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Joseph Edward Duncan III

BY Gary C. King

1. Idaho
2. On the Move
3. Watching Children
4. Barking Dog
5. Search for Shasta and Dylan Begins
6. "Concrete Bob"
7. Search for Shasta and Dylan Continues
8. Bludgeoned
9. Denny's
10. Partial Duncan Timeline
11. Shasta's Statement
12. Duncan's Blog
13. The First Plea Deal
14. The Anthony Martinez Case
15. Duncan Makes Another Deal
16. Steve Groene's Reaction to Duncan's Newest Deal
17. Details Provided by Duncan
18. Sentencing Hearing
19. Sentence
20. Bibliography
21. Photo Gallery: Abducted in Idaho
22. Michael Mullen Feature Story
Idaho

Joseph Edward Duncan

The State of Idaho's motto is Esto perpetua, and it means let it be perpetual, it is
forever. It seems like a fitting motto for a state that was pretty much established by
the Jesuits in the early 1840s, and gives pause for one to wonder what its motto
might have been had it been founded by another group. Nowadays Idaho's family
and religious values are heavily influenced by the Mormons, also known as the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Nonetheless, Idaho is as unusual in its diversity as it is in its natural beauty, with a

topography that consists of many mountains that reach elevations of 8,000 feet
and areas, like that of Hell's Canyon, where the terrain plummets to 1,500 feet.
Idaho's scenery is often breathtaking, and recreational opportunities such as world-class skiing, kayaking, hiking,
backpacking, fishing, whitewater rafting, snowmobiling and snowboarding, to name a few, abound.

Liberty and freedom are very important to the citizens of Idaho, resulting in part in the state's lawmakers being
historically known for writing laws that rarely infringe on individual or property rights. It is also common for residents
to own firearms. When all is said and done, it doesn't make much sense that a convicted child molester would make
a conscious decision to travel hundreds of miles from the Midwest to a state where his past deeds were not likely to
be readily accepted, a region whose conservative residents were not likely to throw out the welcome mat and allow
him to assimilate into their society. But that is exactly what sex criminal Joseph Edward Duncan III had done, and in
the process his alleged criminal actions would literally shock and horrify the state, stun the nation, and ultimately
destroy a family.

On the Move

Joseph Edward Duncan III

As best as police have been able to determine, Joseph Edward Duncan III, 42-
years-old, fled Becker County, Minnesota almost immediately after someone
posted his $15,000 bond following an April 5, 2005 court hearing where he had
been charged with sexually molesting a six-year-old boy and for attempting to
molest the boy's friend. After being released from custody, he apparently began
making his travel plans. He stopped by a Wal-Mart and purchased night vision
goggles and a video camcorder. At some point he also obtained a shotgun, shells,
and a claw hammer.

Ten days later, on April 15, 2005 he rented a 2005 red Jeep Grand Cherokee in
St. Paul, Minnesota. However, he never returned the vehicle at the termination of the rental agreement, and the
Jeep was eventually reported to police as a stolen vehicle on May 4, 2005. Police would later learn that between the
time the Jeep was rented and reported stolen, Duncan had traveled through parts of Missouri and had gone as far
south as Newton County, located in the far southwestern corner of the state in an area that borders Kansas,
Oklahoma and Arkansas. It was there, on April 27, 2005, a little more than a week before the vehicle would be
reported stolen to police in Minnesota, that he allegedly stole a set of license plates off of a vehicle and placed them
on the Jeep that he was driving. It would later become clear to the police that he was fully capable of carefully
planning his every move, as most sexual predators are, and had done so in this instance by disguising the vehicle
that he was driving even before it had become necessary to do so. It must have been shortly after he had stolen the
license plates in Missouri that he had made the decision to go to Idaho.

A red Jeep Cherokee

Satisfied that he had given the authorities the slip, it is believed that Duncan
headed north again, the exact route of which he had taken being unknown, until
he connected up with Interstate 90 at some point, most likely either in South
Dakota or Wyoming, and headed west toward Idaho. While it is not precisely
known when Duncan arrived in Idaho, it was while he was en route to that state
that an arrest warrant was issued for him in Fargo, North Dakota for failing to
properly follow the conditions of his April 5 release and for missing a subsequent
court date. No one apparently paid any mind to the sex offender driving the stolen Jeep with the stolen Missouri
plates as he made his way west. But then, why would anyone? He was being careful in his cold and calculated
planning, and had given little reason for anyone to pay any attention to him.
Watching Children

Map of Idaho with Coeur d'Alene locator

Duncan arrived in Kootenai County, Idaho sometime during the second week in
May. Precisely why he stopped in the Wolf Lodge area, located about eight miles
east of Coeur d'Alene and just off Interstate 90, is not known. Perhaps he had
stopped there to grab a bite to eat, or merely to rest for awhile. At some point,
however, he ended up on Frontage Road and drove past the small white
cinderblock and frame house with green trim, the lower portion of which appeared
to have been coated with stucco giving it a smooth appearance, where the
Groene and McKenzie family lived.

The house, somewhat secluded and surrounded by trees, brush and low-lying hills, made an easy target for
someone bent on wrongdoing. Duncan likely saw his next victims, Shasta Groene, eight, and her brother, Dylan,
nine, playing outside the house in the unseasonably warm May weather as he drove past. Shasta and Dylan's
mother, Brenda Kay Groene, 40, came and went, as did Brenda's boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, 37, and Shasta and
Dylan's older brother, Slade, 13, throughout the weekend of May 13-15. Before Duncan's arrival there, it was the
type of community where parents were not afraid to leave their children alone. It was the type of seemingly safe
community where children played outside without parental supervision all the time, rode their bikes wherever they
wanted, and built forts in the woods — generally, kids there simply did all of the things that kids would normally do
where they felt safe. But that was all about to change.

House where Groenes lived

The Groene-McKenzie home was sometimes visited by strangers
whose vehicles broke down on the freeway — their home was the
first house anyone looking for help would see after getting off the
freeway and onto Frontage Road. And, according to later witness
reports, the family was always happy to help a stranger in need.

After having his interest heightened by the sight of the young

children frolicking outside in the yard in what had been their safe
surroundings, or walking or riding their bikes along Frontage Road
and occasionally motioning to passing truckers to honk the air horns of their semis, it is believed that Duncan
reconnoitered the area for at least a day or two until he found the perfect vantage point where he could watch the
kids and their family from a distance without being easily seen, using his night vision apparatus during the
nighttime. While the exact time frame isn't known for certain, police believed that Duncan may have stalked the
family for a few days after becoming comfortable with his surroundings, and had perhaps even followed them to
town to watch them when they shopped, before getting up the courage to make his move.

On Sunday, May 15, 2005, the family drove into Coeur d'Alene to run errands, and then returned home where they
enjoyed a barbecue together with others. The gathering went into the early evening hours before it broke up and
everyone went home. It was the last time that anyone would remember seeing Brenda and Slade Groene and Mark
McKenzie alive.
Barking Dog

Earlier on Sunday, May 15, according to a report that appeared in The Spokesman-Review, before the family had
left for Coeur d'Alene to go to the barbecue, a neighbor who lived nearby hired 13-year-old Slade Groene to mow
the grass by his driveway. However, he didn't have the correct change to pay Slade the agreed-upon $10 for his
work when he was finished but assured the teenager that he would stop by his house and pay him the following day.

Slade Groene
When the neighbor showed up with the money on Monday, the house appeared eerily
quiet. The neighbor honked his horn, but nobody came outside as they normally would
have done when someone pulled into their driveway. Similarly, there was no response
when he knocked on the door, and there were no lights visible inside the house. Only a
dog barked from inside. The neighbor noticed that both of the family's cars were parked in
their usual places, but the car doors had been left open. Suspicious, the neighbor rushed
home and called 911. It was the second time in roughly 24 hours that the neighbor had felt
compelled to call the sheriff's department. The first call had been made to report a suspicious white pickup truck that
had been parked near his barn and had apparently been abandoned.

When deputies from the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department arrived at the small Frontage Road home at 6:15
p.m., everything appeared just as the neighbor had reported. After easily gaining entry to the home through a rear
door to check on the residents' welfare, the deputies were aghast at the carnage they found inside.

The perpetrator's point of entry appeared to have been a rear door that led into the kitchen which had been left
unlocked. There was blood everywhere, much of which was in puddles around two bodies that were sprawled on the
floor. Both victims had been bound with duct tape and zip ties. The injuries appeared to have been centered around
the head and face of each of the victims, obviously a young man or teenage boy and a middle-aged woman. It was
difficult to determine upon initial examination whether the injuries were the result of blunt trauma or gunshot
wounds. Blood spatters, the telltale signs of either mode of death, were everywhere and it would take a careful
crime scene analysis to conclusively determine whether they had been beaten or shot, or both. The acrid smell of
the congealed blood had become strong, and the sight and smell brought on a nauseous feeling to some of the less
seasoned deputies.

As the deputies made their way through the house they encountered a third victim, also bound with duct tape and
zip ties, in the living room. There was also a significant amount of blood connected with the third victim and it
appeared that he, too, had died as a result of either a gunshot wound or blunt trauma to the head. There was no
doubt in anyone's mind that each of the victims died horribly.

