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The Encounter With Evil - The Groene Family Murder

April 29, 2024

On this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the nightmare that happened to an unsuspecting family in rural Idaho.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

We have something a little different in store for everybody today. Don't worry, we're doing an episode, don't be clicking off that podcast or YouTube. Everyone relax, we still have an episode. But in all seriousness,Payton and I recorded an episode, then we headed out to Arizona for our live shows, and while we were there, we realized the audio and video both got completely corrupted.

There was nothing we could do to save it. We triedeverything. So, what we are going to do is we are going to use a Patreonepisode from 8 months ago or so. Yeah, eight or nine months ago. So, only a fewpeople have heard it. If you have heard it and you're a Patreon or Applesubscriber, I'm sorry, but I promise we will make it up to you. There will be alot of extra content in the next couple of months with our live shows. Majorityof you haven't heard this, 99% of you or whatever, so here we go, we got a freshnew episode. Yeah, and if you like this episode, this is a good taste of whatwe do over on Apple subscriptions and Patreon. And then also like Garrett said,all of our live shows are actually posted on Patreon and Apple subscriptions.So, if you've been wanting to listen to those, you can also check that outhere. But yeah, I'm so sorry, next week we will come at you with the episodeonce we re-record it. But this is still a really good episode. It's one of ourbonus episodes, so enjoy. We just wanted to give you a little explanation ofwhat you're listening to. Again, sorry, we love you, and yeah, we're stillgetting an episode, and next week we'll be back with obviously a normalepisode. All right, let's get into it.

Hey everybody, welcome back to our podcast, this is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland. And I'm Garrett Moreland. And he's thehusband. I'm the husband.

We are doing something we've never done before, and no, thisisn't a crazy announcement, but we're recording at night. Yeah, it's weird,it's almost 9:00 p.m. It feels a little creepy, actually, I'm not going to lie,I don't like it. We're just in this room. Yeah, I don't know, it's kind ofweird. Anyways, it's feeling a little spooky, a little bit spooky. Okay, 10seconds. I got some new wheels and tires on my car, so there's an update there.You know how people make the joke about how women or women's of the householdhave so many pillows on their bed? Uh-huh. That's how I feel about you and yourwheels and tires. There are lots of wheels and lots of tires. It's just like,what, they look the same? Yeah, they're really cool. They look the exact sameas the old ones. They look way cooler than the old ones. Payton is just a tadjealous, but that is okay.

I've been getting this itch to travel, and I don't know ifit's because I want to or because I'm just getting FOMO, but we don't, I feellike we don't travel very often. When it's not for work, we probably take avacation together probably once a year, right? Yeah, I feel like that's kind ofoften. Yeah, um, we'll take a week vacation to like Mexico or somethingprobably once a year, but I want to go to London. I want to go to London. Iwant to go back to Spain. I've never taken you back to Spain. I don't know, Ijust really want to travel. Getting the travel bug, but it's just one,expensive, and two, it's fun but it's also a lot of work, you know what I'msaying?

Planning that is a lot of work. Even doing it, you're sotired. It's not like you and I just going to Cancun for 4 days, you know,relaxing, trying to disconnect, and taking our yearly vacation. Like, I thinkI'm maxed out right now to the point where if you woke me up tomorrow and said,"Surprise, we're going to Spain," I'd be like, "No fucking way."You'd be like, "I'm so ungrateful." Just kidding, but no, I know whatyou’re saying. Yeah, I know what you're saying. So, that's what we got on thelist: new tires, new wheels. I want to travel, I want to go to London. Maybe Ijust need to move to London. Need to move, move over there, hang out for sixmonths to a year, build the studio there, and then come back. What do they sayin London? Cheers? Cheers. Cheerio? Cheerio. Anyone that listens to our podcastand is from there, I always wonder how I sound, how we sound to people thataren't American, you know? Like, our accents, like do we sound like just stupidAmericans?

Last but not least, I feel like I'm starting to reach an agewhere I'm turning into a dad. No, this is not a pregnancy announcement, but Ifeel like I'm getting to the age where I was at Costco. I can't remember howlong ago it was. Oh, I was ordering some things from Costco online, and therewere all these socks and shirts, and I got a little bug to buy them. I waslike, not yet, like I need to have four kids, need to be like mid-40s, 50sbefore I just go full-on, let me get all my clothes from Costco, everything.

