He said we can

gain trust in each other again."

Sara listened to Brad's glib and persuasive words without expression.

She recognized his lies too well now.

Later that day, she took the three little boys to McMinnville to spend

the night at her sister's.
 
Her cell phone rang twice but she didn't

answer it.
 
She finally shut it off.
 
She had other anesthesiologists

covering for her at the hospital, no one needed herþexcept for Jess,

Michael, and Phillipþand she didn't want to hear any more of Brad's

pleas for reconciliation.
 
He didn't miss her, he missed her

checkbook.

He was about to find out that she had made her first and last payment

on the Volvo station wagon Brad wanted to lease.
 
That would make him

absolutely furious, but she had decided to stop paying his way.

The next morning, Sara called the boys' baby-sitter and learned that

Brad had been taken to Good Samaritan Hospital, suffering from chest

pains.
 
Once she had run to the E.R, stricken with fear that she would

lose Brad to a fatal heart attack.
 
Not now.
 
She had heard his cry of

"Wolf' too many times.
 
She took Michael and Phillip back to their

sitter, and later, as she drove Jess to his basketball game, her car

phone rang, It was Brad's psychologist.
 
"She said Brad was having an

anxiety reaction.
 
She wanted to talk with me to see how much of an

emotional support I could be for Brad."

Emotional support, indeed.
 
Sara did not rush to the hospital.
 
She

watched Jess play basketball.
 
But her pager beeped.
 
It was a nurse

from Good Samaritan who told her that Brad asked that Sara stop by her

apartment at Riverplace to pick up a letter he had left there for

her.

After the basketball game, Sara took Jess home and then went by her

apartment.
 
She felt an icy apprehension when she saw that somehow Brad

had circumvented the tight security there and managed to slide a letter

under her door.

"I visited Brad in the I.C.U [intensive care unit] and he looked very

pitiful and pathetic," Sara wrote in her diary.
 
"He had some IV's in,

was getting a Lidocaine infusion (No PVC s on his EKG for a change)

Nasal O/2

[oxygen] and was trying to sound very weak.
 
He had me read the letter

and then continued to tell me how much he loved me and wanted us to be

together."

Brad told Sara how easily he had gotten into her apartment complex.
 
"I

told some women who were going in that my wife wasn't answering the

phone and I thought her phone wires were disconnected.
 
They let me

right in."

Sara knew she could never stay in her apartment again.
 
Brad had such a

guileless, charming way, he would always be able to get into any

apartment she hadþeven the most security-conscious complexes.
 
He was

like smoke, able to creep beneath doors, through locked windows.

There was no safety for her anymore.

Looking at the "sick" man in the hospital bed, Sara felt nothing at

all, except relief that he was in the hospital, it meant she could have

one more night with the boys.
 
"We went to dinner at Wan Fu's and then

stayed overnight in the trauma call room.
 
It was a nice evening with

them."

Sara kept the letter Brad had slipped under her door.
 
Later that

evening, something made her reread it.
 
Brad had printed it in

sprawling letters.

My dearest wife, .. I love you very much.... It may be too late ...

[butj our family is the most important part of my life.

Brad wrote fervently that their problems should in no way be considered

cause for divorce.
 
He could not bear to let Sara go.

we are humans.
 
. . I want to .
 
. . rebuild our trust I have made some

mistakesþI sought refuge in Lynn when I thought there was no friendship

or trust from you....

Brad explains, with his odd talent for reversing blame, that their

marriage is in trouble mostly because of Sara's omissions.
 
If she had

only given him an ultimatum sooner, everything could have been worked

out.
 
In essence, he was saying that it was her fault that he had

continued his affair with Lynn for so many months.

Moreover, he blamed his stress over the Houston lawsuit for whatever

poor judgment he might have shown.
 
Somehow, those worries had affected

the way he felt about Sara.
 
But he felt he was "o.k. now," thanks to

the fatherly concern shown by his attorneys, Wes Urquart and Joe

Reike.

Brad again reminded Sara that she had been less than direct with him.