Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (81 page)

herself.

"He was waiting to take my money right after work.
 
He told me I was

selfish when I wanted to keep some."
 
She never had time to count the

money she made dancing for rich men.
 
She might have been surprised if

she had.
 
She wasn't a lawyer like Cheryl or a doctor like Sara, but

Dana was bringing in almost twenty-five thousand dollars a month.

And as the dawn turned rosy over Houston, Brad and Dana drove home to

one or another of the fine homes he had rented for them and his sons.

Brad told Dana very little about the civil suit against him in Portland

nothing more than that the charges were trumped up, and that he was the

fall guy because no one really knew who had murdered Cheryl.

According to what he said about Cheryl's promiscuity, it sounded as if

anyone could have killed her.
 
He warned Dana not to give out

information about him to anyone.
 
If he was on one of his trips, she

wasn't to tell where he was.
 
If he was in Houston, that went double

46

With the the civil trial set to begin in the first week of May 1991,

and no indication at all from Brad Cunningham that he would be present

for that trial, Mike Shinn tried every channel possible to notify

him.

The last thing Shinn wanted was for Cunningham to be able to say he had

not even known there was a trial.

l First of all, Shinn sent subpoenas to every attorney that Brad had

ever employedþat least those Shinn knew aboutþand that list alone was

formidable.
 
"I must have contacted more than a dozen of Brad's former

attorneys," he said.
 
It appeared that he had spent most of his adult

life involved in litigation.
 
"They all said they were no longer in

touch with him, they had no idea where he was, and they had no way of

contacting him."
 
Or if they did, they weren't saying.

Since Shinn knew that Brad spent a great deal of his time in Houston,

he decided to look there.
 
In early April he hired a private

investigator in the Houston area, Charles Pollard of Greenwood,

Texas.

Shinn gave Pollard Brad's date of birth (October 14, 1948) and his

Social Security number (537-48-7732) and told him that Brad supposedly

was living with his three small boys who were attending St. Ann's

Catholic School in Houston.
 
He should have been fairly easy to find.

But Brad had become a master at hiding in plain sight.

Pollard first tried the usual routes to trace an individual.
 
He did

computer checks of voter registration, assumed names, marriage license

records, criminal records, and deed records in Harris County.
 
He came

up with a driver's license for Bradly Morris Cunningham, but Brad had

moved from the address listed.
 
Pollard searched through all Texas

vehicle registrations and found nothing.
 
He finally got a hit.

Houston Lighting and Power had Bradly Cunningham in their records as

a.customer at 4824

Bel Air Boulevard.
 
And Pollard discovered why Brad was so hard to

trace.

He had routinely changed one digit in his Social Security or driver's

license numbers, a subtle adjustment in the age of computers that was

enough to prevent someone from being found.

On April 18

Pollard went to the Bel Air Boulevard address.
 
The neighborhood was

definitely upscale, and the home where Cunningham was supposed to be

living was opulent.
 
Pollard spoke with the woman who lived next door

and she said that a dark-haired man was living there with three boys.

Pollard reported this to Shinn, who sent him documents to be served on

Brad about the upcoming civil trial.
 
On April 24

Pollard returned to the Bel Air Boulevard house at 4:30 in the

afternoon.
 
He noted a blue Volkswagen van parked in the garage with

the Washington license plate 567-CZD.
 
It was the vehicle that Sara

learned Brad had bought in Washington after he dumped the pickup truck

with the BBIIGG license.

Pollard assumed that he would find his quarry inside the house.

But it wasn't going to be as easy as it seemed at first.
 
He rang the

bell and after a time the door was answered by a dark-haired boy with

freckles who looked to be about eight or nine.

"Is this where Bradly Cunningham lives?"
 
Pollard asked.

The dark-haired boy nodded.
 
"But he's asleep."

Before Pollard could say anything, the boy disappeared and an extremely

pretty young woman with long blond hair came to the door.
 
When he

asked her name, she shook her head, refusing to identify herself.

Pollard wondered if she might be Dana Malloy, the woman Shinn believed

to be living with Brad.
 
But he wasn't going to find out from her.
 
She

seemed nervous.

"I'm the baby-sitter," she told him with little inflection in her

voice.
 
