Dead by Sunset

by Ann Rule

  Loni Ann embarrassed Brad, however, before they even made their getaway. When she tossed her wedding bouquet to a group of squealing bridesmaids and single girls, she miscalculated and threw it too high, and it got caught on a low-hanging telephone wire. It was only a small flaw in Brad’s perfect plan, but he was furious. With one clumsy throw, Loni Ann had ruined his smoothly choreographed wedding and reception. The damn bouquet teetered on the wire while everyone tried to poke it and shake it down. Loni Ann didn’t know why it made such a difference to Brad, but it did. She apologized a dozen times, and finally he told her to forget it. They would not let her bad aim ruin their honeymoon.

  Loni Ann looked forward to a wonderful life with her new husband, and with the baby she carried. They rented a small unit at the Mark Manor apartments midway between Burien and White Center, and both of them worked hard. Although Brad had his three scholarships, that income wasn’t enough for the way he wanted them to live. He did construction work when the Washington Huskies weren’t in training or playing.

  The young Cunninghams’ first summer, 1969, was a memorable one for its cataclysmic and extraordinary events. Astronaut Neil Armstrong took man’s first steps on the moon on July 20. Eight days later, Mary Jo Kopechne drowned in Senator Ted Kennedy’s car when it plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. And on August 9, Charles Manson’s followers carried out his grotesque orders to kill and turned Roman Polanski’s home into an abattoir.

  Most memorable of all, perhaps, was the Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, which began on August 15. Almost half a million young people gathered on a dairy farm in Bethel, New York, to listen to The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and dozens of other musical groups and performers. But while much of America’s youthful population was caught up in peace and love and, most particularly, Woodstock that summer, Brad Cunningham had other things on his mind. He didn’t want to dress like a hippie or camp out in a muddy field listening to rock stars in the rain. He was more comfortable in a three-piece suit.

  Brad had always been a young man in a hurry and he didn’t act like a college boy. He could not have cared less about peace and love and the end of all war, and he had far more important interests than whether the Washington Huskies won the game on Saturday. He still liked football well enough, and he took pride in keeping his huge body toned, but his ambitions had changed and football was no longer his main focus. Brad hadn’t made football history at Washington. He was a little fish in a big pond and there were dozens like him.

  Twenty-five years later, a man who had played for the Huskies was asked about Brad. He searched his mind and finally a memory dawned slowly. “Yeah, I remember him,” he said. “He was ‘the crook.’” He didn’t explain his cryptic remark further. But Brad had always been a braggart, and in college he liked to refer to the “big boys” he worked for. He was still attending the University of Washington, but his scholarships were a mere pittance compared to what he was making at Gals Galore,* a topless tavern that was a major draw in the north end of Seattle. It was rumored to be run by organized crime interests. Perhaps it was, or perhaps that was only one of Brad’s exaggerations. While Seattle has never been a big mob town, there have been some “families” whose business interests were suspect.

  Brad began at Gals Galore as a bouncer, but a month later he was promoted to business manager. He was smart, and he was a quick study, but Loni Ann wondered about his rapid rise in the girlie tavern. He was certainly making a lot more money than he had working construction during vacation. And when he dropped off the squad, he told Loni Ann that the coach told him he was making too much money at his outside job to keep his scholarship. Maybe that was true.

  Besides that, Brad’s personality made it impossible for him to be a team player. College football was only a stepping-stone for him, a way to pay for his education. And he didn’t need that any longer. He had his future all planned, and he and Loni Ann were not going to be living in a crummy apartment for long, not if things worked out the way he believed they would.

  When she looked back, Loni Ann recalled that the first six months of her marriage to Brad were quite happy. She had always realized that Brad was a little self-involved, that he wanted his own way, but it wasn’t that big a deal to her. She had won the boy—the man—she loved and she was determined to be the perfect wife. To supplement their income, Brad and Loni Ann served as assistant managers of the apartment house where they lived. She cleaned apartments after tenants moved out, and he handled the books and the landscaping.

