Coeur d’Alene, Idaho – When waitress Amber Dean spotted 8-year- old Shasta Groene at a Denny’s restaurant about 2 a.m. Saturday, something about the little girl’s face was familiar.
Cautiously, carefully, she talked to the child and the man with her, bringing her a milkshake and offering her crayons to keep her occupied.
The child looked so much like photos of a girl who had been missing since her mother, brother and mother’s boyfriend were slain a few miles away that the waitress called police.
“It clicked in my brain,” said Dean, 24.
The restaurant and businesses across the area had been displaying photos of the girl and her brother since the youngsters disappeared six weeks earlier.
As the officers arrived and talked to the little girl early Saturday, Shasta broke down and told them her name.
The man with her, a 42-year-old register sex offender, was arrested. But Shasta’s 9-year-old brother, Dylan, remained missing Saturday and was feared dead, Kootenai County sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said.
He said investigators believe the boy had been alive when he disappeared and were continuing to search for him, but initial information wasn’t promising. He wouldn’t elaborate.
The man with whom Shasta had been eating onion rings, cheese sticks and chicken fingers was identified by authorities as Joseph Edward Duncan III of Fargo, N.D. He was charged Saturday with kidnapping and was being held without bail, with more charges possible, Wolfinger said.
It was not known whether Duncan knew the victims.
“We don’t have any idea who Duncan is, other than a very, very sick individual. Sick and stupid to go to a Denny’s at 2 a.m. with a child,” Bob Price, Shasta Groene’s paternal uncle, said by telephone from Tacoma, Wash.
Duncan seemed jittery and jumpy, Dean said, not unusual for Denny’s at 2 a.m., the hour that bars close in Idaho, but she wondered about the little girl.
The waitress said she gave Shasta crayons and coloring paper and a mask from the movie “Madagascar” to keep her busy while she talked to the restaurant manager and called police.
“I was trying to figure out a way to keep them there so the officers would have time to get there,” Dean said.
She offered the girl dessert and then took her time making a vanilla milkshake. She said she and manager Linda Olsen were careful not to alert co-workers or customers to the situation as they discussed whether the girl might be the missing Shasta.
Duncan had an outstanding warrant for failing to register as a high-risk sex offender and was facing charges of molesting a 6-year-old boy in Minnesota. He had been released on bail in April, a few weeks before the children disappeared.
When Dean spotted the two, they were less than 10 miles from the home where Shasta’s mother and two others were discovered bound and bludgeoned to death on May 16.
It was not yet known where the girl spent the past six weeks. She was being interviewed at the hospital Saturday but appeared physically well, Wolfinger said.
Dylan and Shasta had been missing since at least May 16, when sheriff’s deputies responded to their rural home after a neighbor reported that dogs were barking and the door of one vehicle was open, but no one was in sight.
The deputies found the bound, brutalized bodies of Brenda Groene, 40, Slade Groene, 13, and Mark McKenzie, 37.
Police were seeking a warrant Saturday to search a stolen red Jeep that officials said Duncan had been driving. In Fargo, officers were securing Duncan’s apartment in a neighborhood where a number of North Dakota State University students live, police Sgt. Shannon Ruziska said.
Duncan, whose criminal history dates to 1980, enrolled at the university in 2000, majoring in computer science, and made the dean’s list. When he moved to Fargo, more than 300 people attended a community-notification meeting.
Kerstin Haugen, who lives in an apartment building next door, said she had not seen Duncan for several months. Police stopped by looking for him, she said.
“He seemed normal,” Haugen said.
She said she was not aware that he was a registered sex offender when she first moved in, but found out later from neighbors. She said he kept to himself.
Ruziska said police were doing quarterly checks on Duncan.
“The call from Idaho was a surprise to us,” Ruziska said.
