Dead by Sunset

by Ann Rule

  Arlene was Catholic and she probably did carry Brad’s first child to term. If so, Brad was not told.

  Everyone who ever went to high school remembers one student who was a shining light, so sought out and sought after that he—or she—seemed to have been blessed by some benevolent gods with luck and beauty and talent. At Evergreen High School in Burien in the years from 1965 to 1967, that student was Brad Cunningham. He was tremendously popular. He had one ambition, the goal he had worked toward since he was about ten. He wanted to get a scholarship to the University of Washington and play for the Huskies.

  Brad quickly moved into the upper echelons at Evergreen High School. He made the varsity squad for the Evergreen Wolverines, and he was elected president of the sophomore class. His sister Ethel remembered that he wanted to join Demolay, but decided not to when he found he would have to swear to respect women. By his senior year in the autumn of 1966, he was captain of the football team, vice president of the Lettermen’s Club, and a member of the Wolverine Guard, the Honor Society, and the Modern Language Club. “Brad was Mr. Popular,” a classmate recalled. “He was Mr. Everything.”

  Brad was also charmingly outrageous in high school, particularly in his debates in Contemporary Problems class; he was the bane of his teachers but his classmates found him hilarious. He once argued that the crime of rape was an impossibility. And one of his friends echoed that chauvinistic opinion by writing in Brad’s yearbook, “No girl can be raped because girls with their skirts up can run faster than boys with pants down.”

  Although he rarely drank as an adult, comments scribbled in Brad’s yearbook referred constantly to his drinking exploits. But nothing kept him off the football squad, and everyone who knew him expected that he would one day be an All-American. Brad could think on his feet faster than any student in school, and he could run through opposing blockers just as fast. He was the one kid in high school whom others envied. The Brads of this world sometimes show up at class reunions driving Cadillacs, and sometimes they end up selling used cars. Brad Cunningham, however, was going to make it big. Everyone who went to Evergreen with him believed that.

  As a teenager, Brad was handsome the way jocks are handsome. He had a wide face and a thick neck. His eyes were clear and penetrating under lidded brows, and his body was perfect. Looking back, some who knew him suggested that by the time he went to college he might have been into steroids. His only physical flaws were a wide nose and a slightly lantern jaw. Brad’s Colville-Yakima Indian heritage was more readily apparent in those days. In later years, his nose was more aquiline, in all likelihood as the result of cosmetic surgery. Maybe he had plastic surgery to fix a septum deviated by a football injury or maybe it was because he wanted to look less Indian.

  Even in high school, Brad had aspirations to a certain kind of life. He was determined to find a place in a world as unlike the one he had been born into as possible. He wanted nothing to do with being part of a racial minority. He hated references to his Indian roots. But that created a problem for him. When he graduated from Evergreen High School in 1967, he had his athletic scholarship to the University of Washington as everyone expected—but he needed more financial help. The Colville tribe offered academic scholarships. Although he had always tried to play down his Indian blood, Brad accepted the Colville tribe’s two scholarships eagerly.

  In his senior year, Brad also found another pretty young girlfriend. Their relationship was the closest thing to going steady that he had since Arlene vanished from his life. Loni Ann Ericksen* was a sophomore at Evergreen. She had transferred to public high school that year from Holy Names Academy. Her mother was ill with multiple sclerosis; the whole family had to make sacrifices and private school tuition had to go.

  Loni Ann was a pixieish girl with dark eyes and hair and a dimple that showed in her left cheek when she smiled. When she was sixteen, she smiled often. “You know,” a fellow classmate recalled, “when I think of Loni Ann then, I can never picture her without a smile.”

  Brad had noticed her first when she walked past the radiators in the foyer of Evergreen, the vantage point where popular seniors congregated. She was thrilled when he showed up at her locker, although she tried to act blasé. And he quickly became her whole world. Her feelings for Brad were scrawled over two inside covers of the Evergreen Wolverines yearbook in 1967.

