All right, well, we have something a little different in store for everybody today.

We.

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, Peyton 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's nothing we could do to save it. We tried everything. And so what we are going to do is we are going to use a Patreon episode from eight months ago or so. Yeah, eight or nine months ago. So only a few people have heard it. If you have heard it and you're a Patreon or Apple subscriber, I'm sorry, but I promise we will make it up to you. There will be a lot of extra content the next couple of months with our live shows. Majority of you haven't heard this, 99% of you or whatever. So here we go. We got a fresh new episode.

Yeah. And if you like this episode, this is a good taste of what we 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 out here. But, yeah. I'm so sorry. Next week, we will come at you with the episode once we re record it. But this is still a really good episode. It's one of our bonus episodes, so enjoy. We just wanted to give you a little explanation of what you're listening to.

Again, sorry. We love you. And, yeah, we're still getting an episode. And next week, we'll be back with, obviously, a normal episode.

All right, let's get into it.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to our podcast. This is murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Moerland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

I'm the husband. We are doing something we've never done before. And, no, this isn't some crazy announcement, but we're recording at night. Yeah, it's weird.

It's almost 09:00 p.m.

It feels a little creepy, actually. I'm not gonna lie.

I don't like it.

We're just in this room.

Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of weird.

Anyways, it's feeling a little spooky.

A little bit spooky. Okay, 10 seconds.

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 household have so many pillows on their bed?

Uh huh. Yeah.

That's how I feel about you and your wheels and tires.

Lots of wheels and lots of.

It's just like, why they look the same.

Yeah, they're really cool.

They look the exact same as the old ones.

Look way cooler than old ones. Peyton is a tad jealous, that is.

Okay. Um. I've been getting this itch to travel, and I don't know if it's because I want to or because I'm just getting foMo, but I. We don't.

I feel like we don't travel very often when. If it's not for work, we probably take a vacation together by once a year, right?

Yeah.

I feel like that's kind of often.

Yeah, yeah.

We'll take a week vacation to, like.

Mexico or something, probably once a year. But I want to go to London. I want to go to London. I want to go back to Spain. I've never taken you back to Spain.

I don't know. I just really want to travel.

I'm getting the travel bug, but it's just one expensive and two, it's.

It's fun, but it's also a lot of work.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, try that I landing.

That is a lot of work.

Even doing it. You're so tired.

It's not like you and I just going to cancun for four days, you know, relaxing, trying to disconnect, and taking, like, our yearly vacation.

Like, I think I'm maxed out right now to the point where if you woke me up tomorrow, we're like, surprise. We're going to Spain.

I'd be like, you'd be like, no fun in avocado.

You'd be like, I'm so ungrateful.

Just kidding.

But, no, I know what you're saying. Yeah, I know what you're saying.

So that's what we got on the list.

New tires, new wheels.

I want to travel. I want to go to London. Maybe.

Maybe I just need to move to London. Need to move.

Move over there, hang out for six months to a year, build a studio there, and then come back.

What do they say in London?

Cheers.

Cheers. Cheerio. Cheerio.

Anyone that listens to our podcast and.

Is from there, I always wonder how.

I sound, how we sound to people.

That aren't american, you know, like, our accents. Like, do we sound like just stupid Americans? Last but not least, I feel like.

I'm starting to reach an age where.

I'm turning into a dad.

No, this is not a pregnancy announcement.

But I feel like I'm getting the age where I was at Costco.

I can't remember how long it goes.

Oh, I was ordering some things from Costco online, and there was all these, like, socks and shirts, and I got.

A little bug to buy them.

I was like, not yet.

Like, I need to have four kids. Need to be, like, mid forties, fifties, before 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, not yet, Garrett. Not yet.

Hold out. You know what I'm saying? Just like, WHOOP. You just swooped in there and I was like, oh, by that, Garrett, better hold back. You know what I'm saying? Mm hmm.

What do you think about that?

Okay.

Like, do you.

Dad, you are crazy.

Oh, wow, you're barking.

Are you fine?

If I'm going, should I go all in Costco?

You do what you want to do.

Because I'm currently wearing some socks from Costco.

Man, are they comfy.

They're comfy and they're cheap.

