Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (93 page)

animal-like, crouching and growling.
 
"I guess maybe when he played

football," she said later, "they acted like that.
 
He was making

terrible grunting, growling noises, and I ran away from him.
 
He came

after me until I was trapped, crouched in the bathtub with my back

against the wall."

Dana thought she was going to die.
 
Brad was so infuriated because she

had disobeyed him that he was going to come into the tub and kill

her.

Her thoughts skittered frantically, what could she say to calm him

down?

"I told him I loved him.
 
I kept saying I loved him.
 
He left for a few

minutes, and then he walked back in and, oh God he was carrying a

loaded .38 in his right hand.
 
But he had both hands ciosed around the

gun and he was pointing it up at the ceiling.
 
Then he said, You're

gonna hurt me, aren't you?
 
You're gonna hurt me like everyone else."

" As far as Dana knew, Brad had done most of the hurting in his

relationships with the women who came before her, but she wasn't about

to argue that point with him.
 
"No!"
 
she cried.
 
"No, Brad.
 
I'm not

going to hurt you.
 
I lo2)e you!"

"No!
 
You're going to hurt me."

To Dana it seemed that awful scene took hours and hours, but she knew

it probably lasted only fifteen minutes from the time Brad erupted into

his animalistic rage until it was over.
 
She was trapped in the tub

screaming out that she loved him and wasn't going to leave him.
 
He was

aiming the gun alternately at her and at the ceiling.
 
"And then

suddenly

Brad just slid down the wall," Dana said, "as if his legs were

collapsing under him.
 
I went to him, and he took the gun and put it to

his head.
 
He was completely relaxed then, with the gun pointed at his

own head.
 
I don't know what he did next.
 
I ran.
 
I took the stairs in

two leaps and ran to the neighbors."

She called the police from the neighbors' house.
 
And the local

authorities soon discovered that Washington County, Oregon,

investigators were very interested in the whereabouts of one Bradly

Morris Cunningham.

Oregon detectives came north and took Dana back with them to

Portland.

She was scared enough, and fed up enough, to want to tell them what she

knew about Brad.
 
The problem was, she didn't know that muchþalthough

she gave her permission for them to go into the Mill Creek house to

remove guns and other paraphernalia there.

"I stayed in a hotel in Seattle the first night, and I didn't sleep,"

Dana remembered.
 
"I didn't sleep in Portland either.
 
I finally went

back to Seattle because I was tired.
 
Brad found me.
 
He started with

the same thing, You're my wife'þbut I wasn't his wifeþand I can't live

without you.
 
He made promises.
 
Promises, promises.

Dana went back to live with Brad.
 
She missed the little boys, and she

wanted to believe his promises.
 
It didn't last and she knew that if

she ran again, she would have to run farther.
 
Her youngest brother,

Barney,* who was only twenty, went up to Seattle to help her get

away.

"Barney took me to my sister's house in Florida, and I thought I was

safe."

She wasn't.
 
Frustrated, Brad was a force to be reckoned with.
 
He

reverted to type.
 
He gathered together all the pictures he had of Dana

in lingerie or revealing costumes and had dozens of prints made.
 
He

wrote a devastating letter detailing every small slip from grace that

she might ever have made.
 
And then he started faring.
 
"Brad faxed

letters and photos to my parents, the bank in my little hometown, our

church, my parents' friends and customers, all my friends.
 
He told

everyone that I was a stripper.
 
He told my parents if they didn't tell

him where I was, it would get worse."

It did.
 
Brad put all of his business schemes on hold and drove to the

little town in southern Oregon where Dana had grown up.
 
"He actually

stalked my father around town, trying to see if he would lead him to

me.

He contacted my high-school friends and told them lies."

Dana shuddered, remembering.
 
"My mother was so horrified by all the

letters and pictures and the things Brad was telling people.
 
I told

her, That's not true, Mom!"
 
Sometimes I blamed my parents for even

believing the things he was telling them about me.
 
Brad was clever.

He knew how to divide a family, and gradually he was tearing our family

apart.
 
He thought I was in Oregon, but I wasn't, I was in Florida.
 
