After 16 months deployed in East Africa, Special Operations veteran Kenneth Dunar returned home to find his wife in bed with his brother. What happened next was a masterclass in strategic warfare—civilian edition.
The C-17 Globemaster touched down at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst on a Friday afternoon in October with the bone-jarring impact that marks every military homecoming. For Kenneth Dunar, thirty-four years old and carrying the weight of four consecutive deployments, the turbulence barely registered. What awaited him on the ground would prove far more destabilizing than any rough landing.
Within three hours of touching American soil, Dunar would discover his wife of nine years in bed with his younger brother. Within three days, he would execute what legal experts now call one of the most comprehensive divorce strategies they’ve ever witnessed. And within a week, both his wife and brother would find themselves facing criminal charges, financial ruin, and a custody battle they had no chance of winning.
This is not a story about betrayal—there are thousands of those. This is a story about what happens when someone trained in strategic operations applies military precision to personal warfare. And it’s a story that raises uncomfortable questions about the intersection of justice, revenge, and the skills we teach our soldiers.
The Soldier
Kenneth Dunar doesn’t look like someone who would dismantle two lives with surgical precision. Sitting across from me in a suburban Philadelphia coffee shop, he’s soft-spoken, measured, almost gentle as he bounces his five-year-old son Jackson on his knee. His seven-year-old daughter Emma is doing homework at the table, occasionally asking her father for help with multiplication problems.
“Daddy was in the Army,” Emma explains to me matter-of-factly. “He helped people in other countries. Now he helps us.”
It’s a child’s simplification of sixteen years of military service, most of it in Special Operations. Dunar joined at eighteen, following in the footsteps of his father, a decorated Vietnam veteran who died from Agent Orange complications when Kenneth was seventeen.
“My father taught me that honor isn’t negotiable,” Dunar says, his voice still carrying the flat affect of someone trained to compartmentalize emotion. “He also taught me that preparation defeats luck every time. He used to say, ‘Hope is not a strategy.’”
That philosophy would define everything that followed.
After his father’s death, Kenneth’s mother remarried quickly—”too quickly,” he says now—to Gerald Dunar, a successful insurance broker who brought his own son Michael into the family. The two boys, separated by just two years, could not have been more different.
“Michael was the golden child,” Kenneth recalls without apparent bitterness. “Charming, social, always knew what to say. I was the serious one, the one who followed rules. My mother loved us both, but she understood Michael better. I reminded her of war. He reminded her of possibilities.”
Kenneth left for basic training the day after high school graduation in 2009. He would complete Ranger School, earn his Green Beret, and deploy to Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria over the next fifteen years. Michael, meanwhile, drifted through three years of community college, worked in their stepfather’s insurance office, and by most accounts, never found his footing.
“I didn’t judge him for not serving,” Kenneth says. “Not everyone is built for it. But I did judge him for never building anything of his own, for always looking for shortcuts.”
Those shortcuts would eventually lead to Kenneth’s guest bedroom.
The Wife
Sarah McLean was twenty-two when she met Kenneth Dunar at a veterans’ charity event in 2016. She was volunteering, he was twenty-five and fresh off his first deployment to Iraq, and by all accounts, the attraction was immediate.
“Sarah represented everything I thought I was fighting for,” Kenneth says. “Normalcy. The American dream. Home.”
They married eight months later. Emma arrived within a year, Jackson two years after that. From the outside, they looked like the perfect military family: attractive couple, beautiful children, nice house in a good school district.
But Kenneth was gone more than he was present. Second deployment. Third deployment. The army kept sending him back because, as he puts it, “when you’re good at what you do in Special Operations, they keep needing you.”
His fourth and final deployment—sixteen months in East Africa training local forces to combat extremist groups—would prove the breaking point. He missed Jackson’s first day of kindergarten, Emma’s ballet recital, two Christmases, and, as he would discover, his wife falling in love with his brother.
“I suspected something was wrong before I left,” Kenneth admits. “Small things. The way she angled her phone away when texting. How Michael started coming around more often, always with excuses about helping with the kids or fixing things around the house.”
What Kenneth did next separates his story from countless other tales of military infidelity.
“I installed monitoring software on our home computer before I left—completely legal since I owned it and it was in my house. I also set up security cameras, telling Sarah they were for safety while I was deployed.”
Over the next sixteen months, Kenneth Dunar built what his attorney, Oliver Harvey, calls “the most comprehensive divorce case I’ve seen in forty years of practice.”
The Evidence
The USB drive sits on Oliver Harvey’s desk like a bomb. The sixty-three-year-old attorney, a family law specialist who has been practicing since 1985, handles it with something approaching reverence.
