BOISE, Idaho — Six life prison terms were added Monday to the death sentences of Joseph Edward Duncan III, with a judge telling the confessed child-killer that his rampage of murdering four family members and abducting and sexually torturing a young brother and sister “exceeded the bounds of human understanding.”
In August, a federal jury handed Duncan three binding death- penalty sentences for the kidnapping, torture and murder of 9-year-old Dylan Groene, who was snatched from his Coeur d’Alene home on May 16, 2005, with his sister Shasta and held for weeks at remote campsites in western Montana.
Duncan kidnapped the children after barging into their northern Idaho home and using a hammer to kill their 13-year-old brother, Slade, their mother, Brenda, and her fiance, Mark McKenzie.
In a state court hearing Monday, Duncan was sentenced to three life terms for those murders. He had been sentenced in state court in 2006 to three life terms on kidnapping charges for binding all three victims before they were bludgeoned.
After the state hearing, U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge sentenced Duncan to three more life terms, one for kidnapping Shasta, the lone survivor, and one each for sexually abusing her and her brother.
“By any stretch of the imagination, your rampage . . . exceeded the bounds of human understanding,” Lodge told Duncan. “These crimes . . . were unfathomable, cruel and sadistic.”
Duncan, 45, was handcuffed and whisked away by U.S. marshals. Prosecutors say the Federal Bureau of Prisons will determine where he should be held, a decision that may be influenced by whether California authorities pursue criminal charges against Duncan for the 1997 abduction and murder of a 10-year-old boy from Riverside County.
Duncan, a convicted pedophile originally from Tacoma, Wash., who acted as his own attorney during the death-penalty phase last summer, has said his violence was motivated by a need to seek revenge on society.
Offered a chance Monday to explain his actions or offer remorse, Duncan was unapologetic and instead quoted a biblical passage he attributed to St. Paul. “I care very little why I’m judged by your or by any human court. Indeed, I do not even judge myself,” Duncan said. “My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. The truth is my only judge.”
