Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (87 page)

friendship had developed, and Cheryl, her brother, and her three boys

all came to Ethel's daughter's wedding.
 
Sanford, who had less than a

month to live, came to the wedding too.
 
"That was the first time I had

seen my dad in all this time," Ethel said.
 
"My dad then died on July

twenty-sixth.... Cheryl called me after the funeral and told me she

felt partly responsible for my dad's heart attack .
 
. . and that Brad

had told her not to come to the funeral.... I told her Brad had shown

up with Sara and tried to pass her off as Cheryl .
 
. . I nipped that

in the bud."

Shinn asked Ethel about her relationship with Cheryl later that

summer.

"Did she talk with you about witnesses'?"

"Yes."

"Did she talk to you about who they were?"

"Yes."

"In the conversation Cheryl had with you about taxes and bankruptcy

þwhat did she tell you in connection with the evidence she intended to

present in the divorce and custody proceedings?"

"She was going to break Brad.
 
Break the bankruptcy statements.
 
She

was going to prove that he was getting money .
 
. . he was avoiding

taxes with the IRS.... I gave her any information she needed.... She

told me she had prepared a list, she was keeping it secretþ" "Did you

have conversations with her," Shinn asked, "where she was afraid of the

consequences?"

"Not only was she afraid of the consequences to her but to those of us

who were going to testify.... She made a list but it was a protective'

kind of list.
 
She told me that on the Friday before her death."
 
It

was clear from Ethel's testimony that she believed her brother was

capable of violence, of revenge, of murder.
 
She said he had beaten her

too.

Shinn elicited testimony from Ethel about her final conversation with

Cheryl.
 
It had been on Friday, September 19, 1986, after Brad picked

up the children.
 
Cheryl said they had argued as usual, and she had

insisted he have the boys home on time on Sunday because they had

school the next morning.
 
"They'd started to argue and fight," Ethel

said, "and he was raising his arms and everything, and all of a sudden

he stopped and said, What's the matter with me?
 
Sunday!
 
You're not

going to be here .

I , I ," .
 
.

' I after Sunday.
 
I don't have to worry about you."
 
I sat right up

and said, Cheryl, Cheryl He's not just making threats anymore.
 
He

means to do it thgs weekend.
 
He's got a plan.
 
I know Bradly .
 
. . He

doesn't have to argue with you because it's settled in his mind....

He's going to do it."
 
I even tried to warn her.
 
I said, Cheryl,

listen to me....

He's not going to attack you in your house.
 
Has he ever threatened you

with the children being harmed if you don't do what he tells you to?"

and she said, Yes, I'd lay down my life for my kids, you know that."

" Sobbing on the stand, Ethel recalled that she had warned Cheryl that

Brad was going to do something to call her out of her home, alone, tell

her that something was wrong so she would have to go out to get the

kids, that he would draw her away from security.

"How did you know this?"
 
Shinn asked.

"He plans and he creates and he figures out how he's going to go after

somebody," Ethel said.
 
"He was this way in junior high."

Rosemary Kinney, Brad's mother, took the stand next.
 
She looked

nothing like snapshots of the lovely young girl Sanford had married, or

the attractive middle-aged woman standing next to him on a camping

trip.
 
The years had been unkind to her.
 
Her hair was still raven

black, but it was pulled into a knot on top of her head, and her face

was deeply lined, her eyes almost hidden by pouches of flesh.
 
Shinn

asked her what the nature of her relationship with Brad had been over

the previous decade.

"I haven't seen my son," Rosemary said, the pain of many losses

bringing tears to her eyes.
 
"I saw him at his father's funeral in

July.

[Before that] it had to be at Loni Ann's [custody] hearing."

' You testified against your son?"

"Yes, I didþof his treatment of the children.
 
He came to the cabin

with the children and I had fixed dinner.
 
He dished their plates upþ

they were smallþand he walked into the kitchen and said, Eat that

food!"
 
Kit said she couldn't eat any more.
 
He started force-feeding

them.

Kit finally vomited her food into her plate...."

"Did you know Mr.
 
Cunningham's second wife?"

"Only time I seen her was in court.
 
