Joseph E. Duncan III broke into the Groene´s house on May 15, 2005, tied everyone up and then bludgeoned Slade, 13, his mother Brenda, 39 and his stepfather, Mark McKenzie, 37 to death with a clawhammer. He took Dylan and Shasta so he could torture and molest them.
Police who came upon the scene were stunned by the sight. There was blood and gore everywhere and the faces were nearly unrecognizable. One officer who came upon the scene was so shocked by the sight that he quit police work for months afterward. An APB went out for Shasta and Dylan.
Duncan took them in a stolen 2000 Red Cherokee jeep with Missouri license plates to a very remote campsite in the Lolo National Forest and kept them there for a few weeks, having sex with both of them and torturing Dylan. He made a video of the crimes and the video was shown to jurors and those in the courtroom. He raped Shasta and forced Shasta and Dylan to perform sex acts on each other.
The video showed Duncan raping and torturing Dylan in various ways. At one point, he takes Dylan into an old shack, where he forced Dylan to perform a sex on him and whipped him with a belt.
Then he told Dylan to stand on a bench, hung a wire around his neck, and then masturbated as he watched Dylan nearly die from hanging. “Then Jet took him down and said, ‘Wake up, wake up, wake up,’” Shasta Groene said in a police interview.
She said Dylan screamed when he woke up because he thought he had been in heaven. He then offered the half-dead Dylan an opportunity to watch his “death” by hanging on tape. A little while later, he forced Shasta to drag the half dead Dyllan through the campfire with a rope around his neck, burning him horribly. Then Duncan “accidentally” shot Dylan in the stomach with a shotgun.
He was alive and possibly could have lived for a few hours, though his guts were hanging out. Duncan decided that there was no way to save him, so he shot him in the head. It was later determined that he probably did not shoot Dylan “accidentally” after all.
After Dylan was dead, he chopped his body into little pieces and filmed himself forcing Shasta to throw the body parts on the fire. Then he forced Shasta to pick the body parts out of the fire and filmed that too.
This must set some sort of a record for evil, but I’m not sure. The FBI did say that this was the first time that they had ever heard of anyone murdering adults just to get at kids, so it does set a depravity record in that sense.
Details of whatever he did to Shasta have not been made available yet, but she was definitely raped. Normally, in this sort of thing, the names of the living kid, Shasta, would be kept secret, but her name was already out there as an APB Amber Alert, so the cat was out of the bag.
“The devil is here, boy, the devil himself. The demon couldn’t do what the devil sent him to do so the devil came himself,” Duncan yells in one of the videos. “The devil likes to watch children suffer and cry.” Duncan cracks sick jokes through the videos. In one video, Duncan jokes, “They kidnapped me – they won’t let me leave.”
In one video, he cracks, “I shouldn’t be taking pictures of you pulling up your pants like that young man – people might think I’m a pervert.” In another video, Duncan asks the kids about their wishes. Dylan says he just wants to go home.
I guess you are wondering why no one heard all this mess up in the mountains. The makeshift campsite is at the end of a very remote logging road. It’s a one-hour drive down a terrible road to get to the remote site at the bottom of a cliff. It seems like hardly anyone ever goes there.
There are a lot of remote places out in the Western forests where you can stay for weeks at a time and not see another human.
Later, on July 2, 2005, Duncan went back to a Denny’s restaurant with Shasta in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, where she was immediately spotted by a resident, who went in and told the manager, who wisely called 9-11. It was 1:30 AM and the cops pulled in with their lights off. Duncan saw the cops and took Shasta into the bathroom with him. He came out later and the police quickly surrounded the table and asked him to come outside.
Police discovered that the man was Joseph Edward Duncan III, a 43 year old fugitive sex offender from Fargo, North Dakota. He had recently been charged with molesting a 5 year old boy he knew who lived near him.
Shasta was taken back to her father, and she is with him now, as her Mom and stepfather are dead.