As they reported their findings, the deputies believed that the victims in the kitchen were Brenda Groene and her 13-
year-old son, Slade, and that the victim in the living room was Brenda's boyfriend, Mark McKenzie.

There was no sign of eight-year-old Shasta Groene and her nine-year-old brother Dylan.
The deputies sealed off the house without removing or making positive identification of the bodies, and they closed
off Frontage Road in the vicinity of the house and designated it as a crime scene. They posted sentries to stand
guard throughout the night, and would return at first light with crime scene technicians and homicide investigators.

Search for Shasta and Dylan Begins

Deputies removing bodies of the Groene victims

Investigators, along with crime lab personnel, returned to the
Frontage Road home at daybreak on Tuesday, May 17,
2005. Positive identification of the bodies soon confirmed the initial
suspicions of the Kootenai County deputies: three homicides of a
most violent nature had occurred, and the dead were indeed those
who had been tentatively identified by the deputies who had initially
found the bodies. Following lengthy examinations at the scene by
sheriff's department detectives and crime lab technicians, the bodies
of Brenda Kay Groene, Slade Groene, and Mark McKenzie were
systematically removed from the house and taken to the county
morgue. They believed that the victims had been killed sometime
between Sunday night and the time their bodies were found on Monday.

Dylan Groene, victim

Meanwhile, volunteers with the Kootenai County Search and Rescue fanned out in all
directions throughout the wooded areas that surrounded the Groene-McKenzie home and
Lake Coeur d'Alene in their search for Shasta and Dylan. Some searched on foot, others
on horseback or all-terrain vehicles, and some used tracking dogs as well as dogs that
had been specifically trained to sniff out corpses as they traversed the woods and back
roads throughout the area. A helicopter also searched from the air, and Idaho State Police
(ISP) as well as the Coeur d'Alene office of the FBI joined the search effort and canvassed the area, showing
Shasta and Dylan's photos to area residents in the hope that someone had seen them.

Shasta Groene, victim

An Amber Alert was also issued nationwide for the two children. The Amber Alert
described Dylan as four-feet tall, 60 pounds, blue eyes and blond crew cut hair. Shasta
was described as three-feet ten-inches tall, 40 pounds, with hazel eyes and long brown
hair.

"Our main concern right now are the two children we cannot find," Sheriff Rocky Watson
told a gathering of reporters at a planned news conference.

Looking into the victims' backgrounds, investigators learned that Brenda had married Steven Groene at Big Bear
Lake, California, in 1986, and had five children together before divorcing in 2001. Following the divorce, she moved
her family to Wolf Lodge, Idaho and had lived there with Mark McKenzie ever since. Additional background
information on Brenda showed that she had operated a business called Maid to Order in which she cleaned houses
on a work-for-hire basis. According to those who knew her, she would drop her children at a daycare and typically
work all day cleaning other peoples' homes. However, she eventually got out of the housecleaning business so that
she could spend more time with her children. Those who knew her described her as a good mother.

Brenda Kay Groene, victim

Brenda wasn't a person without problems, however. She was on probation for possession
of drug paraphernalia at the time of her death, and she had served jail time for the
conviction on the aforementioned offense. She had also been ordered by the court to
attend drug and alcohol counseling, but financial difficulties had prevented her from
completing the programs.

Another son, 18-years-old, was in jail awaiting sentencing on burglary charges at the time
of the murders. One can only wonder if the same horrible fate that took the lives of the other members of his family
would have befallen him, too, had he not been in jail.

Mark McKenzie was described as an outdoors enthusiast who liked to spend some of his spare time hunting and
fishing. He worked full-time at a job as a supervisor at a stainless steel sink manufacturing company in Spokane,
Washington, located just across Idaho's western border. Both Brenda and Mark associated with bikers whose visits
to their home sometimes gave way to partying. They appeared to be well-liked throughout the community and no
one that the police interviewed could understand how they could meet such a vicious end.

"Concrete Bob"

Robert Roy Lutner

According to information released by the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department on
Wednesday, May 18, a "person of interest" surfaced in the case following interviews with
relatives and friends of the victims. Robert Roy Lutner, 33, also known as "Concrete Bob,"
a moniker he had been given because of his work in the concrete and construction
industry, was a friend of the victims and had visited them twice in recent days — once on
the Friday afternoon preceding the murders and again on Sunday evening, which was believed to have been the
day of the slayings. A relative of the Groene's told detectives that Lutner owed Brenda Groene and Mark McKenzie
$2,000. However, the relative told the investigators that no one in the family had indicated that there might have
been any trouble between them and Lutner, and there was no indication that he was being pressured to repay the
money even though the family needed it.

Mark McKenzie, victim

"I never saw him hostile toward my family at all," the relative said, according to a news report in
the Spokesman-Review.

Further investigation revealed that Lutner had been in trouble before, and in fact his criminal
record in the county was somewhat lengthy. He had been in trouble on drug possession
charges in 1992, and had been arrested for domestic battery in 2004 in an incident outside a bar that involved a
fight with a girlfriend. That charge had been eventually reduced to disturbing the peace. He was convicted twice for
fraud for improperly representing unemployment claims and was currently on probation for those convictions.

Lutner, at six-foot, three-inches and weighing in at 230 pounds, was someone the cops definitely wanted to talk
with. However, they first had to find him.

Searchers cover a trail

He was seen at a bar in the area on Sunday afternoon, which would
have been prior to being seen at Groene and McKenzie's
home. Two days later, on Tuesday, he talked to his probation officer
on the telephone and said that he was making a trip to Boise. By
that time, he had heard about the murders and was crying while
talking to a family friend of the victims, but the authorities were not
yet looking for him as a person of interest in the case. That all
changed, however, in a matter of hours after investigators pieced
together the sequence of events that had placed Lutner at the
Groene-McKenzie residence prior to the murders.

The next day, Wednesday, May 18, Lutner learned that the
investigators were looking for him and he turned himself in to
sheriff's deputies in Coeur d'Alene. He was interviewed over the
next several hours and denied having anything to do with the
murders. He took a polygraph and passed it with flying colors, and
was subsequently dropped as a person of interest in the case,
leaving investigators back at square one.

Search for Shasta and Dylan Continues

Missing poster for Shasta and Dylan

After the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department established two

phone lines for citizen tips about the brutal slayings and child
disappearances, more than 150 calls were logged within the first 12
hours. Volunteers had come forward to answer the phones in the
department's emergency operations center, located in the basement
of the sheriff's department headquarters building. Six volunteers
were on the phones around the clock, taking calls from concerned
citizens, friends of the family, and an occasional psychic trying to
help with a thoughtful lead about where Shasta and Dylan might be
found. Some of the tips came from parents whose children had
known Shasta and Dylan, and they provided outdoor locations
where they had sometimes gone to play. However, none of the tips led anywhere immediately or provided any
information that might shed some light on why such a terrible thing had occurred in their peaceful county.

Search dogs occasionally picked up Shasta's and Dylan's scent at various locations over a wide area of hills and
lakefront acreage, and near area ponds and streams which were searched with the aid of diving teams, to no
avail. There simply was no sign of the children.

Captain Ben Wolfinger

"We don't know if they're injured," Captain Ben Wolfinger told a reporter for the
Spokesman-Review. "We don't know if they're hiding out, if they're so scared that they're
afraid to come out. We want to search every nook and cranny."

Although the most viable leads were continually passed on to the makeshift command
post, consisting of a white trailer stationed near the crime scene, none of them panned
out.

As one day followed another, additional investigators from the FBI as well as from other local agencies joined in the
murder investigation and the search for the missing children. The FBI also offered $100,000 in reward money for
information leading to the safe return of the children and the capture of the person who abducted them. The case
had quickly become the largest criminal investigation in Kootenai County's history.

Steve Groene, Shasta's and

Dylan's biological father

Even though he was looked at initially as a possible suspect, as husbands always are in
any homicide investigation where a spouse or ex-spouse has met a violent end, Steve
Groene, Brenda's ex-husband and Shasta's and Dylan's biological father, was quickly
ruled out as a suspect in both the murder investigation as well as the missing children
investigation.

"Is he emotional already?" Wolfinger asked, as reported by the Spokesman-Review. "Yeah. Is he stressed? Yeah. Is
he beside himself with grief? Yeah. However, there is no evidence to substantiate Steve Groene as a suspect or a
person of interest."

Steve Groene, accompanied by relatives and friends, made an emotional plea for the safe return of his children on
national television on Thursday, May 19.

"Please, please release my children safely," Groene said quietly, his voice hoarse from a lot of crying. "They had
nothing to do with any of this. Release them in a safe area where law enforcement can find them. Call the help
line. Let them know where they can be found."
Two days later America's Most Wanted ran a segment on its Saturday night, May 21, telecast which resulted in 19
tips being called in to the sheriff's department shortly after the program aired. However, none of the tips provided
much hope to the investigators that they would find the children anytime soon.

