Convicted killer Duncan taunted 2 abducted children in video

BOISE — Convicted child killer Joseph Edward Duncan III taunted two kidnapped children, joking that he would take them home, in a video clip shown Friday to jurors in his death penalty sentencing hearing.

The video was one of several clips shown in federal court of Duncan, 9-year-old Dylan Groene and his then-8-year-old sister Shasta Groene while they were camping in 2005, deep in Montana's Lolo National Forest.

The video clips did not include segments showing the young boy being sadistically tortured. Federal prosecutors have warned jurors that they'll have to watch that disturbing footage during the hearing.

Friday's clips showed Duncan teasing the children about wanting to go home and showed a strange campfire ritual in which he said they were burning their wishes.

In that video, the camera shows a log covered in writing burning in the campfire.

"All of our wishes being burned," Duncan says, off camera. "My wishes for forgiveness, your wishes for ... "

"Going home," both children interject.

Then the children wish for more frivolous things, with Shasta listing "a purse and makeup and one thousand, million dollars."

But Duncan cuts them off.

"Lots of luck, people. At least my wish is something I might get," he says.

Ultimately, Shasta did return home when Duncan was arrested after taking her into a Coeur d'Alene Denny's restaurant on July 2, 2005.

Duncan fatally shot Dylan at the remote Montana campsite and burned his remains.

The convicted pedophile from Tacoma pleaded guilty in December to 10 federal charges related to the kidnapping of the two children. Three of those counts carry a potential death penalty. The U.S. District Court jury must decide whether Duncan should be sentenced to death or life in prison without parole.

The children were taken from their Coeur d'Alene home in May 2005 after Duncan fatally bludgeoned the children's mother, Brenda Groene, their 13-year-old brother Slade, and the mother's fiance, Mark McKenzie. Duncan earlier pleaded guilty in state court to killing McKenzie and Slade and Brenda Groene. Sentencing on those charges is not at issue here.

Both children were sexually abused before Duncan killed Dylan.

In another video clip shown Friday, Duncan mocked the children by wailing, "Help, they kidnapped me, they won't let me go home or nothing!"

Most of the videos — along with pictures of Dylan dressed in a makeshift cowboy costume with a hat, sheriff's badge and plastic gun and Shasta wearing makeup and a choker-style necklace with a purse slung across her body — were found in a folder on Duncan's laptop computer titled, "For Shasta" FBI computer forensic examiner Loren Mercer testified.

Duncan, who is representing himself, had little interaction with the court and appeared to nod off at times during the testimony. At one point a snoring noise was picked up by the courtroom's sound system; the source of the noise was not clear.

Earlier in the day, an Idaho State Police detective was asked to read a letter written by Duncan to his mother. The letter, apparently never sent, was found folded in Duncan's coat pocket.

In it, Duncan said he wished he could kill himself but his will to live was too strong.

"I have once again become a medium of violence in the world and once again wish I was not alive," he wrote. "I know there is good, and love in my heart and yet at the same time there is a huge reservoir of hatred (evil) that drives me to hurt people, even those I love."

Duncan went on to write that he had been "praying fervently for God to help me, but his answers are jumbled and confusing I am driven by my hatred for our society ('the system') while at the same time tortured by my own compassion."

Duncan's letter complained that he had been taken over by a demon.

"God has shown me the face of evil," he wrote. "Evil is real only because we make it real. Evil can live in a person and society as well. ... I have been inflicted by an evil 'demon' that is nurtured by our so-called Criminal Justice System. ... But know I'm still fighting my demons and asking God to guide me as he can."

Duncan has a long string of arrests and prison time for crimes ranging from car theft to rape and molestation. He is suspected in the 1996 slayings of two half-sisters from Seattle and is charged with the 1997 killing of a young boy in Riverside County, Calif.