In the 1980’s, two small towns in California were shocked when two 12-year-old boys were brutally murdered. No physical evidence had been left at the crime scene and nobody knew who would want to hurt these two boys. With the help of witnesses and a sketch artist, investigators were able to connect their deaths to the disappearance of a 15-year-old boy. The suspect in question was Jon Dunkle. Despite the ease of connecting the three crimes and identifying Dunkle as a likely suspect in all three cases, Dunkle was unlike any other criminal the investigators had dealt with before. It would be years before detectives were able to finally to arrest 26-year-old Dunkle, who had been referred to as “The Peninsula Serial Killer.”
John Davies
John Davies was 15-years-old when his mother, Joan, dropped him off at the San Mateo Public Library on Saturday, November 7, 1981. It was just after 11AM in San Mateo, California and Joan was in a hurry. She was a program director for a high school and was heading to monitor a swim meet. Just four years earlier, the Davies family, including Joan, her husband Jim, John, and his two older brothers, Jimmy and Mark, moved from Chicago to Belmont, California. Jim had quit his job in the corporate world and was opening his own one-hour photo business, as well as renovating Victorian homes. The oldest Davies child, Jimmy, was starting to make a name for himself in the Navy. Mark, who was about two years older than John, attended Serra High School with his brother. John had a tough time in school. He was bullied and called names and had a difficult time fitting in. He started following Mark around and tried to find his place. He became friends with other students who played Dungeons and Dragons and experimented with smoking pot, cigarettes, and drinking alcohol.
On weekends, Mark would often bring his little brother with him to neighborhood parties and to hang out with older kids. John, who had been a pretty good student before transferring to Serra High School a few months earlier, let his grades fall as he tried to make friends and build a social life. Joan told her son how disappointed she was that he was neglecting his school work and John had promised to do better. That day, John was planning on working on two history papers, then heading to visit his best friend, Larry. John told his mother that he liked living in California, despite having some trouble at school. He liked his new friends and loved helping his dad with house restorations. Though the youngest Davies boys partied a bit too much, the Davies family seemed to have settled in well to their new home.
Around 5:30PM that night, Jim came home to find John and Mark in the kitchen, before leaving to meet his wife at a dinner party.
Mark and two of his friends went up to his room to hang out. The boys usually polished off a few six packs of beer, but Mark had taken John to a big party last night and was still recovering. John, like he often did, tried coming into Mark’s room and hanging out, but Mark wasn’t having it. He told him to leave and after a small tussle, John ran upstairs to his own room, crying. Later that evening, Mark went into his brother’s room and saw that he’d cleaned it up. He told him that it looked great, but John ignored him.
Around 11PM, Mark fell asleep, so John walked his friends home. Afterwards, he came back to his house and watched a movie with Carlos. At 12:30AM, the two boys went to bed. Carlos remembered seeing John shut his bedroom door behind him and heard his tape deck start playing. Around 1:30AM, Joan and Jim arrived home.
The next morning, Joan awoke to find the front door open. She figured that Mark had snuck out, then back in and forgot to shut and lock the door. She went to wake the boys up for church at 9AM, but John was nowhere to be found.
She noticed that though her 15-year-old was gone, his new jacket, shoes, and his money were still in his room. John would never go past the driveway without his shoes. Though Joan was concerned, Jim and Mark didn’t seem to think it was that big of a deal. Mark said that he’d gone to bed early and that he didn’t know anything about John sneaking out. He assumed that his brother was probably trying to ditch church (even though Joan had found where John had laid out his church clothes). Jim said that they’d probably find John at home after church, nursing a hangover. The family left for the morning service at Belmont Baptist.