Bludgeoned

The same day that Steve Groene had made his televised plea for the safe return of his children, sheriff's department
investigators and the Kootenai County Coroner's Office released details of the official cause of death of the murder
victims. According to the coroner's report, all three victims died from blunt trauma to the head. Each victim suffered
skull fractures and contusions of the brain, and investigators believed that a claw hammer may have been the blunt
instrument used on each of the bound victims. Following a toxicology analysis, tetrahydrocannabinol, also known as
THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, was found in the blood of Brenda Groene and Mark McKenzie. Traces of
methamphetamine were also found in their blood. Investigators claimed that they still did not know whether the
victims had been killed by one person acting alone or by more than one perpetrator. However, due to the fact that
each victim had been bound, they theorized that it may have taken more than one person to subdue the victims and
carry out the crimes.

Shasta & Duncan getting in the Jeep

Meanwhile, later that day a tip was phoned in by a sporting goods

store owner in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, located about 70 miles north of
Coeur d'Alene. The store owner said that a man and two children, a
young boy and a young girl, came into his store. The man had
asked for directions to Libby, Montana, after which the three left in a
white van with Washington license plates. The store owner said that
the children fit the descriptions of Shasta and Dylan.

Deputies from Boundary County as well as officers from the Idaho

State Police searched the main roads as well as the less-traveled
roads that led from Bonners Ferry to Libby, Montana, but there was
no sign of the van, the man, or the two children.

As the investigation continued, the cops were still no closer to determining a motive for the crime than they were to
finding the children. Drugs, or a drug deal gone bad, had been discussed as one possible motive — except that the
house on Frontage Road didn't contain evidence of drugs or of a methamphetamine lab, which were scattered here
and there throughout the Pacific Northwest, despite the fact that marijuana and methamphetamine were found in
Brenda and Mark's blood during their autopsies. To the cops it looked more like they had just been recreational
users and had likely used the drugs during the Sunday barbecue. There was even some talk among the
investigators that the killings may have been gang-related, prompting them to bring in a gang unit from Spokane to
go over and study the crime scene. But after all was said and done, there was no indication that the crime was
gang-related.
So who killed Brenda and Slade Groene, and Mark McKenzie, and kidnapped Shasta and Dylan Groene? And
why? Were the children even still alive? At this point it appeared that there would be no easy answers to those
questions and many others, and it seemed that any semblance of answers would not be forthcoming anytime soon.

Denny's

Investigators, as well as family members, held out hope that Shasta and Dylan were still alive. DNA tests on blood
taken from the crime scene showed that the blood belonged to the three murder victims and that Shasta's and
Dylan's blood appeared to be absent from the crime scene.

Shasta & Duncan enter store

Meanwhile, as time slipped forward, investigators hoping to find

clues that would help unravel the mystery of what happened not
only with regard to the murders on Frontage Road but to what had
happened to Shasta and Dylan began sifting through tons of
garbage from the area's public landfills and from Dumpsters in and
around Wolf Lodge. They hoped to find clues such as bloody
clothing that the killer may have discarded, or even the murder
weapon itself. But after sorting through tons of refuse, clues to what
happened and why remained elusive.

As the days turned into weeks it began to seem as if Shasta and

Dylan had simply disappeared from the face of the earth, never to
be seen again. Then, on Saturday, July 2, at about 1:30 a.m. and 48
days after the case had begun, the unexpected happened. A
middle-aged man driving a red Jeep Cherokee with Missouri license
plates turned into the parking lot of the Coeur d'Alene Denny's
restaurant, located north of Interstate 90, and parked.

He exited the vehicle, along with a little girl. They walked into the 24-hour establishment, passing by two young men
who were standing outside smoking cigarettes. In almost a state of shock, one of the young men recognized the
little girl as Shasta Groene. He had no doubt that it was Shasta — he had passed a billboard with a photo of her and
her brother, Dylan, earlier that evening.

But where was Dylan? There was no sign of him.

Nonetheless, the young man alerted his girlfriend inside via his cellular phone about what he had just
seen. Afterwards he alerted Denny's employees as well, but a waitress had already recognized Shasta by that time
and had told her shift manager. The manager subsequently called 911 at 1:51 a.m. and approximately ten minutes
later three police cars arrived at the restaurant, their lights turned off.
 Shasta & Duncan in the store

The man with the girl believed to be Shasta apparently saw the
police cruisers as they turned into the Denny's parking lot because
he immediately got up from his table, told a waitress that he needed
his check, and headed toward the restrooms with the little girl. When
the man returned a few minutes later, several officers surrounded
him and escorted him outside. Another officer spoke to the little girl,
and she told him that her name was Shasta Groene. Shasta said
that she wanted her "daddy" and that she wanted to go home.

Outside, shining their flashlights into the windows of the red Jeep,
the police officers saw no sign of Dylan, dashing their hopes that he
was still alive.

Shasta, who appeared to be in good physical health, was taken to a local hospital for examination and observation
where she remained for the next couple of days. She was eventually reunited with her father after he traveled from
Seattle to Coeur d'Alene to be with her.

Partial Duncan Timeline

Duncan's Fargo, ND mugshot

from sex the offender
database

The man with Shasta was identified shortly after his arrest as Joseph Edward Duncan III,
a 42-year-old fugitive sex offender from Fargo, North Dakota. He would initially be
charged with two counts of first-degree kidnapping, for which the maximum penalty in
Idaho is death or life in prison. Additional charges would come later as the evidence warranted including, initially,
three counts of first-degree murder.

In building their background on Duncan, investigators learned that he was born on February 25, 1963 in Tacoma,
Washington, where he was also raised. His first run-in with the law occurred in 1978 when he was 15-years-old. In
that incident he raped a nine-year-old boy at gunpoint, and the following year he was arrested driving a stolen car.

He was sentenced as a juvenile and sent to Dyslin's Boys' ranch in Tacoma, where he told a therapist who was
assigned to his case that he had bound and sexually assaulted six boys, according to a report by the Associated
Press. He also told the therapist that he estimated that he had raped 13 younger boys by the time he was 16.

In 1980 Duncan was sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint. Fourteen years later
he was paroled on the condition that he have no contact with minor children and was sent to a halfway house in
Seattle so that he could eventually, hopefully, return to society as a productive citizen. It didn't appear that he was
capable of going straight, however, and any hope of him returning to society as a normal citizen quickly vanished.
He violated his parole in 1996 by using marijuana and getting caught, and for possession of a firearm. He was sent
to jail for 30 days, and then released.

Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias

During that same timeframe, in July 1996, Sammiejo White, 11, and Carmen
Cubias, nine, half-sisters from Seattle, were last seen leaving a motel room near
downtown where they had been staying. Their bodies were found nearly two years
later, in February 1998. Although Duncan wasn't viewed as a suspect in their
disappearances and deaths at that time, given the circumstances surrounding the
Shasta and Dylan Groene case his background and movements would be carefully scrutinized in that case and
others.

Deborah Palmer, seven-years-old, was last seen walking to school in Oak Harbor, Washington on March 26, 1997.
Her body washed up on a beach five days later. Duncan would also be looked at in that case to determine whether
he could be linked to Deborah's disappearance and death. Duncan, on March 31, 1997, the date that Deborah's
body was found, stole his girlfriend's car and disappeared.

Anthony Martinez

While sitting in jail in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho following his arrest in connection with the Wolf
Lodge murders and child abductions, Duncan was quickly connected with the unsolved
disappearance, rape and death of ten-year-old Anthony Martinez of Beaumont, California
during an interview with FBI agents, according to Globe magazine. Agents were
questioning him about his possible involvement in other cases that were similar to the
Groene case, and he purportedly told them about the Martinez boy in Riverside County in
Southern California where he had apparently fled to after stealing his girlfriend's car in Washington. He reportedly
was visiting his father in Highland, California, only 22 miles from Beaumont, at the time Martinez disappeared.

Anthony Martinez disappeared on April 4, 1997 while playing with his younger brother and several friends in an alley
behind their home. A man apparently approached the boys and offered them money to help him find his lost cat.

"He first went after Anthony's brother, but that boy got away," Beaumont Police Lt. Mitch White told Globe
magazine. "He got Anthony."

According to Anthony's brother as related by Lt. White, the man threatened Anthony with a knife and forced him into
a white 1986 Chrysler New Yorker sedan and drove away. Anthony's bound naked body was found fifteen days
later, on April 19, in a shallow grave. Recently and in conjunction with the Groene investigation, Duncan's partial
right thumbprint found on duct tape from Anthony's body nearly nine years later was determined to be Duncan's. A
wanted poster that was circulated in Southern California at the time of Anthony's death depicted a suspect that bore
a striking resemblance to Duncan.
By August 27, 1997, Duncan had made his way to his half-sister's house in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was
arrested for parole violations. He was returned to Washington and sent back to prison, but was released less than
three years later. On July 21, 2000, Duncan moved to Fargo, North Dakota.

Realizing that they were dealing with a probable serial killer, the cops found themselves wondering why Duncan had
ever been released from prison. He was clearly an example of a habitual offender who had managed to slip through
the cracks of the system.

Shasta's Statement

According to the details that Shasta recounted to Kootenai County Detective Dan Mattos, contained in court records
from a probable cause hearing held on Tuesday, July 5, 2005, Shasta was asleep in her bedroom the night that her
family was killed. Her mother came into her room, woke her up, and led her into the living room where she first saw
Duncan. According to court records, Duncan carried Shasta and her brother outside and placed them inside a
pickup truck and drove them to a location where he had parked the red Jeep Cherokee. He then placed the children
inside the Jeep and drove them to a campsite deep in the forests of western Montana. Over the next several weeks,
according to Shasta, he repeatedly raped and sexually abused both of the children. She told Mattos that Duncan
had acted alone. She also said that she had called Duncan "Jet," a nickname of his own device, Joseph Edward the
Third.