“This,” he says, “is sixteen months of continuous documentation. Timestamped photographs of Michael’s car in Kenneth’s driveway overnight—sometimes three, four times a week. Bank statements showing cash withdrawals from their joint account that Sarah used for hotels. Text message backups. Security camera footage. It’s extraordinary.”
But the evidence goes deeper than simple adultery documentation.
Three months into Kenneth’s deployment, Sarah opened a credit card in his name. The signature was forged, the charges excessive—$47,000 in eight months for jewelry, restaurants, and a weekend trip to the Bahamas that Sarah had described to Kenneth as a “girls’ trip.”
“I have the passenger manifest,” Kenneth says, pulling out another folder. “Michael was on that flight. They stayed in the same room. She charged it to a card in my name while I was training militia forces in Somalia.”
The charges include identity theft and fraud—both federal offenses made more serious by the fact that Kenneth was deployed at the time.
“There are enhanced penalties for crimes committed against service members during deployment,” explains Zack Schwarz, the District Attorney for Burlington County who would eventually prosecute the case. “It’s considered particularly egregious. Sarah Dunar didn’t just commit fraud—she committed fraud against a deployed soldier.”
But the most damaging evidence involved the children.
Kenneth’s security cameras captured multiple instances of Sarah leaving seven-year-old Emma and five-year-old Jackson alone in the house while she went to meet Michael. The footage shows Emma, frightened, knocking on her mother’s locked bedroom door while Michael was inside. Audio recordings captured Sarah yelling at her daughter to “go away.”
“That was the moment I knew this wasn’t just about divorce,” Kenneth says, his voice dropping to something harder. “This was about protecting my kids from someone who was failing them as a mother.”
School records showed missed parent-teacher conferences, forgotten permission slips, and a marked decline in both children’s academic performance. Jackson’s pediatrician had called Kenneth—deployed overseas—because Sarah had missed vaccination appointments by six months.
“Medical neglect,” Oliver Harvey notes. “Combined with documented emotional neglect and adultery conducted in the family home. Pennsylvania doesn’t typically grant sole custody, but Kenneth had built an unassailable case.”
The Brother
Michael Dunar’s story intersects with Kenneth’s in ways that would prove legally devastating.
In 2024, while Kenneth was deployed, Michael started a business: Dunar Premium Autodetailing. On paper, it looked legitimate—a veteran-owned small business specializing in high-end vehicle detailing. In practice, it was built on fraud.
“Michael used Kenneth’s military credentials and veteran status to secure preferential contracts with the VA and local government,” explains Trevor Carol, an investigator with the VA Office of Inspector General. “He listed Kenneth as a co-owner, forged his signature on incorporation documents, and claimed veteran-owned business status using Kenneth’s DD214 discharge papers.”
The scheme secured over $340,000 in government contracts reserved for veteran-owned businesses. It also constituted multiple federal crimes: fraud, identity theft, and what prosecutors called “stolen valor by proxy.”
“Kenneth was in Somalia,” Carol emphasizes. “There is no possible way he could have signed incorporation documents, attended business meetings, or participated in any aspect of this company. We have his commanding officer’s testimony, deployment records, even timestamped photographs placing him in East Africa during key dates Michael claimed they were meeting about the business.”
But there was more to Michael’s past than anyone in the family had known.
“I did some digging,” DA Schwarz says. “Michael had a sealed juvenile record—shoplifting, passing bad checks. And three years ago, he was questioned in a credit card fraud scheme but never charged. This guy had been running scams his whole life.”
Kenneth’s mother, Patricia Dunar, had never mentioned any of this to her son.
“She knew,” Kenneth says flatly. “She knew Michael had problems, knew he was using my name, and said nothing. Family loyalty, she called it. I call it enabling.”
The Homecoming
Friday, October 18, 2024, 3:47 PM. Kenneth Dunar’s Uber pulled up to the house he’d been paying the mortgage on for nine years. Michael’s leased BMW sat in the driveway. Kenneth paid the driver, grabbed his duffel, and used his key to enter.
The house was quiet. Then he heard it: Sarah’s laugh from upstairs, followed by Michael’s voice.
Kenneth dropped his duffel at the base of the stairs. The thud was deliberate. Footsteps rushed across the floor above. Sarah appeared at the top of the stairs, wearing one of Kenneth’s old Army t-shirts and nothing else. Michael stood behind her, shirtless.
“Kenneth,” Sarah’s voice cracked. “You… you weren’t supposed to be back until next week.”
