Latest / Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast / Shasta Groene – Survival Story

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Shasta Groene – Survival Story · Wicked and Grim: A True Crime Podcast

0:06
Speaker 1: On a quiet Idaho night in May of two thousand
0:09
Speaker 1: and five, an innocent family was attacked and slaughtered inside
0:13
Speaker 1: their own home. Then their two youngest children were taken
0:17
Speaker 1: and vanished without a trace. What began as a routine
0:21
Speaker 1: welfare check would unravel into one of the most disturbing
0:25
Speaker 1: child abduction cases in modern American history, a hunt that
0:30
Speaker 1: crossed state lines, exposed years of hidden crimes, and also
0:34
Speaker 1: shocked even seasoned FBI agents. And at the center of
0:38
Speaker 1: it all was an eight year old girl forced to
0:41
Speaker 1: survive the unthinkable. This is the survival story of Shasta Grony.
0:48
Speaker 2: My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
0:51
Speaker 2: and Grim.
0:52
Speaker 1: A true crime podcasting. The following podcast content. I have
1:00
Speaker 1: material intended audience listener.
1:23
Speaker 2: That felt kind of lonely.
1:25
Speaker 1: Our intro it felt lonely.
1:27
Speaker 2: Without Jacko getting used to that.
1:30
Speaker 1: I see what you're saying. Halloween weeks over and done
1:34
Speaker 1: with and onto a new season, specifically Mariah Carey season.
1:38
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, tell me I'm wrong, I think. Well I'm
1:43
Speaker 2: not quite there yet.
1:44
Speaker 1: Well I'm not either, but the memes and stuff were
1:47
Speaker 1: certainly there, and the stores you go to, Oh, man
1:50
Speaker 1: man full swing Christmas.
1:53
Speaker 2: We took our Halloween decorations down. I guess I should
1:56
Speaker 2: have been the grallowing decorations down, but I'm not ready
2:00
Speaker 2: to put Christmas up yet. No, it would be a
2:02
Speaker 2: little while. I think it's nice when I don't know,
2:04
Speaker 2: when you have the house, it just looks so empty
2:06
Speaker 2: and clean, almost after you on decrave right, holiday, less.
2:10
Speaker 1: Clutter, it's more organized. It's a breath of fresh air.
2:13
Speaker 1: Getting that space again.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm going to enjoy that for a little bit,
2:18
Speaker 2: I think and.
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Speaker 1: Totally understand that. So we have a whack ton of
2:24
Speaker 1: people to thank over on Patreon. We didn't think during
2:27
Speaker 1: Halloween week. We were a little bit preoccupied with everything
2:30
Speaker 1: going on. So it's back into the regular scheduled things
2:32
Speaker 1: today and this is going to be I think officially
2:36
Speaker 1: our longest list of patrons ever.
2:40
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean, gosh, yeah, we get quite a
2:43
Speaker 2: few people sign up, but I didn't realize it was
2:45
Speaker 2: that many in that week. So that's fricking awesome.
2:48
Speaker 1: It is, so bear with me. I'm going to go
2:51
Speaker 1: through a long list of some amazing people, and I'm
2:53
Speaker 1: going to do my best on all of your names.
2:55
Speaker 1: So shout out to Tracy Ferguson, Kim Rosencranz, Cat Cox,
3:01
Speaker 1: Jamie mcgar, Melissa M. Marshmallow, Stephanie Lynz seventy nine, Crystal Centrin,
3:09
Speaker 1: Ca Von, Sherry Harmison, Dimitri Miltrin, Jamie Hill, Deborah rob
3:15
Speaker 1: Cindy Brunson, Laurie Diltz, Lyssa Sirah Vultanan, Sarah Hill, Melissa Bowling, Medley,
3:24
Speaker 1: Natasha Hankem, Kathy, Emily Hendrix, Stephanie Schneider, Kelly Powers, Dave Langford,
3:31
Speaker 1: Pam Armstrong, Brianna aupencru Elizabeth hann Becks, Whittacombe, and Autumn Banks.
3:38
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, you amazing, amazing people.
3:42
Speaker 2: Dan Dang, that's a good list of humans right there.
3:44
Speaker 1: It is a good list of humans, and they got
3:46
Speaker 1: some pretty cool stuff going through October. Though we've been
3:48
Speaker 1: silent the last couple days recouping from everything.
3:50
Speaker 2: Wow. I mean, there's a lot for people to catch
3:53
Speaker 2: up onto, so I think that's understandable.
3:55
Speaker 1: That's definitely true. But we got some cool stuff lined
3:57
Speaker 1: up both in the podcast here and over on Patreon,
4:01
Speaker 1: So be sure to stay tuned into the podcast and
4:03
Speaker 1: check out Patreon if you're interested. Yeah, but I think
4:07
Speaker 1: we should mosey on over to our case for the day.
4:10
Speaker 2: What do you think, back to normal schedule and scheduled programming.
4:16
Speaker 1: Normally scheduled programming. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, for sure,
4:19
Speaker 1: let's do it. So this is a survival story, and
4:22
Speaker 1: I thought it'd be good to come back into everything
4:25
Speaker 1: with a survival story.
4:26
Speaker 2: That's a good idea.
4:27
Speaker 1: But it comes with a warning. This does discuss the
4:32
Speaker 1: abuse and sexual abuse of children. Oh gosh, So I
4:35
Speaker 1: keep details very limited in that aspect. Okay, okay, you
4:40
Speaker 1: ready for this? Yep? Now. Before the world knew her name,
4:43
Speaker 1: before the headlines and Amber alerts, before the word survivor
4:47
Speaker 1: was ever even attached to an eight year old girl,
4:50
Speaker 1: Shasta Gronie was just a kid growing up in a
4:52
Speaker 1: small house tucked into the trees along Wolf Lodge Bay
4:56
Speaker 1: Road in northern Idaho. Her mother, Brenda Groenei, was forty.
5:00
Speaker 1: She was a barefoot in the summer natural living, make
5:03
Speaker 1: anything work kind of mom, always planting her feet in
5:06
Speaker 1: the dirt like she needed the earth to really steady
5:08
Speaker 1: and ground her. It was said she could take a
5:11
Speaker 1: rundown house, a thrift store couch, and a handful of
5:14
Speaker 1: wildflowers and somehow make it feel warm and inviting, like
5:19
Speaker 1: a home, like someplace to live.
5:21
Speaker 2: I love that. I want to be like that when
5:23
Speaker 2: I grow up.
5:24
Speaker 1: That's something to strive for. Honestly, Yeah, she was part hippie,
5:28
Speaker 1: part force of nature, and she didn't fuss over appearances.
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Speaker 1: She made things work. Her fiance, Mark Kenzie, wasn't loud
5:36
Speaker 1: or dramatic. He was a kind of man who fixed
5:38
Speaker 1: what he broke, helped who needed helping, and kept the
5:41
Speaker 1: house running with quiet reliability. He loved her kids like
5:45
Speaker 1: they were his own, and they trusted him the way
5:48
Speaker 1: children do when a man has proven himself to be safe.
5:52
Speaker 1: Three of Brenda's five children still lived at home, thirteen
5:56
Speaker 1: year old Slade the oldest, who was already doing yardwork
5:59
Speaker 1: for neighbors and teasing his siblings in the way that
6:01
Speaker 1: only big brothers really can. Then there was nine year
6:04
Speaker 1: old Dylan, who was gentle, sensitive and openly attached to
6:07
Speaker 1: his mom, a kid who cried, easily, hugged off, and
6:11
Speaker 1: defended his little sister when she needed him. And then
6:14
Speaker 1: there was Shasta, the youngest, eight years old and small
6:18
Speaker 1: for her age, but already sharper and stronger than anyone
6:21
Speaker 1: really realized. Their two oldest brothers had already moved out,
6:25
Speaker 1: so the house most days was just the five of them.
