Jon Scott Dunkle was convicted in San Mateo County, California, of murdering two boys from Belmont: John Davies, 15, who disappeared in November 1981, and Lance Turner, 12, who was killed on October 2, 1984. A jury found true a multiple-murder special circumstance and returned a verdict of death. He also confessed to killing Sean Dannehl, 12, in Sacramento in July 1985, and that killing was put before the jury that decided his sentence. On August 4, 2005, the California Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in People v. Dunkle.
The case is unusual for two reasons. Police in Belmont suspected him for years and, according to ABC7 in San Francisco, said so publicly, but did not have the evidence to arrest him. And once he confessed, the question of whether he was mentally fit to be tried took nearly three years of hearings, hospital stays and two separate competency trials before a jury could hear the murder charges.
The California Supreme Court described Dunkle as a close friend of the Davies family of Belmont, on the San Francisco Peninsula. He was 21 in November 1981. He spent time with John Davies, 15, and with John's older brother. Evidence at trial showed that he sometimes threw rocks at the older boy's bedroom window to get him to slip out at night, and that the boys went with him to an abandoned hospital property they used as a hangout. John's mother had spent years helping him with his reading after he was found to have dyslexia, the court said.
A defense psychiatrist estimated his intelligence as low normal, with an IQ no higher than 90. By 1985 he was living and working in Sacramento, where he had a job at a fast-food restaurant. ABC7 reported that some months before 10-year-old Kevin Collins vanished in San Francisco he had held a manual labor job with the Internal Revenue Service in San Francisco.
His date and place of birth, his parents and his early schooling were not reported.
John's father reported him missing on Sunday, November 8, 1981. That morning his mother had found his bedroom empty. His older brother had last seen him the evening before, and John had left behind his belongings, including his only pair of shoes, the court said.
Dunkle helped the family put up flyers. The court noted that he came by on the Wednesday or Thursday after the report and then did not come back. Police at first treated John as a runaway. His parents searched for him for years.
In mid-1982 a Belmont detective began contacting Dunkle about the case. By September 1984 the police were treating the disappearance as a possible kidnapping and had called in the FBI.
Dunkle later told investigators that he had taken John from his home under a pretext and killed him in Redwood City, in San Mateo County. He said he had been drinking whiskey and smoking marijuana earlier that night, and that he became aggressive when he drank and smoked. He told a psychiatrist retained by the district attorney that he had wanted to kill someone since watching a movie in the sixth grade, and that with John he had thought, "here is your chance to kill someone."
John was found after Dunkle drew a map for investigators.
Lance Turner was 12 and lived in Belmont. On the afternoon of October 2, 1984, he did not return from soccer practice at a school field in the town. His mother called police at about 7 p.m. to report him missing, and he was found dead in Belmont that evening. He had been stabbed.
Boys told police where they had seen Lance heading. Three girls told investigators they had seen a young man with dirty blond hair in the same area that afternoon. He said his name was Jon and that he had graduated from Carlmont High School the year before. Their descriptions were used for a composite drawing. ABC7 reported that students who had seen someone resembling Dunkle near the scene helped an artist prepare the sketch.
Dunkle at first denied having been in that area. He told police he had been filling out job applications in Redwood City that afternoon, but the applications he described were not found, according to the court. He later said he had spent about three hours in that area drinking a six-pack of beer before the killing.
The investigation of both Belmont cases stayed open through 1984 and 1985. On December 4, 1984, a Belmont detective and an FBI agent interviewed Dunkle twice. He denied seeing John Davies on the night he vanished and was emphatic, the court said, that he had never thrown rocks at the boys' windows. On December 27, 1984, a Belmont police sergeant questioned him about Lance Turner. He again denied any part in it.
In January 1985 the Belmont police placed an undercover officer, Lisa Thomas, at the Sacramento restaurant where Dunkle worked. She saw him several days a week and sometimes went out with him. On February 9, 1985, he told her that he had lied to investigators, while still saying he was innocent of the killings. On February 28, 1985, in a recorded conversation, she told him a false story about a hit-and-run accident, and he described two attacks on other people in San Mateo County in 1982. Both people survived. Those attacks were later presented as evidence against him, though the court opinion does not record charges or convictions for them.
ABC7 reported that the undercover officer became his drinking companion, wore a wire, and called for backup when he broke into a home, and that he was charged with burglary. The California Supreme Court said that by the autumn of 1986 he was in state prison on a burglary conviction.
In August 1985 an undercover narcotics officer using a false name left a letter at Dunkle's house and followed it with a second letter and a telephone call asking for money. Dunkle did not respond, the court said.
