Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (94 page)

had to be in Vancouver or Victoria within twenty-four hours if she

wanted to see Jess, Michael, and Phillip.
 
Dana knew he was making it

impossible for Sara to get there in time from Portland.

Brad had always been a stern disciplinarian with his sons, but there

was one incident that summer that unnerved Dana.
 
He had a puzzle ring,

silver links that could be entwined so they looked all of a piece.

One day one of the boys was playing with it and lost it.
 
Brad was

enraged.

"He asked Jess, Michael, and Phillip which one of them had done it,"

Dana recalled.
 
"And none of them would admit to losing his ring.
 
He

got the car and we all went for a drive, and all the while he was

trying to get the guilty kid to confess.
 
They were scared, but they

wouldn't tell."

When they came to a lonely place, far from town, Brad opened the car

door and ordered the boys out.
 
"You'll stay here until you decide to

tell me the truth," he growled, and then drove off as Dana watched the

three little boys' images grow smaller in the sideview mirror.
 
She

pleaded with Brad to go back for them, but he wouldn't.
 
Jess was not

yet twelve, Michael was nine, and Phillip was seven.
 
It would be dark

soon.

What if the boys tried to find their way back and got on the railroad

tracks?
 
What if some pervert found them out there alone?

After a long, long time, Brad turned the car around and drove back to

where he had left his sons.
 
They were waiting there, huddled together,

and Jess quickly confessed to losing the puzzle ring.
 
"But I don't

think he did it.
 
He just confessed to save the others," Dana said.

"Brad did that often, dumping the kids way out in the boonies

someplace.

I think he always went back because he needed them.
 
He used to tell

me, These children are my assets."

" The strange summer of 1992 passed.
 
They were living in a picturesque

paradise, but Dana felt as if she and the three boys were moving

through a minefield, never sure what Brad might do next.

In the fall, they went back to Washington and moved into a much smaller

house in Mill Creek, rented again in Dana's name.
 
Dana knew she had to

get away from Brad, but this time she was planning her escape

carefully.

"I'd cut off my family, so Brad couldn't write to them.
 
I had no

contact with them.
 
I really had no contact with them, so it wouldn't

do him any good to start sending letters and faxes again."

Dana told Brad she wanted to move out for a little while.
 
She didn't

dare give him the impression that she was leaving him for good.
 
"I

told him, I can't live with you all the time, but I'll still be with

you.
 
I won't be out of your life totally.
 
I'll see you on Sundays,

and I'll be here for holidays and for the boys' birthdays.
 
You'll all

be iiving with Uncle Herm soon, and I'll be with you a lot."

" Brad watched Dana's face carefully, searching to see if she was

telling him the truth.
 
He had always found her transparent and, of

course, he considered her vastly inferior to him in intelligence.
 
"I

guess he half believed me," Dana remembered.
 
"He let me go, but he

stalked the crap out of me.
 
My tires were slashed.
 
There were bullet

holes in my bedroom window.
 
Once I found a stack of bills in his room

from the Blue Moon Detective Agency.
 
He'd hired them to follow me."

Dana couldn't support herself cutting hair and selling makeupþor

perhaps she could, but Brad had introduced her to a lifestyle that was

hard to forget.
 
She found a job dancing at one of the places on the

strip north of Seattle.
 
Rainbow's* wasn't nearly as classy as the

Men's Club, i l: 'i but "Angel" was back in business and was soon a

favorite with the crowd.

She was living the life that Brad had programmed her for.

Dana kept her promise to be with Brad and the boys on weekends, even

though she knew that he was either following her himself or paying Blue

Moon to do it.
 
She was there for Phillip's ninth birthday party just

before Thanksgiving.
 
To this day she can recite Jess's, Michael's, and

Phillip's birthdaysþdate and yearþby rote.
 
Like all their "mothers,"

she cared about Brad's sons.

That fall, Brad talked continually of new building projects and what he

would do with all the money he was going to realize from his Texas

lawsuit.
 
Herm and Trudy Dreesen were still supportive, but Trudy was

terminally ill.
 
Her breast cancer had metastasized to her bones.

Even so, she was helping take care of Jess, Michael, and Phillip.