Joseph Edward Duncan was born, one of five in a military family, in Fort Bragg, Virginia, in 1963. His parents soon moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he grew up. He was described as lonely and displaced in high school, especially after his parents’ divorce in 1979. He soon dropped out of high school. He engaged in sex at age 8 with two of his sisters. They apparently initiated it. What this had to do with his later offenses, I have no idea.
He committed his first serious offense at age 12, when he raped a 5 year old boy, but he was not caught.
By age 15, he was charged with raping a 9 year old boy and sent to juvey. There he admitted that he had bound and raped six boys already.
He later said had already raped 13 younger boys by the time he was 16. The following year, he was arrested for stealing a car. He was a sociopath from an early age. At age 17, he was arrested, charged and sentenced to 20 years in prison (apparently as an adult) for raping a 14 year old boy at gunpoint. The tortures that he put him through were similar to those seen on the Dylan Groene tape.
At the time, he was diagnosed as a psychopath, or antisocial personality disorder under the current rubric. This condition is impossible to treat, though some of them burn out and often descend in alcoholism and depression in their 40′s. Duncan is clearly not one of those.
He was paroled 14 years later at age 33 and sent to a halfway house in Seattle. A man named David Woelfert testified at the parole board that Duncan was no threat whatsoever. He loaned Duncan $3,000 and found a place for him at a halfway house.
Woelfert is also homosexual, and for a while, Duncan and Woelfert had a gay relationship. It looks like Woelfert was conned too. In 1996, he was released from the halfway house. Almost immediately after his release from the halfway house, he violated parole by using marijuana and possessing a firearm. He was given 30 days and released.
Apparently soon afterwards, 9-year old Carmen Cubias and her 11-year old half sister, Sammiejo White, went missing from the motel where they were staying with their homeless family. A while before, Duncan was living only three blocks away from the motel where they vanished. These girls later turned up dead, and Duncan is a prime suspect, though he will probably never be charged.
The girls were last seen by their 16-year-old brother at 8:30 pm on July 6, 1996 after they left the Crest Motel in Seattle, where they were staying with older and younger siblings and their mother. The girls were used to be out at all hours and knew their way around the neighborhood very well.
They said they were going to the Taco Time where they were going to bum some spare change so they could eat and get some money for a pack of cigarettes for their brother. Apparently they never made it.
It turns out that Duncan has confessed to Shasta Groene that he killed two little girls in Seattle. He made the same confession to investigators, but he said he did not know their names.
At the time of their disappearance, Duncan was living and working in Bothell, Washington, where the girls’ bones were found almost two years later in February, 1998, by a transient staying in an abandoned barn. They had both been murdered violently, but the details could not be ascertained. But both of their skulls had been crushed.
After Duncan was arrested for the Idaho killings, a woman came forward and said that she had worked at the Quality Food Mart in Bothell that summer.
That summer she repeatedly saw a man she now says was Duncan come into the store to buy stuff accompanied by a frightened little girl, who she now identifies as Carmen Cubias. Once again, we see that Duncan keeps his victims alive for a long time, molesting and probably torturing them before killing them.
When talking to investigators, Duncan revealed enough details of the crimes, without confessing, to convince the cops that he killed the two girls. Whether he will be charged or not is not known. After he confessed, his lawyer convinced him to clam up about any other crimes he may have committed.
On March 26, 1997, Deborah Palmer, age 7, disappeared on her way to school in Oak Harbor, Washington, about 50 miles away from Seattle. Palmer disappeared while walking the two blocks from her Kettle Street apartment home to school.
Duncan had an appointment in Seattle to take a polygraph test at an unknown time. Oak Harbor would have been a 1 1/2 hour drive away. She may have been killed in Deception Pass State Park, near where her body washed up.
The week before, around March 19, Duncan had tested positive for marijuana, which would have violated his parole. Eleven days later, he quit his Bothell job, stole his girlfriend’s car and fled his Seattle home for for California to visit his father in Pahrump Nevada. That was the very same day that Palmer’s body washed up on a Pacific Ocean beach seven miles away from Oak Harbor and the story was all over the news.
