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last updated: 8/4/2005



Kidnap/Murder Victim's Mother Speaks Out



On April 4, 1997, Anthony Martinez was forced into a white car in the town of Beaumont as his friends watched

RIVERSIDE Police in Riverside County say they've linked the man who murdered a Northern Idaho family and abducted two children with an eight-year old child murder Anthony Martinez in Beaumont.

Killer Reportedly Confesses to Crime
Charges Filed In Idaho Missing Case
Major Break In Murder Case

Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle say they've linked Joseph Edward Duncan III through a single fingerprint to the abduction and murder of 10-year old Anthony Martinez in 1997. Duncan was arrested last month for beating three people to death near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho and then abducting eight-year old Shasta Groene and her nine-year old brother Dylan in May. Duncan is accused of later killing Dylan, but Shasta was recovered safely after she was spotted in a North Idaho restaurant.

The then 10-year old Beaumont boy was lured to a car driven by a stranger who had a story about a lost cat. His body was found 16-days later nude and bound in the desert about 70-miles from his home.


When asked what she would like to say to her son's suspected killer, she said, "I don't know, I dont' know...he seems like such an evil man, I don't think anything I would have to say would remotely touch him, he's so evil...I don't know at this point if I would have anything to say to him at all."
FBI agents involved in the Idaho investigation contacted Riverside authorities saying Duncan mentioned the name Martinez and the general direction.

Martinez' mother, Diana Medina, now lives in Morgan Hill California - a suburb of San Francisco and Wednesday she had this reaction:


disbelief, just thinking, honestly thought you keep hope up, once they tell you, you just know that the chances get smaller and smaller, just really kind of disbelief like wow, really.
This year has been very difficult, he would have graduated high school, would have been a man so it did make this year hard for me.

When asked what she would like to say to her son's suspected killer, she said, "I don't know, I dont' know...he seems like such an evil man, I don't think anything I would have to say would remotely touch him, he's so evil...I don't know at this point if I would have anything to say to him at all."

"I know that he knew that we loved him, but that would be the only thing I'd say, and we miss him obviously," Medina said when ask about what she would say to her son.

Medina says, "He [Duncan] took obviously one of the most precious things a mother has; I can't let him take my other kids, I can't let him take our future, their future."

Duncan faces kidnapping and murder charges in the Idaho case and is currently being held without bail.




abclocal.go.com/kabc/news/080405_nw_anthony_martinez_case.html


Copyright 2005 ABC Inc., KABC-TV Inc

Sex offender linked to '97 Martinez killing

Reported confession leads to thumbprint match


08:52 AM PDT on Thursday, August 4, 2005



By LISA O'NEILL HILL and MICHAEL FISHER / The Press-Enterprise

A convicted sex offender charged with kidnapping two children from their Idaho home and bludgeoning their family to death has confessed to killing Anthony Martinez, a Beaumont boy whose 1997 abduction triggered one of the Inland area's biggest manhunts, a source close to the investigation said Wednesday.



'It's like it was yesterday'

Anthony's mom finds focus for her anger

Criminal history began with rape of teenage boy

'My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die.'


Although Joseph Edward Duncan III, 42, has not been charged in connection with the death of the brown-eyed 10-year-old, he told FBI agents in Idaho that he crushed Anthony's head with a rock, the source said.

Duncan's thumbprint was found on duct tape used to bind Anthony's hands and feet and cover his mouth, the source said.

At a news conference Wednesday, Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle said investigators are "pretty confident" Duncan committed the crimes.

For eight years, frustrated sheriff's detectives have pursued 15,000 leads. But they had only a partial fingerprint from the crime scene -- which they now know is from Duncan's right thumb -- that was not enough to compare to those kept in criminal databases, Doyle said.

"We have the partial, but we've got nobody in the world to compare it to until we get some other leads to say, 'Look, this is the guy,' " Doyle said. "It would have taken something to lead us to Duncan, and that's what we got when he mentioned Martinez in Southern California."

The sheriff said his department received confirmation Monday that the print is Duncan's.

The new information ends years of searching for the identity of the man with piercing blue eyes who snatched Anthony on April 4, 1997. Anthony was playing with his brother, Marcos, then 6, and other children in an alley behind his Beaumont home when a man in a white car drove up and asked for help finding his lost cat.

The abductor whipped out a switchblade, put it to Anthony's head, grabbed him in a headlock and threw him in the back seat. Fifteen days later, Anthony's nude, bound body was found buried under rocks in a remote arroyo north of Indio known as Berdoo Canyon.

The outgoing boy who loved the Dallas Cowboys, baseball cards and reading mysteries had been sexually assaulted, officials revealed Wednesday.

Doyle said Duncan spoke about "Martinez" in Southern California while he was being questioned last month about the Idaho kidnappings and slayings. Doyle and the FBI declined to provide specifics of the interview with Duncan.

The convicted sex offender remains in custody in Idaho, where he was arrested in July in connection with the May 16 bludgeoning deaths of Brenda Groene, 40, her son, Slade, 13, and her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, 37, at a home near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Police said Duncan kidnapped Shasta Groene, 8, and her brother Dylan, 9, from the home.

Police captured Duncan and rescued Shasta after a waitress at a Coeur d'Alene Denny's recognized the child. Dylan's body was later found in Montana. Both children had been sexually assaulted.


Silvia Flores / The Press-Enterprise
Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle, left, announces the confirmation of credible evidence against Joseph Edward Duncan III in the murder of Anthony Martinez, a Beaumont boy slain in 1997. "I can tell you this is one sick individual. I'm talking sick," Doyle said.



Bittersweet News

The Martinez case devastated the child's family, haunted residents of the tightly knit community and taxed investigators.