Herm Dreesen listened to Brad talk about the money to be made from

multiple-unit construction projects.
 
No one could be more convincing

than Brad.
 
He knew real estate, he knew banking, and he knew

construction.
 
If he hadn't had a problem with his contractors in

Houston, he would have been a rich man by now.
 
But Brad was still only

forty-four and he was prepared to share his knowledge with his uncle

Herm, who was a dozen years older.

Herm and Trudy Dreesen had been good friends with a couple their own

age for a long time.
 
"Herm approached us about going in together on

some property development," the wife would recall.
 
"The way it began,

Herm was going to put up the money and we were going to put in this

piece of property we had.
 
It sounded like a good idea, and Herm

introduced us to his nephew, Brad Cunningham.
 
We liked him at first,

he was charming and knew the business and it sounded like a great

idea.

We thought it would be wonderful."

The Dreesens' friends tore down an existing house on their property, a

rental, in preparation for the construction of a forty-two-unit

apartment complex.
 
"Right away, we lost our income from the rental,"

the wife said.
 
"And, of course, we had the cost of the demolition and

clearing.
 
And then this Brad Cunningham, Herm's nephew, wanted us to

co-sign for a million-and-a-quarter loan!
 
We had understood that our

art was to provide the land."

It got worse.
 
They also discovered that, if they did agree to sign for

the loan, there were clauses stipulating that they would have

absolutely no control over how the loan was administered.
 
Brad would

handle all the money.
 
"We pulled out, and there were hard feelings

with Herman and we felt bad," the husband said.
 
"But we couldn't

co-sign on a loan that large and have no say in how it was spent.
 
We

lost the house, but we still had the land...."

Brad was furious with them for not having the vision to let him handle

their land and their money.
 
It clearly was to have been his way back

up the ladder of success.
 
Meanwhile the suit in Texas dragged on as

Vinson and Elkins continued its work on the case.

Brad had always intimidated Dana and now he scared her.
 
"By that fall

of 1992,1 had started carrying a gun for protection," she said.
 
"I

didn't think much about it at the time, but at Phillip's birthday

party, Brad asked to borrow my gun.
 
He just said, I need your gun,"

and I said, Not a problem," and gave it to him.
 
I realized later that

he had something planned for me and he wanted to make sure I wasn't

armed."

Dana had made a platonic friend of one of the muscular bouncers at

Rainbow's, Denny Johnson.* On December 9 Brad and Dana argued and she

could sense he was working up toward the kind of rage she had seen

before.
 
She called Denny and asked him for protection.
 
And then she

decided to pack up her things and move to another location where it

wouldn't be so easy for Brad to find her.

"I was going to meet Denny at the Fred Meyer [store] parking lot.

I tried to put my stuff in the trunk of my carþit was a 1989

Mitsubishiþ but the trunk lock seemed to be broken.
 
I couldn't get it

to turn.

l just threw my stuff in the backseat and headed for Fred Meyer.
 
I

waved Denny down, and he stood by while I forced my trunk open."

There was a body in her trunk.
 
Dana screamed when the "body" moved,

and Denny drew his handgun and shouted, "Whoever's in there, get

out!"

Brad, a phantomlike figure dressed completely in a black spandex body

suit, crawled out of Dana's trunk.
 
With Denny Johnson standing by, he

had no choice but to leave.
 
"I called my dad, and he called the Oregon

State Police," Dana said, "and we both gave reports to them.
 
I think

that Brad borrowed my gun deliberately at Phillip's party because it

was only two days after that when he was hiding in my trunk, dressed

like that.
 
If I'd been alone .
 
.."

Brad had a ready excuse for hiding in Dana's trunk.
 
"I was only trying

to hook up a listening device," he told herþas if to say, "Doesn't

everybody?"

A cousin recalled visiting Brad in late 1992 or early 1993.
 
Brad

bragged that the previous spring, after Dana called the authorities and

they had surrounded his block, he had driven through the police lines

five times and they never knew who he was.
 
He was apparently amazed to

see them there.
 
"They tore up my house," he said plaintively.
 
He told

his cousin that Dana had been "kidnapped" by the Oregon State Police

then and that they were keeping her now in Portland against her will.

Brad's preoccupation with what law enforcement officials in Oregon were