6:27
Speaker 1: There were school, movies, chores, and of course the kids
6:30
Speaker 1: playing outside barefoot like their mother often did, and nobody
6:34
Speaker 1: thought twice about it. They lived near the woods, surrounded
6:37
Speaker 1: by tall pines, and the kind of trust in the
6:40
Speaker 1: surroundings that comes from believing danger is something that happened
6:43
Speaker 1: somewhere else. The back door to their home, in fact,
6:46
Speaker 1: stayed unlocked, so that the dogs could go in and
6:49
Speaker 1: out at night freely. It was the kind of household
6:52
Speaker 1: you don't really worry about danger with, because danger, as
6:55
Speaker 1: I mentioned, was far away, not here, happened to other
6:58
Speaker 1: people somewhere else, on another street and another neighborhood and
7:02
Speaker 1: another home. Except little did they know danger was actually here,
7:06
Speaker 1: and it was already here. One afternoon, Brenda looked out
7:10
Speaker 1: the window and she froze in place. There was a
7:13
Speaker 1: man on the hill behind the house. He wasn't walking
7:16
Speaker 1: or exploring, but he was watching. She pointed him out
7:20
Speaker 1: to Mark, who ran inside to grab binoculars, but by
7:23
Speaker 1: the time he got back, the man was gone, swallowed
7:26
Speaker 1: by trees and who knows where. They tried to laugh
7:30
Speaker 1: it off. Maybe it was a hunter passing through, or
7:32
Speaker 1: a hiker who had wandered a little bit too far
7:34
Speaker 1: off the trail. Maybe she'd even imagined it. Who knows.
7:37
Speaker 1: Maybe it was just nothing. But it wasn't nothing. The
7:41
Speaker 1: man on the hill was someone by the name of
7:43
Speaker 1: Joseph Edward Duncan, a convicted child predator out on bail.
7:50
Speaker 1: He was driving a stolen jeep with fake license plates
7:53
Speaker 1: and wearing night vision goggles and already studying their family
7:56
Speaker 1: like a hunter stalking his prey.
7:58
Speaker 2: Oh man, I hate this.
8:00
Speaker 1: He watched them play in the yard, he learned where
8:03
Speaker 1: each child slept, and he returned night after night, staying
8:07
Speaker 1: long enough to memorize the rhythms of their life. He
8:10
Speaker 1: didn't want money or material things. He wanted children, and
8:14
Speaker 1: in the Grony family he found exactly what he was
8:17
Speaker 1: looking for.
8:18
Speaker 2: That's some creepy shit right there.
8:20
Speaker 1: This man is scum of scum.
8:23
Speaker 2: I will say that now well, and honestly, if you
8:26
Speaker 2: just see him once like that, you would, you know,
8:29
Speaker 2: just push it aside like oh, or just make excuses.
8:33
Speaker 1: Right for sure, because it could be I mean, you're
8:35
Speaker 1: out in the bush, people walk around, hiking, they hunt.
8:38
Speaker 1: Who knows, right, Maybe it's a neighbor surveying his property
8:42
Speaker 1: lines and gets up to yours and he's trying to
8:43
Speaker 1: figure out where it is. Whatever acred you have, who's
8:47
Speaker 1: to say? Now, it's when patterns start to emerge that
8:50
Speaker 1: you start to think twice about things. But unfortunately they
8:53
Speaker 1: didn't have that insight. They only saw him the once so.
8:57
Speaker 2: One time, so it's yeah, it's easy to just be like, oh,
9:00
Speaker 2: that was nothing. It was just kind of creepy, but nothing, yeap.
9:03
Speaker 1: Now, as I mentioned, the back door even stayed un lock,
9:05
Speaker 1: so the dogs would come and go, and no one
9:07
Speaker 1: thought twice about it. But Joseph, well, he saw an opportunity.
9:12
Speaker 1: May fifteenth, two thousand and five, was supposed to end
9:15
Speaker 1: like any other night at the Grony home. The family
9:18
Speaker 1: had spent the evening at a neighbor's barbecue, having fun,
9:21
Speaker 1: and when they finally drove back to Wolf Lodge, it
9:23
Speaker 1: was already dark. No one knows exactly when Joseph slipped
9:28
Speaker 1: into that house, only that he had already been inside
9:30
Speaker 1: before learning where each person slept and mapping out the
9:33
Speaker 1: rooms exactly, regardless of how long. Once inside he waited,
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Speaker 1: he brought with them zip ties, gloves, a hammer, and
9:41
Speaker 1: a sawn off shotgun. Somewhere between midnight and morning, Brenda
9:45
Speaker 1: woke up first. She must have sent something was wrong,
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Speaker 1: a sound, a shadow, or the unmistakable feeling that they
9:52
Speaker 1: weren't alone, just something. She went straight for her children's
9:56
Speaker 1: room and shook Shasta and Dylan awake, whispering the kind
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Speaker 1: of no child should ever have to hear that someone
10:02
Speaker 1: is in the house. The three of them walked into
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Speaker 1: the living room, where Joseph was already waiting, with gloved
10:10
Speaker 1: hands and a gun in his grip. They were now
10:12
Speaker 1: confronted with an armed intruder, and they were powerless. Now
10:16
Speaker 1: things are a little bit vague here on how this
10:18
Speaker 1: exactly played out, but we are following the events as
10:22
Speaker 1: eight year old Shasta recalls it. And once the family
10:25
Speaker 1: was all gathered, he then zip tied Branda first, then Mark,
10:30
Speaker 1: then Slade. The two youngest children were then sent outside,
10:33
Speaker 1: barefoot into the night, told to sit in the yard
10:35
Speaker 1: while the rest of the family was dealt with. They
10:39
Speaker 1: heard what happened next, but they didn't see it. The
10:42
Speaker 1: thuds the screams and the sickening, dull rhythm of a
10:46
Speaker 1: hammer striking flesh again and again coming from inside the house.
10:52
Speaker 1: Now at one point during the attack, thirteen year old
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Speaker 1: Slade somehow made it outside, injured, staggering in a daze
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Speaker 1: and covered in blood, before Joseph drug him back inside
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Speaker 1: and finished what he started. Oh No, By the time
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Speaker 1: the house went quiet, three members of the family were dead,
11:14
Speaker 1: and the two youngest children were alive, sitting outside in
11:17
Speaker 1: the dark. But Joseph wasn't done. He then put both
11:21
Speaker 1: Shasta and Dylan into the back of his jeep and
11:24
Speaker 1: drove away from Wolf Lodge, past the darkened houses, pasted
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Speaker 1: the neighbors who'd soon be waking to sirens the past
11:32
Speaker 1: life they had known hours earlier. While the siblings sat
11:36
Speaker 1: frozen in the back seat, the dogs they barked in
11:39
Speaker 1: the otherwise silent house, and early the next morning, the
11:43
Speaker 1: neighbor who owed sleigh money came to the door. He
11:46
Speaker 1: was ready to hand him a few dollars for mowing
11:48
Speaker 1: his lawn as he was doing yardwork for neighbors. Right. Yeah,
11:51
Speaker 1: he came, and he knocked, but there was no answer
11:54
Speaker 1: in the home. Now on the driveway. The cars were
11:56
Speaker 1: all still there, but there was no answer. In fact,
11:59
Speaker 1: there there's even some doors in the vehicles that were
12:01
Speaker 1: left to jar, a little bit left open. Something didn't
12:05
Speaker 1: seem right, something was wrong, so he called the police.
12:11
Speaker 1: When officers arrived and entered the home on the morning
12:13
Speaker 1: of May sixteenth, two thousand and five, for that welfare check,
12:17
Speaker 1: they found what they later described as a scene quote
12:20
Speaker 1: beyond brutal. Brenda and slade laid in the kitchen, mark
12:25
Speaker 1: in the living room, and there was blood everywhere, bloody footprints,
12:30
Speaker 1: handprints splattered all over. It was an absolute massacre in
12:34
Speaker 1: that home. But there was no sign of Shasta or Dylan.
12:37
Speaker 2: It would be a complete nightmare in there.