When they returned, John still wasn’t home. Jim called the police in hopes of starting an investigation, while the rest of the family tried to think of places that John might’ve been. They called neighbors and every friend of John’s that they could think of, but no one had seen him. Mark, unbeknownst to his parents, went into John’s room and checked a secret hiding spot that he and John had for drugs. In a decorative wine bottle, there was a small film canister. This was where Mark and John kept tabs of LSD. All of it was gone. Mark suddenly became very concerned about his brother. John had taken LSD for the first time last week and couldn’t recognize his surroundings or his brother. Mark assumed that since John was so angry at him last night, he’d taken the LSD and left the house.
The following day, a detective from Belmont PD arrived at the Davies’ home. It turned out that no one had even taken a report on John’s disappearance when Jim called yesterday. The Davies insisted that John would not have run away. Before the detective left, Mark pulled him aside and told him about the missing LSD and that he was concerned his brother might have had a bad trip and be lost or hurt somewhere. The detective took all of his information back to the station, where he learned later in the week that the Davies had already been circulating missing posters with John’s information. People began reporting sightings of John in nearby cities. Though police did not confirm (or attempt to confirm) any of these sightings, based on these reports and the reported history of John’s rebellious behavior and drug and alcohol use, the detectives felt confident that the teenager was a runaway.
Joan and Jim told the detective that they thought John could’ve left that evening with a friend of the family, 21-year-old Jon Dunkle. They said that they had no doubt that if Dunkle asked, John would’ve left in the middle of the night with him. Both he and Mark partied often with Dunkle, and he was very close to Joan and Jim. Despite the police saying that they cleared Dunkle, both Joan and Jim continued to tell people, “When our son disappeared from our lives, so did Jon Dunkle.”
Lance Turner
12-year-old Lance Turner had been dropped off at the Ralston Intermediate School soccer fields at 4PM on Tuesday, October 2, 1984. Lance carpooled with three of his friends, Ian, Thomas, and Mark, who were all on the same team as him. Ian’s father, Tim, dropped the boys off. Their soccer practice didn’t start until 5PM, but Time coached a younger team that had an earlier practice. The four boys had no problem filling the empty hour. They had grown up with each other in Belmont and loved playing sports and Dungeon and Dragons. Lance was considered an especially handsome seventh grader. With blonde hair and blue eyes, Lance was popular, even with the eighth grade girls. His older sister Tracy would tell her friends that despite Lance only being twelve, he was a “stud” and girls called the house for him often. His parents, Margo and Quincy, thought of Lance as a happy and confident child, who was growing into a thoughtful and smart teenager.
On the day of their practice, Tim left the boys on the fields while he went to coach his team. The Ralston campus backed up to the Water Dog Lake recreation area. There were many trails, picnic areas, as well as the lake itself. Teenagers hung out in the woods and on trails often, many of them using the secluded area to smoke, drink, or hook up. It was a large area, but the boys were pretty familiar with it. Lance told his friends that he was bored and suggested they go down to the rope swing near the lake. His friends said they didn’t want to go. It was a little bit cooler out that day and Mark said it would be cold by the water. Lance told them that he would just go alone. His friends saw him run down towards the wooded area until he passed the “smoking tree” and into the woods.
At 4:50PM, the coach for Belmont Oaks Soccer League, Ray Williamson, gathered the boys between ages 10 and 16 to prepare for practice. Lance’s friends grabbed their soccer bags and noticed that the number 10 bag was left on the bench. Unsure who number 10 was, they grabbed the bag and hurried over to their practice field. At 6PM, Thomas’ father, Bill, pulled up at the practice field and Thomas, Ian, and Mark ran to the car to be driven home. Bill asked where Lance was. He was part of their carpool and he normally gave him a ride home too. The boys didn’t know where their friend was. Bill asked them to go look for Lance. The three boys ran down the trail to the rope swing and back, with no sign of Lance. When they returned to Bill and told them they couldn’t find Lance, Bill asked Coach if Lance had been in practice. He hadn’t seen him. Both Coach and Bill agreed that it was very abnormal for Lance to miss practice without his mother letting someone know. Coach and another adult went down the trail to the rope swing, but couldn’t find him. It had started to get dark out and the adults were worried. Margo Turner was contacted and told that her son was missing.
