"...[T]he world will know who I really was, and what I really did... I am scared, alone, and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society. My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die." -Joseph Duncan

There's not much worse in humanity than those who prey on children, plucking them from their lives and innocence life flowers in a garden ready for the taking.

As is common in such cases, Duncan and his four siblings were heavily abused as children (by their mother). His sister Cheri Cox testified that "When she was beating on you, if you fought back, it was worse. In his case, he just took what she gave and kind of whimpered off into his bedroom."

Joseph Duncan was born on the 25th of February 1963. He was the fourth born of five children and the oldest son at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina. With his father active in the military, the family moved around frequently, eventually landing in Tacoma, Washington. Here they stayed until Duncan was a teenager.

Childhood abuse can manifest in the abused in many different ways. Some people are able to move past it, live "normal" lives...have a family and live a life without exhibiting that same violence that was inundated within their lives as children. Others, however, do not follow this path, but instead that anger, hurt, betrayal and violence, leads them down an entirely different path altogether.

And this is often the case with males abused as children by either parent. However, boys that are abused by their mothers often display much more violent tendencies as the psychological connection between a mother and son is very different than a mother and daughter, father and daughter, or father and son...

This is not an excuse for such behaviors as the rape and murder of children, but a psychological fact.

In 1978, at the age of 15, Duncan committed his first (known) sex crime. He raped a(n unnamed) nine-year-old boy whom he'd held a gunpoint. A crime for which he was arrested for.

(I was unable to find a lot of detail for most of his crimes or early life...the overall conditions of his childhood, relationships, behaviors and the like...so my details on all of his crimes are limited at best with the exception of his last crime...which seems to be the main focus surround him. But I will detail what I can leading up to his being caught.)

In '79 he was once again arrested. This time is was for driving around in a stolen car and was sentenced as a juvenile. For this, he was sent to Dyslin's Boys Ranch, where he was entered into therapy.

During this time, his parents divorced, his father remarried and his three older sisters moved out of the house. He wasn't at the ranch long, being released after only a few months.

In 1980, also in Tacoma Washington, he raped another (unnamed) 14 year old boy, after abducting him and (once again) holding him at gunpoint, after stealing multiple guns from a neighbor. For this crime, he was convicted for twenty years, serving fourteen before being paroled with the condition that he would not have interactions with minors.

Once released, he was sent to a half-way house, though he didn't stay, living in multiple places in and around Seattle. He would eventually violate his parole two years later after being arrested for marijuana and firearm possession.

He served one month before being released again, this time with updated parole restrictions. It was during this time period that Duncan is believed to have murdered a 10 year-old boy named Anthony Michael Martinez in Indio, California in 1997. There are more people believed to be victims within this time period, but none (legally) confirmed.

On the 31st of March, 1997, Duncan once again violated his parole when he stole his girlfriend's car, later being arrested on the 27th of August at his half-sister's house in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was once again sent back to prison.

He was once again released on July 14th, 2000, for good behavior where he moved to Fargo, North Dakota. On July 3rd of 2004, Duncan, while in Detroit Lakes Minnesota, molested a boy at a playground, attempting to do the same to the boy's friend. He was arrested and charged for this in March of 2005.

A friend of his, a Fargo business man, posted his $15,000 bail in March of '05, and was released on the 5th of April.

Now...for want of a better term...this is where the real story begins. I say this because it is within the last story where the details of his crimes are focused.

After he'd posted bail, he made travel arrangements, with the plan of skipping bail. He stopped by a Wal-Mart, buying night-vision goggles and a video camcorder. He also rented a red 2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee on the 15th of April. Once he had a vehicle, he went through parts of Missouri and on the 27th of April, stole a set of license plates in Newton County, Missouri. One week later, on the 4th of May, the Jeep was reported stolen.

On June 1st, he was issued a federal warrant for not showing up for his trial. At the time that the warrant was being issued, Duncan was traveling down I-90, going through either South Dakota or possibly Wyoming, where he was heading west bound toward Idaho.