But I'm going to hold out.

I'm going to wait. I'm going to try to wait. I'll try to wait twelve more years. I'll keep everyone updated.

Twelve?

Yeah, I'm.

That's quite a bit.

29 now. Ew.

I know.

I don't.

Ew, David.

I don't know what happened.

I'm old, 30 years old.

So I'm going to try to hold out for a little bit, and then I'll start going all in Costco. But for everyone else that's gone, all in on Costco or Sam's club, good for you.

I support you. All right.

Our case sources this week are stolen in the night. People magazine investigates alt trucrime. All right, I'm just gonna start off by saying that today's story is a.

Really rough, really tragic one, and there.

Are children involved, so I just wanna give that trigger warning. But this one is from my home state of Idaho, and it was probably the biggest story in the state back when it happened. So that is my preface before we.

Get into it, so I probably know it. No? Okay.

The city of coeur d'Alene is located just 15 miles from the Idaho washington border. It's known for the beautiful vistas around lake coeur d'Alene, bringing together forest, water, and mountains in what you might call a landscape painter's dream. Or a golfer's dream. Golfers from all over the world are drawn to the coeur d'Alene resort golf course, famous for its floating green, which is a literal island to which golfers are taken by ferry to play a round of golf in the middle of the lake.

I know this and I've seen this.

But it's like almost any resort town. Coeur d'Alene is also a place to work and live. In the year 2005, about 40,000 people called coeur d'Alene their home. And among those 40,000 residents were the Groni family. 40 year old Brenda Groni was a divorced mother of five children. Her two oldest children, 18 year old Jesse and 20 year old Vance, lived with their father, Steve Groenie, 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.

Her boyfriend, 37 year old Mark McKinsey, had known Brenda for decades. Both had grown up in Coeur d'Alene, and they'd been long time friends. Neither of them expected to end up in a relationship together.

But there they were.

And ever since 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 the kids, and it only made sense for them to move in together. Wolf Lodge was a house that had been owned by Mark McKinsey's family for six decades. It was owned by his grandmother, and he had spent 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 were being made as Mark, Brenda, and her three youngest children were becoming a family. And two of those children were still really young. Dylan was just seven, and Shasta was eight, so, I mean, still fairly young. And also living in the house was Brenda's 13 year old son, Slade. Wolf Lodge was located on East Frontage Road, which ran parallel to Interstate 90. It was an old house without such modern amenities as a dishwasher, a washer and dryer, or an electric stove. But that was kind of part of its charm.

Yeah.

Brenda felt secure there. And she and the kids loved their neighbors. Neighbors like Bob Hollingsworth, who had become close friends with Brenda and Mark and even the kids.

Good old Bob, man, 13 year old.

Slade was close enough with Bob to call him one afternoon, it was the afternoon of May 15, 2005, and to ask Bob if he could borrow a little spending money.

But Bob had a better idea.

Slade could come over and mow his grass and earn a little bit of spending money.

How about $10?

Bob asked. And this sounded good to the teenager. And he mowed the strip 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 he promised Slade that he would drop by the house tomorrow and pay him then, which, honestly, okay, that kind of shady. Like, yeah, 13 year old kid comes and mows and you're like, I owe ya. Bye.

Especially that young of age, right?

Yeah.

Weird.

So Slade Groni was cool with this, and he returned to his house. And then the following evening, Bob Hollingsworth pulled into the grony driveway and waited for someone to come outside. This was a neighborhood with a lot of acreage between the houses, so normally someone from the grony household 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 lights on 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 gronies porch and noticed the door ajar with only a pool of blackness visible through the crack.

Uh oh.

And as he began to walk up the porch steps, Bob stopped when he noticed bloodstains 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 reply he got was from the dog inside, which just continued to bark. Bob suddenly got really freaked out. He raced back to his car, drove home and dialed 911. He was connected to police dispatch and told that a deputy would drop by the Groni residence to perform a welfare check.

That seems weird, right?

Considering all the information he knows.

Well, all he is saying is, I dropped by, like, the car doors are.

Open, I saw some blood. I didn't go inside. And they'll, the police are like, okay, well, we'll perform a welfare check on the family.

I feel like nowadays I'm curious.

