Joseph Edward Duncan III

Joseph Edward Duncan III (February 25, 1963 – March 28, 2021) was an American convicted serial killer and child molester who was on death row in federal prison following the 2005 kidnappings and murders of members of the Groene family of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. He was also serving 11 consecutive sentences of life without parole for the 1997 murder of Anthony Martinez of Beaumont, California. Additionally, he confessed to—but had not been charged with—the 1996 murder of two girls, Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias, in Seattle, Washington. At the time of the attack on the Groene family, Duncan was on the run from a child molestation charge in Minnesota.

During his incarceration, authorities connected Duncan with the unsolved murders of Anthony Martinez in California and two girls in Seattle, which all occurred when Duncan was on parole from 1994 to 1997. In all, he was convicted in Idaho for kidnapping and murdering the three victims in Coeur d'Alene, for which he was given six life sentences: in federal court for kidnapping Shasta and Dylan Groene and murdering Dylan, for which he was given three death sentences and three life sentences; and in the state of California for kidnapping and murdering Martinez, for which he was given two life sentences.

Duncan died on March 28, 2021, at the age of 58, as a result of a terminal brain tumor.

Early life and criminal history Joseph Edward Duncan III was born at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, on February 25, 1963. He was the fourth of five children born to Joseph Edward Duncan Jr and Lillian Mae Duncan. He had three older sisters and a younger brother. His father was in the United States Army. Because of this, the family moved from city to city within the U.S. and abroad, changing locations every year or two until the elder Duncan retired to Tacoma, Washington when the younger was around 12 years old. His mother was described as a domineering woman. After being arrested in 1980, he claimed to have been abused as a child; however, his younger brother disputed this. His parents split up in 1979 and divorced in 1983. His sisters soon left the household all at once, and he remained behind with his mother while his brother went to live with their father after some time. His father would later remarry, giving Duncan a stepfamily. He attended Lakes High School but did not graduate.

Duncan had a long history as a violent sexual predator. He committed his first recorded sex crime in 1978 when he was 15 years old. In that incident, he raped a 9-year-old boy at gunpoint. The following year, he was arrested for driving a stolen car. He was sentenced as a juvenile and sent to the Jessie Dyslin Boys Ranch in Tacoma, where, according to a report by the Associated Press, he told a therapist assigned to his case that he had bound and sexually assaulted six boys. He also told the therapist that he estimated that he had raped 13 younger boys by the time he was aged 16.

In 1980, Duncan stole several guns from a neighbor and abducted a 14-year-old boy, raping him at gunpoint. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for this crime but was released on parole in 1994 after serving 14 years. While out on parole, Duncan is known to have lived in several places in the Seattle area. He was arrested again in 1996—this time for marijuana use—and released on parole several weeks later with new restrictions. Authorities believe that he murdered Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias in Seattle in 1996 and Anthony Martinez in Riverside County, California, in 1997, during his parole period; however, both those cases went cold and were not tied to him until after his arrest in the Groene case. He was arrested in Missouri and returned to prison in 1997 after violating the terms of his parole;

In March 2005, Duncan was charged with the July 3, 2004, molestation of two boys at a playground in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. On April 5, 2005, he appeared before a Becker County judge, who set bail at US$15,000. A Fargo businessman, with whom he had become acquainted, helped him post bail. However, he skipped bail and disappeared.

Idaho murders and kidnappings On May 16, 2005, authorities discovered the bodies of Brenda Groene, 40; her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, 37; and her son, Slade Groene, 13, in their home along Lake Coeur d'Alene, outside the city of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Two of Brenda's other childrenDylan, 9, and Shasta, 8 were missing. An Amber alert was issued and searchers combed the area for the missing children while authorities investigated the deaths at the home as homicides.

Forty-seven days later, in the early morning of July 2, 2005, Shasta was seen at a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene in the company of an unknown man. A waitress, a manager, and two customers there recognized the girl from media reports. They surreptitiously called the police and positioned themselves to prevent the man from leaving. Police officers arrived at the restaurant and arrested the man, later identified as Duncan, without incident. Authorities discovered that Duncan had rented the car in Minnesota and never returned it. A gas station employee in Kellogg, Idaho, about east of Coeur d'Alene, recognized the vehicle as one that had stopped at her station hours before Duncan was arrested. The remains were sent for DNA testing to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, where they were positively identified as Dylan's.

