This is the original post that I wrote back in 2005. Jumbled and in a rush, I really didn’t do this justice. I have posted an update toward the bottom.
Original Post –
One of the things I have been following lately, besides Natalie Holloway, is the two missing kids, Shasta and Dylan Groene. I read a report early Saturday about Joe Duncan being arrested but didn’t make the connection until later that day. I happened to see the pictures of Shasta and Dylan on the FBI’s web site at some point last week. One of the things that is mentioned several times on CNN is that Joe Duncan blogged about his life as a sex offender at his web site, fifthnail.com. Don’t bother trying to visit, the web site is no more. Either the provider, godadday.com, or the fbi have taken it down. You can find the cached remains at google though, here, and here (links no longer available). All total I found about 16 pages cached at google, just with a preliminary search, not really digging.
After having read some of it, his skewed perspective bleeds out everywhere in his writing. The dude is fucking sick. Funny thing is, he sounds like a fucking liberal talking about welfare, or class warfare in his writing.
Just did another search on google (similar to the first) on fithnail.com sex, now get 168 links. Looks like the great majority of them are news sites picking up on some of his sick activities. I haven’t surfed much lately, so don’t know if this is being posted about much, but I found it interesting that at least up until Sunday or Monday, most of the blogs that I read have been strangely silent on this one.
Too bad being drawn and quartered is probably on the list of Cruel and Unusual, because that is the kind of punishment that this sick fuck deserves. Considering how cruel and unusual HE is, it just might fit.
Updated Post 11/11/2022 –
Duncan committed his first recorded sex crime in 1978, when he was fifteen years old and raped a nine-year-old boy at gunpoint. The next year he was arrested for driving a stolen car and ended up being sentenced as a juvenile and sent to a Boys Ranch in Tacoma where he told a therapist he had bound and sexually assaulted six boys. He also told the therapist that by the time he was sixteen he had raped thirteen younger boys.
In 1980 Joe Duncan stole several guns from a neighbor and kidnapped a 14-year-old boy, raping him at gunpoint. He was sentenced to twenty years of prison for that crime and ended up on parole in 1994. Originally, he was sentenced to a sex offender program but that was terminated after he sneaked away from a family visit cottage and peeped on an 18-year-old girl. He spent the next 12 years in five different prisons and was a problem for the first couple of years, receiving infractions for assault, weapon possession and substance abuse. He earned his high school diploma in 1982 while he was in the Washington Corrections Center in Shelton.
While he was out on parole, he moved around the Seattle area a lot and worked as a telemarketer. He was arrested in 1996 for marijuana and possessing a firearm and released on parole again a few weeks later with some new restrictions. Police believe he murdered Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias in Seattle in 1996 and Anthony Martinez in California in 1997. Those cases went cold until after his capture in the 2000’s. He stopped reporting to his parole officer and went on the lam in March 1997 after he tested positive for marijuana use. He bounced back and forth between Las Vegas, San Francisco and Kansas City, Mo where an FBI task force tracked him down at his half-sister’s home.
Anthony Martinez was kidnapped at knifepoint and his body was found two weeks later, sexually assaulted and bound with duct tape. There was a fingerprint found on the duct tape that eventually matched Joe Duncan’s.
Duncan was arrested again in Missouri in 1997 and went to prison for a parole violation. During a hearing to revoke his parole Richard Wacksman, a doctor from Fargo, testified that he would support Duncan financially and allow him to live in his home if released. The parole board at that time was not inclined to put any other children at risk but he was released in 2000 with time off for good behavior and moved to Fargo, North Dakota.
During the five years that Duncan was living in Fargo, Duncan was lying low. He appeared to have turned a corner in his life. He worked steady jobs, made friends, and made the Dean’s List at North Dakota State University.
In May of 2005, Joseph E Duncan III murdered Dylan and Shasta Groene’s mother Brenda, their 13-year-old brother Slade and Brenda’s boyfriend Mark McKenzie at their home just outside of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho and then kidnapped Dylan and his 8-year-old sister Shasta. Duncan murdered the family by bludgeoning them to death. Neither Dylan nor Shasta had to witness the killings.
He took the children to the Lolo National Forest in Montana where he tortured both children and murdered Dylan Groene.
Almost two months later Shasta and Joe Duncan were seen in a Denny’s restaurant in Coeur d’Alene where a manager and a customer had both called 911, recognizing the girl sitting with him (at 2a.m.) as Shasta Groene. Police quickly arrived and took Duncan into custody. When Shasta was rescued, she told them that Duncan said he was bringing her back to her father because Duncan had changed his mind about killing her. She also said that he had told her she had taught him how to love. She was reunited with her father.