"I wish they had caught him sooner, and then this family in Idaho wouldn't have had to suffer," Anthony's mother, Diana Medina, said by telephone from her home in Morgan Hill in Northern California. "But no matter how they catch him ... they can't bring back my son, they can't change what happened, but they can prevent it from happening again."

Beaumont Police Chief Patrick Smith echoed Medina's thoughts.

"It's kind of bittersweet it took another tragedy to let us move forward on this case," Smith said.

Doyle said he would like to see Duncan get the death penalty if convicted. But Doyle conceded that it could be years before Duncan is brought to trial, given the Idaho case and the work to be done yet on the Martinez investigation. The sheriff said police in Washington also are looking at Duncan in connection with the deaths of two girls.

"I can tell you this is one sick individual. I'm talking sick," Doyle said.

FBI officials said Duncan might be responsible for other abductions and slayings.

"Investigators are actively looking into what other crimes he may have been involved in around the country," said Laura Eimiller, an FBI spokeswoman in Los Angeles. She declined to discuss specifics, citing the pending investigation.

The sheriff said his detectives have nothing to indicate Duncan might be linked to other child slayings in the Inland area. But, he said, detectives would look into open cases.

"You just pray there are not more victims," he said.

Local Connection

Duncan was a teenager when he was first arrested for sexual assault.

At 17, Duncan was convicted of raping a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint in Washington state and sentenced to 20 years behind bars, parole records show. He was paroled in 1994 and vanished in his girlfriend's Chrysler New Yorker in March 1997 after testing positive for smoking marijuana. He was arrested about five months later at a relative's house in Missouri and served another three years in prison.

Duncan was known to be in California the year Anthony was killed, authorities said. Duncan's father lived in Highland from 1993 to 1997, Doyle said.


Special to The Press-Enterprise
Joseph Edward Duncan III, left, and the 1997 composite sketch of the suspect in the abduction of Anthony Martinez, 10, of Beaumont.



Duncan resembles a description of Anthony's kidnapper that the boy's friends and brother gave police. A widely circulated composite sketch described the kidnapper as 25 to 35 years old, about 5-foot-8, thin build, with blue eyes, brown hair and a mustache. The man drove a white four-door sedan with two red pinstripes on the driver's door. Duncan weighs about 155 pounds and stands 6-foot-1, according to the Sheriff's Department. He has blue eyes, brown hair and a mustache.

Doyle said he was not surprised that a serial predator has been implicated in Anthony's death, given the ruse he used about a lost cat.

"That would lead us to believe he was probably a sex offender, and then, when we found Anthony, there was no doubt about it," he said.

Autopsy results showed Anthony lived for several days after he was taken. Doyle said investigators are searching for the car Duncan used in 1997 while in California. Investigators believe Duncan used his girlfriend's car when he kidnapped Anthony. The car is thought to have been totaled in a crash, Doyle said.


Prayers Answered

After Duncan talked about the Martinez case, FBI officials in Idaho contacted sheriff's officials. Two investigators jumped on a plane to Idaho to try to talk to Duncan, but he refused, the sheriff said.

Homicide investigators, working with the FBI, obtained a search warrant for Duncan's fingerprints on July 27.

Cat hairs also were found on the duct tape used to bind Anthony, and Duncan is known as a cat lover, the source said.

On Wednesday afternoon, as word spread about the long-awaited break in the case, friends, strangers and others reacted with relief.

"We've been praying for this for eight years," said family friend Margarita Dahl, who used to baby-sit Anthony and still attends Potter's House Christian Church in Beaumont where the boy and his parents were members. "I knew that sooner or later it would happen -- that they would find his killer. Everybody that helped in the search, everybody who knew them, they never gave up."

Bernie Bricker recalled leaving his air-conditioning business for a couple of weeks to help look for the boy, combing ditches beside Interstate 10 and hiking the rolling hills around Beaumont.

Bricker said his mother called Wednesday afternoon and gave him the news about Duncan being the prime suspect in Anthony's death.

"I just wanted to grab the guy by the throat," Bricker said. "It was just anger, not so much relief."

Beaumont police Lt. Mitchell White, the original lead investigator on the Martinez abduction, held off retiring in January, partially because he did not want to leave the department before the case was solved.

"This was an investigation that tugged on everyone's heart strings," White said. "I'm thankful that the parents are going to get some closure."

For 15 days in 1997, Anthony's disappearance overwhelmed Beaumont. Prayer vigils called for Anthony's safe return, and more than 3,000 people joined hands in an eight-mile circle around the center of town to show their support.

On April 19, the search ended when a ranger on patrol spotted a buzzard circling above a desert canyon. Anthony's body lay a few hundred feet off a rutted road wedged in a rocky crevice about eight miles south of Joshua Tree National Park.

The crime shocked residents and "really changed our small-town way of living," said Whitney Shepherd, who was among the many volunteers who helped with the search. She said she let her children walk by themselves before the Martinez kidnapping and killing, but not after. Her own son was about 8 at the time.

"After that, he wanted to walk by himself, and I flipped out," she said. "Things change, you know? My kids don't do anything without another kid or an adult, to this day."

Staff writers Steve Moore, Phil Pitchford, David Hermann and Gregor McGavin and news researcher Jackie Chamberlain contributed to this report.



www.pe.com


2005, The Press-Enterprise Company

Thursday, August 4, 2005 - Page updated at 08:56 AM




Duncan tied to boy's slaying

By Jonathan Martin and Mike Carter

Seattle Times staff reporters




At left is a police sketch of a suspect in the 1997 slaying. At right is a photo of Joseph Edward Duncan III, taken July 2.

Anthony Martinez was killed in 1997.



In March 1997, Joseph Edward Duncan III suddenly quit his job in Seattle, borrowed his girlfriend's car and fled parole. Ten days later, according to California authorities, he may have lured a 10-year-old boy into the car, then killed him and dumped his body.

