Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (26 page)

jars....

Boy, it sure is lonesome around here.
 
The cabin is so quiet.
 
I'll be

glad when you get home.... Well, Mama, it's 12:30 in the morning and

I'm tired.... So good night, sweet dreams, and I love you.... Your Old

Man In other letters Sanford wrote about pets, family, cooking,

gardening, and how much he missed his wife.
 
He kidded her that their

living room looked like a warehouse for Luzierþthe cosmetic line that

Rosemary sold.

If his plan was to reassure her that everything was normal at home, his

letters were masterpieces of deceit.
 
The only thing that seemed to

trouble Sanford was his father.
 
At the age of forty-eight, he still

had a prickly relationship with Dr. Paul Cunningham.
 
He wrote about

it to Rosie.

Friday, I came up to the cabin but my Dad had to complicate things for

me He called me at the office and wanted to have me drop off the air

compressor for him I told him I was going straight to the cabin after

work This didn't faze him ar all He wanted to use that compressor so I

had to go back home and help him load it on his pickup.
 
I sure was

unhappy about that.

Paul Cunningham was the father who had kicked his first wife out of the

house and farmed their sons Sanford and Jimmy out for their whole

childhood, and Sanford, at least, had never quite forgiven him.

Otherwise, Sanford's letters were full of love and plans for a future

with Rosie.
 
"I know it's hard to understand how my father could do

thatþwrite such nice letters when he was planning to leave my mother,"

Susan said later.
 
"But you have to understand that my father always

prided himself on his letter writing.
 
He always wrote long letters

full of news.

But, most of all, the way he did it was the only way he could have left

my mother.
 
If she'd knownþshe would have feigned illness, she would

have screamed and made scenes."

For the two weeks in July and August of 1972 that Rosemary was in

Alaska, Sanford wrote every third day or so.
 
She had no inkling that

her husband was not as lonely as he sounded.
 
"I haven't seen anyone or

called anyone.... But there again," Sanford wrote, "you're the only one

I want to talk to anyway.
 
Or at least be around.
 
I really miss you

honey.
 
I didn't think it would be this lonesome.
 
I guess I love you

so much and you're so much of my life .
 
. . I really am anxious for

you to get home again so I can hold you in my arms and squeeze you till

you holler."

Rosemary came home from Alaska to a husband who was, apparently,

devoted to her.
 
But sometime later that year, Sanford told Brad that

what he really wanted was to live with Mary.
 
Brad thought that was a

reasonable plan and offered to help his father defect from his marriage

with a minimal loss of assets.
 
Brad was twenty-two when he learned

that his father was involved with another woman.
 
He hated his mother

so much that it probably gave him pleasure to know that his father was

cheating on her.
 
The two men talked over Rosemary's head, using double

entendres and winking.
 
And she didn't have a clue.

Although her marriage had been far from perfect, Rosie loved her

husband.
 
She was touched and amazed when Sanford bought her a new car,

a Pontiac GTO.
 
To top that off, he and Brad urged her to consider

taking another vacation.
 
She looked from one to the other in

surprise.

She had no idea that either her son or her husband cared whether she

needed a vacation.

"You've worked so hard, Mom," Brad said.
 
"We think you deserve a

vacation ' "Why don't you fly down and visit your sister Jewel in

California?"

Sanford urged.

After a lot of coaxing, Rosemary agreed that it would be wonderful if

she could take a trip like that.
 
Her husband and son helped her pack

and waved goodbye.

She was gone for two weeks.
 
And as soon as she had left, Sanford

called his children and said, "You gotta come help me move."
 
Susan

would acknowledge that she helped pack.
 
Her father was in such a panic

to get out without a scene.
 
It seemed the only way.
 
She knew how

bitterly her parents fought, they were never going to stay together.

When Rosemary returned two weeks later, she was rested and anxious to

get back to Sanford.
 
But her homecoming was anything but happy.

When she opened the front door of their house on 128th Street, she

thought at first they had been robbed.
 
Everything of any value was

gone.
 
The place had been ransacked, almost totally cleaned out.

About-the only objects left behind were her "Indian" thingsþstools with

deer legs, old photos, "Dream catchers," a few linens, and some

furniture that was almost worn out.

