Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (74 page)

"He was physically abusive, he was violent .
 
. . he was emotionally

abusive .
 
. . he was sexually abusive."

Loni Ann described her shock, her fear, her shame over the abuse that

Brad had heaped upon her eight months after their wedding.
 
As she

related incident after incident, a haunted look washed over her face.

"He said I was really stupidþhe couldn't understand how he could have

married someone as stupid as I was...."
 
Her voice was laced with

unshed tears and old terror when she told of the night Brad had left

her on the edge of an embankment over a riverþleft her, she was sure,

to step forward and drown.

"Did you ever seek professional counseling or help for the

psychological or emotional effects Mr. Cunningham's abusive conduct

during your marriage had on you?"
 
Shinn asked.

"Only just recently.... I was told that everything would probably be

all right in time, to give it time, but it's been seventeen years and

it's not okay."

"What's not okay about it?"
 
Shinn asked.

"It just still stays with me .
 
. . I have problems because of it."

Loni Ann said she had allowed Brent to live with his father in the

spring of 1986 because he hated living in Brooklyn, where she was

working."

"When and why did he stop living with his father?"

I "In July of 1987.
 
His father threw him outþhe didn't want him

anymore."

Loni Ann said that her daughter Kit did not want to talk to Mike Shinn

"or to be involved in any of this."
 
Both her children had suffered

pain during the long separations from their father, and "when they did

see him, they were never happy when they came home."

"Did you ever witness any abuse to Brent when he was a baby?"

"When we were married .
 
. . his father would throw water at him for

crying or throw water at him for not wanting to eat.
 
He didn't beat

him too much .
 
. . he was only two.
 
I didn't see any reason for

disciplining a two-year-old .
 
.."

"Did he?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"He would slap him.... After we were divorced, and Brad returned the

children from visitations, I noticed that my son had bruises on him on

his backside, almost from his waist to his knees, and he said his

father had spanked him .
 
. . for wetting the bed."

Asked about weapons Brad owned, Loni Ann had seen a rifle and a small

machine gun.
 
"He said he knew people whoþfor the right price þwould do

anything he wanted them to do...."
 
You know I can do whatever I want .

.

. I always win.
 
I never lose."
 
.
 
. . He told me I should know better

than to mess with him."

Reluctantly, Loni Ann answered Mike Shinn's questions about an incident

that had occurred after her divorce.
 
Brad had come very early in the

morning to pick up the children when she was still asleep and he told

her he would wake them up and get them dressed.
 
"I went to take a

shower.
 
He unlocked the bathroom door with a screwdriver and he came

in and he just took me into the bedroom.
 
He told me not to make any

noise or it would wake up the kids, and he didn't care if the kids saw

it .
 
.

. and afterward, he said he didn't know anyone could hold their breath

that long."

"Did you report this to the police?"

"No .
 
. . I didn't think anybody would believe me."

"And after you discovered that he had left you on the cliff, did you

report it to the police?"
 
Shinn asked.

"No."

"Why?"

"It wouldn't have made any difference.
 
They couldn't do anything about

it, and if he found out, things would only be worse.... I just knew I

had to get away from him .
 
. . somehow."

Mike Shinn finished his questions, his part of the deposition had taken

an hour and a half, and Loni Ann looked devastated.
 
When Rieke began

to question her in more detail about the night that Brad left her

beside the river, she suddenly began to sob and ran from the room.

Diane Bakker went with Loni Ann to the ladies' room and held her.

"Her whole body shook with racking sobs," Bakker said later.
 
"She

started talking to me.
 
I guess I didn't ever know that someone could

be so afraid of somebody.
 
She told me how Brad terrified herþeven to

this dayþand to remember that incident, and how close she came to

dying, was something that she could hardly deal with.
 
Not only that,

it brought hack all the memories of her marriage to him.
 
She proceeded

to tell me many things that didn't come out in the deposition that were

unbelievable."

Loni Ann told Diane what she could not bring herself to describe in

detail in the deposition.
 