The sheriff of Riverside, Calif., announced yesterday that investigators had linked Duncan to the boy's killing. A partial thumbprint recovered from the scene matched a thumbprint recently taken from Duncan.

The body of Anthony Martinez was found in a remote canyon north of Indio, Calif., on April 19, 1997.

If the sheriff's office is correct, this would be the first crime to be tied to Duncan since he was charged in July with killing a Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, family, then abducting their 8- and 9-year-old children for sex and killing the older child.

Brenda Groene, Slade Groene and Mark McKenzie were killed in their home near Coeur d'Alene sometime late on May 15 or early May 16. Shasta Groene, 8, and Dylan Groene, 9, were abducted from the home. Shasta was spotted July 2 in a Coeur d'Alene restaurant in the company of Duncan, who was arrested at the scene.

Before the Idaho attack, Duncan was charged in July 2004 with molesting a 6-year-old boy on a Minnesota playground.

Amateur detectives have filled Internet blogs with speculation that Duncan, a 42-year-old from Tacoma, committed far more crimes than he's been charged with. Two bloggers in mid-July described similarities between a composite sketch of the Martinez kidnapper and Duncan's mug shot, and between the car Duncan was driving and the white four-door sedan used to lure Martinez.

"I thought the resemblance, the facial structure, was just so strong," said Steve Huff, a 37-year-old opera singer in Georgia who writes a blog, www.planethuff.com/darkside. "It just got my hackles up."

FBI special agent Brent Robbins said the bureau contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children after the Idaho abductions and slayings to look for other possible victims.

"As a result of them correlating children, that helped us contact Riverside County," he said.




Robbins declined to say if Duncan is suspected in other cases.

The Martinez case was high profile in California, and Riverside Sheriff Bob Doyle said the fingerprint match was "huge."

"We followed up 15,000 leads over eight years," the sheriff said. "You can imagine the elation."

In 1997, Duncan fled Seattle while on parole for the rape and torture of a 14-year-old Tacoma boy in 1980.

He had been paroled in 1994, and in the next two years he landed steady work, according to parole-board records. He also got into several homosexual and heterosexual relationships.

But by June 1996, Duncan was having difficulty, according to the documents. He began smoking marijuana and stopped seeing his therapist regularly. He admitted to looking at pornography on the Internet and, on one occasion, hanging out at the Queen Anne neighborhood pool and watching naked, pre-adolescent boys change into their swim trunks.

"It looks like [Duncan] has some terribly confused boundaries and seems like [he] is going through a lot right now," his parole officer wrote in June 1996. Four months later, the officer wrote, "His personal life appears a little less stable."

In October, the Department of Corrections ordered Duncan arrested. His parole was reinstated with tougher conditions. His parole officer wrote: "[Duncan] is obviously a greater risk than his record suggests."

By March 1997, Duncan had slipped further. He again was caught smoking marijuana and quit his $300-a-week job as a magazine salesman March 25 without informing his parole officer. He called two days later and claimed he was at his mother's house in Tacoma. He borrowed his girlfriend's white, four-door 1986 Chrysler New Yorker and disappeared.

On April 4, 1997, a group of boys were playing in Beaumont, Calif., when a thin, mustachioed man pulled up in a white, four-door sedan and asked for help finding a lost cat. The man tried to grab another boy before seizing Martinez.

The boy's nude and decomposed body, bound with duct tape, was found under a pile of rocks after a ranger noticed buzzards circling the area. Doyle, the Riverside sheriff, said the boy had been sexually assaulted, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Riverside sheriff's Cpl. Dennis Gutierrez said detectives are attempting to find the vehicle and search it for additional evidence.

Around the same time, parole records indicate, Duncan's parole officer thought Duncan was headed to his father's house in Las Vegas, which is 300 miles from where Martinez's body was dumped.

Duncan stayed on the run until August 1997, when he was arrested in Kansas City, Mo.

Duncan was sent back to prison in Washington to serve the remaining three years of his 20-year sentence, for violating parole. He was released, unsupervised, in 2000.

Jonathan Martin: 206-464-2605; Mike Carter: 206-464-3706




seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002419750_duncan03m.html


Copyright 2005 The Seattle Times Company

12:14 PM PDT, August 4, 2005

Suspect in Idaho, Calif. Murders Kept Blog

By Lance Pugmire and Susannah Rosenblatt, Times Staff Writers


The prime suspect in the kidnapping and killing of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez has a long history of child torture and wrote a blog about his struggle to control himself, officials said today.

Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle said Joseph Edward Duncan's thumbprint was found on duct tape used to bind Martinez, who was abducted, molested and murdered in 1997.

The boy was snatched as he played with his younger brother and four friends in the backyard of a friend's home in the rural town of Beaumont. His body was found 15 days later in remote Berdoo Canyon in Indio.

Duncan, 42, of Fargo, N.D., has been charged with killing four family members and kidnapping and molesting 8-year-old Shasta Groene in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Authorities say there are similarities between the two crimes.

Doyle said that the right thumbprint that authorities recently lifted from Duncan matched a thumbprint found on the duct tape that was used to bind Martinez's mouth, legs and hands.

Doyle said authorities believe Martinez's abductor set the boy along rocky ground, then lifted a heavy boulder and used it to fatally "cave in" the boy's head.

Pathologists who examined the boy's body reported that the abductor likely allowed Martinez to live for a few days after the kidnapping, then killed him. Martinez was sexually assaulted before his death, a pathologist ruled.

"We're unclear where they went, at this point it's entirely speculation," Doyle said. "We've always wondered, why Berdoo Canyon, though. It's not far off Highway 62, but it sure is remote. We don't know why Anthony was taken there."

Doyle said that when Duncan was asked by FBI agents in Idaho if he had been involved in any other crimes, Duncan mentioned the Martinez case, but he refused to talk to Riverside County sheriff's detectives.