12:40
Speaker 1: Yes, that's exactly what it was. It was clear this
12:44
Speaker 1: wasn't a burglary gone wrong or a fight that spiraled
12:47
Speaker 1: out of control. It was a targeted, violent event in
12:50
Speaker 1: a way that didn't match anything local law enforcement had
12:54
Speaker 1: ever seen before. Three people brutally bludgeoned and murdered and
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Speaker 1: two young children missing, no signs of forced entry, no
13:03
Speaker 1: obvious motive, nothing, and the killer hadn't even tried to
13:06
Speaker 1: cover up or hide what he'd done. Zip Ties were
13:09
Speaker 1: still left on the bodies, binding them together. Blood was
13:12
Speaker 1: still fresh, like I said, footprints, handprints. The back door
13:15
Speaker 1: was unlocked. The family car sat in the driveway, each
13:18
Speaker 1: door left slightly open, like the killer walked away, not
13:21
Speaker 1: in a hurry, but with a purpose, after looking around
13:24
Speaker 1: and snooping in things.
13:26
Speaker 2: Well, I have to say too, the one son that
13:28
Speaker 2: he murdered was a child. Yes, I think you had
13:31
Speaker 2: said he was like thirteen. That's a kid, Yes, definitely,
13:35
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
13:37
Speaker 1: But he had taken the two youngest, is what he Yeah? Yeah, Now,
13:40
Speaker 1: the crime scene didn't just tell investigators what had happened,
13:43
Speaker 1: It told them someone had taken time to do it.
13:47
Speaker 1: Shasta and Dylan, of course, quickly became the priority right
13:50
Speaker 1: out of the gate. They were assumed alive until proven otherwise,
13:53
Speaker 1: and within hours an Amber alert went out statewide and
13:57
Speaker 1: then nationally. Their faces were on TV, on highway billboards,
14:02
Speaker 1: and inconvenience store windows and posters. Everyone was looking for
14:06
Speaker 1: a little girl with wide brown eyes and a boy
14:08
Speaker 1: with a shy smile. While detectives tried to figure out
14:11
Speaker 1: who would want to murder a family and take these
14:14
Speaker 1: two children. But the first forty eight hours went nowhere.
14:19
Speaker 1: There was no forced entry, no obvious enemies, no ransom call,
14:22
Speaker 1: no fingerprints that matched anyone in the system, no vehicle
14:25
Speaker 1: spotted leaving the scene, nothing, No neighbors heard anything unusual
14:28
Speaker 1: except the family dogs beginning to bark in the early
14:31
Speaker 1: morning darkness. The killer walked out of that house like
14:34
Speaker 1: a ghost, and investigators worked their way outwards in circles
14:38
Speaker 1: trying to find something, starting with people closest to the family,
14:42
Speaker 1: you know, friends or ex's, coworkers, neighbors, that sort of thing.
14:45
Speaker 1: They questioned everyone in the area, including one man named
14:49
Speaker 1: Concrete Bob Lutner, who was a rough edged local with
14:52
Speaker 1: a criminal record and a rumored debt to Brendan Mark.
14:56
Speaker 1: He had apparently visited the family the same day that
14:59
Speaker 1: they were murdered, and he owed them approximately two thousand dollars.
15:03
Speaker 1: He owned tools, he had a temper, and he knew
15:05
Speaker 1: the house, so police announced him as a person of interest.
15:10
Speaker 1: Within hours of that being announced, Concrete Bob himself walked
15:13
Speaker 1: into the police station on his own accord and demanded
15:17
Speaker 1: to be interviewed, and he wanted to prove he wasn't
15:20
Speaker 1: anywhere near the house when the murders happened now as
15:23
Speaker 1: alibi checked out and there was no physical evidence that
15:25
Speaker 1: tied him to the scene. So just like that, the
15:27
Speaker 1: only lead they had, well it disappeared. By day three,
15:32
Speaker 1: national media had arrived, Satellite trucks lined the rural roads.
15:36
Speaker 1: Reporters described the scene as if it were straight out
15:38
Speaker 1: of a horror movie, and the FBI joined the case.
15:41
Speaker 1: A one hundred thousand dollars reward was posted. Search teams
15:45
Speaker 1: combed the mountains, riverbanks, and logging roads around Wolf Lodge,
15:48
Speaker 1: trying to find any clue or even potentially bodies, but
15:54
Speaker 1: there was nothing. Not a footprint or sightings, no vehicle trace.
15:58
Speaker 1: The two children were just gone. Now. While Idaho detectives
16:02
Speaker 1: were busy trying to find anything they could, the man
16:06
Speaker 1: that they were after, Joseph Edward Duncan, was calm. He
16:10
Speaker 1: was driving and eating at gas stations, and in the
16:13
Speaker 1: back of his seat of that stolen red jeep, two
16:16
Speaker 1: children were being taken deeper into a nightmare. Now. At
16:20
Speaker 1: the time the murders took place, Joseph was already a
16:23
Speaker 1: fugitive from another state, a registered Level three sex offender
16:27
Speaker 1: who'd been released on bail just weeks earlier after being
16:31
Speaker 1: charged with molesting two boys in Minnesota.
16:34
Speaker 2: Oh, man, there's no reason that man should be released then.
16:37
Speaker 1: Just you wait, he should be behind bars, like you said,
16:41
Speaker 1: awaiting trial. But a judge allowed him out on a
16:45
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollars bail, and a local businessman, convinced Joseph
16:50
Speaker 1: had turned his life around, paid it and set him free. Wow,
16:56
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand dollars bail for a level three registered sex offender,
17:00
Speaker 1: the highest level.
17:02
Speaker 2: I mean, gosh, it's like, you don't want to blame anyone,
17:06
Speaker 2: but you kind of have to blame those two, the
17:08
Speaker 2: judge and that business man, because they like, they enabled
17:12
Speaker 2: him to be out of jail.
17:13
Speaker 1: They one percent? Did I agree wholeheartedly?
17:17
Speaker 2: Holy shit? So like blood is on their hands now.
17:20
Speaker 1: Joseph's criminal record didn't look like the profile of someone
17:23
Speaker 1: who might reoffend, which is kind of like, you know
17:26
Speaker 1: the question, oh, would Joseph reoffend if we let him
17:28
Speaker 1: out on a fifteen thousand dollars bail? Well, his criminal
17:31
Speaker 1: record actually looked more like the portfolio of someone who
17:33
Speaker 1: never stopped offending. By age sixteen, he'd already raped more
17:38
Speaker 1: than a dozen boys.
17:40
Speaker 2: What the shit.
17:42
Speaker 1: At seventeen, he abducted and raped another child at gunpoint
17:45
Speaker 1: and was sentenced to twenty years in prison, where he
17:47
Speaker 1: served only fourteen. Each time he got out, he escalated,
17:52
Speaker 1: gun stolen children, assaulted probation, violated state lines, crossed, re arrested, released, repeat, Oh.
17:59
Speaker 2: My gosh, this is not okay. I feel like anyone
18:02
Speaker 2: just that has even once heard a child should just
18:06
Speaker 2: like never again. You just don't ever get an opportunity again.
18:08
Speaker 1: I agree. No amount of supervision, no amount of therapy
18:14
Speaker 1: or anything could change an individual like this. The system
18:17
Speaker 1: kept sending him back out. The system was failing repeatedly,
18:21
Speaker 1: and he kept doing exactly what everyone feared he would do,
18:24
Speaker 1: which is reoffend. In the spring of two thousand and five,
18:27
Speaker 1: when the Minnesota judge freed him, he didn't go home.
18:30
Speaker 1: He didn't wait to face a new trial. I want
18:33
Speaker 1: to know what he did. He rented a jeep, stole
18:36
Speaker 1: license plates, bought night vision goggles, a camcorder, restraints, weapons,
18:40
Speaker 1: and camping supplies, and started driving west. This was immediate
18:46
Speaker 1: upon his release. This is what he did.
