Jon Scott Dunkle killed three boys in California over four years, the first of them the son of a family he was close to. The California press called him the Peninsula Serial Killer.
He was born in 1961. In November 1981, aged twenty-one, he was a friend of the Davies family when fifteen-year-old John Davies disappeared. Lance Turner, twelve, was killed in 1984 and Sean Dannehl, twelve, in 1985, in San Mateo and Sacramento counties. All three were stabbed. Press coverage at the time described him as a thrill killer of adolescent boys.
He was arrested on October 3, 1986 and sentenced to death on February 7, 1990. The California Supreme Court's opinion in his case sets out the facts of all three killings. He remains under sentence of death; no execution has taken place, and California has carried out none since 2006.