Duncan's Confessions To Other Three Murdered Children

[Chocolic]

Heartbroken mother testifies

Margaret Delaney, mother of Carmen Cubias and Sammiejo White, broke into
tears and sobs on the witness stand as prosecutors asked her about her 9-
and 11-year-old daughters and the night they disappeared in Seattle in 1996.
She'd gone to pick up clothing and some food, and had called the motel room
where her five kids were awaiting her. "I told 'em as soon as I got the
clothes, I was going to be on my way as soon as I stopped at the store," the
mother said between sobs. "I talked to Luke and Sammie." But when she
returned, the two girls were gone, and their 15-year-old brother said they'd
gone across the street "to get something to eat, and he said they never came
back." She sent him out looking for them, and when he returned, she went
herself. After hunting for an hour, she called police. Her daughters'
remains were recovered almost a year and half later.

While the mother testified, Joseph Duncan looked down at the table, his
large, pale hand cupped over the right side of his face, blocking it from
the audience. Jurors watched glumly as the mother testified, and several
male jurors turned their gaze to Duncan, watching him with narrowed eyes,
but he didn't look up. Among the exhibits presented were the "missing"
poster that was distributed as Delaney and authorities hunted for the
missing girls; it recalled an exhibit introduced earlier today - the posters
distributed as Anthony Martinez's family hunted for their missing son.

'A man's got Tony!'

The fingerprint expert followed much more dramatic testimony from three
previous witnesses. Ernesto Medina, Anthony's father, told of the day his
son was abducted. "A terrible thing happened that day," he told the court.
He heard children screaming from outside his apartment, "A man's got Tony!"
The father ran outside and saw his youngest son limping toward his
apartment, one shoe off and one shoe on, saying the same thing. He ran
inside and called 911, grabbed his keys and began to drive around the
neighborhood, searching for his son. He heard his 6-year-old son's statement
to police; the boy's 10-year-old brother had tried to keep the kidnapper
from grabbing his younger brother. "He said Tony had either stepped in the
way or got in the way somehow, and he said the man grabbed Tony," Medina
told the court. A detective and a forensic expert testified next about the
scene where the child's body was discovered in the desert.

Expert's 595th time testifying

The court just heard extremely detailed testimony from a latent fingerprint
expert, Richard Kinney, of the California Department of Justice. Kinney told
the court that in his 38 years in the field, he's testified as an expert 594
other times - and this was the 595th. He then proceeded with a detailed
explanation of how he matched the latent print on duct tape found at the
scene of Anthony Martinez's murder to Joseph Duncan's print. The explanation
was so detailed and technical, complete with diagrams on a white board, that
Duncan wasn't the only one in the courtroom whose eyes closed. Several
jurors began to nod, as did some in the audience.

Duncan told FBI he was haunted by child's cry

FBI Special Agent Mike Sotka testified in court today that Joseph Duncan, in
a conversation with authorities at the Kootenai County Jail on July 19,
2005, told him he killed Carmen Cubias and Sammiejo White as his "first
revenge." "He told me that these two girls were his first revenge, and that
it occurred in 1996," Sotka told the court, "his revenge for going to jail
the first time. . I think his actual quote was 'sheer unadulterated revenge.'
" Sotka said Duncan told him of taking the girls to a wooded area, and
taking a crowbar out of his car. When 9-year-old Carmen asked what it was
for, he told her he liked to hit trees with it, and he then hit several
trees with the crowbar. Then he hit 11-year-old Sammiejo in the head, and
Carmen saw what was happening. "When he went to hit her, he said all he
remembered was her yelling 'no,'" Sotka told the court.

Sotka said Duncan told him his abduction and murder of Anthony Martinez a
year later was "revenge against society again for sending him back to jail
for a probation violation." Duncan complained that by going back to jail for
a month, "he lost a good job." Sotka said Duncan told him he had learned a
lesson from his crime against the two girls. "He didn't want to hear them
talk. That girl's voice saying 'no' affected him." So when he kidnapped
Martinez, Duncan taped over his mouth with duct tape, Sotka said, and kept
the tape in place while he kept the child alive for a day in the desert
before hitting him in the head with a rock and leaving him. The child was
still breathing when Duncan abandoned him, wounded and naked in the desert,
Sotka told the court.

Jurors attentive, Duncan passive

As testimony in court today has highlighted previous child murders by Joseph
Duncan, jurors have been listening attentively and many have been taking
extensive notes on their clipboards. They've been looking back and forth
from the prosecutors to the witnesses and following closely, as they hear
about these crimes for the first time. The only previous reference to the
California and Washington murders that jurors had heard was a passing
mention from Shasta in statements to police, about Duncan having committed
previous murders.

