Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (95 page)

doing was obvious.
 
And, six years after the fact, he gave his cousin

yet another version of where he was on the night Cheryl died.
 
"He

started mumbling about how he couldn't have killed Cheryl.
 
He said he

wasn't even in Oregon the night she died.
 
He said he was in a

laundromat on Bainbridge Island."

With Dana gone, Brad had become what he had always said he wasþ the

primary parent.
 
His three young sons were now completely at his

mercy.

Brad might have walked away from his civil judgment, but he had not

shrugged off the losses in his life as easily as he pretended.
 
He was

growing more and more paranoid.
 
He had every reason to feel

paranoid.

Since late January 1993, a grand jury in Washington County had been

listening to some ninety-one witnesses describe the events leading to

Cheryl's murder.
 
For nine weeks the jurors met behind closed doors.

And since grand jury proceedings are secret, no one knew if they were

close to handing down a criminal indictment of murder against Brad.

When he realized he no longer had Dana under his control, Brad was

shocked that she, of all his women, had been able to walk away from

him.

He had been so busy convincing her that she was dumb that he believed

it too.
 
And yet she had been able to get away from him by leaving

without really leaving.
 
When he finally caught on that he was seeing

her less and less, he panicked.
 
Unlike the other women he had let go,

he was obsessed with getting Dana back.
 
She was many things to him.

She was a meal ticket.
 
She was young, sexy, and extremely beautiful.

And she knew things about him that he never wanted her to tell.

Brad wasn't finished with Dana, nor was he finished with Sara.
 
He

still needed them bothþfor different reasons.
 
He had told Sara that he

detested her, but he wanted her to "stay healthy" so he could sue her

for child support.
 
He had really been scrambling for money: He had

sold the little rental house in Tampicoþthe house he always referred to

as "the boys' house"þand collected a $40,000 balloon payment.
 
They

never saw the money, Brad bought a truck and trailer with it, and a

Macintosh computer.

On February 23,1993, he kept his promise to seek child support from

Sara by filing a motion in Multnomah County Circuit Court.
 
In his

affidavit Brad said he was unemployed while Sara earned about $3S0,000

a year.
 
He stated that he was the "full-time primary care" parent of

his sons and was commuting to Yakima, Washington, to work on the family

home."
 
No mention was made of the mountain of debts he had saddled

Sara with when they divorced.

District Attorney Scott Upham and his investigators in Washington

County were getting antsy.
 
They were more so when they learned from

Greg Dallaire at Garvey, Schubert that Judge Sharon Armstrong had

received a surprise phone call from Dana Malloy.
 
Mike McKernan called

Dana and learned that Brad was getting ready to vanish.

On March 16, 1993, Brad had gone to Dana's house in a rage and accused

her of talking to the Oregon State Police.
 
He told her that she had

betrayed him and now he was about to be indicted on murder charges.

Jess and Michael had been subpoenaed to appear before the Washington

County grand jury and Brad was in a panic.
 
"You can mess with meþbut

don't mess with my kids," he warned.
 
He told Dana that he would never,

net Jer allow his sons to testify before a grand jury again.
 
Dana had

been frightened enough to call the Seattle police to have Brad removed

from her premises.

Then on Sunday, March 21, Brad had called Dana and talked to her for

two hours.
 
He told her that before he allowed his children to go to

Oregon to testify before the grand jury, he would leave the country.

His voice softened and he urged her to come back to him.
 
She could go

with them when they fled America.
 
They would be together, just like

old times.

Dana told McKernan she knew that Brad had done thorough research on

both Mexico and Chile by going to the library and by talking to people

who had lived there.
 
This wasn't something new.
 
Fleeing the country

had long been his alternative plan if he ever felt pushed to the

wall.

Brad had had passports for himself and the boys since May of 1990.
 
Now

he told Dana that he planned to take Jess, Michael, and Phillip to

Chile, he had already arranged for them to live with a Chilean

family.

Dana was ambivalent.
 
Part of her still loved Brad, the other part was

afraid of him.
 
She told him that she couldn't be with him because of

what had happened to Cheryl.
 
