Joseph Duncan

Darlene Torres, Dylan Groene's grandmother, reacts to the death sentence given to Joseph Duncan.

Darlene Torres, Dylan Groene's grandmother, reacts to Joseph Duncan's death sentence.

Steve Groene reacts to Joseph Duncan's death sentence.

BOISE – A mother sobbed on the witness stand, telling of her two murdered daughters. Glum federal jurors listened to her testimony, but several looked away from her and across the room at Joseph Duncan, who told the FBI he kidnapped the two girls on a Seattle street and killed them with a crowbar. While Duncan sat at the defense table, looking down, several male jurors watched the bearded, orange-shirted, wild-haired defendant with narrowed eyes.

Boise reporter Betsy Z. Russell talks about testimony about Joseph Duncan's past crimes during his death sentence trial on "On the Record with Rebecca Mack."

BOISE – Joseph Duncan wasn’t just planning to kidnap, rape and murder one child – he planned to commit such crimes over and over until he died, the convicted killer told a federal jury Friday. That admission came in Duncan’s closing arguments, a scant two hours before the jury of eight men and four women unanimously found him eligible for the death penalty on three charges for the kidnap, sexual torture and murder of 9-year-old Dylan Groene in 2005.

Boise reporter Betsy Z. Russell talks about the second phase of the Joseph Duncan sentencing trial.

BOISE – Steve Groene, father of the victim, has filed an emergency motion urging U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge to reconsider his order that a graphic video be shown in open court in the Joseph Duncan case. In Groene’s motion, filed Wednesday, he asked that the video, a key piece of evidence that shows Duncan abusing 9-year-old Dylan before the child’s murder, be shown only on individual monitors rather than on the court’s projection screen. The motion also asks that only one designated reporter be allowed to view the video, and no members of the public; and that “descriptions in the press that discuss what the videotape depicts be limited to the subject matter necessary for the public, through the press, to understand the death penalty process, comprehend what evidence has been presented to the jury for its consideration, and observe the impact that the playing of the video has on the trial participants including the jury, counsel and the defendant.”

BOISE – Joseph Duncan’s story that his initial shooting of 9-year-old Dylan Groene was an accident was undermined in court Wednesday, when an FBI firearms expert testified that extensive testing showed Duncan’s shotgun couldn’t fire accidentally. John Webb, an FBI firearms examiner expert from Fredericksburg, Va., told the court, “The Browning 500 is a quality firearm that’s been produced for over 100 years. … I could not make the Exhibit 41 shotgun fire without pulling the trigger.”

Then-editor Steve Smith talks about the Spokesman-Review's coverage of the Joseph Duncan sentencing trial.

Boise reporter Betsy Z. Russell talks about the showing of graphic videos filmed by Joseph Duncan during his sentencing trial on "On the Record with Rebecca Mack."

BOISE – Joseph Duncan repeatedly threatened to kill the two children he held captive for weeks at a remote Montana campsite in 2005, the surviving victim told police shortly after her rescue. In a videotaped interview shown to jurors in Duncan’s death penalty sentencing trial Tuesday, Shasta Groene told police that at one point Duncan brandished the claw hammer that he’d used to fatally bludgeon three members of her family.

After nearly 30 years in the news business (yes, I really did start writing for my hometown newspaper at the age of 16), I like to think of myself as calm and fairly tough in the face of news of all types. I covered a rather gruesome murder trial during my first full-time job out of college at a small daily newspaper and never flinched. But I was young and brash, that case didn’t involve young children, and I wasn’t yet a mother of two.