Groene family murders Much of what is known about the murders of the Groene family was revealed by Shasta Groene herself. According to Shasta's police interview, Duncan killed her mother, older brother, and her mother's fiancé. Then, he kidnapped her and her brother, driving away with them in the stolen Jeep Cherokee.

Shasta told investigators her mother came into Dylan's and her room and woke them up. Her mother said, "Someone is in the house," and led them into the living room, where Shasta saw Duncan wearing black gloves and holding a gun. Duncan tied her mother's hands with nylon zip ties and did the same to her mother's fiancé and Shasta’s brother Slade. Duncan removed Shasta and Dylan from the house and placed them outside on the lawn. While waiting outside with her brother, Shasta heard multiple thumping sounds during the time that Duncan bludgeoned the three people remaining inside the home to death. She then saw her injured older brother, Slade, staggering away from the entrance to the house. Once he had finished murdering the three inside, Duncan placed Shasta and Dylan in his car. He took both children to other locations, where he repeatedly raped and tortured them for six weeks. Shasta stated that they drove a long distance and stayed in two different campsites, during which time Duncan told her of having beaten her family members to death with a hammer. Dylan was killed instantly. According to Shasta, Duncan then started crying and told her that he only killed him to put him out of his misery. A public memorial service was held for Dylan on July 16, 2005, which would have been his tenth birthday, at Real Life Ministries.

Shasta reported that Duncan nearly killed her days after killing Dylan. She said that he gave her the choice to be killed either by strangulation or with a gun. Shasta chose the former, and Duncan proceeded to wrap a rope around her neck and tightly pull it, causing Shasta to start suffocating. However, she summoned enough breath to beg Duncan to stop, using his nickname, "Jet", and he immediately did. He then asked her if she would like to meet his mother, to which she responded yes, and they drove back toward Coeur d'Alene and stopped at the Denny's restaurant where Shasta was rescued.

Other crimes Duncan's arrest led the FBI to launch a nationwide review of unsolved missing child cases. He was implicated as a possible suspect in several crimes that occurred between 1994 and 1997 when he was on parole and between 2000 and 2005 when he was free from prison. Although he was cleared as a suspect in some cases, authorities in California and Washington had enough evidence to believe Duncan had committed unsolved murders in their jurisdictions.

Anthony Martinez On April 4, 1997, 10-year-old Anthony Michael Martinez was playing with friends in the front yard of his home in Beaumont, California, when an unknown man approached the group asking for help in finding a missing cat. The boys initially agreed to help the man. Once they looked in an alleyway and did not find the cat, they stopped their search. After telling the man they couldn't find the cat, the man grabbed Martinez at knifepoint and threw him into his vehicle. After a two-week search, Martinez's body was found nude and partially decomposed in Indio, California, on April 19. Investigators noted that he had been sexually assaulted and bound with duct tape. who both vanished on July 6, 1996, after leaving the Crest Motel in Seattle. Their skeletal remains were found on February 10, 1998, in Bothell, Washington. Duncan confessed to beating them to death. County prosecutors had initially planned to charge Duncan with the kidnappings of Shasta and Dylan; however, they deferred those charges to the federal courts, as transporting children across state lines for sexual exploitation is a federal offense. Duncan's attorneys blamed the multiple postponements on the prosecution's insistence on pursuing the death penalty. He was immediately sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the three kidnapping charges. Duncan also agreed to cooperate with Kootenai County sheriff's detectives investigating his crimes and provide passwords to encrypted files stored on his computer. He was arraigned the following day at a federal court in Boise, where a judge ordered Duncan to stand trial the following March.

On December 3, 2007, Duncan pleaded guilty to all ten charges against him. As a condition of the agreement, Shasta Groene would not have to testify in the penalty phase of the trial. Due to a gag order, other plea agreement details were not released.

On August 27, 2008, after three hours of deliberation, the jury recommended the death penalty, and the judge imposed three death sentences for "kidnapping resulting in death, sexual exploitation of a child resulting in death, and use of a firearm in a violent crime resulting in death", all related to the death of Dylan Groene. On November 3, 2008, Duncan was sentenced to an additional three consecutive terms of life without parole in federal prison for kidnapping Shasta Groene and for sexually abusing Shasta and Dylan.