Around 7:15PM that evening, a Belmont police officer arrived at the Turner home. Margo was scared that Lance had fallen from the rope swing and was possibly hurt somewhere. Her husband, Quincy, was down at the fields, searching for his son. While the officer headed to the fields to help search, Coach had gathered fathers and older players to search the wooded area. He had divided the area into a grid and split the volunteers into search crews. Lance’s friend, Thomas, his father Bill, and Quincy went down the trail that Thomas said Lance took to the rope swing. They used their flashlights to light up the trail and look off to the sides. About 25 feet off the path, Bill’s flashlight caught something. He thought it was a tennis shoe. As he got closer, he recognized that there were legs and feet. He kneeled down closer and shined his light through a tunnel of brush. He saw Lance laying on his back and touched his leg. Bill knew when he touched him that Lance was dead. He heard Quincy ask him what he was doing. Bill quickly stood up and told his friend that his son was dead.
Sean Dannehl
On July 2, 1985, 12-year-old Sean Dannehl had set out on his bicycle to ride across the Old Fair Oaks foot bridge to Rancho Cordova. The route would take him about two miles down a bike trail and through a residential area to where some of Sean’s friends lived. His mother, Ellen, gave him permission to visit his friends, as long as he was back before dark. She felt confident that he’d return early because he was scared of the dark.
Sean hadn’t been in Fair Oaks for very long. His parents were divorced and he used to live with his mother and her boyfriend, Kip, in Rancho Cordova. About two years earlier, Sean had left to go live with father Guy and his wife, Debbie in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Guy, Debbie, and their new baby were taking a vacation to Tahoe and wanted Sean to join, but he wanted to go visit his mother since he didn’t see her often. Sean was an active kid. He loved playing soccer, baseball, basketball, and could often be found swimming or on his bike. He loved to be adventurous and had even just broken his arm after falling from a rope swing at camp. He had a cast on his left arm that prevented him from pitching in his Little League All Star game, where he was the top pitcher for his team.
At about 7:30PM, Sean got back on his bike and headed home. At 8:30PM, Ellen became worried. Sean still wasn’t home. It was starting to get dark, so she asked a neighbor for help and began walking towards the trail that her son would’ve taken. She saw a crowd of people near a brush fire and figured that Sean must’ve gotten sidetracked watching the fire. She continued looking, but couldn’t find him. Around 10PM, Ellen made sure that Kip was by the phone in case Sean called. She went to walk the bike trail, but returned without her son. Around midnight, Kip got on a bike and took a flashlight to the trail to look for Sean while Ellen called the police. Two hours later, an officer came by the residence and told Ellen that nothing could be done until Sean had been missing for 24 hours. The police also discovered that last year, they had arrested both Ellen and Kip for possession of drug paraphernalia. This was not while Sean was with them, but police thought it might’ve given Sean a reason to run away. Literally makes no fucking sense.
Ellen, Kip, and friends spent the next several days getting flyers made and showing them around the trails and nearby popular areas. The media hadn’t given his disappearance any attention yet because of the recent discoveries of multiple murder victims of Charles Ng and Leonard Lake. Finally, on July 4th, Sean’s disappearance was covered on the news. A friend of Sean’s father saw the newscast and called Ellen to find out how to get in touch with him. Guy didn’t seem to be very worried. He knew his son was smart and resourceful. He considered Ellen to be a bit of a mess, and Guy’s wife thought that it was possible that Sean wanted to leave the environment. Guy disagreed, saying that his son would never run away. Police didn’t seem to believe him.