Sean Dannehl was 12. On the evening of July 2, 1985, at about 7:30, he left a friend's house in Sacramento on his bicycle. He had not come home by 9 p.m. and was reported missing. He was found dead in Sacramento six days later.
A Sacramento detective, Robert Bell, interviewed Dunkle on July 5, 1985, while the boy was still missing. Dunkle said he knew nothing about the missing boy but admitted he had been drinking on the bicycle trail until about 8:30 that evening. He later gave hair, blood and saliva samples voluntarily, and on July 10, 1985, he walked the trail with the detective.
In his later confession to the FBI he said he had been drinking beer and smoking marijuana with friends that day. According to the court, he told the agents, "I knew right then I was going to stop him and kill him."
In 1986 Dunkle was held at the state prison in San Luis Obispo. In May and July of that year John Davies's mother met with him to ask for information about her son, according to the court; he told her he had none. ABC7 reported that she had also visited him at the state prison in Jamestown to press him to confess, and that he did not.
On September 16, 1986, his cellmate, Charles Rice, gave a statement to a Department of Corrections investigator, Michael Wiley, reporting that Dunkle had spoken to him about the killings. The California Supreme Court said Rice asked for nothing in return. ABC7, by contrast, reported that Rice went to the authorities hoping for a deal on his own manslaughter charges.
On September 22, 1986, Rice gave investigators two maps Dunkle had drawn. In late September Rice wore a wireless transmitter and recorded Dunkle describing the Davies and Turner killings, and on September 28 the prison investigator overheard him describe the Dannehl killing. Rice also told Dunkle he had a friend in the FBI who would help him if he confessed. Dunkle had said he would not go to the Belmont police because he did not trust them, but that he trusted the FBI.
On October 3, 1986, FBI agents Frank Hickey and Daniel Payne interviewed Dunkle at the San Luis Obispo prison with Rice present. He waived his rights and confessed to the Davies and Turner killings, then to the killing of Sean Dannehl, and signed a written statement. He drew maps, and investigators used them in the Davies and Turner cases.
ABC7 obtained recordings of later confessions to two Belmont police investigators, Rich Fogarty and Joe Farmer, who took him through the scenes. In those tapes he blamed marijuana and alcohol for his urge to kill and said he had confessed because he needed help.
A psychiatrist retained by the San Mateo County district attorney, James Missett, interviewed Dunkle on October 7 and October 13, 1986.
The murder case in San Mateo County Superior Court did not reach a jury for three years. On May 27, 1987, Dunkle was involuntarily admitted to Chope Hospital and diagnosed with atypical psychosis; he was discharged on June 2. On November 3, 1987, the court suspended criminal proceedings and appointed two psychiatrists, Charles Casella and George Wilkinson, and a psychologist, Alfred Fricke, to examine him.
He was admitted to the hospital a second time from May 6 to May 16, 1988. A competency hearing before a judge, without a jury, began on May 16, and on May 19, 1988, the court found him competent to stand trial.
On June 17, 1988, the court granted his request to replace his appointed lawyers, Philip Barnett and Vincent O'Malley, and Douglas Gray was appointed about a week later. The same day the court denied a renewed request for a competency hearing and refused Dunkle's request to represent himself.
On February 16, 1989, he was admitted to the hospital a third time. His lawyer declared a doubt about his competence; the court at first denied it, then on March 8, 1989, suspended proceedings again and appointed another psychiatrist, Roland Levy. A second competency trial, this time before a jury, began on July 24, 1989. Dr. Levy testified that Dunkle was incompetent and suffered from chronic schizophrenia with paranoid traits. Dr. Wilkinson diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia but said a person could have that illness and still be competent. Dr. Missett concluded that Dunkle was malingering, ruled out schizophrenia and diagnosed antisocial and borderline personality disorders and sexual sadism. On August 3, 1989, the jury found Dunkle competent.
Jury selection for the murder trial began on October 16, 1989. Before it began, on October 10, he gave up his request to represent himself.
At the trial on the Davies and Turner charges, the jury convicted him of two counts of first degree murder, found true the special circumstance of multiple murder and found that he had used a weapon. No insanity plea was entered. At the penalty phase the prosecution presented the Dannehl killing, the two 1982 attacks, a threat to kill a jail nurse and a residential burglary, along with his taped statements and confessions.
Dr. Wilkinson testified for the defense that Dunkle was a paranoid schizophrenic with antisocial traits. He had studied prison mental health records and school and police reports. In rebuttal Dr. Missett repeated his diagnosis of a mixed personality disorder with antisocial, borderline and narcissistic features and sexual sadism. The same jury returned a verdict of death.
