Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (82 page)

to see Mike Shinn.
 
She had had a brief affair with Brad in the months

before Cheryl's murder and had seen him again in the days that

followed.

"Karen came in with her fiancee," Shinn said, "and she told me, I'm not

sure why I'm here.
 
I have nothing that will help you."
 
And I just

said, Let's wait and see."
 
She actually didn't know how much she

knew.

I knew that Karen Aaborg was going to prove to be one of the missing

links we'd been searching for so long."

Given Brad's history of violence and intimidation, Dr. Ron Turco had

warned Shinn to cover his back.
 
He wasn't just imagining things, there

was every chance that Shinn was in danger.
 
Nobody knew for sure where

Brad was.
 
Dana had said he was in Portland and perhaps he was.
 
And he

might be quietly watching Shinn, waiting for a chance to take on the

attorney who was causing such trouble in his life.

Shinn decided to listen to the advice of the experts in psychopathology

he had consulted, Ron Turco among them.
 
They suggested this was no

time to be a sitting duckþor, in his case, "Jloating duck in his

houseboat on the Multnomah Channel.
 
He abandoned the houseboat and at

least became a moving target.
 
"I ended up living in hotels for that

entire trial," Shinn recalled.
 
"I'd stay in one for a while and then

move on.
 
I didn't want Cunningham to ever get a fix on where I was."

Brad might not be planning to go to his own trial, but he had been seen

in Portland recently and nobody knew exactly why.

l Part VA Civil Matter

Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge Ancer Haggerty was something of a

legend.
 
Like almost every other male connected to the Cunningham case,

Haggerty was an athlete.
 
He had grown up in North Portland and played

guard for the University of Oregon, where he had been All Pc10.
 
He

had served as a Marine captain in Vietnam.
 
In fact, Haggerty and

Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Shrunk had gone through

officers' training together.
 
Haggerty, wounded in battle, was highly

decorated for valor.

Haggerty was a massive presence in a courtroom, standing over six feet

two inches tall, weighing in somewhere around 260.
 
He had a wry sense

of humor and a quick wit, but he had never looked favorably on

defendants who simply ignored the justice systemþas Brad Cunningham

apparently intended to do.
 
The trial was going ahead whether he was

present at the defense table or not.

By May 6, 1991, a jury had been selected.
 
Charlene Fort, a science

teacher, was elected foreman of the twelve-member panel, which was

equally divided between males and females.
 
Before testimony began, the

jurors were taken for a "jury view" of the intersection of 79th and the

Sunset Highway so they could visualize the physical dimensions of all

they would hear in the weeks ahead.
 
They knew, of course, that

something of great importance to this case had happened there.
 
They

did not yet know what.

Mike Shinn did, and he had a prickly feeling at the back of his neck

and along his spine as he stood looking at the spot where Cheryl's body

had been discovered.
 
"I hate to admit it," he said, "but I couldn't

help but wonder if someone was back in those trees taking a bead on

me...."

The trial began the next day.
 
Judge Haggerty's courtroom looked like

all courtrooms.
 
He sat behind the bench in black robes beneath the

state seal of Oregon, the American flag on his right, the flag of

Oregon on his left.
 
Shinn was at the table of the complaining

partyþJohn Burke, representing the estate of Cheryl Keetonþwho was not

present.
 
Diane Bakker sat beside Shinn, her long blond hair caught

back and falling to her waist.

Cheryl's relatives and friends sat in the hack of the courtroom But

somehow the usual air of excitement was missing.
 
There was no one at

the defense table.
 
No defendant.
 
No defense attorneys.
 
As Shinn

would comment later, "It was like playing tennis by yourself, there was

no one to return my serves."

Before the jury filed in to hear testimony, Shinn detailed for Judge

Haggerty the arduous steps he had taken to locate Bradlv Cunningham

listing the names of all Brad's previous attorneys whom he had notified

of the trial date.
 
He also said he had taken a deposition from Trudy

Dreesen, Brad's aunt in Lvnnwood, Washington.
 
Mrs. Dreesen

acknowledged to Shinn that she talked to Brad at least once a week.

"She begged me not to depose her," Shinn told the judge, "but I had

to."
 
Trudy Dreesen, who was now terribly ill, admitted that she had

talked to Brad the morning of her deposition and informed him that his

trial was due to start in Portland within two weeks.