You know what I'm saying? I just, I was like, "Oh, notyet, Garrett, not yet, hold out," you know what I'm saying? Just like,whoop, it just swooped in there, and I was like, "Oh, buy that, Garrettbetter hold back," you know what I'm saying? Mhm, what do you think aboutthat? Okay, like, do you, "Hey Dad, you are crazy." Oh, wow, you'rebarking. Are you fine if I'm going and try to go all in Costco? You do what youwant to do because I'm currently wearing some socks from Costco. Man, are theycomfy. They're comfy and they're cheap, but I'm going to hold out. I'm going towait. I'm going to try to wait. Twelve more years, I'll keep everyone updated.Twelve, yeah, that's quite a bit. I'm 29 now. Ew, I know, I know, ew, David, Idon't know what happened, I'm old. I'm 30 years old. So, um, I'm going to tryto hold out for a little bit, and then I'll start going all in Costco. But foreveryone else that's gone all in on Costco or Sam's Club, good for you, Isupport you.

All right, our case sources this week are "Stolen inthe Night," "People" magazine investigates alt., "TrueCrime."

All right, I'm just going to start off by saying thattoday's story is a really rough, really tragic one, and there are childreninvolved. So, I just want to give that trigger warning, but this one is from myhome state of Idaho, and it was probably the biggest story in the state backwhen it happened. So, that is my preface before we get into it. So, I probablyknow it.

The city of Coeur d'Alene is located just 15 miles from theIdaho-Washington border. It's known for the beautiful vistas around Lake Coeurd'Alene, bringing together forest, water, and mountains in what you might calla landscape painter's dream or a golfer's dream. Golfers from all over theworld are drawn to the Coeur d'Alene Resort Golf Course, famous for itsfloating green, which is a literal island to which golfers are taken by ferryto play a round of golf in the middle of the lake. I know this, and I've seenthis, but it's like almost any resort town. Coeur d'Alene is also a place towork and live. In the year 2005, about 40,000 people called Coeur d'Alene theirhome, and among those 40,000 residents were the Groene family.

Forty-year-old Brenda Groene was a divorced mother of fivechildren. Her two oldest children, 18-year-old Jesse and 20-year-old Vance,lived with their father, Steve Groene, while her three youngest, Slade, Dylan,and Shasta, lived with her and her boyfriend in a house called Wolf Lodge. So,the two oldest are with the dad, the three youngest are with the mom, okay? Herboyfriend, 37-year-old Mark McKenzie, had known Brenda for decades. Both hadgrown up in Coeur d'Alene, and they'd been longtime friends. Neither of themexpected to end up in a relationship together, but there they were, and eversince Brenda's divorce four years earlier, the two of them had grown closer,and by 2005, they'd been dating for almost four years. Mark was close with thekids, and it only made sense for them to move in together.

Wolf Lodge was a house that had been owned by MarkMcKenzie's family for six decades. It was owned by his grandmother, and he hadspent much time there growing up, as his family was big on family gatherings,and many fond memories had collected in that house. And now, memories werebeing made as Mark, Brenda, and her three youngest children were becoming afamily. And two of those children were still really young. Dylan was justseven, and Shasta was eight, so I mean, still very young. And also living in thehouse was Brenda's 13-year-old son, Slade.

Okay, Wolf Lodge was located on East Frontage Road, whichran parallel to Interstate 90. It was an old house without such modernamenities as a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, or an electric stove, but thatwas kind of part of its charm. Brenda felt secure there, and she and the kidsloved their neighbors. Neighbors like Bob Hollingsworth, who had become closefriends with Brenda and Mark, and even the kids. Good old Bob, man.Thirteen-year-old Slade was close enough with Bob to call him one afternoon.

It was the afternoon of May 15th, 2005, and to ask Bob if hecould borrow a little spending money. But Bob had a better idea. Slade couldcome over and mow his grass and earn a little bit of spending money. How about10 bucks, Bob asked? And this sounded good to the teenager, and he mowed thestrip of grass near his driveway, and Bob was pretty satisfied with the job.But when he went to his wallet, he discovered he had only large bills. So hepromised Slade that he would drop by the house tomorrow and pay him then,which, honestly, okay, that's kind of shady. Like, 13-year-old kid comes andmows, and you're like, "I owe you, bye," especially at that young ofage, right? Yeah, weird.

So Slade Groene was cool with this, and he returned to hishouse. And then the following evening, Bob Hollingsworth pulled into the Groenedriveway and waited for someone to come outside. This was a neighborhood with alot of acreage between the houses, so normally someone from the Groenehousehold would pop outside if they saw headlights in their driveway. Got it.But on this night, it was different. The house was dark, there were no lightson inside, and it was eerily quiet, save for the sound of their barking dog.Speaking of barking dogs, Miss Daisy, yeah. So, Brenda and Mark's cars, though,were parked in their usual places, but with the car doors wide open.