  Kait Ann Cunningham was born in October of 1969, the month that her father turned twenty-one. She was an exquisite dark-eyed baby girl. Brad showed her off proudly to his family and friends. Loni Ann was surprised and delighted to see what a proprietary attitude he took with his first child.

  But something began to go wrong in the young Cunningham marriage in the first month after Kait’s birth. Brad had sometimes gotten impatient and short-tempered with Loni Ann during the two years they had dated, and over the first six months of their marriage, but he had never hurt her physically. It had never even occurred to her that he might. She was a strong, athletic girl—but she was no match for a man who could block a 250-pound guard and drop him where he stood.

  The first hairline cracks in the structure of their marriage appeared that fall. Brad seemed to delight in degrading and embarrassing Loni Ann. He told her repeatedly that she was “really stupid.” He said he could not understand how he could have married someone as stupid as she was. Loni Ann was bewildered. She had believed that Brad loved her. She hadn’t changed, except to become a mother. But Brad’s behavior toward her was suddenly and inexplicably cruel.

  He insisted that she dress in a way that demeaned her. He bought her tiny little minidresses and push-up bras. She looked like a hooker. She was a young mother and she could hardly bend over to pick up Kait without showing her underwear. When Rosemary remarked about how inappropriate her clothes were, Loni Ann blushed. “I hate the way I look,” she said, “but this is all that Brad buys me to wear.”

  Brad was consumed with Gals Galore. Loni Ann knew only what he told her about the place and that frightened her. He referred to “orders coming down from Reno and Vegas.” “Brad said that was why they went topless,” she said. “Those were the orders from Nevada.”

  When Brad gave up his football scholarships, Loni Ann was shocked. How could he walk away from his lifetime dream? Now he was working with people who cared only about money. Brad was away from home every day from two in the afternoon until daylight. She had no idea what he did while he was gone, but he would come home “really pumped” because the “big shots” from Vegas had been up for a confab. And sometimes Brad brought home television sets and furniture. She didn’t know where he got them.

  Kait’s birth had marked the beginning of the disintegration of their marriage, and Brad’s verbal abuse escalated into physical violence. The first time he pushed her, Loni Ann was shocked, but she explained it away. The second time he used force on her it wasn’t so easy to deal with. But with every passing month Brad’s physical assaults grew in intensity and frequency. “He would hit me,” Loni Ann recalled many years later. “He would grab me by the arms and bang me against the wall—throw me to the floor, kick me, bang my head into the floor. He hit me across the face with his forearm . . . split my lip.”

  She could never determine just what it was she was doing wrong. She finally came to believe that it was just who she was. Certainly, Brad was growing beyond her in sophistication and in education. He was out in the world, becoming more and more competent in dealing with people. He was so smart and she was an eighteen-year-old girl with a new baby, who helped support them by cleaning toilets and scrubbing floors. She knew she was probably boring to Brad. At the same time Loni Ann was puzzled at how possessive he had become. He wanted to know where she was every moment of the day. That was kind of silly since she had neither the inclination nor
the opportunity to be with any man but Brad. And when Loni Ann had the temerity to ask if she might attend some college classes, he laughed. “That would be a real waste of money—you’re too stupid to learn.”

  Brad was doing so well in his job managing the tavern that he concluded it was ridiculous for him to continue at the University of Washington. He was going to college to prepare for a career where he could make money, but he was already making money. He dropped out of school, although he would eventually return and gain his degree in Business Administration in 1978 when he realized that a degree meant money in the bank. Brad was on his way to be the success he had always envisioned.

  Loni Ann was afraid when Brad was working for Gals Galore. One time she could see that he was really worried about something. He wouldn’t discuss tavern business with her, but he instructed her, “Don’t open the door—not for anyone.” He was gone into the wee hours of the morning and that made her more afraid.

