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Joseph Edward Duncan III Dies of Brain Cancer on Federal Death Row, Never Executed for Dylan Groene’s Murder

The killer of the Groene family in Idaho and of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez in California died at a hospital outside the Terre Haute death-row unit, aged 58.

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Illustration: old cemetery with weathered headstones under autumn trees

Joseph Edward Duncan III, sentenced to die for the kidnapping and murder of a nine-year-old Idaho boy, died on the morning of Sunday, March 28, 2021, without ever facing execution. He was 58. He had been diagnosed with stage IV brain cancer, and he died at a hospital outside federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, the Riverside County District Attorney's Office said. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Idaho announced his death the same day.

The boy was Dylan Groene. According to the court records federal prosecutors cited, on May 16, 2005, Duncan killed Dylan's mother, Brenda Groene, 40, her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, 37, and Dylan's 13-year-old brother, Slade, at their home just outside Coeur d'Alene. He took Dylan and his 8-year-old sister, Shasta, into the Lolo National Forest in Montana, where he tortured both children and killed Dylan. On July 3, 2005, Shasta was recognized with him at a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene, and Duncan was arrested.

He pleaded guilty in Idaho state court in 2006 to the three murders at the house, and his sentencing there waited on the federal case over the two children. In December 2007 he pleaded guilty to the federal crimes against Dylan and Shasta, and in 2008 a federal jury returned a verdict of death on all three counts that allowed it. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge imposed the sentence. That November, Duncan told the judge that any appeal filed for him was "contrary to my wishes." His lawyers appealed anyway, arguing he had not been competent to give up that right. After a twenty-three-day hearing in 2013, Lodge found that he had been; the Ninth Circuit agreed in 2015, and the Supreme Court declined the case in 2016. A 2017 motion to set aside the conviction and sentence was denied on March 22, 2019, and his lawyers were still seeking to appeal that ruling when he died.

Eight years before the Groene killings, Duncan had taken another child. Anthony Martinez, 10, was playing in a neighbor's yard in Beaumont, California, with his younger brother and some friends on April 4, 1997, when Duncan tried to grab the brother, who broke free. When Anthony stepped in, Duncan seized him, held a knife to his head, forced him into a car and drove away. Over the next two weeks investigators chased about 6,000 leads. On April 19, 1997, a park ranger found Anthony's body among rocks in Berdoo Canyon, in the Indio Hills. After his federal death sentence, Duncan was returned to Riverside County, and in April 2011 he pleaded guilty to Anthony's murder.

Anthony's family spoke through the district attorney's office on the day of the death. "The sun is brighter today, and my soul is lighter," said his mother, Diana. His father, Ernesto, said he would have liked to witness the execution, but that knowing Duncan was "standing before God being held accountable for what he has done, what he did to my son, and the horrible crimes he committed to others, that's the real justice." In Idaho, Acting U.S. Attorney Rafael M. Gonzalez Jr. said the death would not bring back the lives lost, but "perhaps death will now allow space for some degree of healing, peace, and closure."

From the time he was taken into custody, federal prosecutors said, Duncan confessed to his crimes and repeatedly tried to plead guilty, and investigators recovered photographs and video of what he had done. He also admitted to the murders of other children. Two of them were sisters, 11 and 9 years old, killed in 1996 in Bothell, Washington. He described to federal investigators how he committed those killings, but because of the sentences he had already received, he was never prosecuted for them.

What the records say and where they differ. The Bothell killings rest on Duncan's own account to investigators; he was never charged with them, and neither release named the girls. The two official releases describe the California sentence differently: the Riverside County District Attorney's Office said he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole, while the U.S. Attorney's Office said he received two life sentences. Neither release gave a formal cause of death; both said he had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Both also spelled the city "Terra Haute."

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