Bob turned his car off and walked up to the Groene's porchand noticed the door ajar with only a pool of blackness visible through thecrack. Uh-oh. And as he began to walk up the porch steps, Bob stopped when henoticed blood stains on the steps and in the doorway of the house. In fact,there was a lot of blood. He called out for Brenda and Mark, but the only replyhe got was from the dog inside, which just continued to bark. Bob suddenly gotreally freaked out. He raced back to his car, drove home, and dialed 911. Hewas connected to police dispatch and told that a deputy would drop by the Groeneresidence to perform a welfare check. That seems weird, right, considering allthe information he knows? Well, all he is saying is he dropped by, like the cardoors are open, I saw some blood, I didn't go inside, and then the police arelike, "Okay, well, we'll perform a welfare check on the family." Ifeel like nowadays, I'm curious, it depends on where, okay, where you're at.Yeah, because, man, like, if I had seen blood somewhere, dude, you better besending, like, the whole freaking patrol. Well, Bob kind of replied the same.He was like, "I think you'd better send more than one deputy." Okay.

A short time later, a team of deputies arrived at the Groenehouse and knocked on the front door, but no one responded. They yelled out toannounce their presence, but again, nothing, only the barking dog. They walkedaround the perimeter of the house and looked through the windows, but it wasdark, and they couldn't see anything because of the circumstances and theamount of blood they had observed near the porch door. They decided to enterthe house, and they found an unlocked door on the property's east side, so theydidn't have to break in. They also didn't want to disturb the blood up front.And once they entered and turned on the lights, they immediately saw that theblood wasn't just up front. There was blood all over the house. I mean, on thewalls, on the floors, in abundance, like something really, really violent hadtaken place in this home, and it was noticeable off the bat.

Okay, and then they looked down, and they saw two people,almost certainly dead, lying on the floor surrounded by a puddle of blood. Bothpeople had been bound with duct tape and zip ties with massive injuries totheir heads. Oh my gosh. One of the victims, a pre-teen boy, had duct tapewrapped all around his head like a mummy, with his hands also wrapped with ducttape, bound behind his back, and they were dead, yes, okay? Lying beside himwas an adult woman with severe head injuries, hands bound behind her back withduct tape, and plastic zip ties around her ankles. Oh, how can you do this toone, obviously any human being, but to like children, kids, right?

In the next room, which was the living room, they found athird victim, an adult male, who also had fatal head injuries and his hands andfeet bound with duct tape and zip ties. There was blood splatter everywhere.This had been a brutal, merciless attack, insane. They weren't sure if thevictims had been shot in the head or bludgeoned, but from the looks of thescene, it looked like it had been bludgeoned. From what they were told by BobHollingsworth and from what they were able to glean from looking around thehouse at mail and other stuff, the three dead people were Brenda Groene, herson Slade, so the 13-year-old, and Mark McKenzie, her boyfriend. But as theneighborhood had indicated, there were five people who lived in this house: theseven- and eight-year-old Dylan and Shasta. Where were they?

Deputies did a sweep of the house looking for any additionalvictims, but the results were negative. There were bloody footprints,handprints, blood smears, blood splatter virtually everywhere they looked,potentially a wealth of evidence, but that would be for detectives andforensics to deal with. Detective Sergeant Brad Mascal of the Kootenai CountySheriff's Department got the call about an hour after deputies first arrived.When he got to the scene, Mascal could tell from the looks on the deputies' facesthat something horrible awaited him just beyond the threshold.

Mascal took notes and then had deputies seal off the houseand the block, with additional deputies stationed to stand guard around thenight. So they're doing what they can to preserve the crime scene. In themorning, more detectives showed up, along with CSI technicians and a trickle ofreporters as word began to get out. But for the time being, investigators keptthe reporters in the dark about what was inside. It was clear to the local newsjournalists, however, that a murder had taken place. And when the headline anda shot of Wolf Lodge splashed across the news, the mothers of Brenda Groene andMark McKenzie were among the viewers. So they did reach out to the family.

Lee McKenzie immediately got into her car and drove to thefamily home. Is that weird, though? “There are five people inside ofthere," she said tearfully to one of the deputies, and he corrected her,"No, there are only three." But she insisted, "No, no, no,there's five who live here, two adults and three children." Wouldn't thepolice know this, though? Like, wouldn't they know the family? Okay, by the endof the day, the three victims would be positively identified as Brenda, Slade,and Mark, all three of whom had been violently slain late Sunday night, May15th, or early Monday morning, May 16th. The kids have been taken.

The question of what happened to the two other children,Dylan and Shasta, was now authorities' number one priority, because Steve Groene,their father, had been staying temporarily with his ex-mother-in-law, DarleneTorres, who was Brenda's mother. And she confirmed that the children were notwith them. So her ex-husband was staying with her mom, okay, got it, and hesaid, "The children aren't with me. No, I don't have the two missingchildren." Got it.

Police now put out a nationwide Amber Alert and launched amassive search throughout the surrounding area. Searchers on horseback,searchers with tracking dogs, searchers in helicopters searching the woodedarea around the home, around the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene. Law enforcementfrom other agencies were brought in to assist: officers from the Idaho StatePolice, the Coeur d'Alene Police, and special investigators with the FBI.

