Even Now, Joseph Edward Duncan Seems To Stalk In Cyberspace

By Steve Huff

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The Crime Library — In July of 2005, Joseph Edward Duncan III, a convicted level III sex offender from Washington State, was arrested in Idaho. With him was Shasta Groene, an 8-year-old girl who had disappeared from her family home in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho months before, along with her brother Dylan. Joseph Duncan now stands accused of murdering 3 members of Shasta's family as well as her mother's boyfriend, and of abusing Shasta and her brother Dylan before murdering the little boy. Duncan had a weblog that quickly became infamous — fifthnail.blogspot.com. Duncan kept the blog between January of 2004 and May of 2005, and most of it chronicled his anger with sex offender registration requirements as well as numerous veiled justifications and excuses for the previous crimes that sent him to prison for 20 years.

On January 22^nd, 2006, it was revealed that Duncan was blogging again. Jules Hammer, who runs jetd63.blogspot.com, was aware that someone in the Kootenai County, Idaho jail where Duncan is incarcerated had leaked the existence of the new blog to the press. She revealed then that she and a few others had known about the new weblog, 5nrevelations.blogspot.com, since November of last year. Duncan was writing entries by hand from jail and sending them to a 'ghostwriter.' His anonymous ghostwriter then simply transcribed the letters onto the blog. The reason for the new blog was not to allow Duncan his "freedom of speech," but because of entries like the one made on January 23, 2006, where Duncan wrote the following:

"[A] very good friend of mine who happens to be a 'serial killer' told me that he committed more sex crimes during the two years he was on parole (including killing three children) than he did in the entire five years he was not on parole. In fact—he tells me that while he was not on parole he committed NO crimes until the police started doing illegal quarterly registration checks at his home (coming to his house to make sure he was complying with the law). He said that was when he started looking for control again—to prove (consciously and subconsciously to himself) that 'they' couldn't control him. So now more people are dead and hurting because some police chief decided to take it upon himself to 'get tough on sex crime.' I've said it a million times and I'll say it again, 'the only cure for crime is Love. Everything else is just more crime!'"

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Steve Huff can be reached via his web site http://www.HuffCrimeBlog.com/.

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