The 8-year-old and her brother, 9, had been missing from their Idaho home for weeks. Officials say they fear the boy may be dead.
By Associated Press
Published July 3, 2005
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho - More than six weeks after she disappeared from a home where family members were bludgeoned to death, an 8-year-old girl was found safe Saturday, sharing a meal with a registered sex offender at a Denny's restaurant in her hometown.
Shasta Groene was reunited with her father, but her 9-year-old brother, Dylan, remained missing and was feared dead, Kootenai County Sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger said.
"Our initial information is that he may be deceased," Wolfinger said, adding that officials were continuing the search for him. He said investigators believe Dylan was alive when the children disappeared.
Joseph Edward Duncan III, a registered sex offender from Fargo, N.D., was arrested on a kidnapping charge. He was being held without bail, and Wolfinger said more charges were possible.
Duncan, 42, had an outstanding warrant for failing to register as a high-risk sex offender and was facing charges from accusations that he molested a 6-year-old boy in Minnesota. He was released on bail in April, just weeks before the children disappeared.
Shasta was seen by a waitress early Saturday just miles from the home where her mother, older brother and mother's boyfriend were discovered bound and bludgeoned to death on May 16.
Amber Deahn, 24, said she thought she recognized the girl eating onion rings, cheese sticks and chicken strips with an older man. Shasta's picture has been posted around town and shown in the media.
"It clicked in my brain that she looks familiar," she said.
Deahn tried to keep the pair at the restaurant longer by giving the girl crayons, coloring paper and a mask from the movie Madagascar, and offering the girl dessert.
"I was trying to figure out a way to keep them there so the officers would have time to get there," she said.
It was not yet known where the girl had spent the past six weeks. She was being interviewed at a medical center but appeared physically well.
"She's a little girl," Wolfinger said. "Obviously she's been through a pretty traumatic time."
Shasta's father, Steve Groene, and her oldest brother, Vance, spent Saturday at a hospital with Shasta. They did not make any statements to reporters, but when asked when he was driving away from the hospital if he was relieved, Vance Groene said, "more than relieved."
Tom Kraus, Brenda Groene's great-uncle in Whitefish, Mont., said family members were elated by the news.
"Obviously, we were very excited they found Shasta," Kraus said. "We are hopeful they can find Dylan. We're very happy those folks at Denny's recognized her and that they found her."
Dylan and Shasta had been missing since at least May 16, when sheriff's deputies responded to their rural home after a neighbor reported that dogs were barking and the door of one vehicle was open but no one was in sight.
The deputies found the bound bodies of Brenda Groene, 40, Slade Groene, 13, and Mark McKenzie, 37. The victims were bound and then bludgeoned to death.
Investigators had interviewed hundreds of people, searched through 800 tons of trash and fielded more than 2,000 tips. It was not known whether Duncan had a connection with the victims.
Duncan was convicted in 1980 of raping a 14-year-old boy in Washington state when he was 16.