I think depend on where.

Okay.

Where you're at.

Yeah.

Because, man, like, if I had saw some blood somewhere, dude, you better be.

Sending, like, a whole freaking patrol.

Well, Bob kind of replied the same. He was like, I think you'd better send more than one deputy. A short time later, a team of deputies arrived at the groney house and knocked on the front door. But no one responded. They yelled out to announce their presence, but again, nothing. Only the barking dog. They walked around the perimeter of the house and looked through the windows, but it was dark and they couldn't see anything. Because of the circumstances and the amount of blood they had observed near the porch door, they decided to enter the house, and they found an unlocked door on the property's east side, so they didn'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 the blood wasn't just up front.

There was blood all over the house.

I mean, on the walls, on the floors in abundance. Like something really, really violent had taken 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. Both people had been bound with duct tape and zip ties with massive injuries to their heads.

Oh, my gosh.

One of the victims, a preteen boy, had duct tape wrapped all around his head like a mummy. With his hands also wrapped with duct tape bound behind his back.

And they were dead? Yes. Okay.

Lying beside him was an adult woman with severe head injuries, hands bound behind her back with duct tape and plastic zip ties around her ankles.

Oh, how can you do this to one?

Obviously, any human being, but to children.

Kids, right.

In the next room, which was the living room, they found a third victim, an adult male who also had fatal head injuries and his hands and feet 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 the victims had been shot in the head or bludgeoned, but from the looks of the scene, it looked like it had been bludgeoned. From what they were told by Bob Hollingsworth and from what they were able to glean from looking around the house at mail and other stuff, the three dead people were Brenda Groni, her son Slade. So the 13 year old, and Mark McKinsey, her boyfriend.

Yeah.

But as the neighborhood had indicated, there.

Were five people who lived in this house. The seven and eight year old, Dylan and Shasta.

Where were they? Deputies did a sweep of the house.

Looking for any additional victims, 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 and forensics to deal with. Detective Sergeant Brad Maskol of the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department got the call about an hour after deputies first arrived. When he got to the scene, Maskol could tell from the looks on the deputy's faces that something horrible awaited him just beyond the threshold. Maskell took notes and then had deputies seal off the house and the block, with additional deputies stationed to stand guard around the night. So they're doing what they can to preserve the crime scene. In the morning, more detectives showed up, along with CSI technicians and a trickle of reporters as word began to get out. But for the time being, investigators kept their reporters in the dark about what was inside. It was clear to the local news journalists, however, that a murder had taken place. And when the headline and a shot of wolf Lodge splashed across the news, the mothers of Brenda Groen and Mark McKenzie were among the viewers. So they didn't reach out to the family.

Leigh McKenzie immediately got into her car and drove to the family home.

Is that weird?

A little.

There are five people inside of there, she said tearfully to one of the deputies, and he corrected her. No, there are only three. But she insists, no, no, no. There's five who live here. Two adults and three children.

Wouldn't the police know this, though? Like, wouldn't they?

Yeah, they knew this family.

Okay.

By the end of the day, the three victims would be positively identified as Brenda, Slade and Mark, and all three of whom had been violently slain late Sunday night, May 15, or early Monday night morning, May 16.

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 Groney, their father, had been staying temporarily with his ex mother in law, Darlene Torres, who was Brenda's mother. And she confirmed that the children were not with them. So her ex husband was staying with her mom.

Okay, got it.

And he said, the children aren't with me.

No, I don't have the two missing children.

Got it.

Police now put out a nationwide amber Alert and launched a massive search throughout the surrounding area. Searchers on horseback, searchers with tracking dogs, searchers in helicopters searching the wooded area around the home around the shores of Lake Coeur d'Alene. Law enforcement from other agencies were brought in to assist officers from the Idaho State Police, the Coeur d'Alene police, and special investigators with the FBI. After the bodies were out of the house, detectives had begun a thorough search of the residents. And in an upstairs bedroom, police found an arsenal of firearms, which was significant because if the motive of this apparent home invasion had been robbery, one would expect the guns to have been stolen. Guns are usually prime merchandise for burglars.

Yeah.

The fact that the guns were ignored and nothing else appeared to have been taken from the residents told investigators that robbery likely wasn't the motive.