Brad said he wasn't the one who had

killed Cheryl, he personally believed that the killer was probably

someone from Garvev, Schubertþone of the men Brad claimed Cheryl was

sleeping with.

"I was going to depose this guy in our divorce."
 
he said "and his wife

would have found out and then he would have gotten divorced and it

would have cost him a lot of money."

"I want to know, Brad," Dana pleaded.
 
"I want you to make me believe

you didn't kill Cheryl."

Brad was quite willing to do that.
 
As Dana later told Mike McKernan,

he said he was home with his sons all night, and the only time he left

was to do laundry and to put something in his car.
 
"I wasn't gone long

enough for them to say I did it."

Brad went into greater detail with Dana than he had with anyone else,

adding the information that "the police never found blood under my

nails."
 
He talked on and on, certain he was convincing her that he was

safe to be with.
 
He told her that Cheryl was involved with cocaine and

that she used cocaine with people in her law firm.
 
"Maybe someone into

drugs killed Cheryl Keeton," he said.

As Dana listened, Brad became more and more specific about names

involved in the investigation of Cheryl's murder.
 
She suddenly

recalled seeing the name "Sharon Armstrong" in some police files Brad

had once shown her and she asked him how Judge Armstrong fit into the

picture of Cheryi's murder.
 
Brad was instantly upset.
 
He said she

must be hiding something from him and he accused her of talking to

Judge Armstrong.

Dana hadn't talked to Sharon Armstrong, but now she wanted to.
 
She

scribbled that name down as Brad continued to talk.
 
He told her he

couldn't let his kids go before a grand jury because it would "ruin"

them.
 
And he asked her again to go with him when they left America.

"If you don't go with me when I leave, Danaþthere will be an

apocalypse' and I won't be around to be indicted."

Dana was beginning to believe that Brad really was going.
 
He had

always told her in the past that, if he had to leave, she would know

because he would turn off his voice mail.
 
Now he said, "I have brought

you my last gift, and I am turning off my voice mail."

He did not go.
 
He continued to harass Dana, creeping up to her house

late at night and banging on her walls.
 
He shouted at her, "I want all

the information you have, Dana!"
 
And he attached another listening

device to her phone, recording her calls.
 
It may well have been that

he wanted his "Angel" dead.
 
And it is just as likely that he was still

obsessed with her sexually.
 
"He always wanted me back," Dana recalled,

bewildered.
 
"He was very jealous.... He phoned me so often in those

first months of 1993.
 
He told me that he had consulted a psychic.
 
He

said the psychic told him that four men had killed Cheryl and then the

psychic said that I was going to commit suicide."

Dana shivered when she repeated that phrase to Mike McKernan.
 
She knew

what it meant.
 
He thought he had enough power over her mind to make

her take her own life.
 
Brad had always been able to persuade her to do

things she didn't really want to do.
 
It would be very convenient for

him now if she did commit suicide.
 
Then he could be sure she would

never testify before the grand jury in Hillsboro.

But Dana had become obsessed with knowing the truth.
 
She located Judge

Sharon Armstrong's number and called her, identifying herself as a

former girlfriend of Brad's.
 
Not surprisingly, Sharon was disturbed to

hear from anyone connected with Brad.
 
Dana confided that she had

information about Brad, but that she was frightened.
 
"He could have me

killed if I came forward."

Dana had trusted Sharon enough to leave two phone numbers with her.

And Sharon had passed them on to O.S.P Detective Mike McKernan.

The world was closing in around Brad.
 
McKernan was working closely

with D.A. Scott Upham's office, helping to tighten the net.
 
It was

true that the Washington County grand jury wanted to hear testimony

from Jess and Michael Cunningham.
 
On March 12, the subpoena documents

were sent to the Snohomish County Prosecutor's office in Everett,

Washington, ordering that Bradly Morris Cunningham be compelled to

produce Jess and Michael before the Washington County grand jury on

March 25.
 
Snohomish County authorities were hopefui that they could

get Brad to come to the courthouse in Everett voluntarily with his sons

so they might be served.

He responded by saying that he had hired an attorney for his

children.

McKernan asked to be notified about any hearings in Snohomish County