Dead by Sunset: Perfect Husband, Perfect Killer?

by Ann Rule

  One night Cheryl looked hard at her brother and said, “Jim, I fear for my life. Short of my collapsing and dying in front of you, I want you to assume that any accident involved wasn’t an accident. Pursue it. Pursue it.”

  Three times, Cheryl told Jim the same thing.

  Three times, he told her not to be frightened.

  The terrible scene at Bridlemile School had given Cheryl a glimpse into the searing rage Brad was capable of. Certainly, she had seen him angry before, although he had usually shown his public face, the smooth, charming facade of a man who had his life and his emotions under perfect control. But Brad had lost it at Bridlemile, just as he had once lost it at the boys’ Montessori School. No, not just; this time Cheryl sensed that he had been ready to kill her for having the temerity to register his son in the school she had chosen.

  She knew it was going to get worse. She hadn’t even brought out her big guns yet, her list of witnesses from Brad’s past. And when she did, she could envision what Brad’s reaction would be. It terrified her. She was fully prepared to do whatever was necessary to keep Jess, Michael, and Phillip with her. Cheryl never wanted them to be the object of the kind of wrath that Brad was capable of. But she also knew full well that she might die trying to save them from that.

  After Cheryl had made up her mind to divorce Brad in February, she had returned to Portland with an iron resolve. She had also been seized with the premonition that she might have less time than she expected. She had called her friend and coworker Kerry Radcliffe. They had attended law school together, and they both were employed by Garvey, Schubert—Kerry on the business side and Cheryl in litigation. Kerry still worked in the Seattle branch of the firm.

  “She called me from Portland,” Kerry later said, “in the third week of February, on a Wednesday or a Thursday. Cheryl was agitated. She said, ‘I’m going to ask you a huge favor. This might sound unreasonable—and demanding—but I need to have this done.’ She said she had gathered her strength and filed for divorce. She wanted to have her will changed that day, and have me Federal Express it down to her so that it would be effective right away. She was not her normal self. She was very much upset.”

  Kerry had drawn up both Cheryl’s and Brad’s wills five or six years earlier. At that time Cheryl had expressly stipulated that all of her estate was to go to her spouse, Bradly Morris Cunningham. Now she wanted to invalidate that will immediately. She told Kerry that she feared Brad’s reaction. But she wanted to be sure that, in case of her death, nothing she owned went to Brad. Jess, Michael, and Phillip should inherit whatever she had. She also told Kerry that she didn’t want Brad to be named guardian of the boys.

  “I told her that until the divorce was final, this will might not have the full legal effect,” Kerry said. “But Cheryl said, ‘I want this down. I want it in my will.’ I told her that if Brad were still alive, the court would probably make him guardian, and she said, ‘I know that, but I want my intent in my will. I don’t want him to be guardian.’”

  Cheryl’s first will had been pretty much a “boiler plate” will in Washington, a community property state. All property acquired after marriage becomes community property of the two spouses in equal shares. What each partner brings into the marriage is separate property, and that includes later bequests or inheritances. Cheryl was adamant that her new will override the community property statutes. She was filing for divorce in Oregon, which is not a community property state.

  Kerry did exactly as Cheryl asked. And she did it so hurriedly that she actually FedExed it with a few typographical errors.

  Cheryl’s new will was blunt. It said she was married to Bradly Morris Cunningham, but was separated from him and in the process of dissolving the marriage. It stated her intention to leave all of her property to her three sons, and “to make no provision for Bradly Morris Cunningham.”

  The will Kerry Radcliffe prepared was a long document. On page nine, it read, “If it becomes necessary that a guardian be appointed for any of my children, I name my mother Betty Marie Vandever. If she is unable to act in this capacity, I nominate my former stepfather, Robert McNannay. . . .”

  Cheryl had considered a number of people who would take good care of her children if she were no longer around to do it. She asked Sharon McCulloch if she and her husband would take them, and Sharon said, “We considered it, and we would have if she’d put us in her will—but our children were so much older than Cheryl’s boys.” Susan McNannay and her boyfriend, Dave Keegan, were also willing to raise Jess, Michael, and Phillip, even though Susan wasn’t twenty yet. They agreed between them to reassure Cheryl of their commitment to her children.