It was probably personal.

And because of this, investigators began a dive into Brenda Groni's marriage and her ex husband, Steve.

That would be insane if it's her ex husband. I don't. I'm gonna say at this point in the episode, I don't think it is.

But, I mean, you never know.

So the two had married in 1986 in Big Bear, California. Steve Groney was a wild one who played in a band called Blue Tattoo and ran with motorcycle gangs. It was largely Steve's lifestyle that led to their eventual divorce. As their family evolved, Steve kind of seemingly didn't. Brenda wanted to be settled and no longer had the patience for Steve's wild lifestyle. She'd outgrown it. And their divorce wasn't the tidiest of separations, either. They'd had longstanding, mounting tension around custody with the kids and visitation. Steve was kind of lazy about it and would often request visitation in, like, at the last minute because his schedule was pretty chaotic and loose. Investigators were wondering if this may have been a crime of anger or vengeance on Steve's part. But Brenda's mother, Darlene, whom he was staying with, confirmed to police that he had been home all night on the night of May 15 and in the early morning hours of May 16. And she was the victim's mother, so she especially had no reason to lie. And no one investigators talked to, including Brenda's family, would buy Steve would do something like this. Like, sure, it maybe wasn't the cleanest divorce, but he wasn't gonna murder her and one of his own kids.

Yeah.

Just cause you're getting a divorce and you don't get along with your ex spouse doesn't mean you're gonna kill your kids.

And her.

And her.

Yeah.

And her new beau.

Yeah, that, too. Also, you know, you're gonna be the first suspect.

Right, right.

It's not like they're gonna be like, oh, it's probably not Steve.

No. And it was just so far out of his character, especially to hurt his own children, that it was just outright implausible. But then what about those motorcycle gangs Steve ran with? This is where investigators now go.

Okay.

They begin exploring the possibility that Maybe steve had ticked off a rival gang, and so they killed his family members in an act of retaliation. But to what end? And what did they do to shasta and dylan, it wasn't adding up.

Also, you're in coeur d'alene, idaho. Yeah. Right? I mean, I don't know a ton about coeur d'alene.

It's a pretty nice area.

I would. This.

The crime rate's pretty low. It's a pretty safe area.

I just. I don't think that's what's going on.

I mean, how dangerous could these gangs.

Be in coeur d'alene?

Coeur d'alene.

Exactly.

Yeah. I don't know.

My dad's in a bike gang.

Yep.

That is in a bike gang.

So you never know.

So this is kind of where they're at. They're like.

It's not really seeming like him. But then Steve Groni holds a press.

Conference as the ex husband. His kids are now missing. A press conference to plead with the abductor, or abductors, plural. And it only raised new questions that investigators were eager to obtain answers to. Please, please release my children safely. He had said with the news cameras rolling, they had nothing to do with any of this.

And police and detectives are like, any of what?

What a weird way to save.

Oh, no.

And so they're wondering, did Steve know more than he was letting on? What exactly is he referring to? The detectives felt it was time to bring Steve in for a polygraph test. And I don't need to remind you how we feel about polygraph tests. Steve Groney took the polygraph test and failed. So detectives weren't satisfied that he was in the clear. Even when Brenda's family and everyone else close 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. What was he hiding? And still, where was Dylan and Shasta? If they were dead and dumped somewhere, or worse, buried, finding them would be like finding a needle in the haystack in the rugged mountain terrain around Coeur d'alene. And if Steve knew something, then maybe the answers could be found on his hard drives. So police confiscated a computer from his residence and began searching through it for clues. But they found none. Nothing at all. And Steve was bending over backwards to cooperate, which sometimes police see as a red flag, as indicators of guilt.

But in Steve's case, it didn't really ring that way. He voluntary 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 explosive amount of anger, it seemed really personal, the way the victims were bound with heavy duty zip ties and duct tape contradicted this because it suggested a methodical element more often seen with sex offenders and serial killers. So investigators were really torn on whether this was a stranger crime or a crime committed by someone the victims knew. All the while, tips poured in from members of the public who claimed they had seen Shasta and Dylan, whose pictures, by this point, were plastered all over the news. There was hardly a set of eyes in Idaho who hadn't seen the images of the two young children. And all over the country, people were aware and on the lookout.

