Joseph Edward Duncan III (February 25, 1963 – March 28, 2021)[1] was an American convicted serial killer and child molester who was on death row in federal prison following the 2005 kidnappings and murders of members of the Groene family of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

[2] Additionally, Duncan confessed to — but had not been charged with — the 1996 murder of two girls, Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias, in Seattle, Washington.

An AMBER Alert was issued and searchers combed the area for the missing children while authorities investigated the deaths at the home as homicides.

[16] Autopsies determined the cause of death to be "blunt trauma to the head"; authorities also noted that the victims had been bound.

[19] Seven weeks later, in the early morning of July 2, 2005, Shasta was seen at a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene in the company of an unknown man.

Police asked the public for tips, specifically concerning sightings of the stolen red Jeep Cherokee with Missouri license plates that Duncan was driving at the time of his arrest.

The employee and her manager notified authorities after reviewing surveillance camera footage and identifying Duncan and Shasta in the video.

[21] On July 4, 2005, investigators found human remains at a remote makeshift campsite in the Lolo National Forest near St. Regis, Montana.

[22] During the trial, it emerged that Duncan shot Dylan at point-blank range by holding a sawn-off 12-gauge shotgun to his head.

Shasta stated that they drove a long distance and stayed in two different campsites, where Duncan told her of having beaten her family members to death with a hammer.

A public memorial service was held for Dylan on July 16, 2005, which would have been his tenth birthday, at Real Life Ministries.

He then asked her if she would like to meet his mother, to which she responded yes, and the two drove back towards Coeur d'Alene and stopped at the Denny's restaurant where Shasta was rescued.

[25] Duncan's arrest led the FBI to launch a nationwide review of unsolved missing child cases.

Although he was cleared as a suspect in some cases, authorities in California and Washington had enough evidence to believe Duncan had committed unsolved murders in their jurisdictions.

On April 4, 1997, 10-year-old Anthony Michael Martinez was playing with friends in the front yard of his home in Beaumont, California, when an unknown man approached the group asking for help in finding a missing cat.

[13] Although a composite sketch of the suspect was made available and a partial fingerprint taken from the duct tape found on Martinez's body, the case eventually went cold.

[13] The FBI and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children became involved and, in turn, contacted Riverside County authorities.

FBI agents reported that Duncan confessed to the murder in an interview on July 19, 2005, describing the crime as “revenge against society again for sending him back to jail for a probation violation.

[31] Duncan also agreed to cooperate with Kootenai County sheriff's detectives investigating his crimes and provide passwords to encrypted files stored on his computer.

[30] On January 18, 2007, Duncan was indicted by a federal grand jury in Coeur d'Alene on ten counts of "kidnapping, kidnapping resulting in death, aggravated sexual abuse of a minor, and sexual exploitation of a child resulting in death," and other crimes related to illegal firearm possession and vehicle theft.

[32][33] He was arraigned the following day at a federal court in Boise, where a judge ordered Duncan to stand trial the following March.

[42] On February 28, 2016, the United States Supreme Court denied Duncan's petition to hear his appeal of a federal judge's ruling in December 2013, which had been affirmed by the Ninth Circuit.

[44] On January 18, 2007, the same day Duncan was indicted in federal court, Riverside County officials announced that he was charged with Martinez's murder.

On the website, which depicted Duncan's day-to-day life as a convicted sex offender, he denied being a pedophile and claimed to have been sexually abused as a child.

[50] The jurors who imposed the death penalty on Duncan were offered counseling for them to cope with the horrific evidence they had to see during the trial.

The video showed this abuse conducted in various interior areas of what appeared to be a dilapidated, single-level wooden shed or small cabin.

Other evidence included human remains, a wire noose (from the cabin interior), and other videos of Duncan's continued torture of Dylan.

[52] In 2016, Shasta Groene (then 19 years old) started a petition called Slade and Dylan's Law in honor of her two brothers whom Duncan had murdered.

Duncan was imprisoned on federal death row at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.

According to him, he rarely interacted with other death row prisoners and actively chose not to speak with them or engage in conversation, claiming he did not really socialize with anyone at all.