It

was my family that he was putting through hell."

Eventually Brad wore Dana down.
 
She couldn't let him destroy

everything her parents had worked for, their position in the town that

had been their home for decades.
 
He sent her messages through her

family and friends, and the message was always the same: "For every day

you stay away, it's going to be that much worse."
 
It was too much for

Dana.

Stronger women than she had been broken by Brad's relentless

campaigns.

He never quit.
 
He never let up.
 
In time, she knew, he would find her,

and in the process her family would be destroyed.
 
She remembered the

words he had said to her so often: "I can wait three years if I have

to, to get back at the people who have screwed up my lifeþbecause I

have patience.
 
I can outwit anyone.... " Dana knew that Brad had a

long list of people he blamed for "screwing up his life."
 
Mike Shinn

was on it.
 
John Burke was on it.
 
Just as Brad insisted her own family

was infected with "Malloyism," he had invented a disease he now called

"Burkeism," whose symptoms included everything Burke had done to

prevent him from dipping into the assets Cheryl had specifically

earmarked for her sons.

Brad had bragged about "stalking" Burke one day as he left the offices

of Garvey, Schubert in Seattle, following him down Madison Street and

waiting while Burke, unaware, browsed in a bookstore.
 
Later he found

out where Burke lived, and Dana had ridden along when Brad located his

house on one of the San Juan Islands.
 
He had brazenly driven up

Burke's road and taken his time observing his enemy's house.

Dana knew all too well that when Brad wanted to find someone, he would

do it.
 
And in early 1992 he wanted to find her.
 
"I went back to him,"

she later said ruefully.
 
"I'd had it.
 
But this time, I had a plan.

If I could convince Brad that he had completely alienated me from my

parents, then I figured he would stop sending letters and faxes down

there.

l told him that I blamed my parentsþnot him.
 
And he believed me.
 
He

left them alone.
 
I had no family any longer, but at least they were

safe from him."

C Q Brad never stayed long in one place.
 
He moved from state to state,

from town to town, even from house to house in the same town.
 
One day

in the summer of 1992 he told Dana that they were going to Canada So

once again they packed up.
 
It wasn't a long trip.
 
Brad had selected

White Rock, British Columbia, which is a few miles north of the

Canadian border beyond Blaine, Washington, and only a

two-and-a-half-hour drive from Lynnwood where the Dreesens lived.

Their White Rock rental was just across the railroad tracks from the

beach and the endless stretches of the Straits of Georgia leading to

the Pacific Ocean.
 
It was a lovely spot, but Dana could see that Brad

was becoming increasingly weird.
 
It was difficult for her even to

visualize the handsome young executive who had driven a Mercedes and

lived in the Dunthorpe mansion.
 
Brad still spent money, all right, but

she had no idea where it came from.
 
She assumed it was some kind of

advance on a settlement in the Texas lawsuit.
 
He wasn't working,

although he bragged about some projects he and his uncle Herm were

discussing.

On July 24,1992, Brad and Dana had gone down to visit the Dreesens.

They were in a grocery store, and Brad suddenly started shoplifting

small items.
 
He was laughing, it seemed to be a game.
 
The things he

was taking weren't worth very much, but he was stealing them.
 
The

store's security guard followed Brad into the parking lot and they

struggled.

"Brad maced the security guard," Dana remembered.
 
He was carrying

Cap-STUN, a powerful pepper spray police use to stop assailants in

their tracks, and he used it on the store guard.
 
He was detained and

arrested but refused to give his name.
 
Booked into the Everett,

Washington, jail as "John Doe," he was eventually identified and bailed

out, and disappeared.
 
A felony warrant was issued for his arrest on

assault and theft charges.

Back in Canada, things were tense that summer.
 
Brad talked a lot about

the "apocalypse" that was coming.
 
He seemed obsessed with natural

disasters and what would happen to them if one occurred.
 
Dana didn't

know what the apocalypse was, but it made her nervous hearing Brad talk

about it all the time.

Sara tried, in vain, to see the boys the summer they were in White

Rock.
 
Brad always waited until the last minute to notify her that she