Eight-year-old Shasta Groene, who has been missing since her mother, brother, and her mother’s boyfriend were bludgeoned to death May 15, is alive and being cared for at Kootenai Medical Center, Coeur d’Alene, after a waitress at a Coeur d’Alene Denny's Restaurant recognized her just shortly before 2 a.m. this morning.
Spokane’s KXLY News 4 has been covering the event since shortly after it began unfolding.
Joseph E. Duncan III, 42, Fargo, North Dakota, who entered the restaurant with Shasta, is in custody and has been charged with kidnapping. Shasta’s brother, Dylan, 9, was not with the two, and there is no indication yet as to where he might be, but authorities are hopeful that he, too, is alive and will be found soon.
Duncan, a level-three sex offender, spent 16 years in prison after being convicted of child rape in 1980 following the abduction of a 14-year-old Tacoma, Washington boy, and has several other convictions in Minnesota and Michigan. His last arrest came July 3, 2004, when he was arrested in Deer Lakes, Michigan, for a sex offense.
He is a computer programmer and his resume appears on the North Dakota State University website, http://www.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu/~jduncan/resume.html, and he also maintains a website advocating non-prosecution of sex offenders. He worked in Spokane as a computer consultant as recently as 2000, and his mother lives in Tacoma. It is unknown whether he knew anyone in the Groene family, and detectives have yet to question him.
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The search is still on for Dylan Groene, 9, but hopes are high that he, too, is alive. |
According to News 4 reports, Shasta and Duncan entered the restaurant shortly before 2 a.m. and a waitress, Amber Dean, thought the girl resembled pictures she’d seen of Shasta. She asked a co-worker, who located a newspaper carrying Shasta’s picture, and they decided to call police. A poster of Dylan and Shasta was missing from the front window of the restaurant.
The waitress talked the man into ordering a milk shake for Shasta, and took her time preparing it, keeping the two inside until Coeur d'Alene Police officers arrived. Officers verified that the girl was Shasta, and Dean walked her to a police car. Inside, Shasta cuddled in her arms, crying, saying she wanted her Daddy, Steve Groene. According to Sheriff's spokesman Captain Ben Wolfinger, Steve was out of state at the time Shasta was found, and is currently in route back to Idaho.
When asked about her brother, at one point she said he was in the house where they’d been staying, at another point she said her brother was in heaven, though she may have been referring to her older brother, Vincent, 13, who was killed at their Wolf Lodge Bay home.
As of 9 a.m., Dylan's whereabouts remain unknown, as detectives and FBI agents have been called in, many from holiday vacations, to pursue the leads that develop. Duncan was driving a red Jeep, which has been impounded.
Details on Duncan remain sketchy, and there is no indication as yet as to whether he was involved in the triple homicide of Brenda Groene, 40, Mark McKenzie, 37, and Vincent Groene.