According to a report in USA Today, Shasta recalled vividly the smallest details of the night that her family was killed
and she and her brother abducted. Shasta told the investigators that Duncan wore dark gloves inside the house,
and carried a shoulder-style weapon, such as a shotgun. During a search of the stolen Jeep, investigators found
dark gloves, a 12-gauge shotgun, and a red shotgun shell. She even recalled the brand name of the claw hammer
that Duncan allegedly used to kill her family, a FatMax. Although Shasta said that she and her brother had not
witnessed the actual murders, she explained how Duncan had showed her and her brother the FatMax hammer and
how he told them that he had used it to kill her family.

According to Kootenai County Sheriff's Detective Brad Maskell, investigators purchased a FatMax brand hammer
and were able to match the tool markings on it to the wounds on victims' skulls.

Shasta also explained to the investigators how Duncan had said that he used the night vision goggles to watch the
Groene-McKenzie home for two or three nights prior to the murders and abductions. Police also found night vision
goggles in the stolen Jeep.

Shasta also stated that Duncan had told her sordid details of how he had sexually molested her brother. He had
even tortured him, burning him with cigarettes.

Based on Shasta's statements, investigators were able to locate the remote Montana campsite where Duncan had
allegedly held Shasta and her brother captive. A short time later, authorities sadly announced that they believed
they had found Dylan's remains off of a remote Forest Service road in Montana's Bitterroot Mountains. A week later,
forensic DNA testing confirmed that the remains were indeed Dylan's. The authorities announced that he had been
shot to death and that his body had been burned.
It was also revealed by the Pacific Northwest Inlander, a free weekly newspaper published in Spokane, Washington,
that a video camcorder was recovered from the stolen Jeep. The camcorder contained video of Duncan abusing
Shasta and Dylan, as well as threatening to kill them. Shasta told investigators that Duncan had showed her some
of the digital pictures. Prosecutors successfully argued that the videos should not be copied for the defense out of
fear that during the process they could fall into the wrong hands and get leaked to the public and make their way
onto the Internet. Prosecutors indicated that Duncan may also be charged with production of child pornography, but
it was not clear whether those charges, if they materialize, would be the result of the digital videos taken of himself,
Shasta and Dylan, or if those charges would be unrelated to the Groene case.

Duncan's Blog

Joseph Duncan, arrested

Following Duncan's arrest, it was discovered that he had been keeping an Internet diary of
sorts, a web log, commonly referred to as a blog, in which he disturbingly implied that he
had left a string of bodies following his release from prison.

"I got out and I got even," wrote Duncan in his blog. "But I did not get caught. So I got
even again, and again did not get caught. I got even twice (actually more)."

Duncan also wrote of keeping a second diary, a secret diary written in code that provided more details of his horrible
crimes.

"...the world will know who I really was, and what I really did..." he wrote. "...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."

Duncan's writings were voluminous, and could easily fill a book. He also had an affinity for dressing in drag, and at
one point in his life he posted as series of such photos of himself on the Internet and labeled them, "Jazzi Jet," and
is an example of how he apparently views himself.

At the time of this writing, the FBI as well as investigators in at least five states are continuing in their efforts to
determine where Duncan might have been at any given time where any unsolved murders or rapes of children were
committed. The investigation, while no longer in its infancy, is still continuing and new details will likely emerge as
Duncan's case moves toward trial.

Duncan's trial date was originally slated to begin on January 17, 2006. However, according to the November 23,
2005 edition of The Seattle Times, First District Judge Fred Gibler vacated the January date and pushed his trial
date back to April 4, 2006, in response to defense attorneys' requests for more time to prepare for trial.
The First Plea Deal

Joseph Edward Duncan III in court

Sex offender, pedophile, kidnapper and murderer Joseph Edward Duncan III,
through his lawyers, worked out a deal with Idaho prosecutors just as his trial was
about to begin in October 2006 for crimes he committed in that state. As a result
of the deal, he pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and to three
counts of first-degree kidnapping in the murders of Brenda and Slade Groene and
Mark McKenzie, and for the abductions of Shasta and Dylan Groene for sexual
purposes.

In October 2006, before jury selection could be completed, Duncan worked out a
stipulated agreement through his attorney in which he described how he had stalked his victims' family for two days
after choosing them at random after seeing young Shasta playing outside her home in a bathing suit. Duncan had
then taken Shasta and Dylan deep into the Lolo National Forest, where he tortured them for weeks. He molested,
tortured and hung Dylan during the course of the horrendous ordeal, eventually murdering the boy and disposing of
his remains in the forest.

"This agreement was made possible because of a brave little nine-year-old girl who was willing to confront Duncan
face-to-face in the courtroom," Kootenai County Prosecutor Bill Douglas said. "A lot of hard work went into this."

After the guilty pleas were accepted, Duncan was allowed to make a statement.

"I've thought a lot about what I wanted to say," Duncan said. "I have nothing to say."

Duncan showed no remorse throughout the proceedings.

***

By the terms of Duncan's stipulated deal with Idaho prosecutors, he was required to cooperate with Kootenai
County investigators in the murder and kidnapping aspects of the cases involving Shasta and Dylan. It was agreed
that his guilty pleas could not be withdrawn, and if he was not convicted in similar pending cases in federal court the
State of Idaho could hold a death sentence trial in which Shasta would not be required to testify. Duncan was
sentenced to three consecutive life sentences without possibility of parole, pending the outcome of the federal cases
against him.

According to KTLA News, Duncan was convicted of the murders and kidnappings a year later in federal court after
prosecutors showed jurors videos that Duncan had made in which the molestation and torture of Dylan, including
Dylan being hanged until unconscious and near death before being revived, were monstrously recorded. The
federal jury also heard that Duncan shot Dylan point-blank in the head while his sister, Shasta, watched in horror.
Duncan received three death sentences in federal court, as well as nine life terms under varying charges for the
murders of four members of the family and the kidnapping of Shasta and Dylan.
The Anthony Martinez Case

Memorial for Anthony Martinez

Earlier, when Duncan had agreed to speak with FBI agents during the
initial investigation, he had mentioned ten-year-old Anthony Martinez's
name. Aware of the Martinez case and very interested, the FBI agents
contacted Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle in California.

"It was a situation where they were asking him about his involvement in
any other similar case," Doyle told a reporter with the National Enquirer. "He said, 'Yeah, this boy Martinez in
southern California, Riverside County.' It was not a full, blown-out confession, though. The FBI asked us if we knew
anything about a Martinez case. I said, 'We sure do — we've been trying to solve the murder for years, and we've
gone through 15,000 leads.' So when we were able to match a partial thumb print on duct tape found near Anthony's
body with that of Duncan, we knew we had our man."

Doyle initially had sent investigators to the Kootenai County Jail in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho to interview Duncan, but he
refused to speak with them.

"We haven't charged him yet, but we intend to carry out further investigations," Doyle said after the 2006 attempt to
interview Duncan. "And we are certainly looking to interview him again."

Anthony Martinez's mother, upon learning of the circumstances of Duncan's parole after serving only 14 years of a
20-year sentence that had allowed him to commit such savagery upon the Groene and McKenzie families and to
murder her own young son, was outraged.

"How do you get out for good behavior?" she asked. "Someone like that can't be rehabilitated. I don't care what
psychologists say."

After linking Duncan to Anthony Martinez's death, the FBI began looking into the possibility that there might be other
murders that could be linked to Duncan that had remained unsolved throughout the years. For all they knew, there
could be many.

According to retired lieutenant Mitch White, the lead investigator in the Martinez case who spoke with KPSP News,
the search for Anthony had been a race against time in hopes of finding the boy alive after learning of his
kidnapping at knifepoint in the alley behind his house. He said that there had often been more than 60 investigators
each day working on the case in the field "following up on leads—at least until his body was found down in Indio."

"When his body was found it was like letting the air out of a balloon," White said. "I mean, everyone was deflated. A
lot of people were angry that it hadn't worked out the way they hoped it would... Once [Anthony] was found,
[investigators] moved down to Indio and continued for a few months after that with a huge investigation."

Anthony had been missing for 15 days when his body was found in a remote area south of Joshua Tree National
Monument in Indio, bound with duct tape, raped, tortured and then beaten to death.
Duncan Makes Another Deal

According to a press release issued by the City of Beaumont, Calif., the 1997 case of Anthony Martinez was
officially closed after a deal was worked out between Duncan's lawyers and Riverside County District Attorney Paul
Zellerbach.

Paul Zellerbach

"Mr. Duncan's attorneys indicated that their client is willing to plead guilty
to all charges and accept a sentence of life without the possibility of
parole, and to waive his appellate rights in the state of California,"
Zellerbach said.

Zellerbach accepted the deal at the request of Anthony's family. As a

result, Duncan appeared in an Indio courtroom on Tuesday, March 15, 2011, and pleaded guilty to the kidnapping,
rape, and murder of Anthony Martinez in exchange for the life in prison without the possibility of parole terms.