Did you know about this before you started researching it?

No. Okay.

Now, Wolf Lodge was situated right off Interstate 90, like I said at the beginning. And so the three victims had been dead for at least 10 hours by the time they were found. Whoever committed this crime, if, in fact they had abducted the two little kids, had more than a ten hour head start because the Amber alert wasn't put out until the next day. Okay, so the perpetrator could technically have.

Been anywhere by this point.

And of all the tips that had poured 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 family and friends, the police learned that Brenda and Mark had had a party at the house the very night they were killed. It was an impromptu barbecue, and a bunch of people had shown up and gathered at the house. This was a substantial piece of information because now police had a whole new pool of witnesses and potential suspects to sort through.

It seems like it took a while for them to know that.

I think it's only been, like, a day or two. I'm just hitting every piece of the investigation so far.

Okay, got it.

Makes sense.

And as they began talking to some of the people who had been at Wolf Lodge that night, they learned that Mark was overheard having what was described as a verbal altercation with one of the people in attendance. And that person was Robert Roy Lutner. The argument concerned money. This was according to the witnesses, Lutner was a good friend to both Mark and Brenda. But Mark had loaned Lutner some money, $1,000 to prevent his house from going into foreclosure. And he was having trouble paying it back. A background check on Lutner showed that he was no stranger to the law. He had a criminal record. He had arrests for drug related charges and more recently, domestic violence. And his fingerprints were found all over the house. Obviously, he was at the party. So the police wanted to talk to him, but they were having trouble tracking him down. And when they talked to his probation officer, they learned that Robert Lutner had skipped town. Just two days after the murders, Lutner told his probation officer he was going up to Boise to visit family. This looked pretty suspicious, like he was trying to avoid having to have contact with the police.

After trying and failing to reach out to Lutner, investigators decided to publicly name Lutner as a person of interest. And that got his attention. As soon as Robert Lutner learned he was being sought by police, he returned to Coeur d'Alene and turned himself into the sheriff's deputies. They spent the next several hours interviewing him, and by the end of their interaction with Robert Luttner, they were able to rule him out as a suspect, which left them back as square one with absolutely nothing to go on.

Gosh, I don't. I have no idea.

I'm confused, because if it's not Steve, I'm still not actually 100% sure he wasn't involved, so.

But if you were to roll out Steve, you were to rule out the.

People at the party.

Who are you left with? Because it seems so personal. Right?

It doesn't seem like it was just this, oh, let me come steal some things. No, it was something very personal.

Unless you have a scary serial killer.

Correct.

Unless you have a complete insane person out there.

Over 400 acres of land had been searched. At this point, it turned up nothing. An even larger number of tips had rolled in, also leading to nothing. Eventually, the coroner released his final report on the causes of deaths. Of the three victims who were killed.

At Wolf Lodge, all three had died.

Of blunt force trauma, beaten to death with an instrument not inconsistent with a claw hammer. So they think it's a claw hammer?

Jeez.

It was still unclear how many perpetrators may have been involved. Some investigators were theorizing that there must have been multiple perpetrators, giving the challenge of gaining control of and binding three people all at once. Investigators had set up a temporary command post in a trailer near Wolf Lodge. That's how massive and urgent this investigation was. Investigation the county of Kootenai, Idaho, had ever seen. The FBI posted a $100,000 reward for any information leading to Dylan and Shasta's safe return. America's most wanted ran a segment on the case, and about 20 tips were called in after the America's most wanted broadcast.

But like all of the others, they.

All ended up being a dead end. And then, about a week after the murders, the owner of a sporting goods store in Bonner's 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 a young boy resembling Shasta and Dylan Groni. 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 two kids in a white van with Washington plates. Authorities searched all routes of travel between Bonner's Ferry and Libby, Montana. But they cited no van resembling the description the sporting goods store owner had given. Weeks passed, and then more weeks. The desperation of the investigators and the families of Dylan and Shasta Groni were continuing to mount. The more that time passed, the less likely it seemed the two children would be found alive. It was a race against the clock, and the leads were drying up.

Okay.