Meanwhile, Duncan himself has sat quietly at the defense table, his chin
resting on clasped hands, often with his eyes closed. His long, shaggy hair
isn't pulled back into the neat knot he favored for his last two days in
court; instead it hangs, ratted, around his face. Today, he broke from
passivity to ask his standby counsel to make arguments against admitting
evidence of the previous murders. Attorney Mark Larranaga told the court,
"It is not relevant to the prison setting context - it is undoubtedly
prejudicial." But the judge overruled him.

Also in court today are Steve Groene, father of Dylan and Shasta, and
Darlene Torres, the children's grandmother and mother of their murdered
mother, Brenda Matthews Groene.

'I recall because it's something I could never forget'

Mark Medina was just six years old when Joseph Duncan, a tall, thin
Caucasian man in a white car, pulled up into the alley behind a neighbor's
house where he was playing with his 10-year-old brother, Anthony Martinez,
and three other friends. Medina is now 17, and a U.S. Army soldier who's
just completed basic training; he appeared in court in his full dark-green
dress uniform. Asked if he remembers something that happened on a particular
day when he was just 6, Medina told the court, "I recall because it's
something I could never forget."

Medina said he, his brother Anthony and three friends were playing in the
back yard, which was chain-link fenced, when Duncan's car pulled into the
alley. "He approached the fence and called us forward," Medina told the
court. "We came and he showed us a picture of a cat. . He offered us each a
dollar if we helped him look for his cat." The boy who lived at the house
then went back inside with his little sister, but the other three boys
agreed to hunt for the cat. After hunting a while in the alley, the kids
went back to Duncan, who was standing in front of his car, and told him they
couldn't find the cat. "He gave us each a dollar," Medina told the court.
"The next thing I remember is seeing a knife being drawn. . The next thing I
remember is he had my brother . the knife to his head. . He was being taken
away and put in the car. That was the last time I ever saw him."

Shasta helped solve Martinez case

Statements that little Shasta Groene made to investigators after her rescue
from Joseph Duncan, along with information found on Duncan's laptop
computer, "pointed to his involvement with the death of a little 10-year-old
boy in Riverside County," U.S. Attorney Tom Moss told the court his morning.
That's why an FBI agent came to the Kootenai County Jail to take Duncan's
fingerprints - prints that then were matched to a thumb print found on duct
tape at the scene of Anthony Martinez's 1997 murder. Duncan told the FBI
agent, Mike Sotka, about committing both that murder and the one of two
little girls a year earlier in Seattle.

The two girls, Carmen Cubias and Sammiejo White, whom Duncan accurately
described as Native American, had left the motel room in Seattle where they
were staying with their mother, 15-year-old brother and 1-year-old sister
just 15 or 20 minutes before their mother returned from an errand, hoping to
get some food at a nearby Taco Time. Moss said the Taco Time manager is
prepared to testify that the youngsters came to the store as the manager was
closing it, said they were staying at the nearby motel with their mother,
and hadn't eaten in two days, and asked for food. They weren't given any.
Duncan, who was leaving his girlfriend's house nearby, "did not plan the
murders," Moss told the court. "He saw them when he was leaving his
girlfriend's house and took them on impulse." Duncan also told Sotka where
he'd left both bodies, Martinez' in the desert and the girls' near an
abandoned house under a pile of wood. The locations matched where the
children's remains were found.

Judge: Evidence of previous murders can come in

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge has ruled that evidence of previous,
unadjudicated child murders can be presented to show Joseph Duncan's future
dangerousness. It doesn't just show he's a danger to children, the judge
said. "The evidence . in this case is highly relevant in that it
corroborates the government's argument that it shows a pattern of violence
throughout Mr. Duncan's adult life," Lodge said. Duncan's "choice of
weapons" has included anything at hand with which he could administer
"blunt force," the judge said, and that could occur in a prison setting. He
noted that Duncan said he was on a rampage against society. "Mr. Duncan's
own words show that he calculates and plans for his opportunities to get
even," the judge said.

Duncan objected, saying one of the judge's statements was "inaccurate." "I've
never said that I am on a vendetta," Duncan declared. "I was, but I'm no
longer - I just wanted that clarified." Judge Lodge said, "Objection is
noted," and the jury was brought back in.