After the bodies were out of the house, detectives had beguna thorough search of the residents, and in an upstairs bedroom, police found anarsenal of firearms, which was significant because if the motive of thisapparent home invasion had been robbery, one would expect the guns to have beenstolen. Guns are usually prime merchandise for burglars. Yeah, the fact thatthe guns were ignored and nothing else appeared to have been taken from theresidence told investigators that robbery likely wasn't the motive. It wasprobably personal, and because of this, investigators began a dive into Brenda Groenee'smarriage and her ex-husband, Steve. That would be insane if it's herex-husband. I don't think it is, but I mean, you never know.

So the two had married in 1986 in Big Bear, California.Steve Groene was a wild one who played in a band called Blue Tattoo and ranwith motorcycle gangs. It was largely Steve's lifestyle that led to theireventual divorce. Okay, as their family evolved, Steve kind of seeminglydidn't. Brenda wanted to be settled and no longer had the patience for Steve'swild lifestyle. She'd outgrown it, and their divorce wasn't the tidiest ofseparations either. They had longstanding mounting tension around custody withthe kids and visitation. Steve was kind of lazy about it and would oftenrequest visitation at the last minute because his schedule was pretty chaoticand loose. Investigators were wondering if this may have been a crime of angeror vengeance on Steve's part, but Brenda's mother, Darlene, whom he was stayingwith, confirmed to police that he had been home all night on the night of May15th and in the early morning hours of May 16th. And she was the victim'smother, so she especially had no reason to lie. And no one investigators talkedto, including Brenda's family, would buy that Steve would do something likethis. Like, sure, it maybe wasn't the cleanest divorce, but yeah, he wasn'tgoing to murder her and one of his own kids. Yeah, just 'cause you're getting adivorce and you don't get along with your ex-spouse doesn't mean you're goingto kill your kids and her and her new beau. Yeah, that too. Also, you knowyou're going to be the first suspect, right? Right, it's not like they're goingto be like, "Oh, what, it's probably not Steve." No. And it was justso far out of his character, especially to hurt his own children, that it wasjust outright implausible. Okay, but then what about those motorcycle gangsSteve ran with? This is where investigators now go.

Okay, they began exploring the possibility that maybe Stevehad ticked off a rival gang and so they killed his family members in an act ofretaliation. But to what end? And what did they do to Shasta and Dylan? Itwasn't adding up. Also, you're in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Yeah, right. I mean, Idon't know a ton about Lane. It's a pretty nice area. It's, I would say, thecrime rate is pretty low. It's a pretty safe area. I just don't think that'swhat's going on. I mean, how dangerous could these gangs be in Coeur d'Alene?Yeah, I don't know. My dad's in a bike gang. Yep, your dad is in a bike gang.So you never know. So this is kind of where they're at. They're like, it's notreally seeming like him. But then Steve Groene holds a press conference as theex-husband, his kids are now missing, a press conference to plead with theabductor or abductors, plural, and it only raised new questions thatinvestigators were eager to obtain answers to. "Please, please release mychildren safely," he had said, with the news cameras rolling. "Theyhad nothing to do with any of this." And police and detectives are like,"Any of what? What? What?" A weird way to say. Oh, no. And so they'rewondering, did Steve know more than he was letting on? What exactly is hereferring to?

The detectives felt it was time to bring Steve in for apolygraph test, and I don't need to remind you how we feel about polygraphtests. Steve Groene took the polygraph test and failed, so detectives weren'tsatisfied that he was in the clear. Even when Brenda's family and everyone elseclose to them continued to insist he wouldn't have done this, they, of course,knew Steve and these investigators didn't. Nor did the members of the public,who were also growing suspicious of Steve and his possible involvement. Whatwas he hiding? And still, where was Dylan and Shasta? If they were dead anddumped somewhere or were buried, finding them would be like finding a needle inthe haystack in the rugged mountain terrain around Coeur d'Alene. And if Steveknew something, then maybe the answers could be found on his hard drives.

So police confiscated a computer from his residence andbegan searching through it for clues. But they found none, nothing at all. AndSteve was bending over backwards to cooperate, which sometimes police see as ared flag, as indicators of guilt. But in Steve's case, it didn't really ringthat way. He voluntarily took polygraph after polygraph until finally,investigators were reasonably convinced he had nothing to do with the crime.

And although the level of violence revealed an explosiveamount of anger, it seemed really personal. Yeah, the way the victims werebound with heavy-duty zip ties and duct tape contradicted this because itsuggested a methodical element more often seen with sex offenders and serialkillers. So investigators were really torn on whether this was a stranger crimeor a crime committed by someone the victims knew. All the while, tips poured infrom members of the public who claimed they had seen Shasta and Dylan, whosepictures by this point were plastered all over the news. There was hardly a setof eyes in Idaho who hadn't seen the images of the two young children, and allover the country, people were aware and on the lookout.