  Cheryl had also tried to provide for the eventuality that Brad would become the guardian of their children. If she could not prevent that, she would stop him from spending the money she left them. She directed that any funds from her estate were to go directly to pay for their education, their medical care, et al., and that nothing should ever pass through Brad’s hands first.

  Kerry did not know, at that point, how completely Cheryl’s marriage had crumbled—or why. “Cheryl told me that she felt very strongly that the children should not stay with Brad. She talked about his having guns and firearms around. She said something about a place in eastern Washington that he’d filled up with canned goods . . . as if he had a survivalist type of mentality.”

  Legally, the job of a “guardian” is basically to act as a substitute parent and provide a home and love to a minor child. A “trustee” is the guardian of a minor’s money. Often, of course, one person serves both functions. However, it is not unusual for a guardian and a trustee to be two separate people. A loving parental substitute may have little knowledge about money matters. Cheryl named her longtime friend John Burke as the executor of her will. He would become the personal representative of her estate and have her will probated. She also named John Burke and Bob McNannay as alternate trustees of her sons’ inheritance.

  Cheryl knew what she was doing when she picked her old friend to look after her boys’ money if she should die. “She told me that of all the lawyers she knew,” Kerry said, “she trusted John Burke to be very strong in that position. He was somebody who could stand up to Brad. She knew that a lot of pressure would be put on this person. She said, ‘Brad is very manipulative and he can wear people down.’”

  Above all, Cheryl didn’t want Brad dipping into what belonged to the boys. She hadn’t been able to put much aside, not with the expenses she had carried for so many years. But she had a retirement fund with Garvey, Schubert. And she had life insurance. If she were dead, her estate would be worth a few hundred thousand dollars.

  Cheryl’s secretary, Florence Murrell, witnessed the will that had been drawn up so rapidly. She had been Cheryl’s friend as well as her legal secretary, and she had watched the steady erosion of her confidence and peace of mind about what might happen in the months ahead. Kerry Radcliffe had too. It seemed impossible that any one could get her down the way Brad did. “Cheryl was incredibly intelligent, very organized; she was a very strong presence,” Kerry would say later, fighting back tears. “She just took control when she came into a room. She was a wonderful attorney and a wonderful person.”

  Cheryl continued to perform well for Garvey, Schubert, but by the late summer of 1986 almost everyone in her Portland offices and many of her coworkers in Seattle knew that she was living in a state of siege. She was embarrassed by that, ashamed that her nerves were so close to the surface and that she jumped whenever a door slammed or a phone rang. She had also been losing weight steadily until she weighed less than a hundred pounds. That wasn’t nearly enough for a woman almost five feet six inches tall. And she was engaged in the litigation of her life. Never had she had an opponent as dogged, or as malicious.

  Florence Murrell tried to be a wall between Cheryl and Brad. She saw how often Cheryl was upset and distraught. She was chain-smoking, but she wasn’t eating. “Brad called constantly,” Florence remembered. �
��At Cheryl’s request, I screened all his calls. I spoke to him many times. I hardly ever put him through to her. She was so upset and trying to work. She kept notes of all his phone calls.”

  Florence saw that Cheryl was especially uptight after depositions and her visits to psychologists in the continuing struggle over the three little boys. “I was separated myself,” Florence remembered. “And we talked about our mutual problems. By that time, I was definitely stronger than she was. I’d buy her flowers and give her cards. . . .”

  Florence had an unsettling experience in the late summer of 1986. She came into work early one morning, sometime between 7:00 and 7:30. “The sun was shining through the east windows. I saw Brad coming out of one of our offices. No one else was there at the time. I was startled—very startled. We passed and I said, ‘Hi, Brad.’”

  Brad had had the area to himself. He smiled thinly at her, and walked through the glass doors, disappearing into one of the elevators.

