The Boy Next Door by Gretchen Brinck, M.S.W. (September 1999)

Mentally Challenged or Just Plain Evil?
Review by Kim Cantrell

Jon Dunkle appeared to be a mild-mannered, slightly mentally-challenged young man.

Behind the public appearance lay a vicious, manipulative child killer.

Twelve-year-olds Lance Turner and Sean Dannehl would be savagely attacked in separate parks.  The common denominator?  Dunkle was living in the area at the time of the murders. 

Steve Murphy would be the victim of a drunk driving Dunkel, who then went to great lengths to leave him for dead. 

Monti Hansen would unfortunately befriend Dunkle, only to be brutally attacked in his own yard while his much younger brother lay sleeping inside. 

John Davies would disappear in the middle of the night from his parents’ home.  He and Dunkle were known to frequently sit in the Davies’ driveway and listen to Dunkle’s car stereo.  The Davies would frequently repeat to investigators, “When John vanished from our lives, so did Dunkle.”

In The Boy Next Door, author Gretchen Brinck, M.S.W. recounts the story of a killer’s five year spree and the effort of police and others to bring Dunkle to justice.  From the advocating actions of the Davies to the jailhouse confess, readers are given a step by step accounting of this case as it unfolds.

Unfortunately, Brinck’s writing style is so cut-and-dry that, at times, the reading becomes mundane.  And I was very disappointed that there appeared to be no additional efforts to learn more about Dunkle’s background; everything that is provided in the book came straight from Court records and newspaper accounts.

Being an old case, there is very little information about this case online; so that alone makes the book worth reading.  While I can’t highly recommend it, I will suggest that you add it to your reading list.

Updates:

In 2005, a California Supreme Court affirmed Dunkle’s death penalty sentence despite an aggressive effort by his defense counsel to show that he was not mentally competent to stand trial in 1986.