  “I thought you were nice, but just another senior. . . . I thought you were funny and a little ‘different.’ . . . And then one day when I was freezingly walking home, who should pop up in his super red car? You!! I wasn’t so sure about that at the time, but now I’m sure glad I accepted your offer. It was then that I decided you were really nice and I wanted to get to know you a whole bunches [sic] better. Things didn’t seem to be in favor of my decision, but time changed that. Well, now I know you better than that day and I’m terribly happy that I do. You’re absolutely, positively, one of the mostest [sic] wonderful persons I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know. . . . You know, Brad, it’s really strange how things come about. I never really thought you’d ever like me or that I could ever like a guy as much as I like you.”

  Loni Ann developed a huge crush on Brad. She was a small girl but she was almost as athletic as he was. When she confided to her girlfriends how she felt about Brad, they quickly apprised her of the “ground rules” for girls who dated him. It didn’t really matter; Loni Ann was so enthralled with him that she would be willing to do whatever he wanted.

  Loni Ann wanted desperately to go to “Telos,” the Evergreen High junior-senior prom, with Brad. He agreed to take her to the dance, held at the Seattle Elks Club on the evening of April 29, 1967. Overhead a mirrored ball turned slowly, its hundreds of facets casting circlets of light over the dancers below. The class of 1968, the juniors, presented Telos in honor of the seniors, and did all the decorating—which consisted mainly of shiny blue Greek columns placed here and there. It would have taken a lot more than that to transform the basically dull decor of the Elks Club. It didn’t matter. The dancers were sixteen and seventeen and the future lay ahead without a blemish or a shadow.

  All the boys from Evergreen had short hair; they had yet to succumb to the hippie craze for long hair that was sweeping America. The girls’ hair was swept up into bouffant styles several inches high, lacquered in place by enough hair spray to keep it immobile in gale force winds. The dance was a milestone in their young lives, a night they would never forget. And encircled by Brad’s powerful arms, Loni Ann danced to Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender” and fell absolutely, utterly in love. She could not imagine then how she could ever bear to be away from him, even though she knew she might lose him. She was still in high school and Brad was going off to the University of Washington. She tried to sound philosophical about that as she ended her long message in his yearbook.

  “. . . All your high school is over. Now, you’ll go to college and be a ‘Big Man’ and I’ll just be a little junior at Evergreen or Holy Names. I really hope that it won’t change anything. If it should, just remember that no matter what there is a crazy little Catholic girl who thinks you’re about the most wonderful person in the world. . . .”

  13

  Longview, Washington, 120 miles south of Burien, was designed to be the perfect city—actually part of a twin city; no one in the Northwest ever refers to either Kelso or Longview singly, but always to “Kelso-Longview.” From the ridges of rolling hills covered with fir trees on down to the flats along the Columbia River, Kelso-Longview seemed the ideal spot for a metropolis. The great river passes below the twin cities on its way west to the Pacific Ocean. And a high bridge connects Longview to Oregon where that state’s far northwest corner pokes into what seems as though it should have been part of Washington State in the first place.

  Neither Kelso nor Longview ever lived up to the grand dreams of the pioneer founders. In fact, in May of 1980, it seemed that Kelso-Longview itself might cease to exist at all. When Mount St. Helens literally blew its top on May 18, p
owdery gray ash clogged the Toutle River’s banks ten feet deep, and Spirit Lake near the peak of the mountain threatened to cascade down and wash Kelso and Longview out to sea. Only a natural dam formed from debris stopped the torrent. For months afterward, travelers along I-5 tromped on their gas pedals when they approached the twin cities, nervous that a wall of water might still be a threat.

  Cheryl Keeton was born in October 1949 and grew up in Longview in a neat, cozy little house on a tree-lined street only a few blocks from Long Park. And in the summer of 1967, like Brad Cunningham, she had graduated from high school and was about to enter the University of Washington. Slender, beautiful, dark-eyed, and extremely intelligent, she was a small-town girl who seemed to have everything. She had dated Dan Olmstead* since she was fourteen, and although Dan, two years older than Cheryl, had attended Whitman University, he was switching to the University of Washington in Seattle so they could be together.