  Loni Ann was relieved when Brad went to work for a life insurance company and then started his own business as a real estate entrepreneur in the early 1970s. He called his fledgling corporation “B.M.C. and Associates.” Brad had not turned out to be the Big Man on Campus everyone expected, but B.M.C. and Associates took off. He proved to be a natural. People responded positively to him. He had such an easy way about him, making everyone he met believe that he sincerely liked them and that knowing him would improve their lives and fortunes immeasurably. He exuded charm and capability at the same time. It was a talent, a genuine talent. It didn’t matter that his office was only a little hole in the wall. Brad had a million-dollar personality.

  They were still living at the Mark Manor apartments in 1970 when Loni Ann found she was pregnant again. It was not an easy pregnancy, and Brad was far less entranced with the idea of being a father than he had been with their first baby. After a long, difficult labor, Loni Ann gave birth to Brad’s second child and his first son on December 9, 1970. Brent Morris* was only thirteen months younger than Kait. Loni Ann had come very close to dying during her exhausting labor, and she was too weak to take care of her new son. Brad’s sister Ethel looked after the redheaded baby until Loni Ann was strong enough to take over.

  Gradually but inexorably, invisible walls rose higher around Loni Ann. There came a time when she had no freedom at all. She had to account to Brad for every minute of her life. Their apartment was midway between Burien and White Center, and since Brad always had the car, Loni Ann had to walk several blocks either way to reach a grocery store. Brad ordered her to let him know whenever she would be gone from the apartment and for precisely how long. With a one-year-old and a newborn to carry along on all her errands, it was difficult for Loni Ann to know how long it was going to take her to get groceries and walk home. She often found herself running in a panic toward their apartment in a futile effort to meet Brad’s immutable schedule.

  Brad’s power over Loni Ann eventually expanded to the point where she was not allowed to take the babies outside to play, or to go to the playground, without notifying him. He instructed her that she must call either him or his receptionist and leave a message to tell him where she was going. If she went to get the mail from the box downstairs and he called twice without reaching her, Brad left work and came home. He punished Loni Ann for such grievous misconduct and he did it physically. Brad would backhand her and she would stagger across the room and crumple to the floor.

  Loni Ann didn’t tell anyone. Brad was nice to everybody but her. “I was embarrassed and ashamed that my own husband would treat me so poorly,” she confessed.

  It got worse. After they had been married three years, Loni Ann was the object of Brad’s beatings two or three times a month. Still, she didn’t tell anyone. Once, when she had tried to argue back, Brad had looked at her and said quietly, “You know, I could have things done to you if I wanted to. . . .”

  This was the man she had loved since she was fifteen. This was the man she had believed was “absolutely, positively, one of the mostest wonderful persons I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know.” Loni Ann realized, far too late, that she no longer knew her husband at all. Perhaps she had never really known Brad. All she knew was that he was ashamed of her, and that she and the babies seemed to mean nothing to him. And after a while, Loni Ann couldn’t understand why Brad wouldn’t just let her go. He didn’t want her. He had convinced her that no one would want her. They had both been very young when they got married, and they had married because Loni Ann was pregnant. Maybe they never really had a chance at a lasting relationship. Still, they stayed together, working at cross-purposes perhaps, but together.

  15

  Loni Ann had no idea at all where she was. She had come to this dark place in a car with Brad. She remembered that much; that part was not a dream. She knew she had wakened slowly from a nauseous, drunken stupor as they hurtled through the night. It was totally out of character for her to get drunk. Her life had become such a tenuous balancing act that she needed, always, to watch and be ready. She never drank, nothing more than a beer or two; that was probably why the drinks at the party had hit her like truth serum, loosening her tongue. Then she had thrown up until her insides felt sprained and bruised, but it was too late. The alcohol was already in her bloodstream. She didn’t weigh that much in the first place. Loni Ann had passed out from the combination of alcohol and humiliation.

