The eight-year-old girl sat in the booth at the Denny’s restaurant, her small frame hunched over a plate of food, her eyes fixed on the table. To anyone glancing her way, she might have looked like a child having a late breakfast with her father. But the man beside her, the one she was forced to call “Dad,” was a monster.
For seven weeks, he had held her captive, murdered her family, and tortured her brother before killing him in front of her. Now, in a final, desperate gambit, Shasta Groene was about to turn the tables on her kidnapper, using the very manipulation he had used against her to orchestrate her own rescue. The waitress at the counter had just recognized her face from a missing person’s poster, and the clock was ticking.
The nightmare began on May 16, 2005, at 6 a. m. , when Shasta Groene was jolted awake by her mother, Brenda, who whispered frantically that a man was in their home in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Shasta, just eight years old, followed her mother into the living room and saw a stranger holding a shotgun. At first, she thought he was a police officer, but when he ordered them to lie face down and bound their hands with zip ties and duct tape, terror set in. The man, later identified as 42-year-old Joseph Edward Duncan III, a level three 𝒔𝒆𝒙 offender, began a brutal assault.
He beat Brenda, her boyfriend Mark McKenzie, and Shasta’s 13-year-old brother Slade with a hammer, one by one, while the children listened to the screams. Duncan then grabbed Shasta and her nine-year-old brother Dylan, taking them into the backyard, where he laid them under a tree. Slade, barely alive, stumbled out of the house, and Duncan chased him down, beating him further until he collapsed.
The two youngest children were then forced into a car, driven nearly 100 miles away to a remote campground in the Lolo National Forest near Saint Regis, Montana. There, Duncan revealed his horrifying truth, holding up the hammer and telling the children, “This is the hammer that I murdered your mom and your stepdad and your brother with. They’re not alive, and you’re never going to see them again.”
Back at the Groene home, a neighbor arriving for a visit discovered the scene and called police. Officers found the bodies of Brenda, Mark, and Slade, with Slade having dragged himself back inside to die next to his mother. The two youngest children were missing, and an Amber Alert was issued.
The community of Coeur d’Alene was plunged into fear, with hundreds of tips flooding in, but no solid leads. Investigators initially suspected the children’s biological father, Steve Groene, who had fought with Brenda over custody days earlier and failed a polygraph test. However, computer forensics cleared him, placing him at his home during the murders.
The case went cold, and the search for Shasta and Dylan continued, with every passing day reducing the chances of finding them alive.
Meanwhile, in the remote wilderness, Shasta and Dylan were enduring unspeakable 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮. Duncan forced drugs and alcohol on them, and when he believed they were under the influence, he bragged about past murders, including the killings of two sisters from Seattle, Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias. He described in graphic detail how he had killed them and where he had placed their bodies.
Shasta, despite her young age, made a conscious decision to survive. She pretended to drink, feigned affection, and asked Duncan questions about his life, his family, and his past, all in an effort to build a false bond with him. “I need to make him think that I love him or that I want to be here with him,” she later recalled.
Her strategy seemed to work, as Duncan began to soften slightly, but the 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 continued, and Dylan’s hope began to fade.
A month into the kidnapping, Duncan gave the children a cruel task: catch a squirrel, and they could go home. After days of trying, Dylan finally succeeded, and the children believed their ordeal was over. But Duncan lied again.
As they packed up, Shasta hugged her brother and held his hand. Then, a loud bang rang out. “I felt my brother’s hand slipped from mine,” she said.
Duncan shot Dylan twice in the back, killing him in front of Shasta, then forced her to help move the body onto a tarp and burn it. For a week, Shasta was frozen, unable to speak or cry, lost in a world of shock and grief. She was now completely alone with a murderer.
Duncan moved Shasta to a lower campsite, where she could see people passing by, but she was chained up and terrified to call out for help. One night, he decided she needed to die, giving her a choice: be strangled or be shot like her brother. Shasta, thinking quickly, chose strangulation, hoping to talk him out of it.
