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Joseph Duncan Pleads Guilty to the 1997 Murder of 10-Year-Old Anthony Martinez in Riverside County

Already sentenced to death for the Idaho killings, Duncan agreed to life without parole and gave up his appeals. The district attorney said that was why he took the deal.

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Illustration of a desert courthouse with palm trees and mountains on a clear spring day, people walking toward the entrance. Not an actual scene from the case.

Anthony Martinez, 10, was kidnapped from his Beaumont front yard in 1997. On March 15, 2011, Joseph Edward Duncan III, already condemned for killings in Idaho, pleaded guilty to his murder.

Duncan, 48, entered the plea in Riverside County Superior Court in Indio and agreed to a double sentence of life without the possibility of parole. John Hall, a spokesman for the Riverside County District Attorney's office, said the term was doubled because of a prior sexual assault conviction and that the defense had offered the plea in February. Duncan also agreed to waive all rights to appeal. District Attorney Paul Zellerbach said his office had first sought the death penalty and accepted the deal only because Duncan had already been sentenced to die for killing another boy in another state. "Mr. Duncan has earned the right to be executed," Zellerbach said.

Anthony was abducted while playing with his brother near his home, and his body was found 15 days later in the desert near Indio. Investigators pursued more than 15,000 leads and were able to link Duncan to the crime only after his arrest in Idaho. In 2008 he was sentenced to death in federal court for murdering 9-year-old Dylan Groene, after he had also killed the boy's mother, Brenda Groene, her fiancé and another of her sons. In 1980 he had sexually assaulted a 14-year-old boy in Tacoma, Washington, and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. "It won't ever be closed, but it will be over, and we can now mourn Tony's death the way we should have in the beginning," said Anthony's mother, Diana Gonzalez. Sentencing was set for April 5. Duncan died in 2021 at an Indiana hospital, still on federal death row.

The Riverside County District Attorney's office later wrote that Duncan pleaded guilty in April 2011 and was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, while reports at the time said he pleaded guilty on March 15 and agreed to life without parole.

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