That brutal trick was the way Rosemary found out about Sanford's new

woman.
 
Her husband had left her and taken everything they had bought

for their home.
 
And Brad, her own son, had helped him do it.
 
Susan's

part in the deception was minuscule, and Rosemary may not have known

that she helped at all.

Rosemary had not been the perfect wife and, certainly, she was not a

perfect mother.
 
But the fact that Brad had plotted against her

probably hurt her as much as losing her husband to another woman.
 
The

men in her life, the ones she had loved and looked to for protection,

had betrayed her.
 
She turned now to her nephew Gary, Jimmy's son.

In her despair, Rosemary visited her nephew Gary and his wife for hours

every day and wept and wailed about Sanford's infidelity.
 
She begged

Gary to spy on him and his new girlfriend.
 
Maybe he could find out

something she could use to get her husband back.
 
Gary held her hand

and commiserated GhTith her, but he wasn't about to become a private

eve.
 
He knew that the break was final.

"Brad s."n&tOdUCed that woman to Sanford," Rosemary sobbed, almost l

unbelieving.
 
"That woman worked with Associated Grocers in Yakima and

I didn't know one thing about it."

Sanford moved in with Mary and in time they were married.
 
He helped

raise her daughter.
 
In their divorce settlement, Sanford got the house

on 128th Street and Rosemary held title to their cabin in Darrington.

She never planted nasturtiums there again, and eventually she

transferred it back to Sanford.

After that, it was a long, long time before Rosemary trusted anyone.

And in the end all the members of the Cunningham family would be

completely estranged from one another.
 
Some would be dead.
 
Others

would not speak.
 
And if Brad was full of guile and cruelty in his

marriage to Loni Ann, he had an expert mentor in his father.

Much to Brad's disgust, Loni Ann had always maintained her friendship

with his older sister Ethel.
 
An assertive woman, somewhat garrulous,

and surprisingly strong given the experiences of her childhood, Ethel

was one of the few women in Brad's life who were not afraid of him.
 
In

desperation, Loni Ann went to Ethel in September 1972 and confided that

she had begged Brad for a divorce but that at first he would not even

consider it.
 
Then he had told her, "Fine, you want a divorce.
 
Go for

it.

You'll never keep these kids.
 
I'll get them.
 
How dare you try to get

away from me?"

"Brad laid out a scenario for me," Loni Ann would say later.
 
"He told

me what would happen to me if I left him.
 
He said that I was a slut.

He said he could kill me in our apartment and make it look like a rape

killing, and that no one would ever suspect him."

"I believed her," Ethel would confirm.
 
"We moved her and the kids out

of her apartment that night."

"You have to understand," Loni Ann said, "that I got to a point with

the relationship that I believed nothing worse could happen to me by

going than by staying.... I had become punch happy."
 
I could never

tell when he was going to be Dr. Jekyll and when he was going to be

Mr.
 
Hyde.

Loni Ann had no friends who were in a position to help her, and there

were no women's shelters to go to in the early 1970s.
 
She was totally

dependent on Brad, and he had always been the one who kept track of

whatever money they had and who paid the hills.
 
"I had no survival

knowledge to exist on my ownþbut I had to," Loni Ann said.

Surprisingly, Brad didn't put up much of a fight when she finally left

him.
 
He was finished with her anvBav.
 
Their divorce was final in May

1973, awarded to Loni Ann on her filing of "cruel and unusual

treatment."
 
Initially they had an agreement to share custody of Kit

and Brent, although the children would live with their mother.

Loni Ann moved to Oregon to attend college.
 
She hoped eventually to

graduate from Washington State and then go on to graduate school so

that she could support herself and her children.
 
At the moment, they

had virtually no resources beyond what Brad was willing to send her.

And even that she could never really count on.

In 1974, however, Brad told her that he had changed his mind about

letting her have Kit and Brent.
 
She had been accepted at Washington

State I Iniversitv in Pullman that summer, and Brad had shown no

concern that she and the children would be moving three hundred miles

east of Seattle.
 
"He waited until within four weeks of my scheduled