And then around 130 in the morning on July 2, a month and a half after the triple murder and abduction. A red jeep Cherokee with Missouri plates. Pulled into the parking lot of the Denny's restaurant north of Interstate 90 in Coeur d'Alene. The jeep rolled into a parking space and parked. Out stepped a man around 40 years old. And with him, a little girl, around seven or eight.

Oh, my gosh.

Right outside the entrance stood two young men, whom we'll call Phil and Luther. Luther watched as the man and little girl strode past them and entered the restaurant. And instantly they recognized the little girl as Shasta Groni.

That's insane.

The man, Luther was sure of it. He'd just driven by a billboard with her and Dylan's face on them only hours earlier.

I can't believe that there's billboard boards up and this guy is going in.

The public with them to Denny's to get some pancakes. That's crazy.

So Luther sends a text message to his girlfriend who was dining inside the restaurant. Meanwhile, waitress Amber Dean had just returned from her break. And noticed the man and the little girl sitting in her section. As she approached them, she immediately recognized something was off. The little girl appeared dirty. Her clothes were filthy. Her hair was unwashed. She addressed the little girl to see what her demeanor would be like. Can I get you something to drink? The little girl didnt respond. And the man wouldnt take his eye off the child, whom Amber thought looked a heck alike. Shasta groni. Ill 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 the table. She felt it may be the missing little girl.

I really hope someone called 911.

Linda casually looked at the man and the little girl and agreed, and they felt like they needed to call the 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 her and the man was just definitely not right. Linda went into the office to phone the police. Meanwhile, Amber returned to the table and in an effort to stall them, gave the little girl a coloring book. The girl looked to the man, who nodded at her in approval, and then the little girl turned to Amber and said, thank you.

Oh, that's so sad.

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 she looked 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 away and 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 eight minutes given their location, and they didn't want to arouse any suspicion. They wanted to keep the two of them in there. Within a minute or two, police cruisers pulled into the parking lot. Amber walked outside to talk to one of the deputies, and when she walked back inside, the man stood up and began heading toward the bathroom with the little girl. Is there anything else I can get you? Amber said to the man, her shakes almost done. The man, without taking his eyes off the child, said gruffly, we need our check 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 and just as reached his booth, a team of deputies approached him from behind.

Sir, one of them said, we'd like.

To have a word with you.

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.

That is just crazy sad.

Oh, I don't know.

No, it's devastating. At this .1 of the deputies sat down with the little girl and asked her what her name was. Shasta Groni, the little girl 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 red jeep Cherokee with Missouri plates, looking for any sign of Dylan, but there wasn'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 was taken down to the Coeur d'Alene police station to be processed. His name was Joseph Edward Duncan III. He was a 42 year old level three sex offender, which is the worst kind of sex offender, a sexual predator. And he was also a fugitive wanted in North Dakota for child molestation.

Oh, my gosh.

Of course. Of course.

They began probing Duncan's background and his criminal history, which dated back to his childhood. Duncan's first known sex offense was in 1978, when he was only 15 years old and was arrested for sexually assaulting a nine year old boy 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 happen to have this girl. You know what I'm saying?

Well, here's my confusion.

A year later, he's arrested again. So he was 15, and then at 16, he's arrested again. I'm just puzzled why he was even out after raping a child at gunpoint.

I feel like we've done a lot of these cases where, I mean, even the last case we did, he got out after, like, 15 years and he killed someone. Or ten years and he killed someone, you know? So it's just.

I just, like, it doesn't.

I don't know.

It's.

People will rape someone, and they'll sexually assault all these people.

They'll serve a total of, like, five.

Years in prison, and all of a sudden, they're out in the world, and.

They'Re like, no, for.

There's no way he's gonna sexually assault or rape someone again, right?

And, yeah, they are.

I feel like 98%, 99% of the.

Time, they do, and it's just a big circle of crap, and it sucks. Zachary.

Yeah.

Like, I understand he's 15, but raping.

A child at gunpoint at 15 or not, that's monstrous.

That's the thing, too.

He should have at least been put into juvie until he was 18.

A child.

A child.

And he had a gun, so he knew it was wrong.

It's just beyond the level that I cannot comprehend.