18:49
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, this makes me sick. Yeah, like this, Oh,
18:53
Speaker 2: it's just the fact that this could have been really
18:56
Speaker 2: quite easily prevented.
18:58
Speaker 1: I yeah, but this is the problem. It's these these
19:01
Speaker 1: reoffenders that are being released back into the world consistently,
19:06
Speaker 1: the system not doing their job, the system failing and
19:09
Speaker 1: allowing them to do these things to human beings who
19:13
Speaker 1: are out there in the world and innocent.
19:15
Speaker 2: Yeah. See, I honestly don't get mad like with I
19:20
Speaker 2: mean the system, I guess I get mad at But
19:23
Speaker 2: like judges and stuff, for example, I don't generally like
19:25
Speaker 2: get mad their job is hard, but in this instance,
19:28
Speaker 2: like I'm like pissed about this, Like that is just
19:30
Speaker 2: not okay.
19:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree, I generally don't judge a judge.
19:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, the different they have a hard job, but this
19:36
Speaker 2: is just this is wrong.
19:37
Speaker 1: Now, this judge fucking failed hard.
19:39
Speaker 2: Yeah.
19:40
Speaker 1: So, after driving with the stolen jeep and all this
19:42
Speaker 1: new supplies, when he reached Idaho, he didn't choose a
19:45
Speaker 1: target with a history behind it. He just kept his
19:47
Speaker 1: eyes open. There was no grudge or debt or any
19:50
Speaker 1: connection of any kind. He simply passed a small house
19:53
Speaker 1: on a quiet rural road and saw two children, a
19:56
Speaker 1: girl and a boy, playing outside in the sun, and
19:58
Speaker 1: decided those were the ones, really, and it's that randomness
20:03
Speaker 1: that haunted a lot of people later. The Grony family
20:06
Speaker 1: didn't know him, deadn't crossed him. They never even saw
20:09
Speaker 1: him before, or he even realized he was coming. When
20:13
Speaker 1: Joseph took Shasta and her brother Dylan, he told them
20:15
Speaker 1: they would die too if they fought him, and so
20:19
Speaker 1: they sat there, silent and shaking as they drove for
20:22
Speaker 1: hours into the mountains and into the forest. Their world
20:26
Speaker 1: became trees, dirt, and a tent and cold air with
20:29
Speaker 1: the man who stole them. The first campsite was deep
20:32
Speaker 1: in the wilderness outside Saint Regis, Montana, isolated enough that
20:36
Speaker 1: no one would hear a scream or stumble upon them
20:38
Speaker 1: by accident. Joseph immediately gave them rules, things like when
20:42
Speaker 1: they could eat or sleep, or go walk, or even
20:44
Speaker 1: when they could talk. Everything was a test, and every
20:47
Speaker 1: failure had an extreme punishment and beating and abuse. He
20:52
Speaker 1: alternated between moments of kindness, letting them have marshmallow roasts
20:56
Speaker 1: and giving him soda, and then bursts of violence. But
20:59
Speaker 1: most horrific of all was the sexual assault that both
21:02
Speaker 1: children were subjected to. Now, as I mentioned at the
21:06
Speaker 1: very beginning. I'm not going to go into detail of
21:09
Speaker 1: the sexual assault, but just know it occurred and it.
21:14
Speaker 2: Was violent, which I mean, given what this piece of
21:19
Speaker 2: shit is, it's not surprising, I guess.
21:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Shasta noticed something early on. The more Joseph
21:25
Speaker 1: focused on Dylan, the more danger her brother was in,
21:29
Speaker 1: and so she did something no child should ever have
21:32
Speaker 1: to do. She began to make herself useful to the
21:36
Speaker 1: man who killed her family.
21:38
Speaker 2: Dang.
21:38
Speaker 1: She seemed to step up in situations, put herself in
21:41
Speaker 1: the line of fire. She laughed when he wanted her to.
21:44
Speaker 1: She asked him questions about his life. She pretended to
21:47
Speaker 1: trust him, she called him by his nickname, all to
21:51
Speaker 1: try and protect her brother. But Dylan was breaking. The abuse,
21:58
Speaker 1: the starvation, and the constant fear it began to hallow
22:01
Speaker 1: him out from the inside. Shasta could see it in
22:04
Speaker 1: his eyes, the way he stopped reacting, stopped hoping, trying to,
22:08
Speaker 1: you know, come up with an escape plan with a sister.
22:12
Speaker 1: She promised him over and over that she would get
22:14
Speaker 1: them both home, and then came a squirrel. Now Joseph
22:20
Speaker 1: told them that the squirrel, if they caught it, well,
22:23
Speaker 1: they could go home. Because the squirrel was ransacking their
22:26
Speaker 1: camp and bothering them, getting into food and all this
22:28
Speaker 1: sort of stuff lots. So if these two caught this
22:31
Speaker 1: squirrel and got rid of it, they were good to
22:33
Speaker 1: go home. That was the deal. And it was of
22:35
Speaker 1: course a lie.
22:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, lies for sure.
22:38
Speaker 1: And it was one of many lies. But to two
22:39
Speaker 1: starving children, terrified captured out being subject to all this
22:44
Speaker 1: in the bush, it was their saving grace. So they
22:47
Speaker 1: built a trap out of sticks and whatever they could,
22:51
Speaker 1: and after days of trying, they caught the squirrel.
22:55
Speaker 2: They're smart kids, say they are.
22:57
Speaker 1: Now. When this happened, they were elated. They thought they'd won.
23:01
Speaker 1: Dylan even hugged Shasta and saying like, we're going home,
23:04
Speaker 1: and in that moment the mood shifted. Joseph walked back
23:08
Speaker 1: to the jeep, where he kept a plastic storage box
23:10
Speaker 1: filled with various things, beer tools, rope, and the sawn
23:15
Speaker 1: off shotgun that he always traveled with At the jeep.
23:20
Speaker 1: The first blast shattered the illusion Dylan was over there
23:24
Speaker 1: with him, and Shasta didn't even understand what had happened.
23:27
Speaker 1: At first, she heard a loud boom and she ran
23:30
Speaker 1: around the jeep and saw Dylan lying on the ground bleeding.
23:33
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. No.
23:36
Speaker 1: When she looked down there at Dylan, he was on
23:39
Speaker 1: the ground, shot in the stomach, bleeding fast, but still alive,
23:43
Speaker 1: still talking and begging for his life, saying please, don't please,
23:48
Speaker 1: I don't want to die, like literally begging for his life.
23:52
Speaker 2: After they just did they were successful at what he
23:56
Speaker 2: asked them to do. Correct, he just shoots them? Okay,
23:58
Speaker 2: holy shit, this is just so messed up.
24:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, but Joseph wasn't listening to his please. He walked over,
24:07
Speaker 1: reloaded the gun and with no hesitation, he lifted it,
24:10
Speaker 1: pressed it against the side of Dylan's head no, and
24:13
Speaker 1: pulled the trigger.
24:14
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, she.
24:16
Speaker 1: Has to watch this happen. And she didn't scream, not
24:19
Speaker 1: because she didn't want to, but she couldn't. It was
24:22
Speaker 1: as if her body just shut down, like her brain
24:25
Speaker 1: refused to process one more impossible reality. Now. Joseph cried
24:31
Speaker 1: after doing this, and he claimed it was mercy, saying
24:33
Speaker 1: that the first shot was an accident and the second
24:36
Speaker 1: one was to end his pain. And it is believed
24:40
Speaker 1: that the shot in the stomach was not intentional, whether
24:46
Speaker 1: he had intended to still kill Dylan is unknown, but
24:49
Speaker 1: is believed that there was a gem in the gun
24:52
Speaker 1: of sorts, and the shot to the stomach was not
24:54
Speaker 1: an intentional shot. Okay, but it is believed he was
24:57
Speaker 1: most likely still going to kill Dylan. Why was going
25:00
Speaker 1: for the gun all that sort of stuff. Yeah, shot
25:02
Speaker 1: to the stomach is believed to not have been intentional.
