Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (79 page)

become cautious.
 
Nothing about this case was going to be easy.

"We always had very nice houses.
 
Brad insisted on a very glamorous

lifestyle," Dana would recall, speaking of their sudden move in the

summer of 1990.
 
"The Seattle house was brand new, and I'm not even

sure where it wasþexcept I remember it was close to the Sand Point

Naval Air Station.
 
It was a beautiful house, over three thousand

square feet."

Dana had gone willingly with Brad and his sons to Seattle in July, but

within weeks she had some reservations.
 
Being chained to a pedestal

was beginning to cloy.
 
She yearned for some small bit of freedom.
 
She

had no job, she didn't know anyone in Seattle, and her life had

suddenly become only Brad.
 
He was there everywhere she turnedþnot

hovering, but enclosing her.
 
He was not nearly as humble or

distinguished as he had seemed to be at first.
 
And he had a one-track

mind.
 
"Brad talked about sex all the time," Dana said.
 
"Sex was his

thing.
 
I asked him not to talk the way he did, but he didn't stop."

Brad tried to persuade Dana to go to topless dancing bars around

Seattle and she was appalled.
 
Watching other women dance nudeþor next

to nudeþwas not something she wanted to do.
 
Even though Brad was

insistent that it would be fun, she refused.

There were other things about Brad that puzzled her.
 
She often found

rubber gloves in his pockets and she could not for the life of her

figure out why he needed them.
 
When she asked him what they were for,

he was evasive.
 
Since his estranged wife was a doctor, she supposed it

was possible that Brad had access to such things.
 
But it was something

that she tried to shut away in her mind.
 
"Brad was crude, too," Dana

recalled.
 
"I don't like to repeat the words he used or the way he

referred to.
 
. . things.
 
He'd use initials, but he'd tell me what

they meant and it was the same as if he said it all out loud."

After Dana had been with Brad and the boys for four months, she began

to feel so smothered that she could barely breathe.
 
She was

twenty-three and Brad was forty-one.
 
Traits that had once seemed sweet

and romantic now seemed like little fences going up around her.
 
Brad

clearly considered her far more than a nanny, far more even than a

mistress.
 
He talked of a future where they would always be together

and Dana wasn't ready for such a commitment.
 
She didn't know if she

ever would be.

Brad had plans to move to Houston and he assumed that she would go

along.
 
Instead, Dana left him, went back to Portland, and moved in

with Nick Ronzini.
 
It was perhaps the first time any woman had left

Brad without discussion or wavering.
 
Dana was just gone.
 
And she was

naive enough to believe she was free and clear.

"Brad moved to Houston.
 
A couple of weeks later, he called and said he

was in Portland," Dana said.
 
"He asked me to have dinner with him

þjust so we could end our being together on a friendly note.
 
I didn't

see why I shouldn't do thatþso I said yes."

That evening with Brad was one of the weirdest Dana ever experienced.

It started out well enough.
 
She was all dressed up as Brad had

suggested, and when she met him, he seemed to be his old wonderfully

charming self, not even upset that she had left him.
 
He took her to a

very expensive restaurant.
 
"It was one of those restaurants where they

served course after course after course," Dana said.
 
"You knowþsalad

and soup and appetizers and then sherbet, and then something else.
 
It

was very expensive and very impressive.
 
They had special wine that

went with each course.
 
I don't drink very much, but Brad kept urging

me to...."

At some point during that autumn evening in Portland, Dana lost track

of time and place.
 
Everything took on a dreamy quality.
 
And she would

still sound puzzled when she remembered what happened next.
 
"When I

woke up the next morning, we were in Houston.
 
I had no idea how I got

there.

l didn't remember getting on a plane or leaving the restaurant.

Brad just kept telling me, I'm so in love with you.
 
I can't live

without you."
 
And so I stayed with him in Houston."

Dana had, at the very least, ambivalent feelings about Brad.
 
She

hadn't even said goodbye to Nick.
 
One minute she was having a

wonderful meal in Portland, and the next thing she knew she was

breathing in the humid, muggy air of Houston.
 
Even if Brad loved her,

he had tricked her.

Nick Ronzini soon figured out where Dana was and followed her to

Houston.
 