So the next year, he gets arrested for stealing a car. He goes to juvie, and while he's there, he admits to a therapist he had bound and raped over a dozen young boys by the time he was 16. Two years later, he steals a small arsenal of firearms and abducts a 14 year old boy. Obviously, we know what he does with the 14 year old boy. This crime would result in him being sentenced to 20 years.

Only 20 years.

Okay.

When he entered the prison system, Duncan went through a sex offender program and spent a year and a half at Western State Hospital near Seattle. After he was examined by numerous mental health professionals, he was released into the general population and ended up serving 14 years of his 20 year sentence. He was paroled in 1996 to a halfway house in Seattle, near where he grew up. He was paroled under the condition that he register as a sex offender and not have any contact with minors. Obviously, his parole didn't last long. He was arrested for using marijuana and being in possession of a firearm, violating his parole and landing him 30 days in jail. Shortly after he was released in March 1997, he quit his job, borrowed his girlfriend's car, and left the area, eventually ending up in Kansas City, Missouri, where he failed to 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 interested in 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 remainder of 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 line into Minnesota and molested two boys on a playground. He was arrested and charged for this, and the judge set his bail at $15,000. A businessman Duncan had befriended put up the money and helped him post Bailey.

Dude, I am just beyond confused. So does he go to jail? What happens?

He skips bell, rents a jeep, and Fleece town.

I have no words. Because, first of all, when he got.

His 20 years, 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.

There.

Bail shouldn't even be an option, right? With his past, that should not even have been an option. I can't believe that was even an option.

Of course he's gonna skip town. And now he goes and he does what he did here and killed a family, and, oh, that makes me so mad.

Well, he also obviously wasn't seen or.

Heard from until he's arrested with Shosta Groni in his presence. So at this point, there's a lot of unanswered questions, and chief among them was, where is Dylan Groney? Duncan immediately invoked his rights and refused to talk. Of course, after her treatment at the hospital, Shasta was reunited with her dad. 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 where Dylan was and.

Kind of what happened, which is so devastating that now they have to go.

To the victim to figure it out.

A little girl, they had her, who's been through awful.

Yeah.

Hell, they had her walk them through.

The whole ordeal, starting with the night of May 15. Shasta remembers being asleep in her bed when suddenly her mom, Brenda, entered the room, crying. Is it time to go to school? Shasta had asked her mom. Brenda told the little girl that someone was in the house, and they don't want us to be here. She led her daughter into the living room, where she saw a man, Joseph Duncan, wearing black gloves and brandishing a gun. Duncan then bound Brenda's hands behind her back with the zip ties. Then mark McKinsey's hands, then Slade's. He then led Dylan and Shasta from inside the house to the front lawn.

Oh, I can't.

I don't. I don't know if I can do this.

Do you want me to skip ahead?

You can keep going.

It's just that, like, infuriates me because, I mean, majority of the people.

Not major people.

Sorry.

A lot of the people listening, I'm sure, have families, have kids.

And that's just one of the worst things that I feel like anyone can ever go through.

It's horrible.

Well, and it gets worse because Shasta.

Tells police that while they're waiting on.

The front lawn, they hear the loud banging coming from inside. And Slade, their older brother, 13 year.

Old, comes staggering out after being hit.

On the head multiple times, like, delirious.

And trying to escape.

And Duncan comes out and grabs him and pulls him back into the house to finish hitting him.

Okay.

Which the little girl told police this.

Like, just fathom that for a second.

Yeah.

And then after this, he put the two little kids in the car, drove around to various campsites and locations, and obviously, you know, what happened. And he tells the little kids that.

He had beaten their family. And then Dylan.

She tells the investigators that Dylan, her little brother, was dead. 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 stolen rental 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 that he'd been rummaging through a box for beer when the shotgun had accidentally gone off, hitting Dylan in the stomach. Duncan then put the shotgun to Dylan's head, pulled the trigger, but it didn't fire. He reloaded and eventually killed him.

This is so brutal. This has to be one of the most brutal ones that we've ever done.

They ended up at Denny's because he was gonna kill her. She. She basically convinced him not to. This little girl convinced him not to. And then he said, do you want to come meet my mom? So they were on their way to coeur d'alene to meet his mom, and they stopped at Denny's, which is so weird.

