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Police Believe Missing Idaho Boy Is Dead

Posted on: Monday, 4 July 2005, 06:00 CDT

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho -- As officers gingerly questioned 8-year-old Shasta Groene about the time she spent with a convicted sexual predator charged with her kidnapping, hopes faded for her still-missing brother.

Kootenai County Sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger said Sunday that deputies believe 9-year-old Dylan is dead, based on information from Shasta and evidence from the stolen vehicle the suspect was driving.

He said interviews with the girl were going slowly at Kootenai Medical Center, where she has been since she was recovered early Saturday while eating at a Denny's restaurant with Joseph Edward Duncan III, a registered sex offender.

"She's a little girl who's been through who knows what in the past six weeks," Wolfinger said.

Duncan, 42, of Fargo, N.D., was arrested and charged with kidnapping, but he has requested a lawyer and is refusing to talk to authorities, Wolfinger said.

Authorities said Duncan, who operated a chilling Web site in which he recently warned of upcoming violent deeds, will not be appointed a public defender until a court hearing Tuesday.

The two children were missing when authorities arrived at their rural home on May 16 and found the bound and bludgeoned bodies of their mother, Brenda; 13-year-old brother Slade; and their mother's boyfriend, Mark McKenzie.

Sunday night, the children's father, Steven Groene, spoke publicly for the first time about being reunited with his daughter.

"When I walked in the door, her face just lit up," Groene told Fox News, choking back tears. "She put her arms out and said 'Daddy, Daddy!' It was one of the better moments of my life."

"She looks real good," he said. "Very upbeat. She acts just like the little girl I saw three weeks before she disappeared."

Groene said police had instructed him not to ask Shasta questions about what had happened. He said he had never heard of Duncan before Saturday and still did not know much about the man. Authorities weren't telling him much about the evidence involving Dylan, either, he said, but they didn't tell him to give up hope.

"Obviously, in the case of Shasta, someone can be missing a long time and still come back safe," he said.

Duncan had spent more a decade in prison for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint, and at the time of his arrest was a fugitive from justice for allegedly molesting a boy in Minnesota.

With no apparent connection to the Groene family, Wolfinger acknowledged that his arrest has brought many questions.

"Where have Duncan and Shasta and Dylan been the last six weeks? Was Duncan involved in the triple homicide? Were other people involved? If so, who and where are they?" Wolfinger said.

"I think why is probably the biggest question we have," he said.

Authorities believe Duncan, who was raised in Tacoma, Wash., remained in the Pacific Northwest with the children during the weeks they were missing. Wolfinger has not said if authorities believe Duncan was involved in the slayings.

Half way across the country, officials were facing another tough question: Why had Duncan been released on bail earlier this year after being charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy at a Minnesota school playground.

In Becker County, Minn., District Judge Thomas Schroeder, who had set bail at $15,000 despite prosecutors' request that it be $25,000, said Sunday that he barely remembers the case and isn't sure if he knew then that the man was a registered Level 3 sex offender.

"Usually on a bail hearing you have limited information, and so you set it in an amount that you think is appropriate," the judge said. He said if he had known Duncan's record, he would have set it high enough that Duncan would not have gone free.

Police in Fargo said they had been looking for Duncan since May, but had no indication he had fled to Idaho.

Days before the children disappeared, an ominous message was posted on a Web site that officials said Duncan maintained.

"I am scared, alone and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society," the May 11 entry said. "My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die."

Since the abductions, the children's faces had been plastered on posters across the region, shown repeatedly on television and placed on billboards. Employees and customers at the Denny's restaurant said they recognized Shasta almost immediately when she came in around 2 a.m. Saturday with Duncan, and several called 911.

The astonishing recovery of Shasta more than six weeks after she disappeared, countered by her brother's continued absence, created mixed emotions here.

"We're happy about Shasta," Bill Todd, owner of Davis Donuts, said Sunday. "But I'm sad there's no good news on Dylan yet."

Source: Associated Press/AP Online

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