Doyle said there are obvious similarities between Duncan's alleged Idaho crimes and the Martinez abduction and slaying.

Idaho authorities say Duncan used night goggles to "scout" the Groene home in the days before his alleged rampage on May 16. Shasta Groene's mother, Brenda; 13-year-old brother, Slade; and Brenda Groene's boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, were bound inside their rural Idaho home and allegedly killed by Duncan with a claw hammer.

Shasta Groene has told authorities in Idaho that Duncan repeatedly molested her and her brother Dylan, 9, before killing Dylan and leaving his body at a remote Montana campsite.

FBI agents contacted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in July to check for crimes similar to the Idaho abductions and slayings, said FBI spokesman Brent Robbins in Salt Lake City. After the center red-flagged Martinez's slaying, FBI agents persuaded Duncan to discuss the Riverside County case "a little bit," Doyle said.

"It was in a situation where they were asking him about his involvement in any other similar cases, and he said, 'Yeah, this boy Martinez in Southern California, Riverside County,'" Doyle said. "It was not a full, blown-out confession, though. We need more. We'll try to interview him again."

FBI agents in Idaho are working to construct a timeline of Duncan's whereabouts over the last decade, to see if there may be more victims, said Donald Robinson, supervisory senior resident agent for the FBI's Coeur d'Alene office.

Doyle said FBI officials told him Duncan was being investigated in connection with two child killings in Washington state.

Duncan has an extensive criminal history. At 16, he started serving a 14-year prison sentence in Washington state for raping a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint. He was released from prison in 1994. Investigators believe Duncan may have traveled to Southern California in 1997 because his father lived in Highland in San Bernardino County.

By the end of 1997, Duncan was back in custody in Washington state on a parole violation, Doyle said. Duncan remained in prison until July 2000, when he moved to Fargo, N.D., and enrolled at North Dakota State University.

In March 2005, Duncan was charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy at a school playground in Detroit Lakes, Minn. Duncan became a fugitive in early April 2005 after posting $15,000 bond.

Martinez's mother said investigators contacted her Friday to inform her that Duncan was a suspect in her son's killing.

Diana Medina said she had worked hard to carve out a normal life for her and her children, Marcos, 15, and Monica, 12. Her daughter was too young to remember much of what happened the day Anthony was kidnapped, but Marcos has struggled, she said: He was playing with Anthony that day.

"I can't be a victim my whole life, and neither can they," she said. "I'm trying to raise my family the right way and do what's right and work and do what everybody else does."

In Beaumont, residents were relieved to hear that a suspect was in custody but said the memory of Anthony's abduction and horror over his killing had never left them.

Longtime resident Kim Bledsoe, 49, said that the case made her more concerned for her own daughter's safety and that she would also wonder if strangers she saw could be Anthony's killer.

"Everyone I didn't know could have been the one," said Bledsoe, a hairstylist who had cut Anthony's hair. "I was really more aware of things that I never noticed before.... When something like that happens, you really take your daily routine for granted."

Times staff writers Susana Enriquez and Sam Howe Verhovek contributed to this report. Enriquez reported from Beaumont and Verhovek from Seattle.



www.latimes.com

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

Report: Duncan confessed to killing California child

Posted: Friday, Aug 05, 2005 - 08:24:08 am PDT

By DAVE TURNER

Staff writer



Police investigate connection to 1997 death

COEUR d'ALENE -- Suspected serial predator Joseph Edward Duncan III confessed to FBI agents that he killed a 10-year-old California boy with a rock, a Riverside, Calif., newspaper reported on Thursday.

The Press-Enterprise reported that sources said Duncan, who is being held in the Kootenai County jail on kidnap and murder charges, told FBI agents he used a rock to crush the skull of Anthony Martinez after abducting the child in April 1997.

FBI officials in Coeur d'Alene on Thursday could not be reached for comment.


On Wednesday, Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle said Duncan, a 42-year-old level III registered sex offender from Fargo, N.D., was the prime suspect in the death of the boy.

"I can tell you this is one sick individual," Doyle said during a press conference. "I'm talking sick."

Two weeks after Duncan was arrested at the Coeur d'Alene Denny's restaurant, California authorities said Duncan talked with FBI agents investigating the kidnap and murders of Wolf Lodge Bay area residents Brenda Kay Groene, 40, her son, Slade Groene, 13, and boyfriend Mark Edward McKenzie, 37, and the abductions of Shasta Groene, 8, and her 9-year-old brother, Dylan Groene. Dylan's remains were later found at a rural campground in Montana.

Doyle said Duncan mentioned the name Martinez to the agents and described the general area around Riverside.

"So they called us to say, 'Hey, you guys have a case?'" Doyle said.

Investigators then flew to Idaho to fingerprint Duncan. They tried to interview him but he refused to talk.

Since talking to the FBI, an Idaho 1st Judicial District judge warned law officers they were potentially violating Duncan's civil rights by continuing to ask him if he wished to talk to them.

Duncan had earlier invoked his Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and to have a lawyer present while being questioned.

Duncan's court-appointed lawyer, Kootenai County Public Defender John Adams, also filed court paperwork reaffirming those invocations.

Adams has refused to comment about the new charges.

But The Press-Enterprise's unnamed source also said Duncan's thumbprint was found on the duct tape used to bind Anthony's hands and feet and cover his mouth.

Doyle confirmed on Wednesday the boy's body, which was nude when it was discovered, was bound with duct tape.

Cat hairs also were found on the duct tape used to bind Martinez, and Duncan is known as a cat lover, the source said.

Martinez was abducted April 4, 1997, at knifepoint near his home in Beaumont, Calif., after a man matching Duncan's description approached him and several other boys, offering them a dollar if they helped him look for his lost cat.

When they refused, the abductor grabbed Martinez, held a knife to his throat and put him in the back of his car.

Fifteen days later, the body was found about 70 miles east in a remote canyon north of Indio, Calif.