  Florence didn’t see the unaddressed, unsealed envelope that lay on the receptionist’s desk. Later, a receptionist idly opened it to try to figure out who it belonged to. Inside she found photographs and negatives. They were nude pictures of Cheryl, pictures she had posed for in the early days of her marriage. They weren’t provocative; they were actually lovely, artistic studies of a young woman with an exquisite body. But Cheryl was mortified. She knew that Brad had intended to cause her embarrassment. Worse than that, he had apparently had free rein to wander through the offices, of Garvey, Schubert before they were officially open for business.

  “When I told Cheryl, she was very Upset,” Florence recalled. “She said, ‘Those doors—they stay locked—until someone’s at that front desk!’”

  Sharon Stewart Armstrong was a Superior Court judge in King County, Washington, in 1986; she had worked with Cheryl at Garvey, Schubert beginning in 1979. Sharon took over Cheryl’s caseload when she was on maternity leave and during the time she was in Houston. Like everyone who worked with Cheryl, Sharon admired her tremendously. “Cheryl was an exceptionally fine lawyer, and we were very good friends,” she said. “She was very, very bright. She had a fine strategic sense; she was excellent in the courtroom. She was also a mature person, able to cope with stress and strain. She was very warm and very funny. I adored her. She was a wonderful person.”

  When Sharon Armstrong became a Superior Court judge in August 1985, her schedule was packed and she and Cheryl didn’t see each other or even talk on the phone the way they often had. In 1986 Sharon knew “a little bit” about Cheryl’s divorce, but it was August before she heard from mutual friends about the depth of her friend’s ordeal. She called Cheryl immediately and was distressed to hear that the information was true. Cheryl needed friends and Sharon offered to come and visit in Portland on the weekend of September 19–21. She would bring along another of their old friends. Cheryl was so happy to hear that, and was looking forward to the September reunion.

  Tragedy seemed to hover over Cheryl and her friends that summer. On August 23 Sharon Armstrong and her husband and daughter were in a terrible automobile accident. Sharon almost lost her husband and child, and they remained hospitalized for a long time. She herself was injured, although not as critically as the rest of her family. “I couldn’t go to see Cheryl,” Sharon remembered. “I was still too weak and in too much pain to go to Portland. I did talk to her on Wednesday or Thursday before the weekend we planned to get together. She told me that Brad was ‘being a beast’ about the divorce.” Cheryl also confided that the psychologist had just recommended that Cheryl have custody of the boys and that “Brad flipped out.” He was going into court to ask for a second report.

  “After this,” Sharon said, “she told me she thought he would kill her. I thought this was startling. I asked her, ‘Why on earth do you think that?’ She said, ‘I think he will do anything to keep me from having the kids.’ She said his mother and sister were very afraid of him, that they wouldn’t let him know where they lived because he had assaulted them. . . . I became concerned. We talked about how she needed to be careful. That was the last time I heard from Cheryl.”

  Kerry Radcliffe talked to Cheryl often in August and early September. And when Kerry learned about Sharon’s accident, she relayed the awful news to Cheryl. “With the Armstrongs’ accident, we talked about how fragile life was. She was really looking forward to the weekend of the twentieth.” Now, of course, Sharon wouldn’t be coming after all. But Cheryl was grateful that Sharon and her family were still alive. After that, Kerry called often to update Cheryl about Sharon’s progress—until Sharon herself was strong enough to call.

  Kerry talked to Cheryl again early in September, two weeks before the weekend of September 19–21. Cheryl told her about the scene at Bridlemile when she had tried to enroll Jess. She said that Brad had screamed and yelled at her, and had yanked on Jess’s arm, trying to pull him away from her. Jess was embarrassed. She was embarrassed.

  “How are you doing?” Kerry asked.

  “You don’t want to know,” Cheryl answered, sounding so tired. “I get up each morning, gather my strength together, and I get through the day.”

  There was little that Kerry could say. Suddenly Cheryl blurted, “Kerry, if I die, Brad did it.” She asked Kerry if she could come down on the weekend of the nineteenth, since Sharon couldn’t come.

  “I didn’t go. I couldn’t that weekend,” Kerry remembered sadly.

  There would never be another weekend.