She had been raped and strangled. The previous day, Deborah’s backpack and jacket were found at a gravel pit. There is no direct evidence linking Duncan to this homicide. There are also suspicions that a family member was involved.
After he fled to California, he killed again. This time, he took off from his Dad’s house in Vista and went to Beaumont, California, where he approached 10 year old Anthony Martinez and his brother who were playing in alley behind their home. He asked them to help find a lost cat, and they declined.
Duncan then put a knife to Anthony’s throat and shoved him into a white car. On April 19, Anthony’s nude body was found in a shallow grave 110 miles away in the desert near Indio, California. He had been raped and beaten to death and his skull had been crushed.
After his arrest in the Idaho killings, Duncan confessed to interrogators that he had killed a little boy in California. He also quite closely resembled the composite drawing of the suspect in the Martinez case.
At this point, he seems to have been living on the streets. Four months later, on August 27, 1997, Duncan was arrested by the FBI at his sister’s house for a parole violation and sent to prison for three years.
At the hearing for the parole violation, a Fargo, North Dakota doctor, Dr. Richard Wacksman, testified that Duncan was not dangerous anymore and that upon his release, he could stay at Wacksman’s home in Fargo. The parole board disagreed and sent him away. Upon his release on July 21, 2000, he moved to Fargo, North Dakota, but it was not long before he started killing again.
After his release, in 2000, he visited Wacksman at his home in Fargo. The neighbors found out about it and confronted Wacksman. Duncan did not return to Wacksman’s home, and Wacksman soon moved to Florida. Duncan then visited Wacksman numerous times at his Florida home, where Duncan liked to scuba dive.
I do not think this Wacksman fellow is a bad guy. Psychopaths are often very charming and have the ability to convince all sorts of decent people that they are really ok, including Dr. Wacksman.
However, it should be noted that Wacksman, while married and with family, is bisexual. It seems certain that Wacksman and Duncan had a homosexual relationship.
While Duncan was living in Fargo from 2000-2005, I believe that he did not stop killing.
On February 12, 2001, Steven Earl Kraft Jr., age 12, disappeared while walking his dogs between 8-9 PM about 1/2 block from his home. The dogs were found later, but Steven is still missing. Duncan may have been involved in this kidnapping and probable homicide.
Russell Turcotte, age 19, a Turtle Mountain Chippewa, was last seen at a truck stop in Grand Forks, North Dakota, on July 12, 2002, after spending the night with friends in Fargo, North Dakota. He was returning to his home in Wolf Point, Montana from a Rainbow Gathering in Michigan.
Surveillance cameras have now revealed that Duncan was at that truck stop hours after Turcotte was there. Turcotte was hitchhiking with a backpack home on a desolate stretch of Highway 2 west of Grand Forks at around 2 AM. He was picked up, probably by Duncan, taken to a side road near Grand Forks Air Force Base.
He was probably raped before he was killed. He was then taken to Devils Lake, 90 miles west of Grand Forks, where his partially nude body was dumped and covered with brush. His possessions have vanished, probably tossed into one of the area’s many rivers and lakes. His skull had been crushed.
Months later, in Nov. 2002, his skeleton was discovered by a rancher in a clump of trees.
The surveillance camera now has Duncan at the truck stop within hours of when Turcotte was there, so the distance question seems to be ruled out. Furthermore, July 12 was a Friday, so Turcotte was last seen on a Friday night. It appears that Duncan picked him up hitchhiking about 2 AM on the morning of Saturday, July 13 and killed him soon afterward. At some point he drove 90 miles east to dump the body.
Duncan was a college student at this time and was probably working too. It’s certainly possible that he had the whole weekend off. He had lots of free time and was always traveling to the Lakes Country in Minnesota to go scuba diving. Also, Turcotte’s skull had been crushed in the same manner that Anthony Martinez, Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias, and Slade Groene, along with Mark McKenzie had been dispatched.
In June 2003, Duncan began going on trips to Minnesota and Michigan to scuba dive. He went on dives all summer.
