Slain Idaho boy remembered on birthday

Sister accurately remembers details of family's murders, her abduction

? On Saturday, more than 700 people filled a church to remember Dylan Groene, whose body was found in a Montana forest after he and his sister, Shasta, were abducted, on what would have been his 10th birthday. Friends talked about how he loved video games and motorcycle riding with his father.

“We love him, and we’ll miss him,” said Lana Hamilton, principal of his elementary school in Coeur d’Alene.

During the memorial service, pastor Jim Putman made only one reference to Joseph Edward Duncan III, who was arrested while eating with Shasta in a Denny’s, saying: “God takes care of evil, and I can trust him to do it. When he punishes, he does it far better than I could ever do.”

Additional details of the crime have surfaced in recent days. The Pacific Northwest Inlander, a weekly based in Spokane, Wash., reported Thursday that officers had recovered a video camcorder from the stolen Jeep Duncan was driving and found footage of him abusing and threatening to kill the two children. The Inlander also reported that Dylan Groene was shot to death and his body was burned.

The newspaper cited unnamed sources who were working on the case. The FBI and Kootenai County sheriff’s office declined to comment on the report.

A woman weeps during a balloon release after a memorial service for kidnap-slaying victim Dylan Groene, at Real Life Ministries in Post Falls, Idaho, on Saturday. Dylan's 10th birthday would have been Saturday.

Duncan’s public defender, John Adams, was incensed about the leaks.

“I thought this was a civilized society and Coeur d’Alene was a city of human rights and not mob rule and trial by press and anonymous sources,” Adams complained.

According to statements released this past week, Shasta told investigators that Duncan said he used night vision goggles to case the family’s rural house for two or three nights. Night vision goggles were found in Duncan’s Jeep, officials said.

Inside the house, Shasta said Duncan wore dark gloves and carried a shoulder-style weapon. Investigators found dark gloves and a 12-gauge shotgun in the Jeep and a red shotgun shell, which Shasta also described, in the house.

Duncan is not likely to cut a sympathetic figure for a jury. He has spent much of his adult life in prison for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint and was on the run when he was captured from charges he molested a 6-year-old boy in Minnesota.