"The district attorney agreed to a sentence of life without the possibility of parole," a Riverside County District
Attorney's office told the Los Angeles Times. An additional possible death sentence had been on the table, and
Zellerbach said that he struggled with his decision to accept the plea agreement.

"I want to make something perfectly clear," Zellerbach said of the deal. "Having been a prosecutor for over 22 years,
having been a superior court judge for almost 11 years, I have never seen a person in my professional career who
is more deserving of the death penalty than Joseph Duncan. He deserves the death penalty for the murder of
Anthony Martinez."

"We are relieved that Anthony's family and the entire community, as well as those who were involved in the search
for Anthony, can finally find closure in knowing that the person responsible for the kidnapping and murder of a
young, innocent child will face justice and never have the opportunity to commit another brutal crime," Beaumont
Police Chief Frank Coe said.

"I have waited almost fourteen years for the day that the killer of Anthony Martinez would face justice and today is
that day," Mitch White said after Duncan's guilty plea was made and accepted. "The case is now closed and I hope
that those that have been so deeply affected by this tragedy can finally have the peace they deserve. Today's
proceedings will ensure that Joseph Duncan will never see the light of day again. I wish the best for [Anthony's
family], and it is my sincere hope that they get the closure that they deserve."

Superior Court Judge David B. Downing said he agreed with Zellerbach's decision to make the deal with Duncan.

"There wasn't much sense, practically speaking, to go through with a trial here," Downing said. He added that death
penalty cases "are much faster in Idaho" and that there wasn't much point in having such proceedings for Duncan in
California.
Steve Groene's Reaction to Duncan's Newest Deal

Steve Groene

In Idaho Steve Groene expressed mixed feelings about the plea deal for
Duncan.

"I don't know if a lot of people do know that Shasta was the one Duncan
confessed [the Martinez murder] to — not only that crime but to the
murders of those two young girls [Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias]
over in Washington state," Groene told a reporter for KXLY News. "It's just a reminder to us of something we'd much
rather forget. I can't imagine trying to put this behind me with Duncan still breathing air. I don't think any of my
children can either, and certainly any of the other family members of victims of his crimes."

According to KESQ News, Groene believes a death penalty trial in California would have cost a lot of money without
resulting in a different outcome, "even if Duncan would have gotten the death penalty in California."

Groene, battling throat cancer and speaking with the aid of an electronic larynx device, hopes that he lives to
witness Duncan's execution.

"I've said it before," Groene said. "I want front row, center seats when they fry this guy. If I don't make it that long,
then maybe I'll have better seats than that."

Groene also hopes that any reward money in the Anthony Martinez case goes to his daughter, Shasta, since she
provided much of the information to police about Duncan and the other murders he is believed to have committed.

"Obviously she took it to heart when Duncan told her about murdering other kids, and she did her best to remember
every detail about everything he told her, and I think for that she needs to be rewarded," he added.

Details Provided by Duncan

During the March 15, 2011, hearing in which Duncan pleaded guilty to murdering Anthony Martinez, Supervising
Deputy District Attorney Otis Sterling read a document apparently written by Duncan to the court, using it to provide
a factual basis for accepting Duncan's guilty plea.

Duncan in police custody

According to Sterling's reading of the document, Duncan admitted that he had lured a
group of boys to help him find a lost cat by offering them $1 each. At one point he pulled
out a knife and forced Anthony into the car he was driving and transported him some 50
miles to the remote desert area near Indio where his body was found.

Sterling read that Duncan had forcibly removed all of Anthony's clothing, and that
Duncan's intent in touching Anthony was so he "could control him to perform sexual acts on him. Duncan then
proceeded to rape Anthony. Duncan admitted that he bound Anthony with duct tape prior to hitting him on the head
with a rock, killing the boy. Sterling also said that Duncan's "intention was to exact revenge on society."

"I've lived with this case for three years," Sterling said. "I wanted to make sure when Duncan came to California I
could do everything I could possibly do to make sure he was convicted. I spent many a night crying. Just the thought
of someone taking a child from where they were playing, and doing what Joseph Duncan did — there is no other
word to describe that than to say it is evil, probably evil in its purest form."

Sentencing Hearing

At Duncan's sentencing hearing for the Anthony Martinez murder on April 4, 2011, Zellerbach said that he wouldn't
have considered a deal with Duncan if Duncan had not already been sentenced to death in federal court.

"As a prosecutor, I handled 50 murder cases and 35 death penalty cases," Zellerbach said. "I presided as a judge
over seven death cases and sentenced five people to death. I've sentenced some of the worst of the worst child
killers, and Mr. Duncan ranks right up there in the top three."

Diana Reed speaks on Duncan sentencing

Anthony's mother, Diana Reed, spoke at the hearing and said that she
gave birth to Anthony when she was 16, and that she did not want Duncan
to know the extent of the pain his actions had caused her and her family.

"I was not going to allow him to steal that from me," Reed said. "I wasn't
going to spend the rest of my life letting him know what he had done to us.
I don't think he deserves to even know. He might have been able to take
Tony physically — he never would be able to take away the love that we've had. He was like my buddy. He was
always there. We kind of grew up together. I wanted so much for him. We're ready for a conclusion, ready for it to be
done. It won't ever be closed, but it's over. And we can now, you know, mourn Tony's death the way we should have
in the beginning. When we buried him, we didn't know who did it. And the Riverside County Sheriff and Beaumont
Police, they never forgot and we'll be eternally grateful to all the departments involved."

Reed said that she pities Duncan, and that she views him as less than human.

"I find it incomprehensible someone who can be categorized as human, the same as I, could do the things he has
done," she said, as reported by Fox News. "I don't consider him a person."

Duncan sat quietly throughout the proceeding, his eyes closed much of the time. When his eyes were open, he
stared mostly straight ahead and would not look at Reed or Anthony's father, Ernesto Martinez, or at other family
members and friends.

"He will endure for eternity pain and suffering that no humankind can comprehend," Martinez said of Duncan in an
emotional statement to the court. "I'm angry that instead of attending my son's college graduation, I'm spending the
day at the sentencing for Tony's murderer. As a father, I would love nothing more than to carry out Joseph Duncan's
execution with my own two hands."
Sentence

Judge David B. Downing

Following the sentencing hearing, Joseph Edward Duncan III, shackled in

chains with his arms crossed in front of him, was sentenced by Judge
Downing to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of
parole in the Anthony Martinez case.

"I can say in my 31 years being involved in the criminal justice system, I've
never met a more evil person than Joseph Duncan," Downing said.

In addition to Duncan's three death sentences, the two life terms meted by Downing brought Duncan's total life
sentences to 11. The sentence was, in part, the result of several special circumstance allegations including
kidnapping, torture, committing lewd acts on a minor, and having been convicted of prior murders being considered.

"It would be ridiculous to even attempt to think that in any way, shape or form that he had any type of remorse,"
Anthony's mother said after sentence was passed.

Downing ordered Duncan removed from the courtroom and sent back to the maximum security federal prison in
Terre Haute, Ind., where he will eventually be executed. According to the plea deal in California, Duncan waived his
right to appeal his conviction in that state, and was ordered to pay $7,000 to Anthony's family to cover the cost of
the child's funeral.

In the meantime, it remains to be seen whether Duncan will be charged and tried in any of the other murders he is
suspected of having committed.

Bibliography Television
CNN
Print Media and Internet Fox News
Billings Gazette Fox News
CNN.com KESQ News
Duncan's Blog: http://fifthnail.blogspot.com KPSP News
Globe Magazine KTLA News
MSNBC.com KXLY News
The Bismark Tribune MSNBC
The Pacific Northwest Inlander NBC News
The Seattle Times
The Spokesman-Review Other Media
USA Today City of Beaumont, Calif.
Valley News Southern California Public Radio

http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/sexual_assault/duncan_and_mullen/1.html
 Michael Mullen, Sex Offender Vigilante
BY David Krajicek

1. Joseph Duncan's Impact

2. False Promise of Sex-offender Registries
3. "FBI" Comes Knocking
4. Threats Reported
5. Executions
6. Quick Arrest
7. Crying Out for Help
8. Sex Offender Hit List
9. Blogging His Thoughts
10. Self-Pity and Blaming Society
11. "Jet" Duncan
12. I Am Already a New Person
13. Sexual Tales
14. Lost Opportunity to Commit
15. School Days
16. $15,000 Bail
17. Sex Registries
18. A Better Strategy?
19. Resources
20. Joseph Duncan Feature Story

Joseph Duncan's Impact

Now and again, America is subjected to the acts of a criminal so profoundly depraved that it changes the way we
view our fellow human beings.

Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer. Gary Ridgway. Dennis Rader. Richard Speck.

This pitiless club has a new member: Joseph Edward Duncan III.

Joseph Duncan arrested

As a teenager in Tacoma, Wash., Duncan raped and tortured a 14-year-old boy at

gunpoint. Convicted as an adult, he spent 18 years in prison and was afforded many
opportunities to overcome—or perhaps constrain—his psychopathic sexual urges.

Ultimately, all efforts failed.

After prison, Duncan enrolled in college in Fargo, N.D., registered as a sex offender and spent several years without
any reported lapses.
But early last spring, he was accused of molesting a boy on a playground in Minnesota. Facing charges that almost
certainly would have led him back to prison, Duncan vanished from Fargo in a stolen Jeep, just weeks before he
was to graduate from North Dakota State University.