Other child murders detailed

Joseph Duncan killed Carmen Cubias and Sammiejo White, ages 9 and 11, with a
crowbar in 1996 in Seattle, and killed Anthony Martinez, 10, in Riverside
County, Calif. by hitting him in the head with a rock, federal prosecutors
told the court just now. Evidence of those unadjudicated murders is being
offered by prosecutors to prove Duncan's "future dangerousness" in his death
penalty sentencing hearing, but Duncan is opposing its admission, and had
his standby lawyer offer arguments against it. An earlier court ruling from
Judge Lodge held that future dangerousness must be limited to the prison
setting - because the jury's only choices for Duncan's sentence are life in
prison without the possibility of release, or death. Prosecutor Wendy Olson
said the murders show a continuing pattern of violence, whether planned or
by impulse (his murder of the two young girls was on impulse, prosecutors
said), with whatever weapons were at hand - so it means he'd be dangerous in
prison, too.

Second phase begins

Today marks the start of the second phase of Joseph Duncan's death penalty
sentencing trial, the "selection" phase. It's so called because while the
jury decided in the first phase whether he qualified for the death penalty
(they said yes), in this phase they decide which sentence to "select" for
him. They have only two choices:

Death, or life in prison without the possibility of release. In this phase,
prosecutors will present evidence about additional, non-statutory
aggravating factors, on top of the statutory aggravating factors they proved
in the first phase. According to their notice of intent to seek the death
penalty, those include victim impact and future dangerousness of the
defendant. This is also when the defendant can offer mitigating factors if
he chooses to.

The second phase is expected to take less time than the first, and could
even just be a matter of a couple of days. This is the phase in which Shasta
could testify if she chooses to; she has that right as a victim, and is not
being compelled to testify. If she does, it'll be in a closed courtroom; a
transcript of her testimony would be provided afterward.

Once this all ends, Duncan still faces other possible death penalty
proceedings elsewhere, including Riverside County, Calif., which has charged
him with the murder of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez in 1997. Here's a link
to Meghann Cuniff's Sunday piece in The Spokesman-Review about the other
trials Duncan could face next.

A startling admission, then a verdict

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 today. That startling 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
separate charges for the kidnap, sexual torture and murder of 9-year-old
Dylan Groene, of Coeur d'Alene, in 2005. You can read my full story here at
spokesmanreview.com, and click here for the full transcripts of today's
closing arguments for the eligibility phase of Duncan's death penalty
sentencing trial.

Steve Groene: 'I feel much better now'

Steve Groene, father of the victim, sat stoically in the courtroom, as he
has through much of the case, as the verdicts were read finding Joseph
Duncan eligible for the death penalty for the murder of 9-year-old Dylan.
Groene, his black sunglasses tucked into the front of his light-blue denim
workshirt, sat with narrowed eyes, blinking frequently. Afterward, outside
the courtroom, Groene told U.S. Attorney Tom Moss, "I feel much better now."
His comment, in the monotone of his electronic larynx, came as Moss patted
him on the shoulder.

Every count, every factor

The jurors agreed with federal prosecutors that Joseph Duncan qualifies for
the death penalty on each of three separate counts, and found the existence
of every aggravating or intent factor that the prosecutors alleged for all
three counts. "You answered yes to torture, and you answered yes to serious
physical abuse," the judge said to the jury, reading over their verdict
forms. Jurors nodded their heads, three different times. They made the
determinations unanimously, and found it was clear beyond a reasonable
doubt.

Verdict: He qualifies for death penalty

Joseph Duncan is eligible for the death penalty, a jury of eight men and
four women found just now after just under two hours of deliberation.

Now, the case will move into its second phase, in which prosecutors will
offer evidence of victim impact and future dangerousness, and Duncan will
have an opportunity to offer any mitigating evidence for jurors to balance
against the heinousness of the crime, as they consider whether his sentence
should be death or life in prison without the possibility of release.

** There's a verdict **

The jury has reached its verdict and will be back in court to deliver it in
15 minutes. That's after just under two hours of deliberations.

'Hope of salvation'

Duncan said he wasn't telling the jury about the effect little Shasta had on
him - prompting him to change his mind about killing her - because he
thought he'd been redeemed. "This is not for my own salvation, but it's for
the hope of yours and all of us together," he said as he completed his
closing statement.

At that, federal prosecutor Wendy Olson offered her rebuttal. The jury
should find him eligible for the death penalty, she said. "Nothing that Mr.
Duncan has said or argued to you changes the fact that the evidence has
proven each of these eligibility factors beyond a reasonable doubt."

'I hated you'

Duncan, looking straight at the jury during his closing statement, said, "I
hated myself, I hated you. I hated everything that you represent. I hated
the system." At that, the judge admonished the confessed killer that he wasn't
offering arguments about the evidence presented in the case. "I'm just
trying to be a little dramatic, the way the government was," he responded.
Then he continued, "I knew that the best way to hurt you was the same way
that I was hurt, an eye for an eye, except that the system didn't take my
eye, it took my heart, it took my innocence."