That doesn't even make.

He's clearly not okay either.

Yeah, he needs to be in a box for the rest of his life.

And Shasta tells police that Duncan did talk to her about other child murders that he had committed. 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 had happened.

Right.

So, after Duncan's arrest, the FBI began reviewing the unsolved cases of missing and murdered children, paying attention to those that occurred during the periods that Joseph Duncan was free.

Okay.

And Internet sleuths also begin looking into this as well. After some Internet sleuths published articles and there was a whole bunch of investigating done, they retested stuff and found that there were fingerprints matching other murders that belonged to Joseph Edward Duncan III. So during a three hour jailhouse interview with FBI Special agent Mike Satka on July 19, 2005, Duncan confessed to having killed a ten year old little boy named Anthony Martinez. He also admitted to an unsolved double murder that had occurred a year earlier. Eleven year old Sammy Jo White and her half sister, nine year old Carmen.

How has he not been caught, man?

In October 2006, Duncan's attorneys and Kootenai county prosecutors reached a plea agreement. Duncan pled guilty to three counts of first degree kidnapping and three counts of first degree murder. He was sentenced to three life terms for the kidnapping charges. Ultimately, the jury recommended the death penalty, and Duncan received three death sentences for the murders of Dylan Groney on three separate charges. Because it was also, like, a federal crime, so there had to be a federal trial. So there was all this stuff wrapped up in the trials. In November 2008, he would receive three additional life terms for kidnapping Shasta Groni and sexually abusing her and Dylan. In 2009, he was extradited to California to face charges in the murder of Anthony Martinez. He pled guilty and received two life terms and was only spared the death penalty because he had already received three of them in federal court dink, too.

Bad we can't, like, give him the death penalty, then resurrect him, then, you know, three different times.

He has never been charged in Washington with the 1996 murders of Sammy Joe White and Carmen, but authorities are satisfied that Duncan was responsible. Duncan served out the remainder of his death sentence on federal death row in Indiana, but he will never be executed in 2020, he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor 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, because you can't live with that.

You can't do those things and be.

That person and not expect that. It's not gonna poison. No, it's gonna poison your body. It's just crazy. So much negative energy, like, pouring through.

Every single case we do, it's like they get some life sentence, and it's like, oh, five years later, they die of lung cancer. You know what I'm saying?

Well, he died on March 28, 2021, at the age of 58.

Either way, good riddance.

Whether it was the death penalty, I.

Mean, this was a real life boogeyman. Like, this is one of just the most horrific, purely evil things that we've covered on this podcast. So, by the way, Steve Huff, who.

Is the blogger who actually pieced together that Anthony Martinez might be a victim of Duncan, it was an. It was an Internet 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 true crime bloggers out there. He's a great writer and always ethical and sensitive in his approach. So you can check out his crime writing at Huff Dot blog. But I just wanted to give him.

A little shout out because he literally.

Helped in this case piece together and unsolved.

An unsolved murder.

But that is the murders at Wolf Lodge.

I don't know.

That was. We didn't even. I know you didn't. I know that you did not even.

Go into all the detail because I don't even know if I could have handled it.

But that was.

That was one of the worst cases. And again, I know it's probably because.

They were children involved and so forth.

And not that it's not just as bad when it's adults, but children, right.

Children are just innocent. They don't know any better.

They're she.

Kids die.

Thought it was time for school.

Yeah.

Like, it's just.

And I think it's because, you know.

I imagine us having a family someday.

Or so many, you know, listeners have.

Families and it's just.

That's horrible.

And I almost contemplated, like, not doing it because it is such a horrific story, but Shasta survived and had to deal with everything that happened. Has to live with this trauma, go.

On and try to have a life. And I just think we could take.

This time to honor her and remember her family for who they were and.

Remember her siblings and just know that.

There were more people that were affected and say good riddance to an evil.

Monster who was finally put away.

And it wasn't just this story. He harmed multiple, multiple children. And so I think we can take this day to just, you know, kind of remember all, all of them and say good riddance to that.

Yeah, I agree.

Okay, you guys, that was our episode and we will see you next time with another one. I love it.

I hate it.

Goodbye.

You our.