She was quite a bit older than

Brad."

". . . his third wife, Lauren Swanson?"

"No, I didn't know her.
 
I got a glimpse of her one time.
 
Loni Ann was

going to let me have the children one weekend, because Brad would never

let me see them.
 
I went to Loni Ann's mother's house, and I put my car

behind the house so Brad wouldn't see it.
 
They drove up, and I got a

glimpse."

"Were you invited to their wedding?"

Rosemary looked astonished.
 
"To Brad's wedding?
 
No."

Rosemary told of the first time she ever met Cheryl Keeton.
 
Kit had

given her Cheryl's address, and she wrote a letter to "explain who I

was, and my nationalityþI'm a registered member of the Colville

Confederated Tribe, and I'm French, Indian, English, Hawaiian.
 
I knew

Cheryl probably didn't know anything about me, and I wanted her to

realize that Brad did have a mother, and I did care about the

children.

When she got my letter, she called me.
 
It was really wonderful to get

to talk to her."

Rosemary had finally met Cheryl at Ethel's daughter's wedding "June

1986.
 
"I was standing in the church, and this pretty lady came up in

front of me with these three beautiful boys, and she said, This is your

grandmother," and these little boys gave me a hugþ" Rosemary put her

head in her hand and sobbed.
 
She had never even hoped that she would

meet Cheryl or her youngest grandsons.
 
She got a chance to visit with

Cheryl at the reception and to have her picture taken with her and the

boys.
 
"I told Cheryl, I'll tell you one thingþ don't ever trust Bradþ'

" "Why do you say that?"
 
Shinn asked.

"Well, after my first husband left me, I got a job as a teacher's aide

in eastern Washington, and it was a break from school and I came home

because I still had the house.
 
I'd changed the locks so no one could

get in.
 
I drove up and there was lights on and I went in and my son

was there.
 
There was this womanþBrad's second wife.
 
He said he was

there to get his things.
 
We had words.
 
He hit me and knocked me on

the floor.
 
l tried to get up, and every time I tried, he hit me

again....

"Finally, he went out the door, and every time I tried to go out, he

hit me with the screen door.
 
He finally hit me so hard in the chest

with his arm and fist, I landed out in front of the house on my neck

and shoulders.
 
I went to the neighbors and called the sheriff."

When the deputy arrived, Rosemary said, Brad came charging in and said,

"I'm the one that called you."
 
But the deputy didn't believe him.

He waited until Brad had removed some things he had in his mother's

garage and left the house.

"The following Monday, I went to Roxbury Court and filed charges

against my son," Rosemary said, beginning to cry again.
 
"I figured

that if I filed charges against him, he would never do anything like

this to anybody else.
 
I knew he had been cruel with Loni Annþso I

filed the charges.
 
The day he was supposed to go to court, I was

thereþbut Brad had an attorney.
 
The judge said Brad wouldn't be

there.

I had to leave to go back to work.
 
Nothing ever happened about

that."

Rosemary went on to tell the jury that she had been afraid of Brad, her

own son, ever since he was in high school.

Shinn handed her a letter that Brad had once sent to her.
 
It was

remarkably similar to the letter he would send to Sara, and to any

number of women who had angered him.
 
He warned her that, if she didn't

change her ways, she might end up killing someone.

Like her daughter Ethel, Rosemary testified that she would have done

"anything in the world" to help Cheryl keep her children.
 
In the end,

of course, there was nothing they could do.
 
The "protective witness

list" that Cheryl had drawn up, the battle plan that she believed would

bring Brad down and protect her little boys, had been as fragile as a

cobweb held up against a bazooka.

Loni Ann Cunningham testified through her videotaped deposition.

Her taut, pale little face filled the screen and the jurors listened as

she recalled the horrors of her marriage to Brad.
 
Kit Cunningham

testified by phone.
 
In a flat voice, she told about the spring she had

spent in Houston when she was twelve or thirteen and had been

humiliated and held captive by her father.
 
One overwhelming fact was

becoming obvious.

The women in Brad Cunningham's life had been disposable, dispensable,

the objects of derision and hatredþand ultimately expendable.