What happened next has become the subject of considerable legal discussion. Kenneth didn’t yell, didn’t threaten, didn’t become violent. Instead, he asked a single question: “Where are Emma and Jackson?”
After confirming the children were at Sarah’s mother’s house, Kenneth simply left. But not before informing Sarah that his lawyer would be in touch about “arrangements.”
“The restraint he showed in that moment is remarkable,” notes Dr. Patricia Gomez, a psychologist who specializes in veteran transition issues. “He’d been trained for sixteen years to control his emotional responses, to think tactically even under stress. Most people would have exploded. Kenneth executed a tactical withdrawal.”
Within an hour, Kenneth was sitting in a diner with Oliver Harvey, laying out a comprehensive legal strategy that Harvey describes as “military precision applied to family law.”
The plan had multiple phases, all designed to execute simultaneously:
Phase One: Emergency custody hearing Monday morning, filed simultaneously with divorce papers.
Phase Two: Restraining order against both Sarah and Michael, forcing Sarah out of the family home.
Phase Three: Criminal complaints filed with the VA Office of Inspector General and the Small Business Administration regarding Michael’s business fraud.
Phase Four: Criminal charges filed against Sarah for identity theft and fraud related to the forged credit card.
Phase Five: Civil suits against both for alienation of affection and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“Most people going through a divorce are emotional, reactive,” Harvey explains. “They make decisions based on hurt feelings. Kenneth made decisions based on strategic objectives. His primary objective was protecting his children. Every action supported that goal.”
The Wedding
Saturday, October 19, 2024. While Kenneth Dunar sat in a rental car outside his mother-in-law’s house, Sarah and Michael were preparing for their wedding—a small ceremony planned for that afternoon.
At 7:15 AM, Kenneth’s children emerged from the house, dressed for the wedding. Emma wore a purple flower girl dress. Jackson wore a miniature suit.
“Daddy!” Emma dropped her flower basket and ran across the lawn. Kenneth caught her, and something in his carefully constructed emotional control cracked.
“You’re home? Mommy said you wouldn’t be home until next week!”
Kenneth spent the next ten minutes with his children, then faced his mother-in-law, Gwendalyn Atkinson. What followed was a conversation that Gwendalyn would later describe in court as “the moment I realized everything Sarah had told me was a lie.”
Kenneth showed her the evidence—not all of it, he wasn’t cruel enough to show intimate photos—but enough. The forged credit card statements, the timeline of the affair, Emma’s teacher’s written concerns, Jackson’s missed medical appointments.
“I didn’t know,” Gwendalyn says now, her voice heavy with regret. “Sarah said they’d agreed to separate, that Kenneth had moved on. She lied about everything.”
Kenneth gave Gwendalyn a choice: support Sarah or maintain a relationship with her grandchildren. Not both.
Then he took Emma and Jackson to the zoo.
“I wanted them to have a good day,” Kenneth explains. “They were about to find out their parents were getting divorced, that their world was changing. They deserved one more day of just being kids.”
By 3:00 PM, around the time Sarah and Michael were exchanging vows, Kenneth was meeting with Sergeant Major Michael Culie, a military veteran with connections throughout the defense community.
“Guys like Michael make it harder for legitimate veteran businesses,” Culie says, his jaw tight. “We take care of our own, but that means we also police our own. Kenneth served with honor. His brother stole that honor for profit. We don’t forgive that.”
By Sunday evening, Kenneth had statements from his command, testimony from fellow soldiers, and a file documenting exactly where he’d been and what he’d been doing during every date Michael claimed they’d worked together on the business.
At 11:03 PM, Kenneth received a text from an unknown number: a photo of Sarah and Michael at their wedding, looking radiant. The message read: “From your loving brother and his new wife. Sorry you couldn’t be there.”
Kenneth stared at the photo for a long moment, then filed it as evidence. Let them have this moment, he thought. Because Monday morning, reality would arrive.
Monday Morning
October 21, 2024, 9:03 AM. A process server arrived at Sarah’s workplace—she’d returned to her maiden name already, with suspicious speed—and served her with divorce papers, an emergency custody motion, and a restraining order.
“She turned sheet white,” the process server’s report noted. “Had to be helped to a chair.”
At 9:47 AM, Michael was served at his business. “He became aggressive,” the report stated.
At the same time, the VA Office of Inspector General froze Michael’s business accounts pending investigation. His employees—three of them—arrived for work to find the doors locked and a federal notice posted.
Kenneth was at Oliver Harvey’s office when the confirmations came through. Also present were DA Zack Schwarz and Trevor Carol from the VA Inspector General’s office.
