Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer? (92 page)

probe into Brad's pastþboth criminal and personalþhis office and

adjoining rooms would spill over with thirty thick three-ring binders

and twenty-four cardboard boxes full of detailed information.

Had Cheryl's body been found a few hundred feet to the east, her murder

would have occurred in Multnomah County, the most populated county in

Oregonþwith, naturally, a much bigger D.A."s staff.
 
Indeed, the Toyota

van was discovered so close to the Washington Multnomah county line

that Upham could still have chosen to decline the case and turn it over

to Multnomah County.
 
He just couldn't do that.
 
As she did everyone

else, Cheryl Keeton haunted him.

Brad simply ignored the $81.7 million judgment against him in the

wrongful death suit in Portland.
 
It was as if it had never happened.

He was concerned only with his multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the

Houston contractors.
 
He and Dana and his sons were living in Houston

again, and living well.
 
He had lost, but in Brad's mind he had won.

Sara had not seen her sons for more than a year, and she was thrilled

þif cautiousþwhen she received a letter from Phillip on September 6,

1991.
 
She recognized Brad's distinctive printing on the

green-and-white envelope and saw it was from Vinson and Elkins in

Houston.
 
Sara immediately wrote to Phillip, enclosing a hundred-dollar

check for his birthday, and sent it by certified mail.
 
"I was so happy

to get your letter.
 
I love you, Phillip.
 
How are Jess and Michael?

Tell them I miss them too and I love you all very much...."

Sara knew Brad could not resist cashing her check.
 
He would have to

show identification, and she hoped she might get the address where the

boys were living.
 
She had seen them all on the television news when

Brad proclaimed his innocence and pleaded poverty.
 
She had watched,

horrified, as Jess faced the cameras and mouthed the words she knew

Brad had programmed into his brainþjust as he dictated their letters to

her.

When her plan to find out his address worked and Sara tried to learn

more about the boys, Brad was furious.
 
Jack Kincaid was trying to help

her see the boys, and Brad vented his rage on him, too.
 
Kincaid's

opinion of Brad was, if anything, lower than Brad's of him.
 
Kincaid

never called Brad by name.
 
He referred to him simply as "Killer."

To intimidate Sara, Brad resorted to a familiar tactic.
 
He sent a fax

to Providence Hospital full of venom and ugly aspersions on her, hoping

t would circulate around the hospital.

Sara .
 
. .

Sara, you suffer from both physical and emotional afflictions .
 
.

.

demonstrated by your cruel toying with the children's minds and

emotions.... You also have symptoms of the surke Syndrome, .
 
. .

wherein the sufferer wrongly punishes the minor children of an

individual they do not like.

I know so well of the hatred you harbor for me.
 
God knows how you have

inaptly lsic] demonstrated it in your failed collaboration with Michael

Shinn.... How you can fabricate and lie under oath amazes me...

Your outwardly attractive appearance and seemingly sweet facade hides

the conniving control freak that you really are....

In the fax, Brad described Sara as a manipulator and a career wrecker

who enjoyed having her friends and associates feel sorry for her and

who deliberately contrived stressful situations.
 
He also named names

of physicians at Providence and said that Sara had started rumors about

them.
 
His loathing and disdain for Sara oozed from every line.
 
He

knew how to hurt her, and that was to chip away at her image as a

mother and her love for the boys.

You have a duty to pay child support for Jess, Michael and

Phillip....

Yes, they have suffered, and YES all I want from you is money.
 
l only

wish I could give the boys a mother.
 
. . You have never learned the

art of love and caring necessary to be a parent....

Wise up, Sara.... Quit trying to punish me for Lynn .. I never got a

chance to tell you this but .
 
. . you are not good at the heterosexual

thing þbetter watch out for Jack before he finds his Lynn."

. . . Get a life, pay child support.
 
. . My only goal in life is to

raise my boys to be healthy, inspired, adults.... Please, Sara, stay

healthy, work hard, make lots of money and pay all your back tare.s .

.

. so I can .
 
. . subpoena your ass when it is necessary.

. . I have a good life with the boys.
 
. . I am also getting incredible

sex þyou should be so lucky if she would only give you lessons.

