‘My soul is lighter’: Serial killer’s death in prison brings closure
Serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan III died in U.S. prison recently, having admitted to slaughtering seven people — including five children — in Idaho, Washington state, Montana and California.
Some question whether Duncan, whose victims included four members of a single family, killed even more people. Following his arrest in 2005 for the slayings of that Idaho family, the FBI reviewed unsolved missing child cases nationwide.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Traci Whelan believes all of Duncan’s killings were revealed in court. She prosecuted him in what she described as the only federal death penalty case in Idaho history.
“His crimes were all publicly acknowledged and reviewed by a judge or jury,” Whelan said Tuesday from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. “He was held accountable.”
Duncan, 58, died Sunday at a hospital in Indiana near the United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute, where he was on death row. The native of Tacoma, Washington, had recently been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
He had been implicated as a possible suspect in several crimes that occurred between 1994 and 1997, when he was on parole, and between 2000 and 2005, when he was out of prison. Duncan was cleared as a suspect in some cases, but authorities in California and Washington believed Duncan had committed unsolved murders in their jurisdictions.
Duncan was a registered sex offender, telling a therapist that he estimated he had raped 13 younger boys by the time he was 16. He spent much of his life in prison.
Duncan’s most violent string of crimes occurred in May 2005, when he was driving across the Idaho Panhandle on Interstate 90 and spotted two children playing in their swimsuits in the yard of a home next to the freeway. He pulled off the road and started surveillance of the home.
Using night-vision goggles, he broke in and tied up Brenda Groene, 40; her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, 37; and her son, Slade Groene, 13. Then he beat them to death with a hammer. Two of Brenda Groene’s other children, 9-year-old Dylan and 8-year-old Shasta, were missing when authorities got to the house.
Duncan had taken the children into the wilds of western Montana, where he tortured and abused them for weeks before killing Dylan.
In the early morning hours of July 2, 2005, Shasta Groene was recognized by employees and customers inside a Denny’s restaurant in Coeur d’Alene. She was with a man.
Employees called police and positioned themselves to prevent the man from leaving. Police arrived with their lights off, drew their weapons and entered the restaurant. Duncan was arrested without incident.