Autopsy results showed Martinez lived for several days after his abduction.

Duncan, who spent nearly 20 years in the Washington prison system for the 1980 rape of a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint, was on parole for that crime when Martinez was taken.

California authorities have yet to file criminal charges against Duncan, who is also expected to be charged by federal prosecutors for the kidnap of the two children and the death of Dylan Groene.

Duncan was arrested July 2 after he was found at Denny's with Shasta.

Since her rescue, Shasta has told investigators how she and Dylan were kidnapped and how Duncan allegedly bound the three others with plastic zip ties and duct tape.

They were killed with a framing hammer late May 15 or early May 16, investigators said.

Authorities allege Shasta and Dylan were also bound and taken by Duncan from the home at the time of the killings and spirited away to rural campgrounds near St. Regis, Mont.

Duncan's preliminary hearing on the kidnapping and murder counts is set for Tuesday.

Dave Turner can be reached at 664-8176, ext. 2009 or at dturner@cdapress.com.


www.cdapress.com/articles...news03.txt


Copyright 2005, The Coeur d'Alene Press. All rights reserved.

August 5, 2005

latimes.com

Focus on Suspect in Idaho Slayings Widens

Several states are looking at the man believed to have killed a Southland boy in 1997.

By Lance Pugmire and Sam Howe Verhovek, Times Staff Writers


"I got out and I got even, but did not get caught," the blogger wrote earlier this year, describing his losing battle with the "demons" that he said had driven him to rape and murder children.

"I got even twice," he added, "actually more."

How many times more?

Authorities in California and at least four other states are asking that question about Joseph Edward Duncan III.

A convicted child-rapist from Washington state who was released from prison in 2000, Duncan, 42, became a dean's list computer science student in North Dakota. Then, last spring, he jumped bail and disappeared after being accused of molesting a 6-year-old boy in Minnesota.

He surfaced last month at a Denny's restaurant in the Idaho panhandle city of Coeur d'Alene, where an alert waitress on the overnight shift recognized the girl with him, Shasta Groene, 8, as a kidnap victim whose face was on "Missing" posters around town. Duncan was arrested July 2 and has been charged with kidnapping the child and her 9-year-old brother, Dylan. Authorities expect to charge him with the killing of Dylan, whose body was found in Montana.

He has been charged with murdering Shasta Groene's mother, Brenda, her 13-year-old brother, Slade, and Brenda Groene's boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, who were bound inside their rural Idaho home and apparently killed with a claw hammer.

Wednesday, authorities in Riverside County announced that Duncan had become the prime suspect in the 1997 molestation and killing of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez, whose disappearance from outside his home in Beaumont coincided with a period when Duncan was out of prison. The case generated widespread attention at the time and had remained unsolved.

Now, authorities in several states, reacting to the news of Duncan's alleged role in the Martinez killing, say they are combing credit-card records and other evidence of his whereabouts to look for links to unsolved crimes. In addition to the investigations in California, Idaho and Minnesota, officials in Washington are examining the possibility that Duncan may have committed additional crimes there. He is also being investigated by authorities from Montana, where Dylan Groene's body was found July 4.

Even before the announcement Wednesday of his alleged link to the killing in California, Duncan's case had stirred widespread anger in the states where he was already a suspect. The anger became especially fierce after the Minnesota judge who allowed him out of jail last spring on a $15,000 bond conceded that he was not fully aware of Duncan's criminal history in Washington, where he was convicted in the 1980 gunpoint rape of a 14-year-old boy.

No one in any state has yet pieced together all of Duncan's moves, but authorities have identified him as the blog author who alternately boasted of and bewailed his violent propensities as he eluded arrest this year.

Duncan's criminal career apparently began with the 1980 rape. He was arrested near Tacoma, accused of stealing guns from a neighbor's house and twice raping the 14-year-old. He told psychiatrists at Washington's Western State Hospital that he was a high school dropout who had moved frequently in his youth as the fourth of five children in a military family.

In court records, he also was quoted as telling doctors he had raped 13 younger boys, first doing so, he said, at the age of 12.

In 1982, the Washington state Board of Prison Terms and Paroles classified him as "a sexual psychopath, not safe to be at large and not amenable to treatment." The report also called him an "extremely dangerous" deviant.



But by 1994, having served 14 1/2 years of his 20-year term, Duncan was released under parole conditions that included abstinence from alcohol and drugs, periodic mental-health evaluations, and "no contact with minor children without the prior approval of his community corrections officer."

He was re-incarcerated twice for failing drug tests; during one of his periods out of prison, authorities said, he went to California to visit his father, Joseph Jr., in the San Bernardino County town of Highland, 22 miles northwest of Beaumont.

Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle said the killing of Anthony appeared to coincide with that visit.

Authorities said they became aware of Duncan's possible link to the killing July 14 when he was asked by FBI agents in Idaho if he had been involved in any other crimes. Duncan told the agents that he had a connection to the Martinez case, they said.

He declined to be interviewed when Riverside County sheriff's detectives rushed to Coeur d'Alene to interview him. But Wednesday, authorities announced that they had matched Duncan's thumbprint to one found on the duct tape used to bind Anthony's mouth, legs and hands before his body was buried in a shallow grave in a remote canyon near Indio.

Authorities believe Anthony's abductor set his bound body along rocky ground, then lifted a heavy boulder and used it to fatally "cave in" the boy's head, Doyle said. Pathologists who examined the boy's body, found 15 days after he was snatched, reported that the abductor probably allowed the child to live for a few days after the kidnapping, then killed him.

DNA, probably from the abductor, was found at the scene, but authorities have yet to compare it with Duncan's DNA, Doyle said.

Jack Levin, an expert on criminal disorders who is director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston, said at least one aspect of Duncan's apparent method in the killings to which he is linked was not uncommon for child predators.