25:07
Speaker 2: So this poor little girl just has now lost every
25:10
Speaker 2: single family member.
25:12
Speaker 1: Correct, and the one who was standing by her side,
25:16
Speaker 1: her brother, Dylan, was gone.
25:19
Speaker 2: I don't even know. Yeah, how could you even just
25:21
Speaker 2: like move forward with that?
25:22
Speaker 1: Knowing that well, in that moment, like she knew there
25:24
Speaker 1: was no escape coming. She understood the gravity of the situation,
25:27
Speaker 1: even at being eight years old. Yes, she knew there
25:30
Speaker 1: was no getting away. If she wanted to live. She
25:33
Speaker 1: knew this that she would have to make Joseph think
25:36
Speaker 1: he needed her. She's smart enough to figure this out.
25:39
Speaker 1: She needed to be his company, not a victim or
25:42
Speaker 1: a hostage. She needs to befriend him.
25:45
Speaker 2: Oh, the fact that a little eight year old has
25:47
Speaker 2: to figure this out just, oh, it's too much.
25:52
Speaker 1: So even after he killed her entire family, shooting her
25:55
Speaker 1: brother out there in the woods, and she's now alone
25:58
Speaker 1: with him, she stayed calm, She continued to hold conversations.
26:03
Speaker 1: She even smiled when he wanted her to smile, She listened.
26:07
Speaker 1: She made herself whatever he needed, whatever kind of human
26:13
Speaker 1: he needed her to be.
26:14
Speaker 2: How would she even know how to do that?
26:16
Speaker 1: I don't know. It was the only thing that she
26:19
Speaker 1: had left in her though, the only fight she had,
26:21
Speaker 1: and it worked. Just days after killing Dylan, Joseph asked
26:26
Speaker 1: her a question. He asked her, do you want to
26:29
Speaker 1: meet my mother? It was the crack she was waiting for,
26:33
Speaker 1: and she said yes. And so, after more than a
26:36
Speaker 1: month in the woods with a monster, she found herself
26:39
Speaker 1: headed back to Idaho. In the early hours of July second,
26:44
Speaker 1: two thousand and five, the door of a Denny's in
26:46
Speaker 1: Cordelaine's swung open, and a little girl in pajama style
26:50
Speaker 1: kind of close walked in beside a man everyone initially
26:53
Speaker 1: assumed was her father. Now Shastagrony had been missing for
26:57
Speaker 1: forty seven days. At this point, her face was everywhere billboards,
27:02
Speaker 1: gas stations, nightly news broadcasts, you name it. There's flyers
27:06
Speaker 1: taped up in convenience stores. Most people had stopped believing
27:10
Speaker 1: that she was even alive at this point, and yet
27:13
Speaker 1: here she was this thin, quiet, pale little girl with
27:17
Speaker 1: her arms crossed in front of her, like she was
27:19
Speaker 1: trying to make herself smaller. Inside that Denny, she ordered
27:22
Speaker 1: herself a milkshake, and the waitress who was serving them
27:26
Speaker 1: Amber Denon. She couldn't stop staring. Something felt off. The
27:31
Speaker 1: girl didn't really look up, she didn't talk unless the
27:33
Speaker 1: man gave her permission to, and she sat stiff with
27:36
Speaker 1: eyes down on her shoulders, tight, not at all like
27:39
Speaker 1: a child going out on an outing with her dad.
27:41
Speaker 1: Getting a milkshake at Denny's. Yeah yeah, So Amber excused
27:45
Speaker 1: herself and went to the manager, and she told the
27:49
Speaker 1: manager that she believes that this girl looks a lot
27:51
Speaker 1: like that missing grony girl, and the manager agreed.
27:56
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, she's angels.
27:57
Speaker 1: Hey wait, because the staff did some amazing stuff here.
28:03
Speaker 1: They didn't panic, but what they did was stall the
28:06
Speaker 1: food order to the table, and they called police quietly.
28:10
Speaker 1: So stalling gives the police more time to arrive and
28:13
Speaker 1: hold them there for longer. Not only that, but the
28:17
Speaker 1: staff positioned themselves near the exit so no one could
28:20
Speaker 1: slip out unnoticed, so they literally guarded the doors of
28:24
Speaker 1: this place. These Dennis employees.
28:25
Speaker 2: Wow, okay, because it would have been so easy for
28:28
Speaker 2: them just head down to their job kind of thing,
28:30
Speaker 2: and not really the observant of the situation. So this
28:33
Speaker 2: is unbelievable.
28:34
Speaker 1: Well, and not only that, they didn't have to put
28:37
Speaker 1: their bodies in the line. Yeah, what if he had
28:38
Speaker 1: a gun and ran for the door they're standing there?
28:41
Speaker 2: Yeah, wow, okay, this is good.
28:44
Speaker 1: Eventually, the door to the restaurant opened and a Quardelaine
28:47
Speaker 1: police officer walked in. He walked straight to the table
28:50
Speaker 1: where they were sitting, crouched beside Shasta, and asked, what's
28:54
Speaker 1: your name? She looked at Joseph first, as if checking
28:57
Speaker 1: whether she was allowed to answer or not, and he nodded. Shasta.
29:03
Speaker 2: She said, oh my gosh, this could make me just
29:06
Speaker 2: sob rain.
29:06
Speaker 1: Now that single word broke six weeks of silence, and
29:10
Speaker 1: the spell Joseph had been holding over her was gone.
29:14
Speaker 1: Just like that, it was over. He went outside without
29:18
Speaker 1: a fight. Police cuffed him beside his stolen jeep. A
29:22
Speaker 1: search of that vehicle found restraints, weapons, night vision goggles,
29:25
Speaker 1: and of course, the sawn off shotgun. Meanwhile, inside the
29:29
Speaker 1: Denny's amber sat with Shasta at the booth and asked
29:32
Speaker 1: her if her brother was in the car, to which
29:34
Speaker 1: Shasta told her, no, he's in heaven.
29:37
Speaker 2: Oh gosh, okay.
29:40
Speaker 1: By sunrise, Shasta was in a hospital, in a clean bed,
29:44
Speaker 1: clean clothes, with warm food. Her father, Steve Groeney, arrived
29:48
Speaker 1: and wrapped his arms around his little girl.
29:52
Speaker 2: Oh right, yes, okay. I was like, what the shit
29:56
Speaker 2: he died? But okay that was his stepfather, Yes.
29:59
Speaker 1: Her step So you did say that she lost her
30:01
Speaker 1: entire family. I did say, yes, she did earlier because
30:05
Speaker 1: I didn't want to give away the mouth that her
30:07
Speaker 1: father was in fact still here.
30:09
Speaker 2: Holy heck. Okay.
30:12
Speaker 1: The world celebrated her safe return when news broke, but
30:15
Speaker 1: for law enforcement, the case was still only half over.
30:18
Speaker 1: There was still one question hanging in the air, heavier
30:21
Speaker 1: than anything else where. Was Dylan. Now. Shasta had already
30:24
Speaker 1: told investigators what had happened to him, that her brother
30:27
Speaker 1: had been shot, killed and quote buried in the woods
30:30
Speaker 1: by the place with the trees and the dirt road.
