I honestly think that the problem with this story outside of the fact that human beings are truly awful sometimes is that the ending left me feeling dissatisfied. I wish that Olsen had interviewed more of the people involved (if still alive) to just get their thoughts about not only what happened, but the final sentencing of some of the participants. I also felt like the little boy who was the center of this case, Davey Weilbacher just became part of other people’s stories. I felt nothing but pain and sorrow for him as you read what a bunch of adults did in thrall to one man.
The Back Bedroom tells how the police in 1976 found the decomposing body of 3 year old Davey Weilbacher. Davey was beaten to death nearly two months prior to being found by the police by his mother and a bunch of people she lived with. The adults claimed that Davey was possessed by the Devil.
Things that I did like, Olsen provides enough details on the main culprit of this horrific mess Leon Cunningham and his family who he ruled with a Bible. When a former neighbor, Debra, Davey’s mother moves back home after a divorce, she gets taken in by the Cunningham family and seems all too eager to believe there’s something wrong with her son. Leon is focused on beating Davey because he believes he is possessed by the Devil. I think that for me in the end I still can’t grasp how Leon was able to control others. He seemed like a shabby man who had no particular charisma based on what I read. I just often find it baffling that people can just go along with one person tells them to do even when they know it’s wrong. Debra just seemed to be an idiot. But I was left wondering about her parents who saw bruises on Davey and her sisters did too and no one did anything.
This takes place in Washington state in the 1970s and I swear with all of the horrible true crime that has happened there, you think Washington state was built on a hellmouth.
The ending as I said comes, you know that eventually Leon, Debra, Leon’s stepdaughter Carolyn, his wife Velma, and a former wife of their son’s were all found guilty. But it didn’t feel like enough was done to that group of people who beat a three year old to death. And I have to say that I wish that we had more insight into so many of the principals in this story. I don’t know if it was because they were died, declined to speak or whatever. I felt for Davey’s father, but it felt like we didn’t revisit him at all after a certain point in the book. I think in the end this book lacked heart. It just felt very paint by numbers.