"The sexual predator abducts a child and keeps him with him for a period of time," said Levin, "then decides to eliminate the only witness to his sex crimes."

But the Idaho killings of Shasta and Dylan Groene's mother, older brother and the mother's boyfriend were unusual for a child predator, he added.

"It's almost unheard of for someone to kill three people in order to kidnap their children," Levin said.

Doyle said there are obvious similarities in Duncan's alleged Idaho crimes and the Martinez abduction and slaying.

Idaho authorities say Duncan used night goggles to "scout" the Groene home in the days before his alleged violent rampage May 16. Shasta Groene has told authorities in Idaho that Duncan repeatedly molested her and her brother before killing Dylan and leaving his body at a remote Montana campsite.

Beaumont police Lt. Mitch White, the lead investigator in Anthony's abduction, said he believes that whoever kidnapped the boy also scouted Beaumont neighborhoods. Like the Groenes and McKenzie, Anthony Martinez was bound and then killed. Like Dylan Groene, he was found to have been sexually assaulted and killed and dumped at a remote area far removed from the site of his abduction.

As investigators continue to examine Duncan's past, one unsolved case that has drawn particular interest in the Seattle area is the abduction and killing of two girls, Sammie Jo White, 11, and her sister, Carmen Cubias, 9, who disappeared in 1996 not far from where Duncan was living at the time. Their bodies were discovered several months later.

A spokesman for the King County sheriff's office in Seattle said Thursday that there were "some similarities" between those crimes and the way in which the Idaho victims were killed after some period of brutalization. An investigation so far has failed to either "eliminate or include him" as a suspect, the spokesman added.

An FBI spokesman declined Thursday to say whether Duncan had elaborated on a role in any other sexual assaults or killings.

Doyle, the Riverside County sheriff, said Duncan had done "some rambling" about other cases, including possible Washington state crimes, when he spoke to investigators about the Anthony Martinez killing.

"The fact is, he may be responsible for some other cases, but you still need the evidence," Doyle said. "We have ours."

"Had they not found him at Denny's," Doyle added, "I fully believe [Duncan] would have killed Shasta, moved on to his next targets, and we'd still be struggling with our unsolved killing of Anthony."

The blog that authorities attribute to Duncan appears to support that view. In postings in 2004 and 2005, the author veered between prayers for help, self-pity and a vow to wreak vengeance on society for its mistreatment of him.

"Yes, I am still alive. I honestly wish not," the blogger wrote April 24. "If you are reading this, and you believe in God, please pray for God to help me defeat my demons." But, he added, he worried that his demons were stronger than he thought.

"I'm afraid, very afraid," he wrote. "If they win, then a lot of people will be badly hurt, and they've had their way before, so I know what they can do."

The Riverside County Sheriff's Department suspects that Joseph Edward Duncan III kidnapped and killed Anthony Martinez, 10, of Beaumont in 1997. Duncan was arrested in Idaho and was with a girl who was kidnapped after her mother, a brother and her mother's boyfriend were killed. His known and alleged criminal history:

1980: Joseph Edward Duncan III is arrested near Tacoma, Wash., for the rape of a 14-year-old boy. He is convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

1994: After serving 14-1/2 years, he is released and moves to Seattle.

August to October 1996: He tests positive for marijuana use and is jailed for that and for firearm violations. He is released in October.

March 1997: In Roslyn, Wash., he again tests positive for marijuana use and violates firearm restrictions. A warrant is issued for his arrest.

April 4: Anthony Martinez, 10, is abducted in Beaumont in Riverside County. Duncan's father lives in Highland in San Bernardino County.

April 19: Anthony's body is found near Indio. He had been sexually assaulted and his head crushed by a boulder.

August: Duncan returns to prison in Washington after being arrested in Kansas City for violating parole.

July 2000: After his release from prison, Duncan moves to Fargo, N.D. He registers as a sex offender.

July/August 2004: A 6-year-old boy is molested in Detroit Lakes, Minn. Police search Duncan's residence.

March/April 2005: Duncan is formally charged in the molestation. Duncan posts the $15,000 bail and flees Minnesota.

May 16: Three members of a family are found slain in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Two of the family's children, Dylan Groene, 9, and Shasta Groene, 8, are missing.

July 2: Shasta Groene and Duncan are spotted at a Denny's in Coeur d'Alene. Duncan is arrested.

July 10: A body found July 4 in Montana is identified as Dylan's.

July 14: Duncan tells of his link to the 1997 slaying, according to FBI agents.

Aug. 2: Police match Duncan's thumbprint to one found on tape that bound Anthony's body.


Sources: Riverside County Sheriff ' s Department. Graphics reporting by Lance Pugmire .


www.latimes.com

Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

New suspect in slaying of girls

Man allegedly admits Seattle killings to FBI

By PAUL SHUKOVSKY
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER



Joseph Edward Duncan III -- a convicted sex offender suspected in a killing and abduction spree in Idaho that left two adults and two children dead -- has told FBI agents that he also killed two little girls in Seattle in 1996.

The confession came last month after Duncan was arrested on suspicion that he killed an Idaho woman, Brenda Groene, her 13-year-old son and her boyfriend in May, according to a federal criminal justice source.

The case attracted national attention as police and federal agents fanned out across Idaho in search of Shasta Groene, 8, and her brother Dylan, 9, who were kidnapped at the time of the slayings.

Shasta was spotted with Duncan at a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene on July 2, and Duncan was arrested.

Dylan's body was found days later in Montana. Duncan has been charged in the deaths of Dylan's mother, her boyfriend and Dylan's older brother. Duncan is expected to face federal charges in Dylan and Shasta's abduction and in Dylan's death.

Investigators in Riverside, Calif., say Duncan's fingerprints tie him to the abduction and death of a 10-year-old boy there in 1997.