When he tracked her to the apartment where she was living, he

encountered Brad and the two men had a fist fight.
 
Neither won,

really, but it was Nick who left.
 
"I would have gone back to Oregon

with Nick," Dana said.
 
"But Nick had problems and I knew that wasn't

the way out.

Besides, I was so insecure that I felt I was trapped with Brad."

Dana had begun her "tour of duty" with Brad.
 
Sometimes things were

good.
 
When Brad was happy with a woman, no man could be more charming

or more fun.
 
"I don't want to say that it was all terrible," Dana

said.

"Thinking back, we had a wonderful time in Houston.
 
We did most things

as a family.
 
Brad took us to Galveston.
 
We had parties.
 
We had

fun.

We always lived in big executive' homes.
 
Brad alwa,v.s had new cars.

When we were first in Houston, Brad had a new van.
 
We needed a van

because of the three boys...."

Back in Portland, Sara hoped against hope that she was free of Brad.

Her divorce was finally granted on October 21, 1990.
 
Circuit Court

Judge Kathleen Nachtigal looked over the documents showing how many of

Brad's debts Sara had to pay and listened to recountings of his

vandalism of their property.
 
She awarded the house, the Broadway

Bakery and Bistro, its stock, the cars, the Whitewater Jet boat, and all

bonds, personal property, and pension assets to Sara.
 
Brad received

his formula for Symptovir and one lot in Tampico, Washington.
 
In

addition, Judge Nachtigal denied Brad's petition for child support and

ordered that he pay Sara the sum of fifty thousand dollars

immediately.

If he did not interest at 9 percent would accrue.
 
He didn't pay.

Sara had paid $220,000 for the Dunthorpe house.
 
And she estimated that

she had poured more than $100,000 into it to remodel it to Brad's

specifications.
 
After they separated, she had made mortgage payments

faithfully on a home occupied by her estranged husband and his nanny/

mistress.
 
Real estate was booming in Lake Oswego in the late eighties

and early nineties, but when Sara finally managed in May of 1991 to

sell the honeymoon house that had become a horror to her, she barely

broke even.
 
It had been an investment only in terror.
 
And she still

had the financial burden of the bakery and the bistro.

Sara's relief at having Brad gone was offset by her pain at losing her

sons.
 
From the time she had adopted them in March of 1988, she had

considered them as much hers as if she had carried them in her womb.

Now, she had no idea where they were.
 
Every day there was something

that reminded her of Jess, Michael, and Phillip and her heart hurt,

thinking of them, wondering if they were safe, if they were happy.
 
She

didn't even know if they were alive.
 
Sara tried to believe that Brad

loved the boysþit was a funny, skewed kind of love, but he had fought

so hard to get them away from Cheryl that he must love them.

And she took some faint comfort in the thought that Dana Malloy seemed

fond of the boys.
 
But Dana was young and would be so easily

intimidated by Brad.
 
Sara knew that if push came to shoveþas it so

often did with Bradþhe would tromp right over Dana.
 
Maybe Dana wasn't

even with them any longer, Brad went through women so quickly.

As it happened, Dana was still with Brad.
 
He wanted her to marry

him.

Brad had rarely been an unmarried man since he wed Loni Ann in 1969.

When his marriage to Sara officially ended in October, Brad just

naturally assumed that Dana would be anxious to marry him.

She wasn't.
 
"Brad always called me his wife," " Dana said, "but I just

giggled when he kept proposing to me.
 
I didn't want to marry him."

Brad had carried out a carefully choreographed plan to bend Dana to his

will.
 
She didn't have the education that his other women had, she was

younger than most of them, and she had never been an assertive

person.

Dana was adamant, however, on one point.
 
Some instinct kept her from

accepting Brad's marriage proposals.

It wasn't easy.
 
As he had with all his women, Brad quickly isolated

Dana's weak points.
 
In his most loving tone, he would call her over to

show her a diagram he had drawn.
 
With his arm around her waist, he

would tap his pencil on a line near the bottom of the page.
 
"See,

angel," he would say.
 
"You're at this level hereþand I'm way up

here.

You're a beautiful woman, but you're uneducated, you're gorgeous but