  Cheryl’s family life was complicated as she was growing up but she had always coped with change serenely. She was a girl who fixed her eye on a goal and headed straight for it, and it was virtually impossible to distract her. Only later would her relationships become convoluted and interwoven, old strands braided back into new ones so that it almost seemed as if some terrible blueprint was being traced, some irrevocable plan set into motion.

  Her mother, Betty, would divorce her father, Floyd Keeton, and remarry twice before Cheryl was grown. Her father would also marry again, and eventually Cheryl had five half brothers and sisters.

  Betty Keeton Karr McNannay had always looked years younger than her true age; she was a tall, attractive woman with a good figure and long brown hair. Most Christmases, she got a new fur-trimmed coat, and she always looked like a model as she posed for somebody’s Polaroid camera. From the time she was fourteen, Betty had worked in some aspect of the medical field. She began as a nurse’s aide and next became a licensed practical nurse and a certified alcohol counselor. Eventually, she would work as a psychiatric security nurse at Western Washington State Hospital in Steilacoom, an institution for the insane.

  Betty’s first, young marriage was to Floyd Keeton, a tall, well-built man in his twenties with a crew cut. He was a half dozen years older than Betty and she was barely nineteen when Cheryl was born. After an acrimonious divorce from Floyd, Betty married James Karr and gave birth to a second daughter, Julia, and to a son, Jim, who were five and six years younger respectively than Cheryl. Betty divorced Karr when Jim was six. Betty was working as an LPN, and Cheryl walked little Julia and Jim to and from school and looked after them until their mother got home.

  Betty met Bob McNannay, her third husband, when she was hired as his secretary at the Port of Longview. McNannay was about a decade older than she was, forty-two, and still a bachelor. He was intelligent and kind and had a great sense of humor. He would spend thirty-seven years working for the Port of Longview, becoming its general manager for the last fourteen years before he retired.

  Betty married Bob McNannay in October of 1963 when Cheryl was two days from her fourteenth birthday. Julia was nine and Jim eight. They all got along fine. Cheryl trusted Bob McNannay and valued his opinion. Betty’s welcome mat was always out to her children’s friends, and their home was full of parties and games and people. There was often an extra place—or two or three—set at Betty’s table; her kids grew up happy.

  Cheryl had always been a dedicated student, determined to go to college. Bob McNannay admired her ambition and her brains. “She was my daughter,” he said later, as close to his heart as any natural child could be. McNannay often found Cheryl sound asleep over her studies, and he would wake her up and send her to bed. “She graduated when she was only seventeen,” he recalled. “Her mother thought she was too young to go to the University of Washington. I told her Cheryl would be fine—and she was.”

  Cheryl was a senior in high school when Betty gave birth to her last child, Susan McNannay. Bob had longed for a child of his own, and he doted on the little girl; the whole family did. Susan was seventeen years younger than Cheryl, who adored her baby sister. She and her boyfriend Dan lugged Susan around with them wherever they went. Sometimes, when they took Susan to the store, they pretended that she was their baby. Nobody doubted that they were her parents, even though they seemed very young to have a baby.

  Cheryl graduated from high school fifth in her class; she was coeditor of the school paper, The Lumberjack Log. She was pretty and brilliant and happy. Susan grew up idolizing her older half sister. Cheryl was always there for her, “a third parent, really,” she recalled years later. As warm and loving as Cheryl was, Susan always viewed her as the strongest member of her family emotionally. “Cheryl was always in control, even with our family. She never lost an argument. She always had the last word,” Susan said. But she stressed that Cheryl wasn’t bossy; she was just blessed with great common sense and determination.

  Cheryl’s natural father, Floyd, had moved to Vacaville, California, and remarried. Cheryl remained close to him, her stepmother, Gabriella, and her half sisters Debi and Kim. From the time she was small, she had spent time every year with her father and his family in California. She was especially attached to her grandmother Edna Keeton.