Brad's idea of sex had been, as she

testified "that I would do anything that he wanted, when he wanted

it."

But it was more than that.
 
She said having sex with Brad was like

being raped.

Loni Ann was finally able to retake the witness chair and face Joe

Rieke.
 
Rieke reasserted his client's express desire to bar all

privileged marital communication.
 
Any attorney working for Brad

Cunningham would have sought to strike the devastating deposition Loni

Ann had just given, citing Brad's marital privilege.
 
But this was not

a task that any defense attorney, much less Joe Rieke, would relish.

The woman was so frightened.

Rieke asked Loni Ann about the incident at the party, apparently in an

effort to imply that she had been responsible for Brad's behavior.

He also attempted to establish that she and Brad had had consensual sex

after their divorce.
 
If possible, Loni Ann shrank even further into

the witness chair.
 
It was obvious that the thought revulsed her and

when he asked her why she had not fought back when Brad opened the

bathroom door with a screwdriver and raped her, she looked at him with

a hopeless expression.
 
She had never been able to fight back.
 
"Brad

always outweighed me by at least a hundred poundsþexcept when I was

pregnant...."

The deposition had begun at one that afternoon of the first day of

spring in 1990.
 
It was over at 3:38

P.M. Loni Ann had smiled only once in two hours and forty minutesþand

that was when Mike Shinn stumbled over pronouncing "kinesiology."
 
But

it was all on videotape, and Shinn would he able to use it in the civil

trial.

Sara didn't know that Shinn had taken Loni Ann's deposition.
 
She

didn't know Loni Ann.
 
She had known none of Brad's former wives Cheryl

was the only one she had ever seen and they had not spoken.
 
She had

vet to reaiize how much they all had in common.
 
ESer own deposition

was scheduled for August 20þfive months wa!.

On April 25, someone from Sara's past returned, someone who sparked

mostly happy memories for her.
 
She had not seen Jack Kincaid for a

long time, not since they had stopped dating in the spring of 1986.

And there was an irony in his coming back into her life at that

particular moment.

If he had not taken another woman to Easter brunch in March of 1986,

Jack and Sara probably wouldn't have broken up.
 
She would not have

been inclined to accept a second date with Brad Cunningham.
 
Kincaid

had often regretted losing Sara, but when he heard she was involved

with Cunninghamþand then murried to himþthere was nothing he could

do.

"It was funny," Kincaid would recall.
 
"Clay Watson and I had been in

the service together, and after he was a surgeon at Providence, it was

Clay who introduced me to Sara in the first placeþback in 1986.
 
And he

told me I'd blown my chance and I was a fool to let her go.
 
He called

me in April of 1990 and said, Well, it looks like you've got (mother

chanceþSara's filed for divorce."

"Clay told me a little bit of what Sara was going through.
 
I didn't

waste time.
 
I sent flowers to Sara at the hospital, and then I called

her.
 
It was April twenty-fifth when we met for drinks at the

Harborside near her Riverplace apartment.
 
She told me she couldn't

live in her apartment þshe was afraid."

Jack and Sara went for dinner at Nick's Coney Island, and they talked

about the decisions they had made over the last four years.
 
He could

see that she was thinner than she had ever been and more worried.
 
The

circles beneath her eyes seemed permanently etched there.
 
IS ever Sara

needed a strong, solid man to lean on, it was now.
 
And Jack Kincaid

was that kind of man.

As far as anyone knew, Brad and the boys were living in an apartment in

Houston.
 
He had been served with a court order to have Jess, Michael,

and Phillip appear for a hearing in Portland on April 16, 1990.
 
On

April 13, his attorney reported that Brad's Houston case had been

postponed yet again, and that he expected to move back to Portland in

the next few weeks.
 
His attorney told Bill Schulte that Brad had no

money to move, no money to have a phone at home, and that he had to

sell his luggage to have "money for food."
 
That would explain the

"children's letter" to Sara Gordon, begging for a ticket home.

And then suddenly on May 27, Brad was back in Portland and in the