Trial nears one year after rescue

COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — It was a year ago Sunday that a small girl with brown hair and a dimpled smile walked into a Denny's restaurant at 2 a.m. in the company of a tall, thin man who might have been her father.

But Joseph Edward Duncan III wasn't Shasta Groene's father. He was a Level III sex offender with a long record of violent assaults on children.

Alert people in the restaurant recognized the 8-year-old girl, whose picture had been splashed throughout the region after she was abducted from a home where three people were killed seven weeks before.

Several called 911, and waitress Amber Deahn stalled the two to give police time to respond. After what seemed an agonizing wait, three officers entered the restaurant, arrested Duncan, and brightened the region's spirits with the miraculous rescue.

The good news didn't last long.

Soon it came out that Shasta's 9-year-old brother, Dylan, who was also abducted, had been murdered.

People were outraged to learn of Duncan's record, and that he was free on low bail from a child molestation charge in Minnesota when the Groene children were abducted.

Found in Duncan's vehicle was digital video and computer equipment that Kootenai County prosecutor Bill Douglas said contain "vile" images of what happened to the children at a primitive campsite in Montana.

Duncan was also identified as the main suspect in the slayings of two children in Washington and one in California.

Prosecutors in Kootenai County are preparing for a capital trial scheduled to begin in October, even as Duncan's lawyers argued for a plea bargain on the grounds it would spare Shasta years of testimony in court.

Shasta's father, Steve Groene, did not return several telephone calls left on his cell phone or e-mail from The Associated Press. He did grant a recent interview to TV reporter Geraldo Rivera, and allowed Shasta to speak with him.

Shasta told Rivera that she was back in school and wanted to grow up to be an actress. She said she loved horses, the violin and the flute.

Members of the girl's extended family took the anniversary of her rescue as a chance to remember the four members of the family who died.

"Thank God we have Shasta as a constant reminder of how great those we lost were and still are in our hearts, forevermore," they said in a written statement. "To lose this many people you love, and to murder, it is truly a living hell."