She said Mr. Cunningham was in Portland, Oregon.
 
"The only

way I have to reach him is through some relatives of his.
 
A Dr.

Dreesen and his wife in Lynnwood."

Grudgingly, the "baby-sitter" gave Pollard a telephone number to the

Dreesen home.

Pollard doubted that Cunningham really was in Portland, he suspected he

was hiding in one of the bedrooms of the huge house.
 
It was obvious

that Cunningham didn't want to talk to him or to accept any papers from

a lawyer in Oregon.

Pollard was stubborn, however.
 
He figured the next best place to

confront Cunningham was at St. Ann's School.
 
He arrived there the

next morning at 7:30 and parked where he could watch parents dropping

children off.
 
The blue Volkswagen van didn't appear, nor did the

Cunningham children.
 
Pollard then returned to the Bel Air address.

This time he saw a white Chevrolet Beretta parked in the drivewav.
 
It

bore Texas plates that identified it as a rental car.
 
He knocked on

the door again, and again the same young boy answered.
 
"My father's

out of town," he said immediately.

"Where's Dana?"

"She's asleep.
 
She worked late last night."

Pollard asked the boy to waken Dana, and when she came to the door, he

handed her the summons informing Bradly Cunningham of his impending

trial.
 
There was also a letter from Judge Ancer Haggerty dated in

February, advising the defendant of his May 6 trial date and requesting

that he appear to give his deposition on May 4.

Later that day Pollard searched deed records for the legal owners of

the house on Bel Air Boulevard.
 
As he suspected, Cunningham was

renting it.
 
The couple who owned the house said that it was indeed

rented by a man named Bradly Cunningham, although it was also currently

for sale.

With no job and no money, and even in hiding, Brad was living well.

The landlords said he was paying rent of $1,900 a month and was prompt

with his payments, but they understood he was moving soon to somewhere

in the Northwestþeither Washington or Oregon, or perhaps even Alaska.

On May 1, 1991, Pollard delivered copies of the legal documents to the

secretary at St. Ann's School.
 
"I probably won't see Mr. Cunningham,"

she said.
 
"He took his children out of school about a month

ago.

Someone in their family is very ill, and he said he was taking the boys

to Portland, Oregon."
 
Pollard didn't tell her that the Cunningham boys

weren't in Portland at allþthat they were spending their days behind

the closed drapes of the house on Bel Air Boulevard, only blocks from

the school.

There was little question in Mike Shinn's mind that Brad knew about the

May 6 trial date.
 
Beyond all Shinn's notifications, he had proof from

Brad himself that he knew about the civil trial.
 
Brad had written a

letter to the editor of the Oregonian complaining of the odious plot

against him.
 
And in that letter, he referred to the upcoming trial.

He knew.
 
In the end, however, Brad could not be bothered with such a

penny-ante legal event as this civil trial.
 
But it would proceed even

if the defendant's chair was empty.
 
Defendants in a legal action have

the right to face their accusers and to defend themselves in a court of

law, it is not illegal for civil defendants to absent themselves from

their own trials.
 
It is, however, highly unusual.

Mike Shinn had gathered scores of witnesses for the trial to be held in

Judge Ancer Haggerty's courtroom.
 
Many of them had new information þor

information that they had been hesitant to reveal before.
 
Many of them

were very frightened.
 
Sharon McCulloch, who had been Jess Cunningham's

first caregiver and who had become Cheryl's close friend, wanted to

testify but vacillated.
 
"I was afraid to testify in the civil trial,"

she remembered.
 
"I knew Brad.
 
I knew the things he could do and how

he just broke a strong woman like Cheryl.
 
One day I would decide I

would do itþand the next day, I'd lose my nerve."

Chick Preston had come on board to work the Cunningham case with Shinn

after Connie Capato's death.
 
He was a remarkably good private

investigator, and just before the May trial he went to Shinn bearing

good news.
 
"Doc Turco always told me to follow Brad's women," and

Chick had talked to yet another one," Shinn said.
 
"I remember Chick

telling me a week before the trial, I've found somebody!
 
I have found

you a dynamite witness!
 
Wait until you hear what she has to say."

" Preston had talked to Karen Aaborg and asked her if she would come in