The fax was the antithesis of the love letter Brad had once written to

Sara begging her to come back to him.
 
Now he hid nothing.
 
As it so

often did, his fury ate like acid on the pages of his handiwork.

. . . I have ventilated all I want to.

Thanks, I feel better.

Brad Cunningham c/o Family in Lynnwood : Fortunately, the scurrilous

fax was tossed unceremoniously into the wastebaskets of hospital

employees who were all too familiar with Sara's problems with her

ex-husband Brad's letter only served as further proof of his genius for

projection.
 
Most of the characteristics he attributed to Sara were his

own.
 
And the "newly discovered" Burke Syndrome was, of course, a slap

at John Burke, the trustee of Cheryl's estate.

By the spring of 1992, Brad felt he had done as much as he could on his

Texas lawsuit and he told Dana that they would be moving north.

Although she had never been that fond of Houston and its humid air that

was almost too thick to breathe, Dana had become somebody in that

city.

She was "Angel," the most popular dancer at the Men's Club, a kind of

celebrity.
 
And now she had to quit her job and trail after Brad.

Still, the pattern of their relationship had long since been

established.
 
When Brad and the boys pulled out of Houston, Dana was

with them.
 
They moved first to Mill Creek, an affluent area north of

Seattle, where Brad rented a quarter-million-dollar house.
 
Dana had to

sign the lease.
 
Brad told her he would never have made it past a

credit check.

His aunt and uncle, Herm and Trudy Dreesen, lived nearby, virtually the

last of Brad's relatives to stay in contact with him.

Dana's world with Brad had become akin to living in a velvet and silky

prison, and now she was looking for a way out.
 
Before, there had been

times when things were bad, but somehow the good times balanced

everything out.
 
That was no longer true.
 
"I couldn't be with Brad any

longer," Dana said later.
 
"Things were getting too dangerousþtoo

weird.

There are things that I'm still afraid to talk about."

For one thing, Brad was carrying a gun.
 
And he was building up a small

arsenal.
 
He was obsessed with guns, with assault weapons, and with

paraphernalia like handcuffs and restraining devices.
 
Dana was back in

the Northwest, back where she had friends and family.
 
She wanted

desperately to leave Brad.
 
It was not that easy.
 
"He wouldn't let me

go," she remembered.
 
"He said, Just be with me.
 
Just live with me,

and we can have an open relationship.
 
Just live with me and I'll take

care of you...."
 
" What Brad meant by an open relationship was that Dana

could date other men, but she could not stay out all night with them.

"If I came home the next day, I got in trouble."

Why would she even consider an arrangement like that?
 
Dana had been

under Brad's thumb for two years.
 
She had lived his life in h,

world.

She had dressed the way he wanted her to dress, she had even become an

exotic dancer because it was what Brad wanted.
 
He had convinced her

that she was too uneducated, too dumb, to ever make it on her own.
 
And

vet, within her, there still beat the most primitive need that any

human has: the need for freedom.
 
Dana didn't have the strength to

leave Brad completely.
 
She was afraid of him, and she was afraid that

she couldn't make it on her own.
 
She took the only bit of freedom he

allowed herþhe let her date other men.
 
Even so she sometimes had the

feeling that he was nearby with a camcorder, fiiming her with other

men.

It wasn't anything she could ever prove.
 
It was just a feeling that

made the back of her neck crawl.

Dana met a very handsome, very nice, young professional man who

ironically, had close connections with the judicial system.
 
They dated

and Dana kept her agreement with Brad, she always came home to sleep.

But one night, she didn't come home.
 
It was almost two in the

afternoon of the next day when she returned to the huge house in Mill

Creek.

Brad met her with an accusation.
 
"You're in love with him, aren't

you?"
 
he shouted.

"No, I'm not," Dana said truthfully.
 
She had come to enjoy spending

time with the young man who treated her like a lady with half a brain

in her head.
 
She didn't love him yet, but she loved being with him.

Suddenly, Dana witnessed a terrifying transformation.
 
Brad slipped

into the blackest rage she had ever seen.
 
"He started breaking glass

and breaking furnitureþ" As Dana cringed, horrified, he became almost