The searches for Sean continued throughout the trails and area where he’d last traveled. On July 8th, six days after Sean went missing, two bikers were riding on the trail around 7:45PM. One of the men noticed a blue bicycle about 40 feet off the trail, partially covered by brush. He ventured down into the brush and saw that it was a boy’s bike. Through the low-hanging trees, the man looked further and saw the outline of a person, about 20 feet away. He could see two bare legs, and as he got closer, he smelled a terrible odor and knew what he’d just found. The men called police who quickly declared the area a crime scene. When investigators crawled through the bushes and approached the body, they initially believed it to be a young black male due to the coloring. They thought he was asleep until they touched him and realized that he was dead. The body had a cast on the left arm, but due to their belief that the child was black, they thought it couldn’t be Sean. They asked for a coroner to be called to the scene to examine the body and determine if it could be a white male. The coroner determined that the body could be that of a white male that had suffered discoloration due to the elements. It was Sean Dannehl.
The Connections
The Davies family felt that police had let the disappearance of their son, John, fall out of focus. Jim and Joan did everything they could to bring attention to their son and keep his disappearance from being forgotten. They still couldn’t understand how police had cleared Jon Dunkle. At one time, Dunkle had been a part of their family. One day at church four years earlier, the oldest Davies son, Jimmy, introduced his parents to a classmate of his, Jon Dunkle. Joan thought the 17-year-old seemed shy, but sweet and perhaps needed a bit of parental care and love. She immediately invited him for Sunday dinner at the Davies’ home. After this dinner, Dunkle’s visits became more frequent. He told the Davies stories of his childhood, explaining that his problems with learning started when his brother pushed him out of a window as a toddler. He told them that he was a police informant. He often talked about abuse and problems in his family. Joan and Jim didn’t challenge Dunkle’s extravagant stories. They seemed harmless. They even let him sleep over when he came to the house one night with Jimmy, both very drunk. He told them that his dad would beat him if he saw him like that.
Dunkle became part of the family, even calling Jim and Joan, “mom” and “dad”. He entered the home at will, not bothering to knock anymore. He had pretty severe dyslexia and had a difficult time reading and writing. Dunkle’s school problems were not just with schoolwork, but with his social life as well. Most considered him to be a very odd guy. He was bullied at school and was extremely socially awkward. Jimmy said that he’d befriended him out of pity and wanted to get him out of his house and teach him how to be a teenager. He took him to parties, where Dunkle was a lightweight with alcohol. He’d get extremely drunk and very giggly, giving people more reason to make fun of him. After Jimmy graduated and moved out, Dunkle, now 20-years-old, befriended Mark and John. The boys put up with Dunkle because he could buy them alcohol.
With Dunkle’s heavy alcohol use and affinity for driving drunk, it wasn’t long before he got a DUI with Mark riding in the passenger seat. Joan forbade her boys from riding anywhere with Dunkle, so they’d sit in his new white Honda Civic in the driveway and listen to the sound system.
Dunkle’s extravagant stories continued. He got a job working airport security and said that he was supposed to be watching for a serial killer that was flying in. He then said that he had a Chrstian awakening while at work and left the job. In May of ‘81, Dunkle left for a Youth for Christ training camp in Oregon. Four months later, he unexpectedly showed back up to the Davies’ home and told them that he’d quit because they made him work too hard. Mark continued to party with Dunkle occasionally, but had grown tired of his immaturity and weird affect. Dunkle began to hang out solely with John, who was just 15. John felt important and cool, with a 22-year-old who wanted to hang out with him alone. It wasn’t too long after Dunkle and John began hanging out by themselves that John disappeared.
The Belmont Police spoke to Dunkle, who had just started a new job at Toys R Us. He said that he’d last been to the Davies’ home on the 4th or the 5th to take Mark out. He had started the new job on the 9th, two days after John was last seen. He told police that he had no clue where John might be, but that he’d help any way that he could. Though they couldn’t get Dunkle out of their head, Jim and Joan tried to accept that the police had appropriately cleared him of being involved in their son’s disappearance.
Connections Continued…Three Years Later
The murder of Lance Turner didn’t seem to be connected to any other attacks in the area. Luckily, there had been quite a few people in the area on the trail that had seen Lance and may have seen his killer. Belmont Police set about accounting for all of the people who’d been seen around the Water Dog Lake area around the time of Lance’s murder.
