Duncan case crawls forward, 2 years later

BOISE – Lawyers are busy filing motions and compiling evidence. Court clerks are updating the docket and scheduling hearings. The federal case against Joseph Duncan is moving slowly toward trial.

But in the midst of all the paperwork falls an important date: Today is the second anniversary of the slayings of Brenda Matthews Groene; her fiance, Mark McKenzie; and 13-year-old Slade Groene. The three were bludgeoned to death with a hammer at their Coeur d’Alene-area home on May 16, 2005. Young Shasta Groene and her brother, Dylan, were abducted the same day.

Duncan has pleaded guilty in Idaho state court to kidnapping and killing Brenda and Slade Groene and McKenzie. But Shasta, the lone survivor in the case, will have to wait until next year to see Duncan stand trial in federal court, where he is charged with kidnapping the two younger children and killing Dylan.

Meanwhile, she’s just trying to be a normal 10-year-old, said family friend Midge Smock.

“Shasta seems to be oblivious to it being the anniversary,” said Smock, an owner of Windermere Coeur d’Alene Realty Inc. “She’s doing OK – she just got a school progress report that wasn’t perfect but she had five A’s. She seems to be happy in school, and she’s going to be in a play this week.”

Shasta’s father, Steve Groene, has been fighting an infection after surgery to rebuild his throat because of larynx cancer, Smock said. He was hospitalized for several days, returning home Monday night to begin recuperating.

“He’s just trying to get back on his feet” and will likely spend this week at home, said Smock, who led a recent fundraising effort to build a home for Shasta. “He had so much damage from the radiation and chemotherapy that they had to go in and repair his throat in a very specialized surgery. Two days later he had an infection and had to be readmitted. …

“I think now that everything’s better, he’ll bounce back,” she said.

While Steve Groene recovers, Smock has been taking Shasta to and from school and watching her in the afternoons.

“She’s been hanging out with my granddaughters and jumping on the trampoline and doing kid stuff,” Smock said. “She does fine in between, but when all the trial stuff starts coming up again, she has to go back and relive it. We just all want to get this behind us.”

That won’t happen for months. Duncan is scheduled to stand trial on the federal charges Jan. 22. Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Prosecutors say 9-year-old Dylan was killed at a remote Montana campsite while then-8-year-old Shasta watched. Shasta was rescued July 2, 2005, at a Coeur d’Alene restaurant, where Duncan was arrested.

A state judge sentenced Duncan to life in prison on the kidnapping counts in the Coeur d’Alene slayings. Sentencing on the murder counts was deferred while the federal government prepared its charges.

If federal prosecutors fail to win a death sentence in their case, Duncan will be returned to the Idaho state court, where a jury will be assembled for a death penalty hearing on the murder counts.

In January, Duncan was charged in a California state court in the 1997 abduction and slaying of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez in Indio, Calif. Prosecutors in that case said they also intend to seek the death penalty.

Duncan is also considered a person of interest in the decade-old slayings of two girls in the Seattle area.