A few days later Dylan’s remains were found in a remote area near St. Regis, Montana. He had been murdered by Duncan with a shotgun to the head at point blank range and his remains burned in a campfire.
In 2006, Duncan pleaded guilty to the murders of the family. His sentence was stayed pending the federal prosecution for his crimes against the two children. Duncan pleaded guilty to those crimes in December of 2007.
While he was incarcerated, police were able to connect Duncan with the unsolved murders of Anthony Martinez of California and two girls in Seattle, all of which happened when he was on parole from 1994 to 1997. He was only charged in the murder in California. All told he ended up being given eleven life sentences and three death sentences.
In October of 2020 he was still on death row when he was diagnosed with Glioblastoma (brain cancer). He declined treatment and died at the age of fifty-eight on March 28th, 2021. Shasta Groene issued a written statement after Duncan’s death”
“For so long I have been struggling with hate towards that man. Today, I woke up feeling like my soul was finally free,” the statement said. “I hope other people affected by Joseph Duncan were able to wake up feeling the same way.”
Shasta Groene
Prior to being arrested in 2005, Joe Duncan maintained a blog called The Fifth Nail (originally at fifthnail.com. The name came out of the lore in which, in addition to the four nails used to nail Jesus in the crucifixion, there was a fifth nail that was taken away and hidden by the Romans. As I mentioned in that rambling junk above, Duncan had some real creepy stuff. He blogged about his day-to-day life as a convicted sex offender but denied being a pedophile and claimed to have been sexually abused as a child.
In January 2004 he wrote “There are no bad people in the world, just people who do bad things”. The same day he posted “I would like to be more social, but I’m always afraid people I meet
are going to be offended when they find out about my past”
In another January 2004 blog entry titled “It begins (first post on his blog),” Duncan wrote that he “just found out” about the June 14, 2003, disappearance of 5-year-old Leanna “Beaner” Warner and was afraid he would be accused.
While he had registered as a sex offender in North Dakota prior to moving to Fargo, Duncan resented the publicity and on his blog, he called it “state-sponsored discrimination” and compared it to Nazi Germany. In March 2004 he wrote “The propaganda against Sex Offenders is getting worse, soon there will
be seperate (sic) restrooms and drinking fountains for us”
He also posted pictures of his cats on his blog.
“I have been very patient with this whole injustice, telling myself that everyone suffers injustice of some kind,” he wrote in a May 10, 2004, blog entry. “But I can feel it now starting to approach the limits of my tolerance. I feel close to cracking, and I don’t even know what that means,” he continued. “I keep feeling like I want to cry. I have not felt this stressed in a long time.”
In April 2005 Duncan wrote – “So, I’ve been accused of molesting a little boy. Those close to me know I didn’t do it of course, how could I, I’m not even a pedophile.”
“Well, I’m not a psychopath either, I feel the full force and pain of everyone I have ever hurt, but that doesn’t stop me from doing what I need to do,” he continued. “Ultimately my feelings don’t matter, I learned that in prison. I have to carry out my orders or a lot worse than just me dying could happen.”
Nine days later he posted “I am still alive, I honestly wish not.”
Duncan posted to his blog two more times, on May 11th and 13th. The first blog post was titled “The Demons Have Taken Over” talking about how demons were forcing him to question his religion.
“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.”
He then wrote that the “Happy Joe” of the past was just a dream and that he’d been pretending all along.
“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?”
In his last post he wrote that he’s no longer sure what’s right or wrong. He also wrote that he was composing an encrypted journal that might one day be unencrypted.
“and then the world will know who I really was.”
“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).”
While he was in prison, Duncan maintained a Blogspot blog called “Joseph E. Duncan III returns to the web from Federal death row to expose the meaning of the Fifth Nail”. All of the content was posted by someone called Silenced, who probably was receiving letters from Duncan to post on the site on his behalf.
During the trial the jurors ended up being offered counseling for all the nasty evidence they had to endure (nothing compared to what the children had to endure). Videos of the torture and sexual abuse that Dylan had to cope with. Other evidence was human remains, a wire noose. During one of the videos a child can be heard screaming in paid while Duncan, naked, shouts “The devil is here, boy, the devil himself…The devil likes to watch children suffer and cry”
In 2016, Shasta Groene started a petition called Slade and Dylan’s Law in honor of her brothers. In the petition description she stated that convicted sex offenders should not be let out of jail. By the time the petition closed it had 51,460 supporters.
Her dad, Steve Groene, passed away in 2019. Shasta has had some trouble but is trying to live a normal life, is married and has children. The aftermath of a personal tragedy of that magnitude can be a difficult thing to deal with.