Beginning in September 2012, Duncan was incarcerated at the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute in Indiana. On December 6, 2013, a federal judge ruled that he was mentally competent when he gave up the right to appeal his death sentence. Psychiatrists working with the prosecution diagnosed Duncan with pedophilia, sexual sadism disorder and antisocial personality disorder with narcissistic traits, but maintained that he was legally sane.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled on March 27, 2015, that a district judge correctly determined that Duncan was mentally competent when he waived his right to appeal his death sentence. On February 28, 2016, the United States Supreme Court denied Duncan's petition to hear his appeal of a federal judge's ruling in December 2013, which had been affirmed by the Ninth Circuit.

On February 28, 2017, a petition for writ of habeas corpus was filed. On September 27, 2017, it was ordered that the government's third motion for extension of time was granted in part and denied in part. The government's response was due October 30, 2017. The petitioner's reply was due on or before January 30, 2018.

California On January 18, 2007, the same day Duncan was indicted in federal court, Riverside County officials announced that he was charged with Martinez's murder.

On March 15, 2011, Duncan pleaded guilty to Martinez's murder and was sentenced to two life terms on April 5, 2011. As part of a plea deal, the sentence came without the possibility of parole or right to appeal. Although Duncan could have faced a separate death sentence in addition to the ones he had already been sentenced to in federal court, Riverside County District Attorney Paul Zellerbach justified the life sentence by stating that he had consulted with the Martinez family who wanted closure in the case and that "the federal system will kill him long before the state of California would have seriously considered it." According to lore, in addition to the four nails used to pierce the body of Jesus Christ in his crucifixion, there was a fifth nail that was taken away and hidden by the Romans. Duncan adopted the name for his own website and blog. On the website, which depicted Duncan's day-to-day life as a convicted sex offender, he denied being a pedophile and claimed to have been sexually abused as a child. All the content on the site was posted by someone using the pseudonym Silenced, who presumably received letters from Duncan to post on the site on his behalf.

John Adams, Duncan's public defender in Kootenai County, and prosecutor Bill Douglas declined to comment on the possibility that Duncan was blogging from prison. Inmates do not have access to the internet, and while outgoing letters are scanned for requests for contraband or for help in planning an escape, they are not read word for word.

Aftermath The jurors who imposed the death penalty on Duncan were offered counseling for them to cope with the horrific evidence they had to see during the trial. Among the evidence viewed in court was a 33-minute video depicting a nude Duncan torturing, physically and verbally assaulting, and sexually abusing a nude, restrained boy identified as Dylan Groene. The video showed this abuse conducted in various interior areas of what appeared to be a dilapidated, single-level wooden shed or small cabin. Other evidence included human remains, a wire noose (from the cabin interior), and other videos of Duncan's continued torture of Dylan. During one of the videos, a child could be heard screaming in pain while a naked Duncan shouted, "The devil is here, boy, the devil himself … The devil likes to watch children suffer and cry!".

Petition for Slade and Dylan's law In 2016, Shasta Groene (then 19 years old) started a petition called Slade and Dylan's Law in honor of her two brothers whom Duncan had murdered.

In July 2019, the United States federal government announced that they would be resuming executions after a nearly two-decade hiatus. Duncan claimed he was "relieved" to hear this news, as in his opinion, being executed via lethal injection would be a much "better" and "cleaner" way to die than dying of natural causes in prison, which is what he feared the most. He claimed he was worried that the government would never get around to executing him. Duncan said of the five federal prisoners selected for execution (Lezmond Mitchell, Wesley Ira Purkey, Daniel Lewis Lee, Alfred Bourgeois, and Dustin Lee Honken) that he was acquainted with four of them but would call none of them his friend. He claimed everyone on federal death row would be "better off" if they were executed.

Death In October 2020, Duncan underwent brain surgery after he was diagnosed with glioblastoma. He declined any treatment and rejected chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Medical staff at the Federal Bureau of Prisons estimated he had between six and twelve months left to live. He died on March 28, 2021, at the age of 58. His body was cremated.