Once in Idaho, he found himself in a neighborhood near Coeur d'Alene. As he was driving around the neighborhood, he spotted Shasta and her older brother Dylan playing in their front yard. His interests in the two kids were strong. Returning to the neighborhood later that night, he essentially cased the house from a safe distance, employing the use of his night-vision goggles. Reportedly, he stalked the family for days, learning their routine as he prepared for his next move.

May 15th is the day he put his plans into fruition. On this day the family, which consisted of 40 year old Brenda Groene, her 37 year-old boyfriend, and the children. 13 year-old Slade, 9 year-old Dylan, and 8 year-old Shasta, all went out running errands, before coming back to join a celebration barbecue.

Earlier in the day, Salde had mowed a neighbor's yard and the neighbor promised to drop off the money the next day. However, when he arrived at the house, it seemed no one was home, though the dog was barking incessantly from inside the home.

The neighbor also noticed that the family's car was parked in the driveway. However, there was something nefarious about the car, as all the doors were open. Suspicious, the neighbor called 911.

When authorities arrived, they found the bodies of Brenda, and Slade in the kitchen, and Mark McKenzie was found dead in the living room. The two youngest children were not there. They were all beaten to death with a blunt object.

The house and roads were sealed off, the entire area considered a crime scene.

A search was underway for Dylan and Shasta. Volunteers amassed to search for them by the Kootenai County Search and Rescue. They searched the woods that surrounded the property, Lake Coeur d'Alene, and a nationwide AMBER alert was issued as well.

Soon thereafter, on the 18th of May, the police found a person of interest in the case. Or so they thought, anyway. This man was 33 year-old Robert Roy Lutner: AKA "Concrete Bob". He was a worker in the concrete industry with a rather lengthy criminal record. He was believed to have visited the family on the day of the murders. A relative of Lutner told authorities that Lutner owed Brenda and Mark $2,000.

Upon Lutner's discovery that the police were looking for him, he turned himself in with the claim that he had nothing to do with the murders or the disappearance of Dylan and Shasta. He past a polygraph test, past it, and was no longer considered of interest to the police.

While the investigation was still on-going, the FBI as well as other local agencies, joined the search. The FBI offered a $100,000 reward for information that would lead to the kids' recoveries.

Shasta later testified that Duncan had tied her and Dylan up. They were placed on the floor of his Jeep. "He said there are rules, and he wanted us to call him 'Daddy' and that if we tried to run away he would shoot us."

As she told her story, she would say that he was emotionally unstable, quickly going in cycles from one emotion to the next. She said that he would be incredibly cruel before turning into a nice, warm person. He threatened them by saying he was going to kill them with the hammer he had killed their mother with...and then spoke of regret for committing those murders.

"He felt bad for our parents', it was wrong, and all the other kind of stuff. He said that I taught him how to love. He thought that he had to kidnap us and kill us, but after all he found out it was a sickness that was telling him to do it. ...He thought God was telling him to do it."

He abused them both, including sexually. According to Shasta's testimony, his cruelty was more so when it came to Dylan than with her. She said that he had tied Dylan to a log, beating him with a stick until it broke. "It was really horrible," Shasta said. "He...told Dylan that Dylan was a coward, which he wasn't. Dylan was a very brave boy," Shasta said when she testified about how he taunted the boy for being afraid of the dark.

Duncan had promised to return the two of them home, however, this wasn't the case. Shasta said that she did not see the initial shot that hit Dylan, but that she found him lying on the ground crying from a gunshot to the stomach.

Duncan told Shasta that the first shot was an accident, happening as he was searching for beer in a trash can/dumpster. The second shot, the shot that would end Dylan's life, was calculated. Shasta told of how Duncan put the shotgun barrel to the boy's head and pulled the trigger, but the shot didn't fire. After reloading, ignoring Dylan's pleas not to kill him, ended his life.

Building a fire, Duncan burned Dylan's body, along with the bloodied clothes, depositing the ashes into a drain pipe that flowed into a river. "There's nothing left," Shasta said.

Reportedly, Shasta was able to gain Duncan's trust and confidence. She made him believe that she wanted to stay with him, saying, "I can be your daughter", and even convinced him to stop choking her by pleading and using his nick name, "Jet".