Wolf Lodge was situated right off Interstate 9, like I saidat the beginning. And so the three victims had been dead for at least 10 hoursby the time they were found. Whoever committed this crime, if in fact they hadabducted the two little kids, had more than a 10-hour head start because theAmber Alert wasn't put out until the next day. So the perpetrator couldtechnically have been anywhere by this point. And of all the tips that hadpoured in, each one of them, and a team of investigators ran each one down,turned out to be a dead end.

So where do investigators go from here? In talking to familyand friends, the police learned that Brenda and Mark had had a party at thehouse the very night they were killed. It was an impromptu barbecue, and abunch of people had shown up and gathered at the house. This was a substantialpiece of information because now police had a whole new pool of witnesses andpotential suspects to sort through. It seems like it took a while for them toknow that. I think it's only been like a day or two. I'm just hitting everypiece of the investigation so far. Okay, got it. Makes sense. And as they begantalking to some of the people who had been at Wolf Lodge that night, theylearned that Mark was overheard having what was described as a verbalaltercation with one of the people in attendance. And that person was RobertRoy Lutner.

The argument concerned money. This was according to thewitnesses. Lutner was a good friend to both Mark and Brenda, but Mark hadloaned Lutner some money, $1,000 to prevent his house from going intoforeclosure, and he was having trouble paying it back. Top of FormA background check on Lutner showed thathe was no stranger to the law. He had a criminal record, with arrests fordrug-related charges and, more recently, domestic violence. His fingerprintswere found all over the house. Obviously, he was at the party, so the policewanted to talk to him. But they were having trouble tracking him down. And whenthey talked to his probation officer, they learned that Robert Lutner hadskipped town just two days after the murders.

Lutner told his probation officer he was going up to Boiseto visit family. This looked pretty suspicious, like he was trying to avoidhaving to have contact with the police. After trying and failing to reach outto Lutner, investigators decided to publicly name Lutner as a person ofinterest. And that got his attention. As soon as Robert Lutner learned he wasbeing sought by police, he returned to Coeur d'Alene and turned himself in tothe sheriff's deputies. They spent the next several hours interviewing him. Andby the end of their interaction with Robert Lutner, they were able to rule himout as a suspect, which left them back at square one with absolutely nothing togo on. Gosh, I don't know. I have no idea.

I'm confused because if it's not Steve, I'm still notactually 100% sure he wasn't involved. But if you were to roll out Steve andyou were to roll out the people at the party, who are you left with? Because itseems so personal, right? It doesn't seem like it was just, "Oh, let mecome steal some things." No, it was something very personal. Unless youhave a scary serial killer, correct? Unless you have a complete insane personout there. Over 400 acres of land had been searched at this point. It turned upnothing. An even larger number of tips had rolled in, also leading to nothing.

Eventually, the coroner released his final report on thecauses of deaths of the three victims who were killed at Wolf Lodge. All threehad died of blunt force trauma, beaten to death with an instrument notinconsistent with a claw hammer. So they think it's a claw hammer. Jeez. It wasstill unclear how many perpetrators may have been involved. Some investigatorswere theorizing that there must have been multiple perpetrators, given thechallenge of gaining control of and binding three people all at once. Investigatorshad set up a temporary command post in a trailer near Wolf Lodge. That's howmassive and urgent this investigation was. It was the largest investigation thecounty of Kootenai, Idaho, had ever seen.

The FBI posted a $100,000 reward for any information leadingto Dylan and Shasta's safe return. "America's Most Wanted" ran asegment on the case, and about 20 tips were called in after the "America'sMost Wanted" broadcast. But like all of the others, they all ended upbeing a dead end. And then about a week after the murders, the owner of asporting goods store in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, about 70 miles to the north,called in a tip about two children he'd seen in his store, a young girl and ayoung boy resembling Shasta and Dylan Groenee.

They were in the company of a man, the store owner had said,who had asked for directions to Libby, Montana, before leaving with the twokids in a white van with Washington plates. Authorities searched all routes oftravel between Bonners Ferry and Libby, Montana, but they cited no vanresembling the description the sporting goods store owner had given. Weekspassed, and then more weeks. The desperation of the investigators and thefamilies of Dylan and Shasta Groenee were continuing to mount.Top of Form

The more time passed, the less likely it seemed that the twochildren would be found alive. It was a race against the clock, and the leadswere drying up. Then, around 1:30 in the morning on July 2nd, a month and ahalf after the triple murder and abduction, a red Jeep Cherokee with Missouriplates pulled into the parking lot of the Denny's restaurant north ofInterstate 90 in Coeur d'Alene. Out stepped a man around 40 years old, and withhim, a little girl around seven or eight. Outside the entrance stood two youngmen, whom we'll call Phil and Luther. Luther watched as the man and little girlstrode past them and entered the restaurant. Instantly, they recognized thelittle girl as Shasta Groenee. Luther was sure of it; he'd just driven by abillboard with her and Dylan's faces on them only hours earlier. I can'tbelieve that there are billboards up, and this guy is going in public with themto Denny's to get some pancakes. That's crazy.

