Abducted Idaho Girl Described Details of Capture

Eight-year-old Shasta Groene remembered the smallest details about the night her family was murdered and the six weeks that prosecutors said she spent with a registered sex offender.

According to court records, Shasta remembered the brand of the hammer used to kill her family, the fact that some victims had their feet bound while others did not, and that the killer wore dark gloves. She called her kidnapper “Jet,” a nickname Joseph Edward Duncan III used on his disturbingly violent Web journal.

Although child witnesses are sometimes considered unreliable, Shasta’s detailed accounts as the sole survivor of the carnage could give prosecutors a powerful tool in their case against Duncan.

Duncan, 42, was arrested when he took Shasta to a Denny’s restaurant, and her account closely corroborated physical evidence recovered from the crime scenes and Duncan’s stolen vehicle, the records showed.

“I don’t think you could have a better witness,” said Jim Sweetser, the former prosecutor in adjacent Spokane County, Wash.

Shasta’s grisly account starts when a stranger broke into her home and killed her family, and she and her brother were taken deep into the forests of western Montana.

For nearly seven weeks Shasta and 9-year-old Dylan endured repeated sexual assaults, according to her account, and at some point Dylan was killed.

Dependent on her abductor for survival, investigators said Shasta had little choice but to follow his commands until a waitress at Denny’s recognized her from pictures plastered all over town.

Duncan has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three of first-degree kidnapping in the deaths of Shasta’s mother Brenda, 13-year-old brother Slade and Mark McKenzie, 37, her mother’s boyfriend.

Federal kidnapping and murder charges will be filed later in the abduction of Shasta and the abduction and slaying of Dylan. Most of the charges carry the possibility of the death penalty.

On Saturday, hundreds of people gathered to remember Dylan at a memorial service on what have been his 10th birthday, with a pastor telling mourners, “God is throwing a better party for him than you could ever possibly imagine.”