Slowly, these unidentified people came forward. The only person who hadn’t been identified had been seen by two groups of people. The first was two young boys. They’d gone to the “smoking tree” and one of the boys began to urinate on the tree. Suddenly someone yelled at them to get lost. They saw a guy sitting on a tree branch. He had light, greasy, shoulder-length hair and braces. The two boys ran off.
A few minutes later, four eighth grade girls skipping volleyball practice went down to the “smoking tree” to dig out a pack of hidden cigarettes and a matchbook. The girls looked up to see the guy sitting on the tree branch. They estimated him to be between 16 and 19-years-old. He offered them sips from his beer can and they shared a cigarette with him. None of them could remember his name, but believed it was “John” or “Don” or something similar. Finally, the girls decided to leave the tree because the guy was starting to creep them out. They remembered seeing Lance run by them around 4:15PM. The girls agreed to sit with a sketch artist, who produced a drawing that they all felt looked similar to the guy, but wasn’t exactly right. Police decided to hypnotize one of the girls to have her describe the guy for a different sketch artist. Once the sketch was finished and shown to the other girls, they agreed completely that the new sketch looked exactly like him. Other boys and girls who’d been near the “smoking tree” that day agreed.
Meanwhile, the medical examiner had determined that Lance’s cause of death was exsanguination. He had several wounds across his body from a sharp object, as well as abrasions to his forehead. A rock had been found nearby with Lance’s blood on it. The ME believed that the attacker had struck Lance with a rock to disable him before attacking him with the knife. There was significant evidence that Lance had fought back against his attacker.
Police returned to the nearby high school to continue their search for Johns or Dons in the records. The officer laid the new composite sketch on a nearby desk and began looking through records. The secretary saw the sketch and was shocked. She told the officer that it looked very similar to a student clerk that she supervised for several years. He had learning disabilities and was very sweet. She even trusted him to house sit for her and her friends. She said he had no social skills and was constantly making up wild stories to impress classmates. The officer showed the sketch to several other staff members in the office and everyone agreed that the sketch was a clear match for the former student clerk: Jon Dunkle. When the officer brought this information back to the station, another officer mentioned that he knew the name, that he’d been trying to get in touch with Dunkle for weeks in attempts to interview him in the reinvestigation of the John Davies case. Lance and John were very different and their stories didn’t seem to have any common factors, except for Dunkle.
The Investigation into Dunkle
With the multiple identifications of the sketch of the unknown man, police began to dive further into Dunkle. He had several arrests for DUIs and other alcohol-related crimes, including a drunk driving arrest where he’d hit a man on a moped, dragged the moped and the man about 30 feet before speeding off. He attempted to get a friend to cover for him, but the moped driver got his license plate and he was arrested. His license was revoked and he remained on probation. Police were very interested in speaking with him about Lance’s murder, but Dunkle continued to string them along. When they’d call to set up an appointment, Dunkle would eagerly set a date and time with them, then cancel at the last minute. In their continued investigation into Dunkle’s life, they found that three days after Lance’s murder, he’d moved from his parents’ home in Belmont to live with his sister in Sacramento.
Finally, after having been blown off multiple times by Dunkle, investigators decided to go to him. They drove to Dunkle’s sister’s house in Sacramento to meet with him. He denied ever having gone out drinking with Mark Davies and said that John never sat in his car to listen to music. He blamed the loss of his license on friends, saying that they got him drunk and caused him to get multiple DUIs. He denied ever having been close to the Davies family and said that he had no idea where John might be, but gosh, he’d love to help any way that he could. They slipped in a few questions about Lance towards the end of their visit. Dunkle said that he had been out job hunting on the day of Lance’s murder. He said he went out around 12:30PM, applied for multiple jobs and got home around 4:30PM. He said that his mother saw him come home. They asked if Dunkle would consent to a polygraph test, but he said he’d have to ask his father about that. He did agree to letting police take a Polaroid photo of him for their records.