The appeal was automatic. The California Supreme Court filed its opinion in People v. Dunkle, case S014200, on August 4, 2005, and affirmed the judgment.
Most of the opinion deals with his mental state. The court rejected his challenges to the conduct of the 1989 competency jury trial, to the evidence admitted there and to the jury instructions. It found that the trial court had erred in June 1988 by not starting new competency proceedings, but held that the error did no harm because competency was tried again in 1989, so he was not tried while a doubt about his competence was unresolved.
The court rejected his claim that he should have been given immunity so he could testify at the May 1988 competency hearing without his words being used against him later, noting that he neither testified nor offered to. It agreed that the June 1988 denial of his request to represent himself was an error, but held that he cured it when he gave up the request on October 10, 1989, so the denial of a mistrial was not prejudicial. The justices also took up a claim that the jury should have been told it could consider voluntary manslaughter based on diminished capacity in the Davies killing.
An ABC7 I-Team report by Dan Noyes said Dunkle was on death row at San Quentin, that the station had obtained a photograph of him at age 52 from the prison, and that his death sentence was on hold because a federal judge had found him incompetent to assist in his own appeal. Dunkle also sent the station a letter.
ABC7's I-Team also examined whether Dunkle could be linked to the disappearance of Kevin Collins, a 10-year-old who vanished in San Francisco after basketball practice. The station reported that documents showed Dunkle had told other inmates he killed a fourth victim around the time Kevin disappeared, and that a psychiatric report mentioned the same claim. The FBI's final report did not mention a fourth victim, and the retired agent Frank Hickey said he had never been told about it.
John Davies's father told ABC7 he had tracked Dunkle to San Francisco on the night Kevin vanished and that the San Francisco police did not want to hear it. San Francisco police later questioned Dunkle at San Quentin. He denied killing Kevin but could not say whether he had been in jail that night. He has not been charged in the case, and ABC7 reported that the Collins investigation remained open. Steve Wagstaffe, the San Mateo County district attorney, told the station: "Jon was an evil, evil man."
The Sacramento case. Dunkle confessed to killing Sean Dannehl, and the killing was presented at his penalty trial in San Mateo County. ABC7 described him as on death row for three murders, but the result of any Sacramento County prosecution was not reported.
The cellmate's motive. The California Supreme Court said Charles Rice asked for nothing in return; ABC7 reported that he hoped for a deal on his own manslaughter charges.
A fourth victim. The claim that Dunkle spoke of a fourth killing rests on prison documents and a psychiatric report described by ABC7. He has denied any role in the Collins disappearance and has not been charged.
His mental state. Doctors disagreed sharply, from chronic schizophrenia to malingering. A jury found him competent in 1989; ABC7 later reported that a federal judge found him incompetent to assist in his federal appeal.
November 7, 1981: John Davies, 15, is last seen at home in Belmont by his older brother.
November 8, 1981: John's father reports him missing.
Mid-1982: A Belmont detective begins contacting Dunkle.
1982: Two people in San Mateo County survive attacks that Dunkle later described to an undercover officer.
September 1984: Police treat John's disappearance as a possible kidnapping and call in the FBI.
October 2, 1984: Lance Turner, 12, is killed in Belmont.
December 4, 1984: Dunkle is interviewed by a Belmont detective and an FBI agent; he denies involvement.
December 27, 1984: A Belmont sergeant questions him about Lance Turner.
January 1985: An undercover Belmont officer begins working at his Sacramento workplace.
February 28, 1985: In a recorded conversation he describes the 1982 attacks.
July 2, 1985: Sean Dannehl, 12, leaves a friend's house in Sacramento on his bicycle and does not come home.
July 5, 1985: Detective Robert Bell interviews Dunkle; he denies knowing anything.
July 10, 1985: He walks the bicycle trail with the detective.
September 16, 1986: Cellmate Charles Rice reports Dunkle's admissions to a prison investigator.
Late September 1986: Rice records Dunkle describing the killings.
October 3, 1986: Dunkle confesses to FBI agents at the San Luis Obispo prison.
May 27, 1987: First involuntary hospital admission.
November 3, 1987: Criminal proceedings suspended for a competency inquiry.
May 19, 1988: A judge finds him competent.
June 17, 1988: New counsel; requests for a new competency hearing and self-representation denied.
March 8, 1989: Proceedings suspended a second time.
August 3, 1989: A jury finds him competent.
October 16, 1989: Jury selection begins in the murder trial.
After the trial that began in October 1989: Convicted of two first degree murders with a multiple-murder special circumstance; the same jury returns a death verdict.
August 4, 2005: The California Supreme Court affirms the judgment.