So Luther sent a text message to his girlfriend who wasdining inside the restaurant. Meanwhile, waitress Amber Dean had just returnedfrom her break and noticed the man and the little girl sitting in her section.As she approached them, she immediately recognized something was off. Thelittle girl appeared dirty, her clothes were filthy, her hair was unwashed. Sheaddressed the little girl to see what her demeanor would be like. "Can Iget you something to drink?" The little girl didn't respond, and the manwouldn't take his eye off the child, whom Amber thought looked a heck a likeShasta Groenee. "I'll give you a few minutes to decide," she said,deciding to play it cool as she walked into the kitchen and found her manager,Linda. She told Linda they needed to keep a close eye on the child at thetable. She felt it may be the missing little girl.

“I really hope someone called 911," Linda casuallysaid. She looked at the man and the little girl and agreed they needed to callthe police, just to check and see. If they ended up being wrong, then so be it.But they thought the little girl looked like Shasta, and the vibe between herand the man was just definitely not right. Linda went into the office to phonethe police. Meanwhile, Amber returned to the table and, in an effort to stallthem, gave the little girl a coloring book. The girl looked to the man, whonodded at her in approval, and then the little girl turned to Amber and said,"Thank you." Amber then asked if they decided on something to drink.The little girl again looked at the man, who nodded at her again, and then shelooked up and asked for a vanilla milkshake. The man said he only wanted water.The man seemed tense, and all of his responses were clipped. Amber walked awayand joined Linda in the kitchen as they discreetly kept an eye on the pair,waiting for the police to arrive, which they knew would take at least eightminutes given their location.

They didn't want to arouse any suspicion; they wanted tokeep the two of them in there. Within a minute or two, police cruisers pulledinto the parking lot. Amber walked outside to talk to one of the deputies, andwhen she walked back inside, the man stood up and began heading toward thebathroom with the little girl. "Is there anything else I can getyou?" Amber said to the man. "Her shake's almost done." The man,without taking his eyes off the child, said gruffly, "We need ourcheck," before disappearing into the bathroom with the little girl.

When they walked back out, he made a beeline for the table,while Amber pretended to be having difficulty printing the check. Just as shereached his booth, a team of deputies approached him from behind."Sir," one of them said, "we'd like to have a word withyou." They immediately placed the man in handcuffs and took him outside. Oh,that is... Can you imagine that? Like, I'm just picturing it in my head. Thatis just crazy sad. Oh, I don't know. No, it's devastating.

At this point, one of the deputies sat down with the littlegirl and asked her what her name was. "Shasta Groene," the littlegirl answered before she began to cry. "I want my daddy," she said."I want to go home." Oh my gosh.

Outside, deputies shined their flashlight beams into the redJeep Cherokee with Missouri plates, looking for any sign of Dylan, but therewasn't any. Shasta was whisked away in an ambulance to the local hospital.Needless to say, she needed some care at this point. Meanwhile, the man wastaken down to the Coeur d'Alene police station to be processed. His name wasJoseph Edward Duncan III. He was a 42-year-old level three sex offender whichis the worst kind of sex offender a sexual predator and he was also a fugitivewanted in North Dakota for child molestation. Oh my gosh, of course, of course.

They began probing Duncan's background and his criminalhistory, which dated back to his childhood. Duncan's first known offense was in1978 when he was only 15 years old and was arrested for sexually assaulting a 9-year-oldboy at gunpoint. It seems like an open and shut case. I mean, how do you get...How do you get out of going, 'Oh yeah, I just happened to have this girl,' youknow what I'm saying? Well, here's my confusion. A year later, he's arrestedagain. So he was 15 and then at 16 he's arrested again. I'm just puzzled why hewas even out after raping a child at gunpoint. I feel like we've done a lot ofthese cases where... I mean, even the last case we did, he got out after like15 years and he killed someone. Or 10 years and he killed someone, you know? Soit's just... I just, like, it doesn't... I don't know. It's... People will rapesomeone and they'll sexually assault someone and they'll harm all these people,they'll serve a total of, like, five years in prison and all of a suddenthey're out in the world and they're like, 'No, there's no way he's going to rapesomeone again,' right? And, of course, they are. I feel like 98%... 99% of thetime, they do. And it's just a big circle of crap and it sucks, yeah. Like, Iunderstand he's 15 but raping at gunpoint at 15 or not, that's monstrous. That'sthe thing too, it's... He should have at least been put into juvie until he was18. A child... A child, and he had a gun so he knew it was wrong. It's justbeyond the level that I cannot comprehend.