Shinn told of hiring Charles Pollard, "who is one of the best

investigators in Texas and claims he can find anyone in twenty-four

hours" Pollard had found Dana Malloy, and Jess, Michael, and Phillip

Cunningham, he had not found Brad Cunningham.
 
He had

hand-delivered Judge Haggerty's order to trial to Dana Malloy one week

before the trial.

Whether Pollard ever saw Cunningham wasn't really the point.
 
Brad had

clearly gotten the message.
 
Within two days, Brad, Dana, and the three

little boys had vacated their lavish fortress of a home in Houston.

"No one knows where Brad Cunningham is now," Shinn said flatly.

The jury then filed in to hear the story of Cheryl Keeton's tragically

short life and to listen to the witnesses Shinn had gathered to help

him tell it.
 
He held up a large picture of Cheryl.
 
She was wearing a

tan trench coat and she was smiling through raindrops at the

cameraman.

Ironically, the photographer had been the man Shinn alleged had killed

her: Brad Cunningham.

"In 1986

Cheryl Keeton was thirty-fourþor so," Shinn began softly.
 
"As you can

see, she was a beautiful woman.
 
She had a brilliant future ahead of

her, [she was] a woman who played many difficult roles at the same

time.
 
First of all, she was the mother of these three little boys.

. .

" He held up another picture.
 
It was a heartbreakerþCheryl with Jess

Michael, and Phillip.
 
"In 1986 the oldest, Jess, was six, Michael was

four and the youngest, Phillip, was two years old."

The jury next looked at a photograph of a laughing woman clinging to a

darkly handsome, smiling man as they stepped through a doorway toward

their future together.
 
"She was the wife of this manþBradly Morris

Cunningham," Shinn said.
 
"This was taken on their wedding day.
 
She

thought at the time she was his second wife.
 
She later found out she

was his fourth."

It hadn't been difficult to pick a jury who knew nothing of the caseþ

there had been little coverage of Cheryl's death, and she had been dead

for almost five years.
 
"Who were these people?"
 
Shinn asked.
 
"Mr.

Cunningham .
 
. . was one of the most intriguing personalities you are

ever likely to encounter.... He had a charm about him, a

charisma...."

Could Shinn do it?
 
Could he paint a true picture of a man the jury was

likely never to see?
 
Could he bring Cheryl back to life and make her

real enough for the jury to understand how devastating her murder had

been to so many people?
 
Could he explain why there was "something

fundamentally disastrous" about their relationship?
 
Would the

preponderance of the evidence he presented to the jury prove that Brad

had murdered his wife?

Shinn began almost at the end of Cheryl's life, setting up an

enlargement of Cheryl's last will and testament on the easel in front

of the jury.
 
He described the tearing hurry Cheryl had been in to have

a new will drawn upþa will barring her husband from inheriting her

estate or even having any control over it.
 
"She told her friend Kerry

Radcliffe, I think he's going to kill me," " Shinn said.

He held up another picture of Cheryl, the last picture taken of her, a

shockingly graphic photograph that showed how she looked on the night

of September 21,1986.
 
"She was beaten over twenty times," Shinn

said.

No one would have recognized this battered corpse as the smiling woman

in the first picture.

The first witness was Randy Blighton, the young truck salesman who had

seen Cheryl's van bumping against the median barrier and had bravely

dashed across the Sunset Highway to get it out of harm's wayþand to

save approaching motorists from disaster.
 
He told of his shock when he

saw the dead woman lying across the front seat.

Karen Aaborg was next.
 
Brad had had so many women throughout his life

that it wasn't surprising his brief affair with Karen Aaborg had

managed to escape the notice of the original investigating team in

1986.

Karen had been in her early twenties when she worked for Brad at

Citizens' Savings and Loan, a young attorney fresh out of law school.

Lily Saarnen's affair with Brad had virtually overlapped his affair

with Karen.
 
Add to that the fact that he was simultaneously sleeping

with his sons' baby-sitter, and it was easy to see why just keeping up

with his sexual conquests was a challenge for police investigators.

Karen Aaborg had simply slipped through the cracks.

Karen had had some misgivings about Brad's activities in late Septem

her 1986, the time of his wife's murder, but she hadn't wanted to hold

up her hand and say, "I was involved with Brad too!"
 
In fact, she had