On June 14, 2003, Leanne "Beaner" Warner went missing from Chisholm, Minnesota. She was last seen at 5:30 PM, but was not reported missing until 9 PM. Earlier in the day, she had been at a nearby lake with her mother. Duncan was familiar with this lake. Earlier in the day, Duncan was supposedly skydiving with friends in West Fargo, North Dakota. Duncan took photos and video of this event.
On his blog, on certain days, he details everything he does, down to the last “t”. It seems he may be doing this to give himself an alibi on days when he does his crimes.
In the video, Duncan discusses scuba diving in the Chisholm area in recent days. That’s the part of Minnesota where Warner disappeared later that day. Much of the rest of the tape consists of Duncan taking video of various children running around in the air terminal.
He left the group around noon, giving him plenty of time to drive to Chisholm and kill Warner. In his very first blog entry, Duncan mysteriously mentions this crime.
On October 3, 2003, Duncan was visited by 3 police officers who accuse him of harassing women downtown. The women know who he is from the Sex Offender database and they have photos of him. He was accused of repeatedly asking them out and not going away when they told him to.
This hardly sounds like a crime. The cops say they know who he is and they watch him all the time. Guess they did not watch him enough. He writes about this incident later on his blog, The Fifth Nail.
Between late February 14 and early February 15, 2004, Justin Phillip Edwards, 13, disappeared. He was living at R. L Mills Home, a state-run facility, located at 116 East “H” Street in Casper, Wyoming since the summer of 2003. He was 5′ tall and weighed only 100 pounds and was retarded. He had the mind of a 6 year old.
In his blog entry of February 16, Duncan says he went skiing for the first time that weekend, alone. Some think he may have been involved in Edwards’ disappearance.
On July 3, 2004, Duncan molested a 7 yr old boy and trying to molest another at a school playground. He had a video camera with him. He was not caught.
In March 4, 2005, Duncan was charged with molesting a 7 year old boy and attempting to molest the boy’s friend in Detroit Lakes, Becker County, Minnesota. On April 5, a judge set his bail at $15,000. This was the July 2004 incident above.
The same day, a Fargo businessman, Joe Crary, wrote a check for that amount to the court and bailed out Duncan. Crary said he befriended Duncan when they both rode their bikes on bike trails in Fargo. Somehow, Duncan gave off the impression of being polite, soft-spoken and seemed sincere about wanting to turn his life around. Duncan also seemed sincere that he was innocent of the Minnesota charges. It should be noted, however, that Crary is apparently a homosexual who had a sexual relationship with Duncan beginning in early January 2004.
After being bailed out, Duncan made plans for his crime spree. He purchased night vision goggles and a video camcorder at a Walmart. He also purchased a shotgun, shells and a claw hammer.
On April 15, 2005, he rented a 2005 red Jeep Cherokee in St. Paul, Minnesota.
After the rental agreement was up, he never turned it back in, and on May 4, auto theft charges were filed against him. On the same day, the key tag to the stolen car was found in Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area in Wyoming, so Duncan must have been here at some point in his travels.
Between those two dates, Duncan traveled all the way to the far southwest portion of Missouri, where it meets Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas. There, on April 27, he stole license plates off a vehicle and placed them on his vehicle.
On May 12 or 13, he ended up on Frontage Road at the home where the crimes occurred. He spent the next two or three days scoping out the house and on Sunday night, he entered the home with gloves, night vision goggles, a claw hammer and a shotgun.
Brenda Groene called Shasta down to the living room from where she had been sleeping. Brenda, Mark and Slade were all tied up there. Duncan quickly hustled Shasta and Dylan outside and into his van. Then he went back in to kill the others. With blows of the claw hammer, he dispatched them.
Shasta heard Mark scream, then she saw Slade try to run out of the house, wounded. He was hauled back in and dispatched. The kids in the van did not witness the killings, but Duncan later told them how he had killed her family. He told her that the name of the hammer was a Fatmax and she learned to call him "Jet" for his initials, Joseph Edward Duncan.
Since his arrest, Duncan is blogging again with the help of others from inside prison. The blog is here.