Not wanting to get caught, he stuck to back roads while they drove. He told Shasta that he would drop her off at the local PD after they went and saw Star Wars, as he wanted to see it before he went to prison.

Then came the day that it all came to an end. This was the 2nd of July, a full 48 days after Shasta and her brother were kidnapped. Two young men were smoking cigarettes outside of a Denny's they had entered in Coeur d'Alene, recognized Duncan and Shasta from billboards along the roadside he'd seen earlier that day. One of the guys told his girlfriend, who worked at the restaurant, as well as other employees. Though some of the workers had already recognized them before he came in to tell his girlfriend.

The manager called 911 at 1:51 p.m. and soon thereafter the police were on the scene where Duncan was arrested and Shasta was taken to the hospital where she remained for a couple of days. After her stay, she was said to be in good health, psychically.

Armed with the details that Shasta had given them, the investigators were able to find Dylan's remains off of a remote Forest Service road int he Bitterroot Mountains; an autopsy confirming that he had been shot to death and then subsequently burned.

The police also discovered a blog that Duncan had that claimed he had killed more people and the FBI, not taking this lightly, along with other investigators across five states, put together a timeline of where he traveled and any open, unsolved cases that revolved around the rape or murder of any children.

His first day in court was July 13th. He was charged with three counts of kidnapping in the first degree for the deaths of Brenda and Slade Groene and Mark McKenzie. Charges for kidnapping Dylan and Shasta were taken up by the FED's since taking children across state lines (with the intent of sexual exploitation) is a federal offense.

Lawyers being lawyers, they were able to get the court dates pushed back and pushed back and Duncan was able to work out a deal with all the courts he had to face. On these conditions, he had to cooperate with the Kootenai County investigators in the murder and abductions. Also a condition was that he could not recant his guilty plea and if he was not convicted in any similarly pending charges in the federal court, the state of Idaho would withhold the death penalty. If this were to be the case, Shasta would not have to testify.

Pending the outcome of the federal case(s), he was sentenced to three consecutive life sentences, without the possibility of parole.

In April of 2008, Duncan fired his legal team, deciding to represent himself...and...while this is perfectly within someone's right to do so...anyone who would represent themselves has a fool for a client, as the old saying goes.

It was determined that he was competent enough to represent himself and on August 27th, the jury recommended the death penalty after only a few hours of deliberation.

The judge sentenced Duncan to three death sentences for "kidnapping in resulting death, sexual exploitation of a child resulting in death, and use of a firearm in a violent crime resulting in death". These charges were for Dylan's murder. On the 3rd of November, he was sentenced to an additional three consecutive life sentences the Shasta's abduction as well as the sexual abuse done to her and Dylan.

Evidence was also gathered by way of a partial thumb-print and he was charged with the murder of Anthony Martinez which was discovered on a piece of duct tape near Anthony's body.

On the 15th of March, 2011, Duncan pleaded guilty to Anthony's murder and was sentenced to two life sentences (after being sentenced to death in the federal court) after being extradited to California. He could not appeal these charges, nor would he be granted parole.

Anthony's mother, upon finding out that he didn't serve his full 20 years back in 1980, said, "How do you get out for good behavior? Someone like that can't be rehabilitated. I don't care what psychologists say."

He was placed in the Terre Haute, Indiana prison where he died in 2021 from brain cancer at the age of 58.

Possible victims:

March 31, 1997, Oak Harbor, Washington: Deborah Palmer, 7 (disappeared on March 27)

February 10, 1998, Bothell, Washington: Sammiejo White age 11 and Carmen Cubias (Sammiejo's half sister, age 9) disappeared on July 6, 1996 in Seattle, Washington; confessed to their murders, but wasn't charged

Unspecified dates in 2005: Possibly stalked the following:

Unnamed girl, 10

Her unnamed sister

Her sister's unnamed friend

During his stay at Dyslin's Boys' ranch, Duncan once told a therapist that he had bound and sexually assaulted six boys, and also raped an estimated thirteen others.

After being released from the hospital, Shasta went to live with her father. She's had many trials to overcome since this happened, as you can imagine. And while she has made some mistakes along the way, she seems to have gotten her life back on track.