Shasta told police of Duncan’s claims

BOISE – Shasta Groene told authorities that Joseph Duncan, during the weeks he held her captive at a remote Montana campsite, described killing at least three other children – a tip that prompted authorities to investigate Duncan as a possible serial killer.

In federal court hearings Tuesday and Wednesday, documents submitted into evidence and testimony from law enforcement witnesses showed that the 8-year-old girl, just hours after her rescue from Duncan on July 2, 2005, told police about Duncan’s possible prior crimes.

Those were the focus of a late-night, four-hour interview between FBI Special Agent Mike Sotka and Duncan at the Kootenai County Jail on July 19, 2005 – an interview that defense attorneys are trying to have suppressed. Sotka testified Wednesday that after he took Duncan’s fingerprints at the jail early that evening, he returned to talk with Duncan about other crimes after Duncan requested that he come back.

Defense attorneys said in court documents that an emotional Duncan asked for his attorney, and the agent ignored the request.

The next day, Sotka returned to the jail with two detectives from Riverside, Calif., but Duncan refused to speak with them, so they left.

Duncan is a suspect in the killings of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez in Riverside, Calif., in 1997, and two Seattle-area girls, 9-year-old Carmen Cubias and 11-year-old Sammiejo White, in 1996.

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge took under advisement both the motion to suppress Duncan’s statements to the FBI agent, and a defense motion to suppress evidence gathered from Duncan’s vehicle after his arrest.

Duncan already has pleaded guilty to killing three people in a bloody attack at the Groene family home east of Coeur d’Alene, kidnapping and repeatedly molesting the family’s two youngest children and then killing one of them, 9-year-old Dylan Groene. Duncan faces a possible death penalty in sentencing hearings set for April in federal court.