  Cheryl wasn’t afraid of much; she was self-confident and had every reason to be. She was smart and she was nice, but few people ever won an argument with her. She wanted to be an attorney one day, and no one doubted that she had what it took. But Cheryl was a romantic, too. Her all-time favorite song was “Send In the Clowns.” Susan, who would grow up to be one of her closest friends, said that Cheryl loved Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera. She played the album over and over again. But “Mack the Knife,” a song of betrayal and swift bloody murder, was not one of her favorites.

  Cheryl began her freshman year at the University of Washington in the fall of 1967, and even though she was more studious than most of her Gamma Phi Beta sorority sisters, she made a lot of friends. There was a warmth and a vivacity about Cheryl that attracted people to her. For all of her life, she would be considered a cherished friend by dozens of people. Many women who are as attractive as Cheryl was and smart to boot have difficulty initiating friendships with other women. Not Cheryl. Everyone liked her.

  Cheryl majored in economics, continued to go steady with Dan Olmstead, and worked so hard in college that she probably didn’t have much time to attend football games. During her years at the University of Washington, it was unlikely that she had any idea who Brad Cunningham was. He was a jock and she was a scholar. Brad had pledged Theta Chi, the fraternity whose chapter house was next to the Gamma Phi house. Occasionally the two houses had exchanges, casual social evenings. And many years later, Brad would claim that he and Cheryl had dated once while they were in college. It is impossible to prove or disprove that. She was going steady with Dan and it would have been unlike her to date someone else. More probably, Brad and Cheryl had only passed each other as they walked to class, their heads bent against the relentless Seattle rain.

  Cheryl’s life had been pretty much charted since she was in junior high school, and a big, cocky football player had no place in her plans. Brad Cunningham was not her style.

  Not then.

  14

  Brad’s lifetime dream had been to play football for the University of Washington Huskies. And he had made it. He pledged Theta Chi, and Burien and Evergreen High School seemed far away, although he continued to date Loni Ann Ericksen all through his freshman and sophomore years. Then in February 1969, Loni Ann missed her period. She was a senior at Evergreen by that time and she was thrilled to be going steady with Brad; being with him was the pinnacle of all her dreams and hopes. Sleeping with him had, of course, always been a prerequisite for any girl who wanted to date him, but like the other girls who had yearned for Brad, Loni Ann hadn’t minded. She loved him. More than that, she idealized him. If she should be pregnant, she told herself, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Even though pregnancy without marriage
was not socially acceptable in 1969, it was not nearly as disgraceful as it had been a few decades earlier.

  Loni Ann, stuck back in high school, had been petrified that she would lose Brad to some college girl. Now she was almost relieved to think she might be pregnant. It would mean that she and Brad would get married. At least, she hoped they would. She already felt like part of his family; she baby-sat often for Brad’s sister Ethel, and she was always welcome at Sanford and Rosemary’s house.

  With the passage of a few more weeks, there was no doubt that Loni Ann was pregnant, due in October 1969. When she told Brad, he didn’t seem upset. They agreed to get married in March, and they chose the United Methodist Church for the ceremony. It was right on Ambaum Boulevard in Burien, only blocks from the house where Brad grew up. He was twenty and Loni Ann seventeen. They made a great-looking couple. He was so big and handsome, and she was slender and pretty.

  Already a perfectionist, Brad took charge of the wedding and had every detail planned ahead of time. He wanted his wedding and reception to go like clockwork. And it almost did. Brad and Loni Ann knew that their friends would tie balloons, crepe paper, and cans on their car, but Brad wasn’t about to drive down the street making a spectacle of himself. He was too conscious of his image. He would not be looked down upon, and he would not be laughed at. So he had stashed a motorized golf cart in back of the church and he and Loni Ann were prepared to zoom right out of the reception in the church basement to a non-decorated car. Brad had figured out how to escape the ignominious pelting of rice and chorus of raucous comments.