‘I was angry that he left’
Dr. Richard Wacksman, the third witness called today, said he first met Joseph Duncan at a coffee shop in San Francisco in 1997, and then kept in touch with him weekly by phone or email. When Duncan moved to Fargo to attend college, Wacksman, a physician who lived in Fargo then, helped get him a car and helped him out financially with tuition and getting an apartment. Wacksman, 55, told the court, “There’s probably a half a dozen people that I’ve helped try to either get in college or finish their high school diploma or G.E.D.” After Wacksman moved away from Fargo in 2002, he stayed in touch with Duncan, who sometimes visited him.
Wacksman said he loaned Duncan $6,500 in March of 2005 for a lawyer after Duncan was charged with child molesting in Minnesota. Duncan cashed the check and disappeared, he said, angering Wacksman. He didn’t hear from him again until he got a call from Duncan on July 1, 2005, a day before Duncan’s arrest in Coeur d’Alene, when Duncan said, “There’s something I haven’t told you.” Wacksman said he yelled at the younger man for absconding on the Minnesota charge, and Duncan then said, “I need to go, I’m running out of time,” and the conversation ended.
