When they came to Washington around 2015, they briefly lived with a friend in Stanwood, eventually moving to Camano. She is truly loved and will be deeply missed by everyone.вЂќД¬unningham and Gonzales met while serving in the Air Force in California. In high school she ran cross country and met many good friends. In her obituary, her family wrote that вЂњKatherine was a fun loving person who enjoyed caring for others and animals. вЂњShe wasn't only my first child,вЂќ said her father, Paul Cunningham. Cunningham, whose friends called her Kay, was described as a bubbly, upbeat and caring person. When news of CunninghamвЂ™s violent death reached Merced, friends and relatives were stunned. By the time they started their hunt, Gonzales, if involved, could have been on the run for 16 days. Island County sheriffвЂ™s investigators, with help from the county coroner, determined Cunningham was actually killed February 15, more than two weeks before her body was found. On the swordвЂ™s hilt, investigators found a match to the boyfriendвЂ™s DNA. In the trunk, police found a bloody samurai sword.ДNA tests showed the blood on the blade was CunninghamвЂ™s. The missing car, it turned out, had already been found abandoned more than two weeks earlier, left in the snow on a steep grade outside Yreka, Calif., 600 miles away. So was her boyfriend, Jacob Gonzales, 33. In the motor home, they discovered a loaded 9mm pistol stuffed in a man's hiking boot.Д¬unningham owned two old Hondas. 22 caliber rifle with an altered stock, a camouflaged pump-action shotgun, and more than a thousand rounds of ammunition. About 70 feet from the body, investigators found another living space, a bunker cut into the hillside, accessible only by ladder descending into an entry hole.ДЄfter obtaining a search warrant, investigators found a stash of fully loaded weapons inside: two bolt-action rifles, a semi-automatic. The couple, both from Merced County, Calif, had leased the site to store some property, then moved into a rundown, white,15-foot motor home on the property. A stream of deputies and first responders soon began flowing into the crime scene.Дetectives would later determine that Cunningham, who was slender with long brown hair and a wide, friendly smile, was living on the property with a boyfriend. When they spotted the wagon and then saw the clumped-up sleeping bag, they looked inside. On March 3, Robert Johnson and a couple of companions were inspecting a piece of land they hoped to buy, a 10-acre parcel off East Tamarack Lane at the southern tip of Camano island. But by the time CunninghamвЂ™s body was found, he had a big head start, and, considered armed and dangerous, god knows where he might be today. If heвЂ™s caught, the county is asking that he be held in lieu of $1 million bail. Seven months later, CunninghamвЂ™s alleged killer is still on the loose. Her remains, wrapped inside a sleeping bag, covered with a tarp and dumped onto a kidвЂ™s Red Flyer wagon, were found by a neighbor on Camano Island, a vacation, residential and farming community about an hour's drive north of Seattle. Now heвЂ™s aware of one: that of 26-year-old Katherine Elizabeth Cunningham, whose body was discovered here last spring. вЂњI was not aware of any homicides involving beheadings in Island County - certainly not in my 25 years living here,вЂќ he says. But not in the countyвЂ™s modern days, says Banks, the local prosecutor. There may have been similar violent slayings in the century-and-a-half since.

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