  She could not really remember leaving the party. She had a blurred recollection of Brad dragging her out of the house and away from the others. Her arms hurt where his fingers had left deep indentations. She was used to it now. Brad was knocking her around regularly, but he was always careful that the marks he left could be covered up by a long-sleeved, high-necked blouse. That was the only time he let her wear modest clothes. He didn’t want anyone to know he was hitting her. They were supposed to be the perfect couple, and Loni Ann knew that perfect wives don’t anger perfect husbands to the point that those wives must be punished. Brad was a stickler about appearances. No one outside their marriage had any hint that they were anything but “the ideal, happy couple.” Brad wanted it that way. He was a young business prodigy on his way up.

  It was Memorial Day 1971, and they had been married two years. Loni Ann had snapped and she had broken a number of Brad’s rules. The party was a going-away party for one of Loni Ann’s friends, a woman she had come to depend on. The fact that one of her few close friends was moving away was a blow to her. Although she had never told anyone about Brad’s beatings, her friends were still important to her. She hated to lose even one. Maybe that was why she had had too much to drink. Brad was incredulous that she could embarrass him that way. But then she had committed an even more terrible offense.

  Before she passed out, Loni Ann had crossed another invisible, forbidden line. She blurted out secrets too long pent up. She told about Brad’s brutality. Even as her alcohol-loosened tongue babbled on about how awful things were in her marriage, she knew somewhere deep inside that Brad would never in this world forgive her. Never.

  And then she had became violently ill.

  Her girlfriends led Loni Ann into the bathroom and one of them held her head while she vomited. She was neither the first nor the last wife who drank too much, told secrets, and thoroughly embarrassed her husband. But Brad was capable of a singular kind of rage, an emotion so inherent and dominant in his nature that it defied opposition. Loni Ann had seen it. His mother, Rosemary, had glimpsed it. And his father had to be aware of his compulsion to control, though Sanford accepted whatever Brad did; Brad was his son and not unlike himself.

  Even with all the beatings she had gone through, Loni Ann had never seen Brad as angry as he was at the party. He had pounded on the door of the bathroom and demanded to be let in. Her friends saw that she was terrified and refused to open the door. Brad simply broke in and grabbed Loni Ann by the arm, half pulling, half dragging her to their car. She didn’t remember that part; she had passed out.

  When she awoke, they
were on a dark road. “I was sick. I was very tired,” she remembered. “When he stopped the car, he walked me a few feet away from the road and told me, ‘Just stay here.’” Loni Ann was still too drunk to walk and frightened half out of her wits. Brad propped her up at the edge of the road and drove off, leaving her surrounded by absolute pitch-black night.

  She stayed. The ground seemed to undulate beneath her, and she struggled to keep upright. Finally she began to crawl, reaching out in the darkness, trying to find the road. She could feel nothing in front of her, so she turned around. Then she saw lights in the distance, lights that would prove to be miles away. In a daze she made her way to an all-night gas station where she called the police. She knew they didn’t quite believe her; she knew she smelled like vomit and alcohol, but she was too tired to explain any further. They took her home, but Brad wouldn’t come to the door and so they left her at Sanford and Rosemary’s house.

  Because Loni Ann was only rarely allowed to drive their car, she had to wait five months before she could retrace the route to the dark place Brad had taken her. The night after the Memorial Day party haunted her. She had a sense of where she had been, the general area, because she had actually been relatively close to home. But there was another feeling that gripped her when she tried to remember. It was terror, and she didn’t know why. She had already been punished for her behavior at the party, and Brad had apparently smoothed over her revelations as the ravings of a woman who couldn’t hold her liquor. What she felt wasn’t fear of reprisal or humiliation, it was a compelling need to know. If she didn’t find out where she had been, she feared she might go back there one night and never return.

  It was a sunny October day when Loni Ann was finally able to get their car for the afternoon. Unerringly, almost instinctively, she retraced the road she had crawled along to reach the gas station and she found the place where Brad had left her; the same smell she had detected that night wafted in the air. The leaves of the trees were gold and russet now instead of the bright green they were in May. That night she had seen nothing but black, but she now knew where she had been.