Turns out the sicko was a blogger.

Blogging The Fifth Nail

Careful, I only spent a few minutes there and its pretty creepy. This guy should never have been let out on bail in the first place.

Personally I think the guy wanted to get caught. What other reason would he have come back to Coeur d'Alene. Apparanty, Shasta was walking around a gas station looking at people in the face trying to get recognized. Nobody recognized her until at the Denny's.

I've thought a lot about this, since it all happened. When it first happened, we were all shocked, since it happened less than 15 miles away from my home. There were absolutely no leads that we heard of. On Memorial day Weekend I was driving my family home from Montana (about the same area the guy was camping out with the kids) and we drove by the Groene house, you can see it easily from the freeway. My wife pointed it out, it still had a police car posted there gaurding it. We commented again about the strangeness of the whole thing and speculated on what happened to the 2 kids. We never would have guessed Shasta would turn up in Coeur d'Alene a month later.

A while back there was a discussion about the missing girl in Aruba. To be honest I didn't follow that story, since I don't watch much news and have limited time for online news. I'm of the opinion, now that the news coverage saved Shasta's life. Had her picture not been posted so much, she wouldn't have been recognized. Even with the publicity, there were a lot of people who saw her and didn't make the connection. I probably would have been one of them, since I never conciously studied her picture. I feel somewhat guilty about that now.

Then there's the creey realization that he chose the Groenes apparantly randomly, and had he driven a little further he might have randomly chosen my neighborhood. That's enough to put the fear of man into this father of 2 small girls.

As for Joe Duncan. He can rot in hell. This guy will almost certainly be convicted and then executed. He deserves it. This will hopefully be an air tight case. I'm all for his execution.

Now I'm not of the opinion all sex offenders are like Joe Duncan. Until you change the laws that make sexual assault on children a life sentence, then registration is the best defense against the monsters. However lets not go overboard and start treating them all the same. There are degrees to the crime, and certainly there must be ways to determine which are the most likely repeat offendors and keep closer tabs on them. A sex offendor should never be released on bail, however. They are an extreme flight risk, so why a judge would allow it is beyond me.

-Steve G.