And now the investigation turns to Seattle and a cold case in the slaying of two young sisters.

Duncan recounted for federal interrogators details of killings committed about the same time in July 1996 that Carmen Cubias, 9, and Sammiejo White, 11, went missing from a motel on Seattle's North Aurora Avenue.

A transient found their skeletal remains about 17 months later on a muddy Bothell hillside.



"He (Duncan) didn't remember the names, but he gave enough information that was tied to the case" for agents to conclude that he was referring to Carmen and Sammiejo, the source said.

Since the confession, investigators have been trying to confirm Duncan's story of killing the two Seattle girls, who spent much of their final days playing in the motel parking lot without their mother's supervision.

So far, facts uncovered by investigators seem to match Duncan's confession. He was living near the motel at the time the girls disappeared.

But the federal criminal justice source cautioned that Duncan's confession "could be like some of those other serial killers who have claimed credit for things they haven't done."

The Coeur d'Alene Press also reported over the weekend that Duncan admitted killing the two girls. The Idaho paper quoted an unidentified source close to the investigation.

Duncan wasn't a suspect when Dennis Nizzi initially worked the case.

"We had never heard of him," said Nizzi, a detective with the Bothell Police Department when the girls' bodies were found. "There were no solid suspects in the case."

Nizzi retired in 1999 with the case unsolved. He said Tuesday night that it was the biggest frustration of his 27-year career in police work.

"I handled a lot of major crimes and homicides in my career. No one wants to walk away with a crime of this magnitude unsolved. It has troubled me," he said.

Part of the problem was the time that passed between when the girls were killed and their bodies were found. "The bodies had completely decomposed. We had nothing but 1 1/2-year-old bones," he said.

"If there is something that comes out of Mr. Duncan's mouth and it solves the crime, I will be tickled to death. I will be the first in court to watch this happen. I would love to see this case get cleared," Nizzi said.

Sgt. John Urquhart, spokesman for the King County Sheriff's Office, said Tuesday: "We have not talked to Joe Duncan. We did send detectives over there to follow up. But he lawyered up, and we have not interviewed him."

Urquhart said last week that no physical evidence links Duncan to the killing of the girls. And he said probably every police agency in the region is reviewing cold cases of child kidnapping and homicide in light of Duncan's arrest.

The FBI has been constructing a timeline of Duncan's movements for the past 25 years to see if it can match the man to unsolved crimes.


TIMELINE OF EVENTS

1980: Joseph Edward Duncan III, 16, is arrested at his Tacoma home for the rape of a 14-year-old boy. A judge gives him 20 years but suspends that sentence so Duncan can get sex-offender treatment at Western State Hospital.
1982: Duncan fails at the treatment program and is sent to prison.

1994: Duncan is paroled. He lives in the Seattle area. He also travels widely throughout the United States.

1996: On the night of July 6, sisters Carmen Cubias, 9, and Sammiejo White, 11, leave Room 16 of the Crest Motel in North Seattle, bound for a Taco Time. The girls, who were living at the motel with their mother and siblings, disappear.

1997: In April, a 10-year-old California boy, Anthony Michael Martinez, is abducted and killed. His body is found 15 days later. In December, Washington state officials revoke Duncan's parole, saying he is dangerous.

2000: Duncan has served his sentence and is released from prison near Spokane. He eventually moves to Fargo, N.D., enrolling in college.

2004: Authorities arrest Duncan on suspicion of molesting two young boys in July. A judge releases him on bond.

2005: In a rented car, Duncan leaves North Dakota. On May 16, Brenda Groene, her 13-year-old son, Slade, and her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, are beaten to death with a hammer in a home east of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Groene's 9-year-old son, Dylan, and 8-year-old daughter, Shasta, are missing. Shasta is found with Duncan on July 2, eating breakfast at a Denny's in Coeur d'Alene. A few days later, Dylan's body is found in Montana. Duncan is charged with the three deaths in the home and likely faces federal charges in Dylan's death and the children's kidnappings. Police in Riverside, Calif., say a fingerprint ties Duncan to Anthony Martinez's death. And now a federal criminal justice source says Duncan has acknowledged kidnapping and killing Carmen Cubias and Sammiejo White.


P-I reporter Paul Shukovsky can be reached at 206-448-8072 or paulshukovsky@seattlepi.com.



seattlepi.nwsource.com/lo...can10.html


1996-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Men helped offender with money, testimony

01:51 AM PDT on Wednesday, August 10, 2005



By LISA O'NEILL HILL / The Press-Enterprise

As the FBI traces Joseph Edward Duncan III's movements across the country, questions linger about the sex offender's relationship with two prominent men who gave him money to help with bail and attorney fees.

Duncan, recently implicated in the 1997 kidnapping and killing of Beaumont boy Anthony Martinez, used a $15,000 check from Fargo, N.D., businessman Joe Crary to post bail in April after being charged with child molestation in Detroit Lakes, Minn. Duncan then disappeared.

The next month, authorities say, Duncan bludgeoned three people to death at an Idaho home and kidnapped two children. He also is accused of molesting both children and killing one.

Richard Wacksman, a pediatrician and internal-medicine and critical-care specialist who moved from Fargo to New Port Richey, Fla., gave Duncan $6,500 for attorney fees, court records show.

Both men declined to comment when reached at their homes.

"I have nothing to say, thank you," Crary said recently when a reporter went to his home in the southern part of Fargo.

Wacksman said by telephone from his Florida home Tuesday that he had nothing to say.

Bicycling Acquaintance

Crary apparently has explained his actions only once, describing his relationship with Duncan in a letter faxed to Fargo's newspaper, The Forum. The newspaper reported that the businessman gave it the statement after its staff made several attempts to interview him.

"We both enjoyed biking on the bike trails in Fargo, and we became acquaintances," Crary wrote to the newspaper. "In my contact with him, I saw him like many others apparently did -- he was polite, soft-spoken, and seemed sincere in turning his life around."

