CARMEN CUBIAS and SAMMIEJO WHITE - 9 and 11 yo (1996)/ Accused: Joseph Edward Duncan III - Seattle WA

New suspect in slaying of girls
Man allegedly admits Seattle killings to FBI

By PAUL SHUKOVSKY, SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Updated 10:00 p.m., Tuesday, August 9, 2005

Joseph Edward Duncan III -- a convicted sex offender suspected in a killing and abduction spree in Idaho that left two adults and two children dead -- has told FBI agents that he also killed two little girls in Seattle in 1996.

The confession came last month after Duncan was arrested on suspicion that he killed an Idaho woman, Brenda Groene, her 13-year-old son and her boyfriend in May, according to a federal criminal justice source.

The case attracted national attention as police and federal agents fanned out across Idaho in search of Shasta Groene, 8, and her brother Dylan, 9, who were kidnapped at the time of the slayings.

Shasta was spotted with Duncan at a Denny's restaurant in Coeur d'Alene on July 2, and Duncan was arrested.

Dylan's body was found days later in Montana. Duncan has been charged in the deaths of Dylan's mother, her boyfriend and Dylan's older brother. Duncan is expected to face federal charges in Dylan and Shasta's abduction and in Dylan's death.

Investigators in Riverside, Calif., say Duncan's fingerprints tie him to the abduction and death of a 10-year-old boy there in 1997.

And now the investigation turns to Seattle and a cold case in the slaying of two young sisters.

Duncan recounted for federal interrogators details of killings committed about the same time in July 1996 that Carmen Cubias, 9, and Sammiejo White, 11, went missing from a motel on Seattle's North Aurora Avenue.

A transient found their skeletal remains about 17 months later on a muddy Bothell hillside.

"He (Duncan) didn't remember the names, but he gave enough information that was tied to the case" for agents to conclude that he was referring to Carmen and Sammiejo, the source said.

Since the confession, investigators have been trying to confirm Duncan's story of killing the two Seattle girls, who spent much of their final days playing in the motel parking lot without their mother's supervision.

So far, facts uncovered by investigators seem to match Duncan's confession. He was living near the motel at the time the girls disappeared.

But the federal criminal justice source cautioned that Duncan's confession "could be like some of those other serial killers who have claimed credit for things they haven't done."

The Coeur d'Alene Press also reported over the weekend that Duncan admitted killing the two girls. The Idaho paper quoted an unidentified source close to the investigation.

Duncan wasn't a suspect when Dennis Nizzi initially worked the case.

"We had never heard of him," said Nizzi, a detective with the Bothell Police Department when the girls' bodies were found. "There were no solid suspects in the case."

Nizzi retired in 1999 with the case unsolved. He said Tuesday night that it was the biggest frustration of his 27-year career in police work.

"I handled a lot of major crimes and homicides in my career. No one wants to walk away with a crime of this magnitude unsolved. It has troubled me," he said.

Part of the problem was the time that passed between when the girls were killed and their bodies were found. "The bodies had completely decomposed. We had nothing but 1 1/2-year-old bones," he said.

"If there is something that comes out of Mr. Duncan's mouth and it solves the crime, I will be tickled to death. I will be the first in court to watch this happen. I would love to see this case get cleared," Nizzi said.

Sgt. John Urquhart, spokesman for the King County Sheriff's Office, said Tuesday: "We have not talked to Joe Duncan. We did send detectives over there to follow up. But he lawyered up, and we have not interviewed him."

Urquhart said last week that no physical evidence links Duncan to the killing of the girls. And he said probably every police agency in the region is reviewing cold cases of child kidnapping and homicide in light of Duncan's arrest.

The FBI has been constructing a timeline of Duncan's movements for the past 25 years to see if it can match the man to unsolved crimes.

Read more: http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/New-suspect-in-slaying-of-girls-1180261.php#ixzz26AjQOTVL

Sister of convicted child killer Joseph Duncan tells judge about abuse

BOISE -- The sister of a convicted killer who waived his right to appeal his death sentence says they both endured horrific childhood abuse at the hands of their mother.
Cheri Cox was in Boise's U.S. District Court on Wednesday to testify in the competency hearing of Joseph Edward Duncan III, who was sentenced to death in 2008 after admitting he kidnapped and tortured two northern Idaho children before killing one of them in Montana.

Duncan gave up his appeals, but his attorneys fought on his behalf and last year the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge to hold a retrospective competency hearing to determine if Duncan was mentally competent back in 2008 when he gave up his right to appeal.

Cox testified about what it was like growing up with Duncan in their childhood home. Cox said she and her four siblings were frequently beaten by their mother while she ranted that men were worthless, and described her mother as a crazy woman who attended church obsessively, every day.

Prosecutors did not question testimony Wednesday that Duncan's mother was abusive, and The Associated Press could not immediately find contact information to reach her for comment.

Duncan, who was the second-youngest of the five children, was passive in the face of the beatings, Cox said.

"When she was beating on you, if you fought back, it was worse," Cox said. "In his case, he just took what she gave and kind of whimpered off into his bedroom."

Their father, who was in the military and often deployed, was frequently the subject of their mother's derision.

Cox said she left home at 17 and only saw Duncan once after that, several years later when he was a patient at a Washington state psychiatric hospital.

Years later, her sister called to see if she'd heard or seen from Duncan because no one had talked to him in some time.

Cox responded that she hadn't. She was boating just a week or so later when she heard Duncan's name during a radio news story.

"And then I heard my brother had been arrested for the," she said, pausing, "thing in Idaho."

Duncan's defense team also called Duncan's former attorney, John Adams, to the stand.

Adams represented Duncan during his state court trial for the murders of Brenda and Slade Groene and Mark McKenzie, crimes that Duncan ultimately pleaded guilty to as part of a plea deal that left him with six consecutive life sentences.

"He was a broken man," Adams said about his first impression of Duncan. "He was frightened and desperate and confused ... It was often hard to follow what he was talking about because he was talking about things that weren't relevant."

Duncan often seemed to ramble in a sort of stream-of-consciousness way, Adams said, about metaphysical and religious things. The attorney never asked the court for a competency hearing or formally notified the state judge that he feared Duncan may be mentally incompetent, he said, but he believed that Duncan's mental status was "touch and go."

Still, Adams said he believed that on the day Duncan entered his guilty plea to the murders in state court, Duncan was competent to make that decision.

"I wouldn't assist a person in a guilty plea that would result in six consecutive life sentences unless I was comfortable that he knew what he was doing," Adams said.

Adams choked up once when discussing how he tried to persuade Duncan to take the plea deal to avoid a death sentence in state court.

"I told him, I expressed that I cared about him. ... I thought that he could still have a life," Adams said.

He later said his role as a defense attorney was to help his client avoid the death chamber.

"There's enough people around to condemn them and blame them and heap scorn on them. My job is to represent them ... to keep them off death row," Adams said.

Duncan kidnapped 9-year-old Dylan Groene and Dylan's younger sister from their Wolf Lodge, Idaho, home after killing several of their family members in 2005. He kept the children in the Montana wilderness for weeks before killing Dylan and returning with Dylan's sister to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where he was arrested.

He was sentenced to life in prison in Idaho state court for the Wolf Lodge murders, and to life in prison in California state court for the murder of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez in 1997 -- a crime he confessed to after the Idaho murders. Duncan has also told investigators that he killed 11-year-old Sammiejo White and her 9-year-old half-sister, Carmen Cubias, near Seattle in 1996, but he has never been charged in their deaths.

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2013/01/sister_of_convicted_child_kill.html