Joseph Duncan Extradited to California for Murder of 10-year-old Boy

January 29, 2009

When I wrote Stolen in the Night for St. Martin's Press couple of years ago, I found myself wishing and hoping since that time that the subject of my book, serial killer scumbag Joseph Edward Duncan III, who is clearly among the worst sexual deviants to ever walk the face of the earth, would eventually be extradited to California to stand trial for the 1997 Riverside County murder of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez after his case in Idaho had been adjudicated.

Readers will recall that Duncan was singlehandedly responsible for the 2005 slaughter of Shasta and Dylan Groene's family - their mother, her boyfriend, and their older brother - before vanishing into the night with Shasta, then 8-years-old, and her brother, Dylan, then 9-years-old - in a case that culminated with the ghastly sexual abuse of Shasta and Dylan for several weeks and Dylan's eventual torture and murder while Shasta was forced to watch.  If not for Shasta's early-morning rescue inside a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, a similar fate almost assuredly awaited the terrified young girl. 

Finally, this past week I got my wish, as did many other people, when Duncan was brought from his death row cell at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana to California on Friday, January 23, 2009 to face the Anthony Martinez murder charges.

Duncan had been previously convicted of raping and torturing a 14-year-old boy in Tacoma, Washington, and allegedly committed the Martinez murder after the system turned him loose and allowed him to move on to commit the atrocities in Idaho.  To recap the Martinez case, investigators looking to match Duncan's profile to criminal activity in other areas of the country placed him in Southern California at the time of Martinez' disappearance in April 1997.  Martinez, according to detectives in Riverside County, had been kidnapped by a "mustached man" in Beaumont, California on April 4, 1997 while playing with his younger brother and several friends in an alley behind their home.  A man fitting Duncan's general description had approached the children and offered them money to help him look for his supposedly missing cat, an obvious ruse to try and gain the trust of the children.
 
"He first went after Anthony's brother, but that boy got away," said Beaumont Police Lieutenant Mitch White.  "He got Anthony."

According to the statement that Anthony's brother had provided to police at the time, the man with the mustache had threatened Anthony with a knife to force him into a white 1986 Chrysler New Yorker sedan before driving away with the boy.  The car's description matched a description of a car that belonged to a woman that Duncan was seeing at the time.  Anthony's nude body was found two weeks later, on April 19, in a shallow grave in a remote area east of Palm Springs.  Duct tape had been used to bind the boy (duct tape had also been used in the Groene case in Idaho), and the autopsy showed that the boy had been sexually assaulted.  A wanted poster with a police drawing of the suspect that had been circulated throughout Southern California bore a striking resemblance to Duncan, but was not immediately linked to him. Years passed with few leads in the case - it wasn't until the Groene case, after Duncan had been arrested, that the Martinez case broke when Duncan agreed to speak with FBI agents at which time he purportedly mentioned the name of the Martinez boy.

 "It was a situation where they were asking him about his involvement in any other similar case," said Riverside County Sheriff Bob Doyle.  "He said, 'Yeah, this boy Martinez in southern California, Riverside County.' It was not a full, blown-out confession, though....The FBI asked us if we knew anything about the Martinez case.  I said, 'We sure do - we've been trying to solve the murder for the last eight years and we've gone through fifteen thousand leads.' So when we were able to match a partial right thumb print on duct tape found near Anthony's body with that of Duncan, we knew we had our man."

 Duncan is scheduled to be arraigned in Riverside County Superior Court on Monday, January 26, 2009, according to Michael Jeandron, spokesperson for the Riverside County District Attorney.

 "He needs to be held accountable for that crime," Jeandron said.  "We're not going to let that go."

 Anthony's mother, Diana Gonzales, was present when Duncan arrived at the Bermuda Dunes airport, near Indio, on Friday, January 23, his hands shackled to a chain fastened around his waist.

 "We had always wished that we would catch him before something happened to someone else's family," Gonzales told a group of reporters gathered at the airport.  "Sadly, that wasn't the case."

Photo Credits: police file photos

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Comments

[Bettttt1]

this, (THING) is another pile of crap, and a coward to boot,
these folk that ravage our children, don't deserve to have a parade thru-out our justice center, the way i see it if you take a life you your own!!! then maybe these re-curring eppy's could at least be nipped in the bud!!!!!!!!!!!
as for duncan, there's clearly no-hope for him.

[Donna Mills]

About Joseph Duncan: He's a creep! In this country, no person convicted of a crime will be subjected to "cruel" and "unusual" punishment, I know. But I say, as long as the punishment fits the crime, it is NOT "cruel" or "unusual." More important than Duncan's extradition to another province to face charges is what happens during that transaction. You see, at some point, I hope he's grabbed by fellow inmates. That's what he really deserves. Forget lethal injection! And I believe that anyone whose crimes are severe enough to warrant more than one natural life sentence should automatically get the death penalty. It's unfair for victims or their families to give convicted killers multiple life sentences they will never serve. That's false justice!

[copa]

the family is in my prayes and as for this sicko i really hope he gets what he deserves,

[wc]

This man deserves death sentence. After the first crime he did, he should have been locked up for life.