30:34
Speaker 1: But remember she's eight years old. She didn't know state lines,
30:38
Speaker 1: or couldn't coordinates or how far they'd driven or directions,
30:41
Speaker 1: but still her description gave detectives enough to start Montana
30:46
Speaker 1: a dirt road and a makeshift camp, homemade fire pit
30:50
Speaker 1: even and of course the grave. Search teams were sent
30:54
Speaker 1: to the Lolo National Forest, which is an enormous stretch
30:58
Speaker 1: of wilderness spanning thousands of eight acres. They used helicopters,
31:01
Speaker 1: cadaver dogs, grid searches, but the area was just too vast,
31:06
Speaker 1: so they tried something else. What had turned the search
31:09
Speaker 1: around was in fact the jeep that he drove see
31:13
Speaker 1: After his arrest, Joseph's vehicle was impounded, but inside was
31:17
Speaker 1: a GPS unit still mounted to the dashboard holding breadcrumb
31:20
Speaker 1: data of everywhere that he had driven. The coordinates led
31:24
Speaker 1: investigators straight into the forest where that campsite was. On
31:29
Speaker 1: July fourth, two thousand and five, two days after Shasta's rescue,
31:33
Speaker 1: investigators reached a clearing miles off the main road. There
31:37
Speaker 1: were rope marks on trees, melted candle wax, and burned
31:40
Speaker 1: scraps of a tarp, and then behind the campsite a
31:43
Speaker 1: mound of disturbed soil. The remains recovered from that shallow
31:49
Speaker 1: grave were confirmed by DNA. It was the body of
31:52
Speaker 1: nine year old Dylan Grony. The autopsy left no room
31:56
Speaker 1: for confusion. He had suffered one gunshot wound through the
31:59
Speaker 1: abdomen and another one through the head. A public memorial
32:03
Speaker 1: for Dylan was held twelve days later on what would
32:06
Speaker 1: have been his tenth birthday. Oh gosh, no, his little
32:11
Speaker 1: league teammates wore uniforms and his school friends released balloons. Now,
32:17
Speaker 1: with Shasta rescued and Dylan's remains identified, investigators believe they
32:21
Speaker 1: had reached the end of the nightmare, but it quickly
32:24
Speaker 1: became clear there were only well, they were only just
32:27
Speaker 1: at the tip of the iceberg on this story. You see,
32:30
Speaker 1: Joseph Edward Duncan had a criminal record, but he wasn't
32:35
Speaker 1: just a fugitive who happened to target one family. The
32:38
Speaker 1: more investigators Doug, the more they realized his name had
32:41
Speaker 1: a different kind of trail behind it, not one that
32:44
Speaker 1: was bound up in legal terms or anything, one that
32:47
Speaker 1: was actually scattered across states with parole logs, juvenile files,
32:52
Speaker 1: old court records, and police databases, yes, but also with
32:56
Speaker 1: open cold cases. The moment his mugshot hit the news,
33:00
Speaker 1: phone started ringing in police departments, detectives who worked cold cases,
33:05
Speaker 1: some over a decade old, in fact, were now suddenly
33:08
Speaker 1: asking the same question, is this our guy? The first
33:12
Speaker 1: confirmed link came from California. A Riverside County investigator recognized
33:17
Speaker 1: Joseph instantly via a sketch, and in nineteen ninety seven,
33:22
Speaker 1: it was a case with a ten year old Anthony Martinez,
33:25
Speaker 1: who had been abducted at knife point while playing with
33:28
Speaker 1: his friends. A partial fingerprint had been taken from duct
33:32
Speaker 1: tape used to buying the boy, and a print well
33:36
Speaker 1: that was never matched to anyone until now. When that
33:40
Speaker 1: fingerprint was reanalyzed against Joseph, it came back as a match.
33:44
Speaker 1: The case had haunted detectives for eight years, and now
33:48
Speaker 1: they had their man. Then came Washington State. During her interviews,
33:53
Speaker 1: Shasta told investigators that Joseph had talked casually, almost in fact,
33:57
Speaker 1: like bragging about two girls in Seattle. He said that
34:02
Speaker 1: he'd beaten them and left their bodies in the woods.
34:05
Speaker 1: Now she didn't know their names, but detectives, well, they did.
34:09
Speaker 1: There was Sammy Joe White, who was eleven, and Carmen Cubias,
34:13
Speaker 1: who was nine. They both vanished in nineteen ninety six
34:17
Speaker 1: and were found murdered two years later. The more they uncovered,
34:21
Speaker 1: the clearer it became. This wasn't a man who snapped
34:25
Speaker 1: in two thousand and five, or not even a man
34:27
Speaker 1: who simply re offended. This was a predator who had
34:31
Speaker 1: been serial attacking, abducting, raping, and murdering children for a
34:37
Speaker 1: long time and never stopped. By his own admission, he
34:42
Speaker 1: had assaulted more than a dozen boys before the age
34:45
Speaker 1: of sixteen. He had been in and out of prison,
34:47
Speaker 1: treatment programs and parole systems for nearly thirty years, and
34:51
Speaker 1: every time he was released, children disappeared, parents had buried
34:57
Speaker 1: their kids, and no one knew they were all connected.
35:00
Speaker 1: Until that is, Shasta lived long enough to speak about it.
35:05
Speaker 1: Not even live long enough to speak about it, But
35:07
Speaker 1: Shasta befriended him, got the information needed, and managed to
35:13
Speaker 1: get herself to safety to be able to speak about it.
35:18
Speaker 1: For investigators, this was no longer just about the Grony family.
35:21
Speaker 1: This was about how Joseph kept getting out, how he
35:24
Speaker 1: was granted bail, how a registered Level three sex offender,
35:28
Speaker 1: the highest risk category, could go missing for months and
35:31
Speaker 1: no one was even looking for him. As one FBI
35:35
Speaker 1: agent later put it, quote, we didn't just arrest a killer.
35:38
Speaker 1: We exposed every failure that kept letting him kill. When
35:44
Speaker 1: Joseph Duncan was finally in custody, there was no question
35:47
Speaker 1: whether he would be prosecuted. That was obvious. It was
35:52
Speaker 1: only a matter of where, how, and for what crime first.
35:57
Speaker 1: His crimes they stretched across multiple states, to multiple courts
36:01
Speaker 1: and multiple victims. Prosecutors from Idaho, Washington, California, and the
36:05
Speaker 1: federal government government all had a legitimate claim to put
36:09
Speaker 1: them on trial, but the one priority took precedence over everything,
36:12
Speaker 1: and that was a justice for the Grony family and
36:15
Speaker 1: the prosecution for Shasta. Idaho charged Joseph first filing three
36:20
Speaker 1: counts of first degree murder for Brenda, Slade, and Mark,
36:23
Speaker 1: and three counts of kidnapping as well. But even the
36:26
Speaker 1: prosecutors knew that the state case was only part of
36:29
Speaker 1: the story because once Joseph drove Shasta and Dylan out
36:32
Speaker 1: of Idaho, he crossed state lines and that made it
36:36
Speaker 1: a federal crime. Transporting children for sexual exploitation meant the
36:41
Speaker 1: federal government had the right to seek the ultimate penalty,
36:45
Speaker 1: which is death. The decision was made quickly. The federal
36:51
Speaker 1: trial would come first and Idaho would wait. But Joseph
36:56
Speaker 1: surprised everyone. Instead of fighting the charges, delaying the process,
37:00
Speaker 1: or denying what he had done, he pled guilty. It
37:04
Speaker 1: seems he didn't want a long trial or especially want
37:07
Speaker 1: Shasta to take the stand, so he admitted everything, the kidnappings,
37:12
Speaker 1: the torture, and the murders. That left only one question
37:15
Speaker 1: for the jury, does this man live or does this
37:19
Speaker 1: man die? The penalty phase was brutal for everyone involved
37:24
Speaker 1: in this story. Juror saw graphic photographs, heard the recordings
37:29
Speaker 1: Joseph made of himself abusing Dylan, and watched a thirty
37:34
Speaker 1: three minute long video he filmed inside a shed abusing Yeah,
37:40
Speaker 1: what the shit? It was all proof of what he
37:42
Speaker 1: was capable of when no one was watching. One juror
37:46
Speaker 1: later said, quote, it wasn't a question of whether he
37:49
Speaker 1: deserved death, It was whether we could sleep again after
37:52
Speaker 1: seeing what he did.
37:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, no kidding.
37:57
Speaker 1: On August twenty seventh, two thousand and eight, after just
37:59
Speaker 1: three hours of deliberation, the jury returned its decision for
38:04
Speaker 1: the murder of Dylan. He was sentenced to death for
38:06
Speaker 1: the sexual exploitation resulting in death. He got death for
38:11
Speaker 1: using a firearm in a violent crime resulting in death.