So the next year, he gets arrested for stealing a car. Hegoes to juvie, um, and while he's there, he admits to a therapist he had boundand raped a dozen young boys by the time he was 16. Two years later, he stealsa small arsenal of firearms and abducts a 14-year-old boy. Obviously, we knowwhat he does with the 14-year-old boy. This crime would result in him beingsentenced to 20 years. Only 20 years, okay.

When he entered the prison system, Duncan went through aprogram and spent a year and a half at Western State Hospital near Seattle.After he was examined by numerous mental health professionals, he was releasedinto the general population and ended up serving 14 years of his 20-yearsentence.

He was paroled in 1996 to a halfway house in Seattle, nearwhere he grew up. He was paroled under the condition that he register as a sexoffender and not have any contact with minors. Obviously, his parole didn'tlast long. He was arrested for using marijuana and being in possession of afirearm, violating his parole and landing him 30 days in jail. Shortly after hewas released in March 1997, he quit his job, borrowed his girlfriend's car, andleft the area, eventually ending up in Kansas City, Missouri, where he failedto register as a sex offender and also failed to contact his probation officer,thus violating parole. So I think it's safe to say he's not really interestedin reforming. No, I don't think he wants to lead a straight life at this point.

So because he violated parole, he serves out the remainderof his sentence, and in the year 2000, he was released and moved to Fargo,North Dakota. He registered as a sex offender and also began keeping a blog,which he called 'The Fifth Nail.' In July 2004, he drove across the state lineinto Minnesota and molested two boys on a playground. He was arrested andcharged for this, and the judge set his bail at $115,000. A businessman Duncanhad befriended put up the money and helped him post bail. Dude, I am justbeyond confused. So does he go to jail? What happens? He skips bail, rents aJeep, and flees town. I have no words because first of all, when he got his 20years, it's like, let's look at his past, what he's done already. Like, no,this guy should never get out of jail. And then he gets arrested again, theirbail shouldn't even have been an option, right? With his past, that should noteven have been an option. I can't believe that was even an option. Of course,he's going to skip town, and now he goes and he does what he did here andkilled a family and... That makes me so mad.

Well, he also obviously wasn't seen or heard from until he'sarrested with Shasta Groene in his presence. So at this point, there's a lot ofunanswered questions, and chief among them was, where is Dylan Groene?

Duncan immediately invoked his rights and refused to talk.Of course, after her treatment at the hospital, Shasta was reunited with herdad, both of whom cried and cried and cried. And then when she was ready,investigators sat down with Shasta, hoping to gain some insight into whereDylan was and kind of what happened, which is so devastating that now they haveto go to the victim to figure it out, a little girl who's been through awful...Yeah, hell, they had her walk them through the whole ordeal, starting with thenight of May 15th.

Shasta remembers being asleep in her bed when suddenly hermom, Brenda, entered the room crying. 'Is it time to go to school?' Shasta hadasked. Her mom, Brenda, told the little girl that someone was in the house andthey... They don't want us to be here. She led her daughter into the livingroom where she saw a man, Joseph Duncan, wearing black gloves and brandishing agun. Duncan then bound Brenda's hands behind her back with zip ties, then MarkMcKenzie's hands, then Slade’s. He then led Dylan and Shasta from inside thehouse to the front lawn. Oh, I can't... I don't... I don't know if I can dothis. Do you want me to skip ahead? You can keep going. It's just... Itinfuriates me because I mean, a lot of the people listening, I'm sure, havefamilies, have kids, and that's just one of the worst things that I feel likeanyone can ever go through. It's horrible.

Well, and it gets worse because Shasta tells police thatwhile they're waiting on the front lawn, they hear loud banging coming frominside, and Slade, their older brother, a 13-year-old, comes staggering outafter being hit on the head multiple times, delirious and trying to escape.Duncan comes out and grabs him, pulling him back into the house to finishhitting him, okay, which the little girl told police. Just fathom that for asecond, yeah. And then after this, he put the two little kids in the car, drovearound to various campsites and locations, and obviously, you know whathappened. And he tells the little kids that he had beaten their family, andthen Dylan, she tells the investigators that Dylan, her little brother, wasdead.

Duncan had insisted to Shasta that it had been an accident.She said she was standing on one side of Duncan's Jeep, which was a stolenrental car, when she heard a loud blast, and when she ran to the other side,she saw Dylan lying on the ground, screaming. Duncan explained to Shasta thathe'd been rummaging through a box for beer when the shotgun had accidentallygone off, hitting Dylan in the stomach. Duncan then put the shotgun to Dylan'shead, pulled the trigger, but it didn't fire. He reloaded and eventually killedhim. This is so brutal. This has to be one of the most brutal ones that we'veever done.

