Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (78 page)

van, Diane clocked the distance to the Mobile station at seven-tenths

of a mile.
 
"It took just a couple of minutes to get down there," she

remembered.
 
She parked the van and waited.

8:07:00: It is dusk when Shinn and the i'killer'' pull out of the

Madison Tower parking area and head for the Sunset Highway.
 
They will

be careful to travel at legal speeds.
 
A camcorder in their car

automatically registers the passing of seconds and minutes.

8:09:44: The arrow to 26

West appears, the car moves left onto the approach toward the westbound

tunnel.

8:13:28: The car emerges from the tunnel and onto the Sunset Highway.

The speed is fifty-five miles an hour.

8:16:32: They reach the location of the Mobile station.

8:17:00: They pull in and park in the shadows there.
 
The "killer'

slips on gloves.
 
He walks slowly around from the hack of the station

to the "victim's" van parked out front.
 
He pounds on the "victim s"

window, forcing his way in.
 
("I was trying to think as Cheryl would

have that night," Bakker remembered.
 
"I sat in the van waiting,

looking all around for Brad."
 
But even though I was waiting for

someone to attack me, I didn't see him.
 
He was just there

suddenly....

") 8:18:20: He is inside the van.
 
(This period could never be

absolutely reconstructed.
 
Had Brad pulled up close to Cheryl's van so

that she could see that Michael was in the car?
 
Or had he left

Michaelþwith orders to "take a nap"þin Sara's car behind the station.

Or conceivably, could he have left all three boys in his apartment?

Furthermore, no one could really know where the savage beating of

Cheryl Keeton had taken place.
 
More than likely, it was a continuous

attack in the van, although she might well have tried desperately to

leap from the passenger door!

only to be winked back by the belt of her jeans.
 
Her injuries had been

inflicted by a heavy object.
 
Shinn was inclined to believe it was a

"policetype" flashlight, although he could never locate it.
 
) 8:22:10:

The "victim's" van, with the "killer" at the wheel and the "victim"

dead or unconscious in the passenger seat, is stopped on 79th Street a

minute or two away from the Mobile station.
 
The eastbound lanes of the

Sunset Highway are just ahead.

8:22:48: The "killer" sends the van toward the freeway.
 
He then jogs

back toward the Mobile station.
 
He is wearing shorts and a T-shirt

now, and carrying a bundle of clothes under his arm like a football.

8:30:50: The "killer" arrives back at the Mobile station where his car

is parked.

8:32:28: The "killer" gets in his car, checks traffic carefully, pulls

out of the Mobile station, and heads toward the Sunset Highway going

east.
 
He is slightly out of breath from his jog.

8:37:40: The "killer" is back on the Sunset Highway, headed east toward

the Madison Tower.

8:38:13: He is in the tunnel going east.

8:42:07: He pulls into the Madison Tower parking garage.

8:42:34: He exits his parked car.

The re-enactment of Cheryl's murder was only a drama.
 
It wasn't realþ

but it seemed real.
 
"I relived it," Shinn recalled.
 
"I was sweating,

my heart was pounding like crazy, even though we knew it was just a

re-enactment.
 
It was almost as if it was really happening."

Brad could have easily been back in the Madison Tower garage at 8:42

P.M. In two more minutes, he would have been able to ride the elevator

to the eighteenth floor and enter his apartment in time to take a phone

call.
 
With ten minutes to spare.

"If Brad had not answered the phone when Sara called just before

nine," Shinn commented.
 
"He would not have locked himself into such a

tight time frame...."

But it was loose enough.
 
The test run had proved that it was, indeed,

possible to drive from the Madison Tower to the West Slope and back in

thirty-five minutesþeven allowing for almost five minutes in which to

strike a helpless victim almost two dozen times.
 
But if Brad was

Cheryl's killer, he may not have had ten minutes to spare.
 
Later,

experts estimated that it would take almost fifteen minutes to bludgeon

someone two dozen times.

In late 1990, Mike Shinn's office was in the Bishop's House, in a

remodeled parish house that was once a part of a church complex.

Because it had been built in a time when crime in Portland was not a

major concern, the Bishop's House had had to be beefed up with security

devices.