There was no physical evidence found to tie Dunkle to Lance’s murder. Even the eyewitnesses identifying him just proved that he was in the area at the time. Police spoke with the associates at every store that Dunkle claimed he had applied at on the day of Lance’s murder, and also looked through their stacks of applications. Nobody recognized him and they didn’t find any of Dunkle’s applications that placed him there on that specific day. When police confronted Dunkle with this information, Dunkle calmly smiled and told them that they must’ve lost his papers, that he was definitely at those stores on October 2nd. They told him that he’d been identified as having been at Water Dog Lake that day by multiple witnesses, as well as that they had a beer can with his fingerprints on it that had been found at the “smoking tree”. None of this unnerved Dunkle. He said that he hadn’t been to Water Dog Lake since June and that everyone who saw him there was lying. He continued to deny that he ever hung out with John Davies and that he only occasionally hung out with Mark. Nothing seemed to fluster Dunkle. Despite his obvious social deficits, Dunkle seemed to enjoy the attention he was receiving from police and, after five hours of questioning, police hadn’t gained anything.
Their next step was to meet Mrs. Dunkle at her home. Through their research, they’d found that she and her husband had a history of domestic abuse, even having divorced at one point, then remarrying shortly after. Mrs. Dunkle would drop off bagged lunches to her son every day at his last job. She showed them her son’s room, which was plain, with a small twin bed and a Bible on the nightstand. There were no decorations or indications that a man in his early 20’s had lived there. Police showed Mrs. Dunkle the composite sketch of the suspect from the “smoking tree”. She said that it didn’t look like her son at all. She went as far as to say that her son was gentle and would never hurt anyone like that. She backed up his alibi, saying that she left work at 3:50PM and saw her son arrive home at 4:30PM. Police left the home, stunned that Mrs. Dunkle seemed to be lying to save her son. They also believed that when Mrs. Dunkle saw the news of Lance’s murder on television, she guessed her son’s involvement, and quickly arranged for him to move to his sister’s house.
Mr. Dunkle was immediately hostile towards investigators. He told them that they needed to leave his son alone and quit trying to pin things on him. He said that his son didn’t have a drinking problem, that he didn’t stay out late at night. He said that the boys he hung out with were always trying to set him up for things he didn’t do. His son did not have a violent temper. Mr. Dunkle told police that his son had always been a good boy.
The Undercover Detective
Investigators had hit a wall. No matter how much they interviewed Dunkle, how or who questioned him, or what kind of pressure they put on him, he wouldn’t budge. He continued to tell them fantastical stories of being in the mafia and how he asked to be fired from past jobs while working for the IRS. Dunkle seemed to always remain calm when in the presence of investigators and continued to enjoy their attention, appearing to even admire some of the officers. Feeling like they had nothing left to lose, they decided to put a young female officer into Dunkle’s life as an undercover friend.
In January of 1985, Dunkle met Lisa Thomas when she was hired at his job at a Rancho Cordova Carl’s Jr. Dunkle was tasked with orienting Lisa to the job, which he took very seriously. Dunkle invited Lisa to a work gathering after her first day at a nearby bar. He polished off several beers and pointed to a poster on the wall that had the sketch of the suspect in Lance’s murder. He told Lisa that police thought that was him, that he’d killed a kid. He added that police also suspected him in the disappearance of John Davies. Officers couldn’t believe that on Lisa’s first day of wearing a wire around Dunkle, he’d brought up both Lance and John.
Lisa began hanging out with Dunkle on almost a daily basis. They’d go on bike rides or go drinking, while Dunkle told her about how there were always undercover cops following him. She wanted him to feel connected with her in hopes that he’d share more about what he’d done. She told him that police had taken away her license too. Dunkle was very excited to hear that. They went on a picnic in a park area and Dunkle told Lisa, as he wiped off his drink can, that he always cleaned his cans now ever since police found his fingerprints on a beer can at Water Dog Lake.