  30

  On September 16, 1986, Cheryl and Brad met at the offices of Kell, Alterman and Runstein in the Bank of California Tower in Portland. Reporter Michael R. King would record their depositions. Cheryl would have much preferred to give her deposition without Brad in the room, but she had no choice.

  Brad was deposed first. Betsy Welch was representing Cheryl, and as she attempted to get some idea of Brad’s financial status, she understood what Cheryl had said about his talent for being evasive about money. He wasn’t sure how long he had worked for U.S. Bank or how many hours he worked. He was beyond that. “Iprobably don’t work—when you say ‘work,’ I mean I think about my job after work. I think about my job at night sometimes. But, you know, my physical presence is not something I keep track of—I’m an exempt employee.” That was true. Nobody at U.S. Bank checked on Brad; he came and went as he pleased.

  Brad had no idea how much money he had made in the early 1980s. “How much did you earn?” Welch asked.

  “I don’t remember. I would have to look at our tax returus.”

  “. . . Mr. Cunningham, you haven’t filed a tax return since 1981, have you?”

  “No—I think ’82.”

  “I hand you your ’82 return. . . . I would like you to take a look at whatever you need to look at there and tell me what your income was for 1982.”

  “It says here it was five thousand two hundred eight dollars.”

  “I think . . . if you look . . . in the back, Mr. Cunningham, that that’s Cheryl’s income for the year.”

  “Oh?” Brad replied. “Well, it’s a joint return.” He had no idea what his income had been. He said his accountant did his tax work. Welch pointed out that his Schedule C Profit and Loss Statement showed that he had had no income at all in 1982 but had claimed $159,000 of expenses. His 1981 form showed income of $1,800 in his “consulting and appraisal” business and claimed a $142,000 loss.

  Brad said his Chapter 11 bankruptcy had been filed in 1984 and mentioned his ongoing lawsuit. “The major assets of the estate, which is this lawsuit against the contractor and his bonding company and the parent corporation, needs to be tried.” His case had been filed in Texas in the 295th District in October of 1982, but he had no idea when it was going to trial.

  “When was the last time you had a trial date?”

  “Gosh,” Brad said, looking bemused. “I don’t know. In Texas, they do things different than we do here. They don’t have trial dates, you understand?”

  “I do
n’t understand.”

  Welch knew that Brad was intelligent, but he was acting ingenuous, as if he had no idea what was happening in his multimillion-dollar suit in Houston. He had no legal costs, he said, but Vinson and Elkins might take up to 40 percent of any judgment.

  “What’s it about?” Welch asked.

  “Messed up the construction—incredible. Violated Uniform Building Code, Uniform Electrical Code, Plumbing Code, improper construction of the concrete. I got a videotape on this stuff. It’s incredible. . . .”

  “. . .What’s the prayer in that case? What are you asking for in money?”

  “I don’t know. My attorneys prepared it. It’s quite a bit of money.”

  “How much?”

  “I don’t know; twelve million . . . maybe it’s fourteen million.”

  Brad, the financial wizard, the entrepreneur, suddenly didn’t know what was going on. He had had no income—at least according to his IRS forms—for years, but he thought he might be suing for as much as fourteen million dollars. He agreed that he hadn’t filed tax returns for 1983, 1984, or 1985, but that was not his fault. It was because his tax picture was “one of the most complex things I have ever seen in my whole life. I don’t understand it.” He was planning to get rid of his accounting firm in Seattle, which, he said, didn’t seem to understand it either. And he certainly had no money to pay Cheryl.

  Cheryl gave her deposition next. Ted Runstein was now representing Brad, and she was frightened, jumpy as a rabbit, when he questioned her. She estimated that their basic living expenses, prior to Brad’s moving out, were $10,000 a month. Early in their marriage, Brad had prepared their financial statements, and she had signed them. In 1982, Brad’s figures showed total assets of $4,074,000 with outstanding liabilities of $1,200,000. This was during the time that the Houston project looked as if it was going to be a go. “I relied on what Brad said the values of these figures were,” Cheryl said. “I had no reason, at that point, to believe that they were untrue.”