They ended up at Denny's because he was going to kill her.She basically convinced him not to. This little girl convinced him not to. Andthen he said, "Do you want to come meet my mom?" So they were ontheir way to Coeur d'Alene to meet his mom, and they stopped at Denny's, whichis so weird. That doesn't even make... What? He's clearly not... Yeah, okay,either. Yeah, he needs to be in a box for the rest of his life. And Shastatells police that Duncan did talk to her about other child murders that he hadcommitted: a young boy in Southern California and two young sisters in Seattle.I am just mind-blown. This guy's not in jail already, like, before this hadhappened, right?

So after Duncan's arrest, the FBI began reviewing theunsolved cases of missing and murdered children, paying attention to those thatoccurred during the periods that Joseph Duncan was free, okay, and internetsleuths also began looking into this as well. After some internet sleuthspublished articles and there was a whole bunch of investigating done, theyretested stuff and found that there were fingerprints matching other murdersthat belonged to Joseph Edward Duncan III. So during a three-hour jailhouse interviewwith FBI Special Agent Mike Saka on July 19th, 2005, Duncan confessed to havingkilled a 10-year-old little boy named Anthony Martinez. He also admitted to anunsolved double murder that had occurred a year earlier: 11-year-old Samy JoeWhite and her half-sister, 9-year-old Carmen. How has he not been caught, man?

In October 2006, Duncan's attorneys and Kootenai CountyProsecutors reached a plea agreement. Duncan pled guilty to three counts offirst-degree kidnapping and three counts of first-degree murder. He wassentenced to three life terms for the kidnapping charges. Ultimately, the juryrecommended the death penalty, and Duncan received three death sentences forthe murders of Dylan Groenee on three separate charges because it was also likea federal crime, so there had to be a federal trial. So there was all thisstuff wrapped up in the trials. Good.

In November 2008, he would receive three additional lifeterms for kidnapping Shasta Groenee and sexually abusing her and Dylan. In2009, he was extradited to California to face charges in the murder of AnthonyMartinez. He pleaded guilty and received two life terms and was only spared thedeath penalty because he had already received three of them in federal court.Too bad we can't, like, give him the death penalty, then resurrect him, then,you know, just three different times. He has never been charged in Washingtonwith the 1996 murders of Sammy Joe White and Carmen, but authorities are satisfiedthat Duncan was responsible. Duncan served out the remainder of his deathsentence on federal Death Row in Indiana, but he will never be executed.

In 2020, he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type of braintumor that is nearly always fatal. Why do I feel like a lot of the cases we do,these criminals always get, like, some crazy cancer or some crazy... 'cause youcan't live with that. You can't do those things and be that person and notexpect that it's not going to poison... No, it's going to poison your body.That is so much negative energy. Like, every single case we do, it's like theyget some life sentence and it's like, "Oh, five years later, they die oflung cancer," you know what I'm saying?

Well, he died on March 28th, 2021, at the age of 58. Eitherway, good riddance. Whether it was the death penalty... I mean, this was areal-life Boogeyman. Like, this is one of just the most horrific, purelyevil... Yeah, things that we've covered on this podcast.

So, by the way, Steve Huff, who is the blogger who actuallypieced together that Anthony Martinez might be a victim of Duncan, it was thisinternet sleuth who pieced that together. Among the many hats that he wears,he's still blogging about True Crime. Wow, and he's really one of the best TrueCrime bloggers out there. He's a great writer and always ethical and sensitivein his approach. So you can check out his crime writing at huff.blog, but Ijust wanted to give him a little shoutout because he literally helped in thiscase piece together an unsolved murder.

But that is the Murders at Wolf Lodge. I don't know, thatwas... We didn't even... I know you did not even go into all the detail, um,because I don't even know if I could have handled it, but that was... That wasone of the worst cases. And again, I know it's probably because they werechildren involved and so forth, and not that it's not just as bad when it'sadults, but children, right? Children are just innocent. They don't know anybetter. They're... She... Kids that young, she thought it was time for school,yeah. Like, it's just... And I think it's because, you know, I imagine ushaving a family someday, or so many... You know, listeners have families, andit's just... That's horrible.

And I almost contemplated, like, not doing it because it issuch a horrific story, but Shasta survived and had to deal with everything thathappened, has to live with this trauma, go on, and try to have a life, and Ijust think we could take this time to honor her and remember her family for whothey were, and remember her siblings, and, um, just know that there were morepeople that were affected, and say good riddance to an evil monster who wasfinally put away. And it wasn't just this story; he harmed multiple, multiplechildren. And so, I think we can take this day to just, you know, kind ofremember all of them and say good riddance to that. Yeah, I agree.

Okay, you guys, that was our episode, and we will see younext time with another one.

I love it.

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Goodbye.

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