'The true heinousness of what I've done'

Joseph Duncan began his closing argument by addressing the jury directly,
saying, "You people really don't have any clue yet on the true heinousness
of what I've done. . I'll try to fill you in on some of the details." When
he went on the run from a pending child-molesting charge in April of 2005,
Duncan said, "I was not searching for a child but rather I was on a
rampage. . My intention was to kidnap and rape and kill until I was killed,
preferring death . over capture."

He said he was prepared to elude capture, and to evade everything from dogs
to neighborhood watch groups to Amber alerts. "I approached all these things
as obstacles," he said. Duncan said he planned for any number of different
types of crimes. "Basically I was on a rampage. . Yes, revenge was certainly
putting it lightly."

Jury retires to deliberate

The jury has retired to deliberate on whether or not Joseph Duncan is
eligible for the death penalty, after Judge Edward Lodge revealed which of
the 15 of them are the three alternates. Those three, who include one who
was among those most upset by viewing the graphic video evidence yesterday,
were led to a separate room, while the other 12 went to the jury room.
There, they'll have access to every exhibit that was presented in court if
they need it to review the evidence while they make their determinations.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, this case is now submitted to you," Lodge
told the eight men and four women.

Duncan: 'Not because the system worked'

"I should actually thank the government for helping me get my eye for an
eye, by showing you the evidence that you have seen, by showing you the
videos," Joseph Duncan told the jury, ". helping me to take away your heart
and your innocence. ... The evidence they presented, that's what it has
done, that's what it has done, that's what they have accomplished, and I
should thank them, but I won't," he said. "Despite the heinousness of all my
crimes, and the sickness, the insanity, the evidence shows clearly that
completely contrary to all my life experience, something happened, and that's
the reason I'm here. Not because I was caught, not because the system
worked, but because an 8-year-old little girl refused to judge me, and
allowed me to see the truth."

'I had no intention of bringing the children home'

Duncan told the court the government has shown, with extensive evidence,
what he really was doing with the two children at the remote Montana
campsite. "They were trying to show that I had no intention of bringing the
children home, and I didn't - I think it's pretty clear that I didn't," he
said. "But for some reason that changed, and I think the evidence suggests
that also."

Duncan said he "wasn't trying to shift responsibility to a child for what I
did" when he questioned a medical expert, Dr. Sharon Cooper, about whether
Shasta might have exaggerated or elaborated in her account of Dylan's
shooting death. "I was simply trying to clarify Cooper's testimony," he
said, adding, "Truth is more important, it's the most important thing here."

'Everyone lies to children'

In his closing statement, Joseph Duncan told the jury, "Everyone tends to
lie to children. It's not something that should be considered to weigh upon
my own honesty. . I have been honest, I have been forthright."

'It was no accident . My argument is no argument'

Joseph Duncan has begun his closing statement, and he told the court, "My
argument, essentially, your honor, is no argument." He said, "The actual
killing of D.G., no, it was no accident. I told S.G. that it was an accident
merely to win her compliance."

Duncan told the court he was on a "rampage," searching not just for one
child to kidnap, sexually exploit and kill, but to commit such crimes until
he died. Among crimes he considered and planned in addition to home
invasions, he said, were day care invasions, parking lot hijackings and
campground kidnappings. The waypoints marked on his GPS, he said, were
indeed targets. The judge has called a recess, after cautioning Duncan that
a closing argument is not a confession. Duncan said he made his confession
long ago.

Prosecutor: Shasta was 'amazingly and heroically accurate'

Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson is a little over an hour into her
closing argument for the first phase of Joseph Duncan's death penalty
sentencing trial, and is weaving a narrative that ties together the various,
disparate pieces of evidence presented to the jury during eight days of
testimony and arguments. Photos flashed on the screen as she spoke, and by
this point, they're familiar to the jurors - the remote campsite, the
abandoned cabin, the two children. The crime's only survivor,
then-8-year-old Shasta Groene, gave detailed statements to investigators
that were corroborated by physical evidence in the case, Olson told the
jury. "S.G. did not exaggerate - she was amazingly and heroically accurate."

At various points in her arguments thus far, Olson has held up items of
evidence submitted in the case, including the murder weapon, a sawed-off
shotgun; an array of maps of various states and remote areas found in Duncan's
stolen red Jeep, a "Fat Max" hammer of the type that Duncan used to kill
three members of the Groene family and to threaten little Shasta and her
9-year-old brother, Dylan. "We know from the outset that his plan was to
kidnap, sexually exploit and kill a child," Olson told the court. "D.G. knew
and was terrified of what the defendant planned to do."

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