Map of Idaho with Coeur-d'Alene locator

Three days later, authorities allege, Duncan turned up with a shotgun and
carpenter's hammer at the home of Brenda Groene and her children near Coeur
d'Alene, Idaho. He bludgeoned to death Groene, her son Slade, 13, and Brenda's
boyfriend, Mark McKenzie.

He bound the woman's two youngest children, Dylan, 9, and Shasta, 8, and
carried them away in his Jeep. He took them to a hideout in the Montana woods
and used the children as sexual playthings for seven weeks before finally killing Dylan, officials allege.

He was arrested July 2 at a Coeur d'Alene restaurant while having breakfast with Shasta.

False Promise of Sex-offender Registries

As Duncan sits in jail in Idaho on murder and kidnapping charges, some experts are citing his case as an example
of the false promise of the country's sex offender registries and the plethora of new laws intended to rein in the
behavior of sexual psychopaths like Duncan.

Duncan is one of 550,000 registered sex offenders in America. Broken down by state or city, the numbers seem
staggering: 63,000 in California, 22,000 in New York, 5,200 in Oklahoma, 2,000 in Sacramento, 1,300 in Seattle.
Full-time monitoring of each of them is not economically viable.

Instead, the felons are identified through sex-offender registries and, in some cases, public notification when the
offender moves in to a new neighborhood.

Some question the effectiveness and common sense of that policy.

John La Fond

John La Fond, a retired law professor in Tacoma who has researched America's treatment
of sex offenders, told the Crime Library that Web publication of offenders' names and
addresses "almost becomes a confession by the state that they cannot keep the society
safe from harm. It invites society to take matters into its own hands."

One Washington state man, in a blue rage over Duncan's crimes against the Idaho family,
is accused of doing just that.
“FBI" Comes Knocking

Hank Eisses must have sighed when he answered the knock on his door at 7 p.m. on Aug. 26 this year (2005).

At his threshold stood a human colossus 6-foot-5 and nearly 300 pounds wearing a blue jogging suit and an FBI ball
cap.

FBI baseball cap

Eisses was accustomed to law enforcement scrutiny of his home, at 2825 Northwest Ave.
in Bellingham, a northwest Washington mill and university town of 71,000.

But this visit would prove to be something completely different.

Eisses, 49, was a registered sex offender, as were his two roommates, Victor Vazquez,
68, and James Russell, 42.

Hank Eisses

Born in Holland but a longtime resident of Whatcom County, Wash., Eisses had pleaded
guilty in 1997 to raping an adolescent boy at his home near the Canadian border on
several occasions after plying him with drugs and alcohol. He spent five years in prison
and underwent sex offender treatment.

Map of Washington state with Whatcom County locator

He was released in 2002 and bought his home with help from
friends at a Bellingham church. Rent from his roommates helped
pay the mortgage.

Vazquez, a New York City native who had moved west, was
confronted by Washington authorities in the late 1980s with
allegations that he had for years sexually abused his own children, boys and girls from infancy to age 14 at the time
of his arrest. He pleaded guilty and spent 11 years in prison. He, too, was released in 2002 and moved in with
Eisses, whom he apparently met through sex-offender treatment.

They were joined 2003 by Russell, who had been imprisoned for nine years on a 1994 conviction for the sexual
assault of a 3-year-old girl. Like Vazquez, Russell was a serial sex offender, with at least six victims, all infants or
toddlers.

Their criminal histories were no secret in Bellingham.

In 1990, Washington became the first state to authorize registration and public notification about sex offenders
under its Community Protection Act. The law also allows unlimited civil commitment for sexual deviants who are
judged dangerous even after they have completed their full criminal sentences.

As in 46 other states, photographs of and addresses for Washington's sex offenders are readily available on various
law enforcement Web sites.

The Whatcom County sheriff's site listed Eisses, Vazquez and Russell as Level III offenders, the most likely to lapse
into further sexual deviance. Even a computer novice could have determined in a matter of minutes that the three
men lived together at the home in the 2800 block of Northwest Avenue.

And that is what brought the giant in the FBI cap to their door.

Threats Reported

All three roommates were home when the agent knocked on Friday, Aug. 26. He explained he was investigating
vigilante-style threats that had been made against registered sex offenders. He said a "hit list" had surfaced on the
Internet, two sex offenders had already been killed, and he had stopped by off-duty to warn them.

Eisses invited the agent in, and the four men sat in the living room and, later, on the patio outside. They had a long
and apparently amicable chat. When he found the men had no beer, the agent went to a nearby shop and bought a
six-pack of Coors.

They sat on law furniture outside as the agent drank the beer and smoked Camel cigarettes. He was acquainted
with each of their offenses and questioned the men about how and why they assaulted their victims.

Victor Vazquez

Russell had to work late that night, and he departed at about 9:30 p.m., leaving Eisses
and Vazquez with the agent. He phoned from work at 1:15 a.m. and got no answer.
Concerned and suspicious of the strange visitor, he drove home during his lunch break at
3 a.m. to find his roommates murdered. Both were lying dead on a bedroom floor, near a
running computer.

Hank Eisses had been shot in the right ear and Victor Vazquez in the right temple. In each
case, the gun barrel had been so close that it was touching the men's skin when fired. The murders were
executions.

Executions

Investigators found two spent 9mm casings in the room. A forensics expert determined that someone using the
computer had visited the Whatcom County sheriff's sex offender registry and had viewed the listings for both Eisses
and Vazquez. The user had also visited a pornography Web site.

The visitor was no FBI agent warning about vigilantes, of course. He was the vigilante.
His targets were poorly chosen.

None of the three had re-offended. They lived quietly and abided the terms of their release. All three were
remorseful, and they likely found strength in their togetherness.

"In a sense, they are a success story," Kathryn Bail, a state prison official, told the Seattle Times. "These guys were
doing fine. They were employed. They were living according to the conditions."

Theodore Kingma, the church friend who helped Eisses buy the house, told the paper, "He confessed his sins, and
he lived right with God and the neighbors."

After the murders, Eve Vazquez, a victim of her father's sexual abuse, released a statement disclosing that she had
confronted her father after his release from prison.

"I found a guilt-stricken man who was suffering deeply from his past mistakes," she said.

She continued, "I worry that the community may feel as if my father's murderer is a social vigilante who is justified in
his actions because of the mistakes my father had made 17 years ago. If anyone had the right to be angry with my
father, it was me, his primary victim."

But Vazquez said she and her father had been slowly rebuilding a relationship.

"I finally learned that my father was more than the sum of his worst acts," she said. "He was a human being, a real
dad who did everything within his means to right his wrongs."

Quick Arrest

The killer made it easy on the investigating agencies. He left fingerprints and ample cigarette butts to produce a full
DNA sample. But the forensic evidence wasn't needed.

The big man could not contain his sense of accomplishment. A few days after the murder, he sent letters to police
and the Bellingham Herald explaining his motives and threatening to kill more sex offenders who had targeted
children.

"I only allowed James Allen Russell to live so he could get the message out to others of his kind that I am coming for
him," he wrote to the Bellingham newspaper, using the nom-de-crime "Agent Life."

On Sept. 5, 10 days after the murder, the man telephoned police from a Bellingham restaurant to say he was
prepared to surrender.

Within the hour, police had arrested Michael Anthony Mullen, 35, a 6-foot-5 ex-con and accomplished sad sack.

Michael Anthony Mullen

In a rambling confession, Mullen said he killed the two sex offenders in twisted retaliation for Duncan's alleged
crimes. He added that he wished to protect children, including his own, from predatory pedophiles. Mullen said he
got the names and home address of the sex offender roommates by visiting the county sheriff's Website about six
weeks before committing the murders. He then carefully cased the house and concocted his FBI impostor scheme.

Mullen insisted that he wanted to immediately plead guilty and be sentenced to death so he could meet Joseph
Duncan in the afterlife and take revenge for his crimes against the Groene family.

Crying Out for Help

Mullen's brother, Larry, told the Seattle Times that Michael Mullen was a troubled man who had been molested by a
neighbor when he was in elementary school.

He had been "crying out for help all his life," the brother said. He had limped through an undistinguished life aided
by alcohol and medications, including anti-anxiety pills, anti-depressants and sleeping pills.

He had served two prison terms in Washington for theft and check fraud, then spent 18 months a California prison
on a 2003 conviction for vehicle theft. He had two or three children from relationships earlier in life.

In a court affidavit, prosecutor Mac Setter said, "He described himself as a thief and a 'con' whose life was wasted
and implied that murdering sex offenders was giving his life value."

The affidavit also quoted a letter that Michael Mullen sent to his girlfriend:

"Murder is not a solution and what I did was also wrong," he wrote. "I can only pray that God will see my intentions
were good."

After the arrest, reporter Mike Carter of the Seattle Times sent a letter to Mullen in jail asking him to expound on his
motivations. He did so promptly and thoroughly, replying in a four-page, hand-printed note.

"My goal is to beat J. Duncan to death, so I can be there when he arrives," he wrote. "It made me sick to think of the
abuse Dylan suffered before he died. To be discarded like garbage."

