COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho (AP) — A day after missing 8-year-old Shasta Groene turned up with a registered sex offender at a Denny’s restaurant in her hometown, investigators struggled with a troubling question: What happened to her 9-year-old brother?
“Dylan is our No. 1 priority at this point,” Kootenai County Sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said at a press conference yesterday.
There was no sign of the boy when Shasta was found Saturday with Joseph Edward Duncan III of Fargo, N.D. Capt. Wolfinger said investigators fear Dylan met the same fate as the three persons found bludgeoned to death in the family’s home.
Other questions, Capt. Wolfinger said, are: “Where have Duncan and Shasta and Dylan been the last six weeks? Was Duncan involved in the triple homicide? Were other people involved? If so, who and where are they?”
Across the country, officials faced another tough question: Why was the man accused of kidnapping Shasta released on bail?
Duncan, 42, had been released a month before the children disappeared. He was facing charges of molesting a 6-year-old boy at a middle-school playground in Minnesota and had spent more than a decade in prison for raping a 14-year-old boy.
Prosecutors in Becker County, Minn., where Duncan was released, did not return calls seeking comment. Police in Fargo said they had been looking for Duncan since May, but had no indication he had fled to Idaho.
“Why did this crime occur?” Capt. Wolfinger asked. “I think ’Why?’ is probably the biggest question we have.”
The Groene children were reported missing May 16, when officials found their mother, Brenda Groene, 40; their brother, Slade Groene, 13; and Mark McKenzie, 37, bludgeoned to death in the family home.
Capt. Wolfinger said Duncan invoked his right to an attorney but will not have one appointed until his first court appearance tomorrow. He was charged with kidnapping and was being held without bail.
Days before the children disappeared, an ominous message was posted on a Web site that officials said Duncan maintained.
“I am scared, alone and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society,” the May 11 entry said. “My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die.”
Forty investigators were working on the case yesterday, with the FBI and Idaho State Patrol assisting city and county police.
A search of the stolen Jeep that Duncan was driving has been completed, and the evidence has been forwarded to the FBI, Capt. Wolfinger said. He declined to describe the evidence.
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