38:14
Speaker 1: He was sentenced again to death three separate federal death sentences,
38:20
Speaker 1: plus three additional life sentences on top. With the federal
38:25
Speaker 1: case settled, Idaho moved forward instead of dragging the family
38:29
Speaker 1: through the trial. Joseph again pled guilty, this time to
38:32
Speaker 1: the murder of Brenda, Slade and Mark. He received three
38:36
Speaker 1: more life sentences, each without the possibility of parole, and
38:41
Speaker 1: the judge in this case made it clear too, if
38:43
Speaker 1: for any reason, the federal death sentences were overturned, Idaho
38:48
Speaker 1: would seek the death penalty all over again.
38:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, well, it's about down time, really.
38:54
Speaker 1: The trials were still not over. California extradited Joseph next,
39:00
Speaker 1: charging him with the nineteen ninety seven abduction and murder
39:03
Speaker 1: of ten year old Anthony Martinez. Once again, he confessed.
39:07
Speaker 1: Once again, he was sentenced two more life terms stacked
39:10
Speaker 1: on top of the rest. By the end, Joseph had
39:14
Speaker 1: three death sentences federally, eight life sentences without parole, and
39:18
Speaker 1: zero chance of ever breathing free air.
39:22
Speaker 2: Again because he is a complete monster.
39:25
Speaker 1: Absolute. For the first time in decades, he wasn't walking
39:28
Speaker 1: out of prison for shasta life after her rescue wasn't well.
39:33
Speaker 1: It wasn't a return to normal. It was the beginning
39:36
Speaker 1: of a very long, complicated, and often painful fight to
39:39
Speaker 1: figure out who she was beyond the worst thing that
39:42
Speaker 1: ever happened to her. She was only eight years old
39:45
Speaker 1: when she walked out of that Denny's with police. The
39:47
Speaker 1: world called her the miracle child, the survivor, the brave one,
39:52
Speaker 1: but she still was just a kid who watched her
39:55
Speaker 1: entire family die. She lived through weeks of torture and
39:59
Speaker 1: abuse and walk walked away from it all. The grief
40:02
Speaker 1: came first, then the questions, then the pressure, interviews, media
40:05
Speaker 1: and strangers calling her strong while she was still learning
40:08
Speaker 1: how to sleep without just nightmares. Her father tried his
40:12
Speaker 1: best to rebuild their life, but the relationship was extremely
40:16
Speaker 1: strained due to all of this was unpredictable and marked
40:20
Speaker 1: by a lot of trauma. As a result of it all,
40:23
Speaker 1: Shasta was placed in and out of foster care. She
40:25
Speaker 1: bounced between homes, rules, therapists, court dates, and expectations no
40:30
Speaker 1: child should ever carry. Healing wasn't linear, and life wasn't either.
40:36
Speaker 1: As she grew older, the weight of everything she survived
40:38
Speaker 1: didn't fade, and like many survivors, especially those who experienced
40:42
Speaker 1: trauma before they even understand the world, Shasta eventually turned
40:46
Speaker 1: to substances to numb what therapy couldn't reach, and she
40:50
Speaker 1: fell into addiction. But she didn't stay there. Recovery, real recovery,
40:56
Speaker 1: came slowly, the way it often does, one hard at
41:00
Speaker 1: a time. She also found love, and she became a
41:03
Speaker 1: mother to five boys, each one proof that her life
41:06
Speaker 1: did not end. In two thousand and five, she named
41:09
Speaker 1: one of them Silent, a combination of her brother's names,
41:12
Speaker 1: Slade and Dylan. Her youngest son also carries Dylan's middle name.
41:17
Speaker 1: She built a home for her family, becoming a homeowner
41:20
Speaker 1: at twenty years old. She created something that she never had, stability,
41:24
Speaker 1: a place no one could take from her, and then
41:28
Speaker 1: it all burned down. Everything she had built was gone
41:33
Speaker 1: in a house fire that forced her and her kids
41:36
Speaker 1: to start over yet again.
41:38
Speaker 2: Okay, that is just not okay that someone who goes
41:42
Speaker 2: through something like this also has that happened, Like holy shit.
41:47
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, I was speechless when I learned.
41:50
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, like that is just some serious bullshit right there.
41:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, to quote her, life is hard, right, now, but
41:58
Speaker 1: I'll get through it. I always get through everything. Dawn
42:02
Speaker 1: end quote, damn now. For more than fifteen years, Joseph
42:06
Speaker 1: Edward Duncan sat in federal prison on death row, and
42:10
Speaker 1: for just as long Shasta Groni was waiting. She wasn't
42:13
Speaker 1: waiting for closure. She was waiting for justice, the kind
42:16
Speaker 1: the system promised her when she was still small enough
42:18
Speaker 1: to swing her legs off of a courtroom chair. She
42:22
Speaker 1: wanted to watch him die, not out of revenge, because
42:26
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be the ending, the ending that
42:29
Speaker 1: she was owed, the ending she was promised. He took everything,
42:32
Speaker 1: her family, her brother, her childhood, and the deal was simple.
42:37
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to die for it all, and she
42:39
Speaker 1: would get to witness it. But in March of twenty
42:43
Speaker 1: twenty one, that ending was stolen. Instead of being executed,
42:47
Speaker 1: Joseph died quietly in a prison hospital bed at the
42:50
Speaker 1: age of fifty eight from brain cancer. When the news broke,
42:53
Speaker 1: the world cheered and called it closure, but Shasta called
42:56
Speaker 1: it a robbery. Quote. They told me I could watch
43:00
Speaker 1: when they executed him. I wanted to look him in
43:03
Speaker 1: the eye and show him that he didn't destroy me.
43:06
Speaker 1: And I was robbed of that end quote. She said
43:10
Speaker 1: his death triggered a full relapse of her addiction because
43:14
Speaker 1: she would never get the chance to face him, to
43:16
Speaker 1: tell him that she grew up, that she had children,
43:19
Speaker 1: to tell him that she lived, and that he didn't
43:22
Speaker 1: get to win. She also felt the system protected him
43:26
Speaker 1: until the very end. He got a warm bed, he
43:28
Speaker 1: got medical care, surgery, three meals a day, things her
43:31
Speaker 1: family never got because they were no longer alive. Things
43:34
Speaker 1: her brothers never lived long enough to even have. And
43:37
Speaker 1: every time he appeared in court, she couldn't shake one
43:42
Speaker 1: thing that she always saw. They had a bulletproof vest
43:45
Speaker 1: on him when he was escorted in the buildings. The
43:48
Speaker 1: man who beat her family to death with a hammer
43:51
Speaker 1: filmed himself torturing her brother was being protected until nature
43:56
Speaker 1: killed him instead. That's not closure, that's a loophole. Shasta
44:01
Speaker 1: never set out to become an activist, but something shifted
44:04
Speaker 1: when she got older, when she fully understood not just
44:07
Speaker 1: what had happened, but why it was allowed to happen
44:09
Speaker 1: at all. Her family wasn't murdered by a stranger who
44:13
Speaker 1: appeared out of nowhere. They were murdered by a known
44:16
Speaker 1: violent sex offender, a man with decades of Red flags,
44:20
Speaker 1: violations and convictions. He was allowed to walk free on
44:23
Speaker 1: bail again and again and again. The system didn't fail accidentally,
44:29
Speaker 1: it failed by design. So at nineteen years old, Shasta
44:33
Speaker 1: did something that took a different kind of courage than
44:36
Speaker 1: just surviving. She spoke up. She started a justice campaign
44:40
Speaker 1: called Slade and Dylan's Law, named after her two brothers.
44:44
Speaker 1: The petition demanded that violent sexual predators, especially those who
44:48
Speaker 1: target children, should never be released back into society. No
44:52
Speaker 1: early release, no parole, no bail bonds that treat a
44:55
Speaker 1: repeat offender like a minor threat. One conviction for a
45:00
Speaker 1: sexual crime against a child would mean life behind bars.