Sex Offender Hit List

Mullen drew up a "hit list" from sex offender registries of men who targeted children. He told the Times he had gone
to "interview" Eisses because "I wanted to know 'why' he did what he did."

"I then interviewed all three occupants, and out of the three only one showed remorse or guilt. He is the one I let
go," he wrote. He said he killed Eisses and Vazquez because they "blamed [sic] their victims they showed NO
remorse." He added, "I wanted one alive to spread the message that 'we' will not tolerate 'our' children being used
and abused."

He continued, "Don't get me wrong. I am no saint. I've been haunted since childhood. I just don't want other children
to grow up confused, sad, scared."
Prosecutor Setter told the paper that Mullen was trying to rationalize an irrational act of vigilantism.

"He is trying to justify these killings, to make it sound like these men had some choice in their deaths, that he
interviewed them and they failed his test by not being remorseful. They did not," Setter said. "He intended to kill
them from the outset."

After trying to wave off legal help and plead guilty during his arraignment, Mullen was persuaded by his brother and
court-appointed lawyer to put up a defense. At a second court appearance, a week after his arrest, Mullen sat
weeping in the jury box. Questions about his sanity at the time of murders likely will play a role if and when the case
goes to trial.

Blogging His Thoughts

Meanwhile, Idaho authorities say they intend to seek the death penalty against Joseph Edward Duncan III, who has
been somewhat less chatty than Mullen about his alleged crimes.

Much of what is known about his state of mind comes from his Web postings.

From January until May 2005, he posted his thoughts on a personal blog, The Fifth Nail, a reference to a folk story
about a nail that pierced the heart of Jesus Christ on the cross and has been missing for 2,000 years.

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

He indicated on his blog that he had gotten away with other, unreported sexual offenses, perhaps during his time in
college in North Dakota.

"I was in prison for over 18 years, since the age of 17. As an adult all I knew was the oppression of incarceration. All
those years I dreamed of getting out...And getting even. Instead, I got out and I got even, but did not get caught. So,
I got even again, and again did not get caught. So, I figured, well, I got even twice (actually more, but that's here nor
there), even if I'm the only one who knows, so now what?"

Duncan also contributed to Talk Left, a liberal-oriented Web site concerning criminal justice. His writing frequently
was marked by self-pitying complaints about the scrutiny of law enforcement and his inability to find a job as a result
of the "state-sanctioned discrimination" against sex offenders.

Self-Pity and Blaming Society

He wrote on Talk Left in January 2005:

"While I was in prison I educated myself and made serious efforts to understand how my life had gotten so far off
track so quickly. Now I am a professional Software Engineer, but have a hard time finding work or even a place to
live because of all the hype surrounding sex offenders. I can't even find a girlfriend, because the kind of woman I
like, mature and educated, are terrified when they find out I'm a "Level Three Sex Offender"; which of course I am
not, I am an x-convict, and that is all. People must realize that it is never okay to discriminate against any class of
people for any reason. Even if that class is so obviously offensive. Discrimination is always based on the perceived
offensiveness of a class; blacks where portrayed as a threat to decent society, as were the Jews in Nazi Germany.
The truth is that most sex offenders do not re-offend...What would ever make a person behave so angrily toward
another completely innocent person? Could it be that that innocent person somehow represents society, and the
violation is some kind of attempt to regain control...I'm no psychologist, but I do know ignorance never solved
anything."

In his final Web posting, on his personal blog three days before the Groene murders, Duncan said he was
preparing a journal that would give the full story of his life. He appeared to be weighing his next step, and surrender
seemed an option:

"I wish I could be more honest about my feelings, but those demons made sure I'd never be able to do that. I might
not know if it matters. (From the journal) the world will know who I really was, and what I really did, and what I really
thought. Also, maybe then they will understand that despite my actions, I'm not a bad person, I just have a disease
contracted from society, and it hurts a lot. I hope to complete this journal before I die (soon) or turn myself in (I still
might do that, I think it is the right thing, but of course, I'm not sure). Speak of being sure; I wish I could be sure
about my thoughts. But right now the only thing I'm sure about is that I'm sure about nothing. It is not a good position
to be in considering my circumstances (being a felony fugitive and all)."

"Jet" Duncan

Duncan, who sometimes called himself Jet, from Joseph E. the Third, was born Feb. 25, 1963.

The son of a career airman, he spent time in Europe and several cities in the United States before his family settled
in Tacoma.

At age 15, with his parents' marriage on the rocks, he stole a car and fled from cops, ramming a police barricade
after a chase.

In January 1980, a month before he turned 17, Duncan broke into a neighbor's home and stole four handguns. Later
that day, he pulled a gun on a 14-year-old boy who walking home from school. He led him to a wooded area, where
he raped him twice and beat him with a tree branch.

Duncan would later claim that he was crying out for attention from his mother and father, who were absorbed by
their own marital problems.

Perhaps that was partially true. But Duncan went a sobering step further by torturing the boy indicative of a sadistic
side.
He burned him with a cigarette and twice pointed the gun at him and fired it on empty chambers, leading the victim
to believe he was about to be murdered.

Duncan was sentenced as an adult to up to 20 years in prison. A kind-minded judge suspended the sentence and
ordered Duncan to be treated at a state mental hospital, but he washed out of that program after he was caught
window-peeping.

He was sent away to prison.

I Am Already a New Person

His mother spent a decade cajoling for his release, but Washington authorities were wary, especially as the public in
the late 1980s began demanding more severe treatment of sex offenders.

"I tried and tried to properly train him up in an authoritarian Christian manner, but his Dad had apparently been
raised in a very liberal fashion," Lillian Duncan wrote to the state parole board in 1988, according to the Spokane
Spokesman-Review. "I repeat, he has been punished enough. Please care enough to give him a chance to have a
decent life."

Duncan himself weighed in with a self-evaluation in 1989: "I was a confused and rebellious kid demanding denied
attention and not understanding the consequences of my actions. Now I am a fully mature adult. I am a positive
person. I like me. I trust me...I am already a new person."

Duncan earned a high school diploma in prison and became an expert at computers.

In the 1990s, he gained a new advocate for release: pen pal David Woelfert, a low-level government administrator in
Seattle, according to the Spokane newspaper. The men apparently developed a romantic relationship.

"Mr. Duncan is filled with remorse for the act that he committed many years ago," Woelfert wrote to parole
authorities in August 1991. "He has gone through the self-imposed hell of realizing the impact of what had
happened."

Two years later Woelfert wrote, "He is open, honest and eager to move on with his life. He is no threat to society
whatsoever...Further incarceration of Mr. Duncan will serve no purpose whatsoever."

Sexual Tales

Duncan's advocates finally persuaded parole officials, and he won release in December 1994 and moved into a
halfway house in Seattle. Duncan worked selling magazine subscriptions over the phone and later for a computer
software firm.

But his lifestyle choices as he enjoyed his first freedom as an adult caused concern among his parole supervisors.

Duncan engaged in promiscuous homosexual sex and had a relationship with a married woman, who encouraged
the convicted sex offender to explore his feminine traits by cross-dressing.
His supervisor, Sandra Silver, was flummoxed, according to documents obtained by the Spokesman-Review.

She wrote to his therapist, "Would you please explain how permitting Mr. Duncan to sustain an adulterous
relationship with a married woman is beneficial to his sexual deviancy issues?"

Duncan tested positive for marijuana in urine tests administered in 1996 and again in '97. As authorities began the
parole revocation process, he vanished, fleeing Seattle and Washington state in his girlfriend's car.

He was on the lam for a number of months, apparently visiting San Francisco and the Los Angeles area. He was
arrested by the FBI at his half-sister's home in Kansas City, and he was returned to prison in Washington.

But by 2000 Duncan had served his full sentence, and the state had no choice but to release him on July 14 that
year.

Lost Opportunity to Commit

Under Washington's Community Protection Act, authorities had the legal right to commit Duncan to its sex predator
complex on McNeil Island if he met the legal definition of a violent sexual predator.

His therapist, Dr. Carla van Dam, came to a remarkable conclusion: based on a complicated formula, she judged
that Duncan had a three-in-five chance of re-offending. Yet, she said, there was "insufficient evidence" to justify civil
commitment.

"This is a complex case that generates more questions than it answers," she wrote.

One complicating factor was the various conflicting stories that Duncan had given about his sexual background
while in the mental facility just after his original conviction.

He claimed he was molested as an 8-year-old and had his first sexual experiences, both homosexual and
heterosexual, at 12. He claimed that at age 15 he forced a 9-year-old to have sex at gunpoint, and he said when he
was 16 he tied up six boys, ages 6 through 10, and forced them to have sex. He also charged incest against family
members.

But Duncan later recanted most of the stories. He said he made them up to draw pity and avoid prison.

"All versions suggested a history where he was surrounded by sexual improprieties," van Dam wrote, adding
Duncan had a "chaotic childhood fraught with sexually inappropriate contact."

And while she couldn't recommend civil commitment, van Dam was not confident about the long-term prospects for
Duncan, whom she portrayed as a skilled liar and manipulator.

"Concerns about his ability to refrain from sexually violent behavior remain," Van Dam pointedly wrote. She noted
Duncan's "longstanding history of sexually deviant behavior and sexual excitement he associates with aggression
and violence."