As the rope tightened around her neck, she saw her mother’s face and heard her voice, and a surge of strength returned. She gasped out a plea, using the nickname Duncan had told the children to call him: “Please don’t, Jet.” The name softened him, and he began to cry, releasing the rope.
Shasta had just saved her own life through sheer psychological manipulation.
Over the following weeks, Shasta continued to build her relationship with Duncan, telling him she didn’t want to go home and wanted to stay with him. On July 2, 2005, seven weeks after the kidnapping, Duncan asked her to be his child and to call him “Dad.” He wanted to take her to meet his mother.
Shasta agreed, and then she made her move. She asked him to take her back to Coeur d’Alene, to show him where she went to school and where her best friend lived, playing on his twisted affection for her. Duncan, believing he had won her loyalty, drove her right back into the heart of the community where the search for her had been relentless.
They stopped at a convenience store, where Shasta kept her distance from Duncan, crossing her arms and avoiding eye contact, a subtle signal that something was wrong. The store manager reviewed security footage after they left and identified Shasta, tipping off police. Duncan then asked if she was hungry, and they went to a Denny’s restaurant.
As Shasta walked in, she saw her own missing person’s poster on the door. A man outside nodded at her, and she nodded back. He went to the counter and alerted a waitress, Amber Dean, who recognized Shasta immediately.
“His entire world revolved around her. She didn’t speak without his permission. There was something just not okay,” Dean later said.
She told her manager, who called the police, and the restaurant staff sprang into action. Amber pretended to have problems printing the check to keep Duncan in his seat, while others positioned themselves near the door to block his escape.
When police arrived, they asked the little girl for her name. She told them who she was, and the entire restaurant erupted in applause as officers took Duncan into custody. Shasta, now safe, immediately told police that Duncan was the man who had killed her family and abducted her.
Duncan, a fugitive who had been on the run after posting bail on a child molestation charge in Minnesota, was arrested. In his stolen car, police found a shotgun and video equipment containing recordings of Dylan and Shasta during their captivity. Duncan went silent, refusing to cooperate, so investigators turned to Shasta, who bravely recounted every detail of her ordeal, including the murders Duncan had confessed to, leading to the recovery of the remains of Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias.
Joseph Duncan eventually confessed, admitting he had hunted for targets, using a GPS to mark houses with children. He had driven by the Groene home, seen Shasta and Dylan playing in the yard, and studied the family for days, even befriending their pit bull with treats to ensure it wouldn’t interfere. He had planned the perfect crime, but he had not counted on the resilience of an eight-year-old girl.
At his trial, the jury watched Duncan’s own video recordings of the 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮, described by prosecutors as the most disturbing evidence they had ever seen. On October 16, 2006, Duncan pleaded guilty to three counts of kidnapping and three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Brenda, Mark, and Slade, receiving three life sentences. He later pleaded guilty to ten federal charges, including the kidnapping and sexual assault of Shasta and Dylan and the murder of Dylan, and was sentenced to death.
He was sent to federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where he died from brain cancer on March 28, 2021.
Shasta Groene, now free from her abuser, began the long and painful journey of healing. She suffered from severe PTSD, hated being recognized, and struggled with therapy. In her early teenage years, she turned to drugs and alcohol, landing in a correctional facility, where she met other girls with similar experiences.
A judge told her she had a lot of help to give people, and Shasta began to turn her life around. She later met her husband, who is related to the half-sisters Duncan had killed, and they have children together. Shasta now focuses on supporting others who have gone through trauma, hoping to become a counselor.
She has forgiven Duncan, saying, “If I don’t forgive him, then he’s going to control my life. I want him to know that I’m doing good things with my life, so he knows that he doesn’t control me anymore.” Her story is one of unimaginable horror, but also of extraordinary courage, proving that even the smallest among us can outsmart evil and survive.