“The business fraud is extensive,” Carol said, spreading documents across the conference table. “These signatures are obvious forgeries. He secured over three hundred forty thousand dollars in preferential government contracts. This is multiple counts of fraud, identity theft, and stolen valor.”
“We’re talking federal charges,” Schwarz added. “And given Kenneth’s service record and the fact he was deployed during most of these crimes, we’re pushing for maximum sentences.”
Kenneth’s phone buzzed. The forty-eighth call from Sarah since Saturday. He declined it.
What happened over the next seventy-two hours would become a case study in what legal experts call “overwhelming force in family law.”
The Aftermath
By Tuesday afternoon, Sarah’s attorney had called Oliver Harvey requesting a settlement meeting.
“They want to negotiate,” Oliver informed Kenneth. “Sarah will give you primary custody, the house, most assets. She wants supervised visitation and is asking you not to file criminal charges.”
Kenneth’s response was immediate: “No deal.”
His counteroffer was non-negotiable: Full custody, no visitation without his explicit approval, the house and all assets, and criminal charges would proceed as planned.
“Prepare for war,” Oliver had written in his response to Sarah’s attorney.
“I’d been preparing for war since the day I read that first text message,” Kenneth says now. “This was just the execution phase.”
The legal proceedings that followed were, by all accounts, brutal.
“I’ve seen contentious divorces,” says Judge Margaret Walsh, who presided over the custody hearing. “But I’ve never seen one where one party had so thoroughly documented the other party’s failures. Kenneth Dunar came with evidence that would have convicted his wife in criminal court, and he was using it in family court.”
The evidence was overwhelming:
- 47 instances of Sarah leaving the children alone or in inadequate care
- 23 missed medical appointments
- 14 missed school conferences
- Bank records showing $89,000 spent on the affair over 16 months
- Text messages discussing how to hide the affair from Kenneth
- Security footage showing Michael in the family home overnight with the children present
- Testimony from Emma’s teacher about the girl’s declining emotional state
“The clincher was when Emma’s therapist testified,” Oliver Harvey recalls. “The court had appointed a child psychologist to evaluate both children. Emma had told her that she used to hear ‘Uncle Michael’ in Mommy’s room and it made her scared. That’s when the judge’s face changed.”
Judge Walsh granted Kenneth full custody with no visitation for Sarah pending psychological evaluation and completion of parenting classes. She also ordered Sarah to vacate the family home immediately and barred Michael from any contact with the children.
“The court finds that the mother has demonstrated a pattern of neglect, poor judgment, and prioritization of her own desires over her children’s wellbeing,” Walsh’s ruling stated. “The father has demonstrated commitment, stability, and the children’s best interests remain with him.”
The Criminal Cases
The criminal proceedings moved forward on parallel tracks.
Sarah was charged with identity theft, fraud, and forgery—all felony offenses. The fact that Kenneth was deployed at the time enhanced the charges under federal law protecting service members.
“We offered her a deal,” DA Schwarz says. “Plead guilty, make restitution, get probation. She refused. She wanted to fight it.”
The trial lasted three days. It took the jury forty minutes to convict on all counts. Sarah received eighteen months in federal prison, followed by five years probation, and was ordered to pay full restitution of $47,000 plus interest and court costs.
Michael’s case was more complex and more serious.
“He was facing multiple federal charges,” explains Assistant US Attorney Jennifer Chen, who prosecuted the case. “Fraud, identity theft, wire fraud, false claims to the government. If convicted on all counts, he was looking at 8-10 years minimum.”
Michael took a plea deal: four years in federal prison, forfeiture of all business assets, and a ban from ever applying for government contracts. He was also ordered to pay restitution of $340,000 to the VA.
“He has no way to pay that,” his public defender noted. “He’ll be paying it off for the rest of his life.”
Patricia Dunar, Kenneth’s mother, tried to intervene. She called Kenneth forty-eight hours after the process servers arrived.
“What have you done? Do you know what you’ve done to your brother?” she’d demanded.
“He’s a criminal,” Kenneth responded. “You want to defend that? Fine. But don’t call me again.”
He blocked her number. He hasn’t spoken to her since.
“That was the hardest part,” Kenneth admits now. “Not the divorce, not the legal battle. Losing my mother. Or realizing I never really had her.”
The Ethics Question
Kenneth Dunar’s case has sparked considerable debate in legal and military communities.
“Was it justice or was it revenge?” asks Dr. Michael Torres, an ethics professor at Georgetown University who has studied the case. “Kenneth had every legal right to do what he did. But the comprehensiveness of his approach—the surveillance, the documentation, the simultaneous legal attacks on multiple fronts—raises questions about proportionality.”