He would prove her right.

School Days

North Dakota State University

A week after he was released from prison, Duncan arrived in Fargo, where he
enrolled at North Dakota State University to study computer software engineering.

As required by state law, Duncan registered with the local police department,
which evaluated his crimes, treatment and punishment and assigned him a Level
III rating, the most dangerous and likely to re-offend. On Sept. 27, 2000, nearly
300 people attended a "sexual offender notification meeting" about Duncan in Fargo. The local newspaper, the
Fargo Forum, reported the meeting and Duncan's background with two separate stories totaling about 2,000 words.

But the commotion blew over, and Duncan apparently managed to live a quiet life, renting an apartment on 7th
Street, a mile from campus. Fargo cops visited him once every three months to update his photograph.

Police Chief Chris Magnus called him "almost a model offender." He was polite to the officers, although he groused
about the visits on his Weblog. Professors, staff members and fellow students in the computer science department
found him to be conscientious and hardworking. He was hired as a programmer in the computer department, and he
was on the verge of graduating with honors earlier this year.

Police Chief Chris Magnus

"I figured he was just getting his life back together," Kendall Nygard, the department
chairman, told the Spokesman-Review. "He seemed to be under control. He seemed
normal."

But on Fourth of July weekend in 2004, a stranger had turned up on a school playground
in Detroit Lakes, Minn., 45 miles east of Fargo. He pulled down the pants of a 6-year-old boy and fondled him.

$15,000 Bail

An investigation of known sex offenders in the region eventually led to Duncan, and was arrested late in March 2005
after the boy and other witnesses picked him out in a photo lineup.

He was charged with second-degree criminal sexual conduct, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years under
Minnesota law. As a repeat offender, Duncan likely was facing a long prison term if convicted.

Those in the university computer science department were stunned when a story about the allegations against
Duncan appeared in the local paper.

A Fargo businessman posted $15,000 bail, and Duncan was released on April 5. The Minnesota judge later said
that he was unaware of the disturbing details of Duncan's rape of the teenager in 1980. He said he would have set a
higher bail had he known.
A week later, on April 13, Duncan went on a peculiar shopping expedition at a Wal-Mart store in Fargo.

Authorities said he spent $732 on night-vision goggles, a palm-sized camcorder, blank videotapes, a radar detector
and a car battery.

On April 20, Duncan made a final contact with a pre-trial probation officer in Minnesota. He stopped by the computer
science department on about the same day, looking for a lost cell phone. He walked out and wasn't seen again,
fleeing in his leased red Jeep.

But the Wal-Mart purchases indicated that he had made plans.

Sex Registries

For some, the intertwined Duncan and Mullen cases indicate that it is time for America to take a fresh look at our
treatment of sex offenders.

Over the past 15 years, local, state and federal lawmakers have passed hundreds of new statutes intended to
extend the incarceration of sex offenders and monitor their behavior after release.

But the Duncan case points out, once again, that no law can block a fiend from acting upon his homicidal impulses.

And the Mullen case, apparently the first involving lethal vigilantism against registered sex offenders, calls into
question the safety and effectiveness of that widely used system. Cites, counties and states are bracing for more
lawsuits by other sex offenders who feel targeted by the registries. The Mullen murders likely will serve as
ammunition for a new round of legal challenges.

John LaFond, the retired law professor, said he found dozens of cases of harassment and assault of sex offenders
as a result of registry listings while researching his 2005 book, Preventing Sexual Violence: How Society Should
Cope with Sex Offenders.

In a telephone interview from Tacoma, LaFond told the Crime Library that the prevailing strategy of public
notification and registries for all sex offenders wastes resources that should be used monitoring and treating the
most dangerous offenders.

As often happens with crime, public policy is crafted based upon one highly abnormal case, such as the Duncan
"stranger" attack. States will redouble their efforts to protect citizens from those nefarious strangers, plowing more
money into that element of the problem.

Yet eight out of 10 sex assaults are committed by relatives, friends or acquaintances.

"Our current policies assume that all sex offenders are equally dangerous and that one size fits all in their treatment
and monitoring," LaFond said. "We box up large numbers of sex offenders for long periods of time...But ultimately
we release those same sex offenders back into the community with minimal supervision and control."

Public notification and registries place the onus on citizens to protect themselves, LaFond argued.
"It's almost as though the state is saying, 'There's a dangerous sex offender living within your midst. We have done
all we can; the rest is up to you,'" he said.

That strategy scares the populace and leaves the erroneous impression that sex offenders have no hope of
changing their behavior that they are more likely to re-offend than other criminals.

In fact, the opposite is true.

In general, about two-thirds of all ex-convicts re-offend within four years of parole.

But a groundbreaking 1998 study of 23,000 sex offenders found that just 13.4 percent of those ex-cons re-offended,
although the rate varied vastly among different categories of offenders.

The lowest rate of re-offending was among those who assaulted family members. The rates were higher for non-
related child molesters and for those who assaulted strangers.

The research showed that the greatest risk of re-offending was among those who abused multiple people or boys
and were young themselves at the time of their first sex crime precisely the profile of Joseph Duncan.

A Better Strategy?

So how can America stay safe from sex fiends?

No law or law enforcement strategy will end sex offenses, although that category of crime like every other has
declined markedly in the United States in the past 10 years. The fact is that heinous acts are certain to occur
somewhere every single day in a nation of 300 million people.

The best we can hope do is minimize the number of re-offenses by sexual predators. LaFond said a newly
developing strategy of intense supervision seems to work best.

This "containment" strategy is used in Colorado, which also has a sex offender registry. But the state's Bureau of
Investigation emphasizes the essential facts about sex offenses on the registry Web site, including this one: "Most
sex offenders (80-95%) assault people they know."

The state has resolved that sex offenders can't be "cured," but their problem can be managed through
comprehensive treatment and carefully structured and monitored behavioral supervision.

Colorado Bureau of Investigation logo

Under the containment approach, sex offenders are intensely managed by community
supervision teams that include probation and parole officers, community corrections
staffers, polygraph examiners and those who provide treatment.
Supervising officers set conditions, monitor behavior and impose sanctions for infractions. Treatment-providers
gather information about the offender and administer long-term therapy designed to alter behavior and negate
sexually abusive thoughts. The polygraph examiner serves as a backup, monitoring compliance and behavior. The
program also invites participation by friends, relatives and employers.

Offenders who behave are gradually granted further freedom. Those who misbehave are reined in.

"What I see in this program is really a strategy that tries to identify the more likely re-offender," said LaFond. "It is an
intensive, hands-on approach, rather than one that just announces to the community, 'He's living among you; you're
on your own.'"

Resources

"Killer tells reasoning why he killed 2 pedophiles," by Mike Carter, Seattle Times, Sept. 15, 2005

"Crying Out for Help All His Life," by Maureen O'Hagan, Seattle Times, Sept. 9, 2005

"Sex offender's daughter asks for understanding; Man suffered for acts, victim says," by Kira Millage, Bellingham
(Wash.) Herald, Sept. 9, 2005

"Man Admits to Killing 2 Sex Offenders, Cites Idaho Case; The Washington state resident says he is angry about
what convicted predator Joseph Edward Duncan allegedly did, according to police," by Tomas Alex Tizon, Los
Angeles Times, Sept. 7, 2005

"Killings of 2 sex offenders may have been by vigilante, police say," by Jonathan Martin and Maureen O'Hagan,
Seattle Times, Aug. 30, 2005

"Duncan had details on slain Seattle girls," by Bill Morlin, Spokane Spokesman-Review, Aug. 11, 2005

"Registries can raise anxieties, awareness," by Erica Curless and Jonathan Brunt, Spokane Spokesman-Review,
Aug. 7, 2005

"Duncan may have more victims," by James Hagengruber, Spokane Spokesman-Review, Aug. 5, 2005

"Duncan's Prison File Reveals Skilled Liar, Sexual Deviant, by Richard Roesler, Spokane Spokesman-Review, July
19, 2005

"Duncan a charmer, exploiter," by Richard Roesler, Spokane Spokesman Review, July 15, 2005

"Police: Duncan busy before trip," by Dave Forster, Fargo (N.D.) Forum, July 15, 2005

"'Almost a model offender'; Police chief, Fargo neighbors saw no warning," by James Hagengruber, Spokane
Spokesman-Review, July 10, 2005

"Idaho suspect's blog details 'demons'; Journal: 'My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die," CNN, July
4, 2005Bottom of Form 1
"Sex Offender's criminal history started early," by Dave Olson, Forum Communications, July 3, 2005

"Victims bludgeoned; Few answers in triple slaying; dad pleads for return of kids," by Susan Drumheller and Erica
Curless, Spokane Spokesman-Review, May 20, 2005

"Families share fond memories; Victims of triple homicide are recalled as 'good people,'" by Susan Drumheller,
Spokane Spokesman-Review, May 20, 2005

"Son says family loving, caring," by Erica Curless, Spokane Spokesman-Review, May 19, 2005

Web sites

Colorado Convicted Sex Offender Site, http://sor.state.co.us/you.should.know.htm

Talk Left: The Politics of Crime, http://talkleft.com/

Joseph Duncan's Blog, http://fifthnail.blogspot.com/