After more than a month of hanging out, he began to reveal more secrets to Lisa, about assaults he’d been responsible for and more drunk driving accidents he’d been in. As their relationship intensified, investigators decided to remove Lisa from Dunkle’s life after he broke into a family’s house and attempted to assault a child on one of their dates. Dunkle seemed unphased that she decided to leave.
Not long after, Dunkle was arraigned for the home break-in and ended up being sentenced to six years in prison, with the assistance of Lisa’s testimony.
The Confessions
In September of 1986, 26-year-old Dunkle was transferred to California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo. It was a medium security prison. Not long after arriving, Dunkle met 20-year-old prisoner Charles Rice. Rice, though young, was a career criminal. He was aware that Dunkle was suspected of child murders, but he thought Dunkle seemed nice enough. The two began to talk about life and difficulties they’d faced in prison. Eventually the two requested cell changes and became roommates. Dunkle told Rice stories of how he had been in the mafia and worked for the FBI, but Rice knew it was BS.
Eventually, during one talk, Dunkle told Rice that he’d seen the man who’d murdered Lance that day. Rice told him that the story was ridiculous and that if he was on his jury, that he’d convict him. Then, Dunkle admitted that he’d murdered Lance. For the next three weeks, Dunkle told Rice everything about the murder, with no emotion in his eyes. Not long after, Dunkle told Rice a story that took place in July of ‘85 in the Fair Oaks area near the bridge that connected it to Rancho Cordova. He said that while sitting at a picnic table, he saw a young boy ride by and knew that he was going to kill him. It was Sean Dannehl. He rode after him and rammed his bike, knocking Sean to the ground. The young boy was cooperative and Dunkle led him into the woods, promising not to hurt him. Despite his promises, Dunkle eventually stabbed Sean to death and left his body. He also admitted to having murdered John Davies and buried his body and the knife he’d used to kill him. Rice considered murdering Dunkle himself. Instead, he made the decision to talk to police. He told them that they had to hear about the murders that his cell mate had confessed to.
Investigators couldn’t believe their luck. Thanks to Rice, they might have Dunkle. He agreed to be wired and talk to Dunkle in the conference room. Rice convinced Dunkle that he had a connection in the FBI who could help make his problems go away. Dunkle seemed to take this to mean that he could help get rid of evidence from the murders. Eager to meet Rice’ FBI friend, Dunkle drew maps of the murder scenes and wrote papers describing the three murders in great detail, with details that only the killer would know. Detectives took Rice and Dunkle out of the jail one day, traveled around with Dunkle while he showed them specific areas where he’d murdered Sean and detailed where he’d stashed the murder weapons for all three. He indicated where he’d buried John’s remains, which were later recovered. He admitted that he’d taken him out that night while John was high on LSD and killed him. Back at the prison, in a recorded room, Dunkle confessed to the murders of Lance, Sean, and John in detail. He waived his right for an attorney and answered every question. He smiled at Rice and the officers throughout, sometimes giggling, saying that he just wanted help.
After multiple assessments by different doctors, the judge ultimately declared Dunkle competent to stand trial. His murder trial began on October 16, 1989. Closing arguments began on December 6th. Within two hours of the jury leaving to deliberate, they returned with a verdict: guilty on two counts of first-degree murder for Lance and John. In early January, Dunkle’s sentence was determined: death. While on death row, Dunkle pled guilty to the murder of Sean. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole (in case the death sentence was overturned for some reason).
Jon Dunkle is still currently on death row in California. He has had several appeals filed on his behalf to appeal his death sentence. The court questions whether he is mentally ill or not and, legally, cannot execute someone who is mentally ill. His series of appeals will likely last for a long time.
Sources for this episode
A Sore Spot from Belmont, California – HubPages
SAN FRANCISCO / High court OKs death for killer / Findings on mental competence stand
The Boy Next Door by Gretchen Brinck