Iron grilles were placed over windows on the ground and second

floorsþnot just in Shinn's offices but for all the offices located in

the building.

Brad Cunningham was a man who resented anyone snooping into his

business and his life.
 
Judging by the huge stack of reports from

Connie Capato and Leslie High, there was ample evidence that

Shinn had done both.
 
And the civil trial was fast approaching.
 
It

seemed a wise thing that his office was secure.

Diane Bakker began to receive obscene phone calls at Shinn's office.

The male voice was Asian, or at least disguised to sound Asian.
 
"I

know who you are," he breathed.
 
"And I'm going to come up there and

rape you."
 
He added some ugly details about what he planned to do.

By the third call, Bakker was ready for him.
 
She kept saying, "I can't

understand youþcould you repeat that, only slowly?"
 
and every time the

obscene caller tried again, she pretended she couldn't understand the

string of obscenities he uttered because of his accent.
 
"I don't think

it was Brad," she recalled.
 
"But maybe it was someone Brad hired.

The guy finally got so exasperated with me because I couldn't

understand' him that he hung up.
 
That was the end of the phone

calls."

But not the end of the pretrial incidents.
 
Diane Bakker went to work

early one morning and found Mike Shinn's office a mess.
 
Someone had

come in during the night, someone with a very explicit mission.
 
It was

easy enough to find the point of entry.
 
Powerful arms had twisted the

iron bars away from the bathroom window of the second-floor office

complex.

"Someone broke the window to the bathroom and took powdered cream and

sugar from next to the coffee machine in the hall and scattered it all

over the hall and Mike's office," Bakker said.
 
"They didn't touch the

other two attorneys' offices."

What was oddþand disturbingþwas that nothing of value was missing.

There were computers, typewriters, all manner of office machines, and

Shinn had any number of paintings and sculptures in his offices that

were worth thousands of dollars.
 
The intruder had taken nothing, nor

had he damaged anything in Shinn's offices.
 
He seemed, rather, to have

broken in just to leave a message.

"The only thing that was disturbed," Shinn said, "was the Brad

Cunningham case file.
 
Whoever broke in had taken that from where I

kept it and scattered it all over the hall.
 
That was what was under

all that spilled sugar and cream.
 
Whoever came in during the night may

have read the file, but he didn't take it away with him.
 
He just left

it in sheets scattered all over my officeþlike a calling card."

Shinn figured he must be getting to somebody, forcing him to look over

his shoulder and annoying the hell out of him.
 
But he was not about to

quit.
 
He was hot on the trail.

Someone was hot on his trail, too.
 
His car was broken intoþnot at his

office but where it was parked near his houseboat.
 
The message was

clear: I know whereyou work, and I know whereyou live .
 
. .

, Mike Shinn wasn't the only target.
 
Some of Dr. Russell Sardo's

records of his sessions with Brad and Cheryl during their custody

battle disappeared.
 
And Sara Gordon received a scribbled letter that

might have been meant to be reassuring, but it was unsigned, and

anonymous messages frightened her.

Dr. Gorden [sic], we heard about your testimony today.
 
Our police

friend tells us based on what you've said they can almost arrest him

and by the end of your sworn statement we expect he'll be in jail by

end of month Hang in there þyou have our support.

Your friends in Washington What friends in Washington?
 
What

testimony?

Although Sara was prepared to testify in the civil trial, only a few

people knew about it.

Superstitious people, those who believe in omens and in the power of

evil, might have felt a pall over the years-long quest for justice in

Cheryl's murder.
 
Oregon State Police Detective Jerry Finch, who had

been the lead detective in the criminal investigation of Cheryl's

death, had succumbed to lung cancer in 1988, almost exactly two years

after Cheryl herself died.
 
He had been in his early forties.
 
Connie

Capato, the private investigator who had been most active in Shinn's

civil investigation of Cheryl's death, was barely thirty when she also

developed cancer, a deadly fast-moving malignancy of the brain.
 
She

was dead within a few months and did not live to see the civil trial

she had worked so hard on come to fruition.
 
Nor did Bob Burnett,

another P.l.

who had worked on the case.

Mike Shinn and Diane Bakker were not afraid, but they had long since