Crary told the newspaper that Duncan had been having financial problems and that he was trying to help him "get things straightened out, just like I have tried to help so many others over the years."

Duncan writes about his "friend Joe" on his Web journal, Blogging the Fifth Nail. He "has agreed to take me by the hand financially and show me how to spend my money constructively," Duncan wrote in an entry dated Jan. 30. "Now that is a good friend! I've been out of prison for almost five years now and I'm still living from paycheck to paycheck."

FBI officials are checking cities that Duncan has lived in or visited to see whether he may be responsible for the abductions or killings of other children. In addition to the Idaho and Beaumont investigations, the authorities are looking at him in connection with the slayings of two girls in Washington state.

Duncan, 42, has spent most of his adult life in prison. At 17, he admitted raping a 14-year-old boy. A judge sentenced him as an adult and imposed the maximum sentence.

He was released in 1994 and initially checked in with his parole officer. But he was in trouble again three years later, when authorities said Duncan violated his parole by fleeing the Seattle area after having unauthorized contact with young children and smoking marijuana.

Offered to House Duncan

Wacksman, the pediatrician, spoke on Duncan's behalf at a parole hearing in 1997. He told corrections officials that he had met Duncan in a San Francisco coffeehouse.

At the hearing, Wacksman offered to be Duncan's sponsor and to allow him to live with his wife and two young children. Wacksman said he did not consider Duncan dangerous and described him as honest and sincere, according to corrections records.

The parole board said it was unwilling to expose Wacksman's children to the risk of living with Duncan.

After meeting with Wacksman, Kathryn Bail, the review board's chairwoman, wrote in a memo that the doctor "feels that he can help Joe and his wife -- Dr. Wacksman's -- is in support of his efforts. He stated that he is bisexual." That document, dated Feb. 2, 1998, was obtained by The Spokesman-Review newspaper in Spokane, Wash.

The parole board revoked Duncan's parole and sent him back to prison.

Walt Disney World Visit

Duncan and Wacksman stayed in touch over the years, and Duncan moved to Fargo a week after being released from prison in July 2000. Duncan visited Wacksman when the doctor relocated to Florida, noting in a Web-journal entry in March 2004 that he had just returned from a vacation that included visits to the Epcot Center and Walt Disney World.

Fargo police contacted Wacksman when Duncan disappeared in April and obtained a warrant for Duncan's arrest.

"There's a lot of curiosity about the relationship," Fargo police Sgt. Jeff Skuza said Tuesday. He declined to make any additional comment, referring questions to the FBI. The FBI also declined to comment.

According to the arrest warrant in May, Wacksman told Fargo police Investigator Gregory Esposito that he last heard from Duncan on April 15, when he received a picture of him on his telephone. Duncan liked camping and scuba diving, Wacksman told the investigator, who asked the doctor about Duncan's mental state.

"Dr. Wacksman stated he believes Joe is not currently homicidal; although he has in the past talked about suicide and what it would be like to drown," the warrant states. "Apparently Joe is under the belief that drowning would be the least painful of all the ways to die."

The doctor told the investigator he was not Duncan's doctor but that he had "just befriended Joe as a pediatrician in Florida."

Wacksman told police he had been in contact with Duncan's parents and other relatives throughout the country and said no one had heard from Duncan.

"Dr. Wacksman stated he would not be surprised if we ended up catching Joe approximately two years from now," the warrant states. "Apparently Joe just wants to get away for some time as he is very scared of going back to prison."


www.pe.com


2005, The Press-Enterprise Company

D.A. must fight feds to try suspect

By Maeve Reston, Times Staff Writer

1:11 PM PST, January 18, 2007


The Riverside County prosecutor said he will seek the death penalty for Joseph Duncan III, charged this morning with the 1997 murder of a 10-year-old Beaumont boy allegedly kidnapped at knifepoint while playing.

But Riverside Dist. Atty. Rod Pacheco faces a battle with federal officials in getting Duncan extradited from Idaho.

Federal officials have filed a preliminary charge against Duncan in the kidnapping of Shasta Groene, 8, and her brother, Dylan, 9, who were taken from their home near Coeur d'Alene. Dylan was found murdered.

Duncan is awaiting sentencing in Idaho on state charges for killing the Groene children's mother, her fianc and their 13-year old brother.

Idaho officials have said they are waiting until federal officials conclude their case to determine whether they will seek the death penalty as part of Duncan's plea deal with prosecutors.

In 1997, a man in a white sedan kidnapped Anthony Martinez from Beaumont while the boy played with his brother and other neighborhood children. Two weeks later, city, county, state and federal officials found Martinez's nude body bound with duct tape beneath a pile of rocks near Joshua Tree.

They could not find a suspect until eight years later, when Idaho authorities called Riverside County sheriff's officials to say they believed Duncan was linked to the murder of Martinez.

Duncan was arrested at a Coeur D'Alene restaurant, where he was eating with Shasta Groene. A waitress recognized the girl from news reports.

Pacheco said there would be no plea deals in Riverside County for Duncan and that he would seek the governor's help in bringing Duncan back to California for prosecution.

"The decision we made was inescapable," he said, noting that prosecutors normally wait until later in the legal process to determine whether to seek death. "Why would I [consider a plea agreement] in a case like this with a 10-year-old boy?"

Martinez's mother said at a news conference in Indio that the family would be satisfied if Duncan was put away "without ever seeing the light of day" whether that was a death sentence or life in prison.

Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle said he was relieved that charges had been filed after difficult and anxious years where the department, in conjunction with the Beaumont police and state and federal officials, chased about 15,000 leads.

He spoke directly to the family in his remarks: "While we cannot bring Anthony back to you, we can bring his killer to justice," Doyle said.


maeve.reston@latimes.com



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