45:04
Speaker 1: By the time the petition closed, more than fifty thousand
45:07
Speaker 1: people had signed it, and even though it did not
45:10
Speaker 1: become law, it forced something important into national conversation, the
45:14
Speaker 1: fact that the justice system already knew what Joseph Duncan
45:18
Speaker 1: was and still gave him another chance to destroy a family. Honestly,
45:23
Speaker 1: the fact that that was not turned into law, I'm
45:26
Speaker 1: kind of disgusted with.
45:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm surprised.
45:29
Speaker 1: The fact that someone out there said, na, we should
45:31
Speaker 1: give a violent sexual predator against children less than life
45:37
Speaker 1: behind bars is disgusting to me. They should be behind
45:41
Speaker 1: That should be the minimum. Life behind bars in.
45:43
Speaker 2: My opinion, Yeah, pretty messed up now.
45:46
Speaker 1: In the end, Shasta found love with her five sons.
45:49
Speaker 1: She found love with a partner who supports her, and
45:52
Speaker 1: a home that she's trying to rebuild. She still struggles, Yes,
45:55
Speaker 1: she still gets overwhelmed, but she keeps going. Shasta doesn't
45:59
Speaker 1: dress her story up as triumph. She tells it the
46:01
Speaker 1: way it is. Survival is messy, healing is layered, and
46:05
Speaker 1: you don't magically become a whole just because you didn't die.
46:09
Speaker 1: But every day she wakes up, parents are children and
46:12
Speaker 1: refuses to let Joseph Duncan own another second of her life.
46:17
Speaker 1: That is survival, and that is victory. It may not
46:21
Speaker 1: be the outcome that she imagined. Where she is sitting
46:23
Speaker 1: across from him in prison to take every ounce back
46:27
Speaker 1: of power that he had. Right, she wanted to look
46:30
Speaker 1: him in the eye and say the word she rehearsed
46:32
Speaker 1: in her head for years. You didn't destroy me. You
46:34
Speaker 1: don't own me. I lived, I had children, I loved,
46:39
Speaker 1: I built a life you never get to control. But
46:43
Speaker 1: even without that final conversation, she still managed to make peace. See,
46:48
Speaker 1: in the end, she realized she had a choice, a
46:51
Speaker 1: choice to forgive, not to free him, but to free herself.
46:56
Speaker 1: She also chose motherhood over bitterness, life over tragedy, and
47:00
Speaker 1: she chose to speak up against repeat predators who are
47:03
Speaker 1: being released quote by mistake. She still plans to tell
47:08
Speaker 1: him what she lived through, not by his face, obviously,
47:12
Speaker 1: because he's gone, but by telling the world with every interview,
47:17
Speaker 1: every page of her book, every time she says her
47:19
Speaker 1: brother's name out loud. It's the conversation that never happened. Quote.
47:24
Speaker 1: I don't hate him because if I hate him, he
47:27
Speaker 1: still owns a part of me, and he doesn't get
47:30
Speaker 1: that anymore. End quote. It's not a fairy tale ending,
47:35
Speaker 1: but it's real. And Shasta in the end, got her
47:38
Speaker 1: justice by living the life he tried to steal. And
47:43
Speaker 1: that's the survival story of Shasta.
47:45
Speaker 2: Groney, hmmm, damn, damn, damn, damn.
47:52
Speaker 1: And if it's not obvious, Shasta is one hundred percent
47:56
Speaker 1: our badass of the day.
47:57
Speaker 2: Gosh, well, yeah, just incredible, especially at eight years old,
48:02
Speaker 2: what she did, no kidding, it's yeah, it's hard to
48:06
Speaker 2: even comprehend. I don't even feel like I could do that,
48:08
Speaker 2: and I'm, like, you know, in my late thirties.
48:11
Speaker 1: So yeah, I feel how to have the power to
48:16
Speaker 1: go through that coverage, not also the wits to do it.
48:20
Speaker 1: To understand, I need to befriend him and then to
48:23
Speaker 1: go on through all these things in life and keep
48:25
Speaker 1: your chin up, and then to say I don't hate him,
48:28
Speaker 1: because if I hate him, he still owns a part
48:30
Speaker 1: of me and he doesn't get that anymore. Holy shit.
48:35
Speaker 2: You know. It is slightly sad because I wish afterwards
48:39
Speaker 2: that her life would have been a bit easier, but
48:42
Speaker 2: she went through like Helen back, so of course it
48:44
Speaker 2: would be a journey. Yeah, the house fire thing is
48:47
Speaker 2: so unnecessary.
48:48
Speaker 1: But that's just life beating you down, honestly, like what
48:52
Speaker 1: the hell?
48:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's just honestly so fucked up to imagine
48:59
Speaker 2: there are people like that guy in this world, Like.
49:03
Speaker 1: That's scary individuals capable of something like that. Yeah, he
49:07
Speaker 1: never stopped. The second he was out, he was right
49:09
Speaker 1: back to it. He never intended to stop, no, he.
49:12
Speaker 2: And yeah, he just didn't give a shit.
49:14
Speaker 1: And yet a judge put him on a fifteen thousand
49:16
Speaker 1: dollars bail, and a business man.
49:17
Speaker 2: Was like, no, I know you. I still have trouble
49:20
Speaker 2: with processing that. Did they not realize who he or
49:24
Speaker 2: all his crimes or his full history?
49:26
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't make sense, it doesn't, it's absurd, But
49:29
Speaker 1: that's what happened.
49:31
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh. Well and then also I was realizing
49:34
Speaker 2: too that she would have had some other or siblings too, right.
49:38
Speaker 1: She does have two older SIPs.
49:39
Speaker 2: There was two that weren't in the home, correct, So
49:42
Speaker 2: her whole entire family wasn't taken away, but you know
49:45
Speaker 2: pretty pretty much. So yeah, so damn, damn. That is
49:50
Speaker 2: like that ah, that one is going to halt me
49:53
Speaker 2: for a while.
49:54
Speaker 1: Rightfully, so I can understand. It's heavy, it's scary, and
49:59
Speaker 1: it's so necessary because the system just failed. And we're honestly,
50:04
Speaker 1: like people talk about to this day, like things are
50:07
Speaker 1: getting worse, like this world's falling apart. I honestly feel
50:10
Speaker 1: like the world's falling apart because of things like this
50:13
Speaker 1: systems failing people. They're letting repeat offenders walk and walk
50:19
Speaker 1: and walk, and they're they're almost protecting these perpetrators instead
50:23
Speaker 1: of the victims.
50:25
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well yeah, like her. Her life was probably almost
50:31
Speaker 2: harder after she didn't have like, you know, any resources,
50:36
Speaker 2: most likely or not the resources that he would have had.
50:39
Speaker 1: Right, No, I guarantee you if she had brain cancer,
50:43
Speaker 1: she would have had to provide her own medical for
50:47
Speaker 1: that surgery. Yet he was in jail and that was
50:49
Speaker 1: covered by taxpayers.
50:51
Speaker 2: Okay. That is messed up, isn't it. Oh? Okay, I
50:55
Speaker 2: don't like that. I don't like that at all.
50:57
Speaker 1: That's the problem with this world.
51:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, when you put it that way and think about
51:02
Speaker 2: it like that, that's fucked.
51:04
Speaker 1: Yeah. So with that, thank you guys for being here.
51:08
Speaker 1: A bit of a heavy story. Like I said, I
51:10
Speaker 1: kind of grade out some of the more graphic stuff, yeah,
51:15
Speaker 1: is good. Yeah, but thank you for being here. If
51:18
Speaker 1: you want to check out the description of this podcast,
51:19
Speaker 1: we are an independently produced and owned show or an
51:23
Speaker 1: indie podcast. It's us in our tiny home, researching, writing, producing, recording,
51:28
Speaker 1: you name it. We got our dogs and our chickens too,
51:30
Speaker 1: but they don't really do much for the show, just
51:33
Speaker 1: our life. But thank you for being here. We appreciate
51:37
Speaker 1: every single one of you, and until next time, stay wicked.