Others disagree vehemently.
“He protected his children,” counters family law attorney Rebecca Sanderson, who has written about the case. “Everything he did was legal, and more importantly, it was necessary. Sarah was neglecting those kids. Michael was committing federal fraud. Kenneth didn’t create these situations—he documented them and sought appropriate legal remedies.”
The military community is similarly divided.
“We teach soldiers to be tactical, to gather intelligence, to execute operations with precision,” says Colonel James Murphy (Ret.), who served with Kenneth in Afghanistan. “Then we’re surprised when they apply those skills to civilian life? Kenneth did exactly what we trained him to do: identify a threat, gather intelligence, and neutralize it.”
But others worry about the implications.
“What happens when we train people in psychological operations, surveillance, tactical planning, and then send them back to civilian life?” asks Dr. Gomez, the veteran psychologist. “Kenneth’s case is extreme, but it’s not unique. We’re seeing more veterans applying military tactics to civilian disputes. It’s effective, but is it healthy?”
Kenneth himself seems unbothered by the debate.
“I had two objectives,” he says simply. “Protect my children and ensure that the people who betrayed me faced consequences for their actions. I accomplished both objectives using legal means. I don’t see the ethical dilemma.”
Two Years Later
Emma is now nine, Jackson is seven. They live with their father in the same house Kenneth bought a decade ago, though it looks different now—brighter, cleaner, with photos of their father in uniform on the walls and a large calendar in the kitchen marking his presence, not his absence.
Kenneth left the military after his final deployment. He works now as a consultant for a defense contractor, a job that keeps him stateside and home every night.
“The kids are doing well,” their court-appointed therapist reports. “They’ve stabilized. Emma’s grades are back up, Jackson hasn’t had any behavioral issues in over a year. Kenneth is an attentive, present parent.”
Sarah completed her prison sentence and is currently on probation. She has supervised visitation with the children once a month—Kenneth’s decision, not the court’s.
“I want them to have a relationship with their mother,” he explains. “But it will be on my terms, when I’m confident she won’t hurt them again.”
Michael is still incarcerated. He’ll be released in 2027, a thirty-four-year-old man with no business, no assets, and a criminal record that will follow him forever.
Patricia Dunar has reached out several times. Kenneth hasn’t responded.
“Maybe someday,” he says. “But she chose. She chose to protect Michael instead of acknowledging what he’d done. That choice has consequences.”
The Lesson
If Kenneth Dunar’s story has a moral, it’s a complicated one.
“This is what happens when someone has the skills, patience, and dedication to absolutely destroy the people who wronged them,” Oliver Harvey observes. “Most people can’t do this. They don’t have the emotional control, the tactical thinking, or frankly, the ruthlessness. Kenneth did.”
But Kenneth himself frames it differently.
“I was a soldier,” he says. “My job was to protect people who couldn’t protect themselves. Sarah and Michael were threats to my children. I neutralized those threats using the tools available to me. Any good father would do the same.”
Would they? Could they?
“The question isn’t whether Kenneth was justified,” Dr. Torres argues. “The question is what kind of society we’re creating when we train people to think this way, then send them back to live normal lives. Kenneth Dunar isn’t a villain. But he’s not exactly a hero either. He’s something new: a veteran who brought the war home in ways we never anticipated.”
As I prepare to leave the coffee shop, Emma finishes her homework and asks her father if they can get ice cream. Jackson is already putting his jacket on, excited about the prospect.
Kenneth looks at his children with an expression I can’t quite read. Love, certainly. Relief, perhaps. But also something harder, more vigilant—the look of someone who has learned that peace requires constant protection, that safety is never guaranteed, that you must always be ready for the next threat.
“Sure, guys,” he says, standing up. “Let’s go get ice cream.”
As they walk out, Emma takes her father’s hand. Jackson runs ahead, then comes back to grab Kenneth’s other hand. They’re a unit, a family that has survived something that destroys most families.
Behind them, somewhere, are a woman in a probation office and a man in a prison cell, both paying the price for betraying someone who knew how to make them pay.
Kenneth Dunar never deployed again after that October homecoming. But in many ways, he never came home from war either. He simply chose a new battlefield, one where the enemies were closer, the stakes more personal, and the weapons more devastating than anything he’d carried overseas.
Whether that makes him a cautionary tale or a success story depends entirely on your perspective.
His children, at least, seem to have an answer. As they disappear around the corner toward the ice cream shop, I can hear their laughter—the sound of two kids who have learned, perhaps too young, that their father will always protect them, no matter what it costs.
Even if the cost is everything else.
[END]
