Monday, January 30, 2006

ONGOING COVERAGE: GROENE INVESTIGATION

Duncan's mail logs released

Records requested after jail writings of suspect may have appeared in blog

Taryn Brodwater
Staff writer
January 28, 2006

Joseph Duncan has sent more than 60 letters from jail to people including relatives, a former neighbor and a doctor who once told a parole board he thought Duncan wasn't a threat to society.

Mail logs from the Kootenai County Jail show Duncan has received more than 100 letters from his mother, brother, the neighbor and others – including evangelists Billy and Franklin Graham and the media.

A handful of women also have been writing Duncan regularly as he awaits trial in the May 2005 killings of Brenda Groene, her 13-year-old son, Slade, and her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie. One woman's letter was scented with perfume.

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The Spokesman-Review requested the mail logs after a report earlier this week that Duncan's jailhouse writings may be appearing on a new Internet Weblog.

The logs maintained by jail staff list names and dates – but no addresses – of mail sent and received by Duncan. A request for copies of Duncan's correspondence was denied when the county's legal department said Duncan's mail is his property.

Comparing the log dates with entries posted to the new blog indicates that Duncan wrote to the same three individuals in the days before each new blog entry was posted: his brother, Bruce Duncan; mother, Lillian Duncan; and a former neighbor, Joni Buzick.

Duncan also sent a letter to Buzick Tuesday – the day after the blog was first made public.

Since the person maintaining the blog is anonymous, it's possible that the letters posted could have been sent at any time since Duncan's July 2 arrest.

Bruce Duncan is the only relative of Duncan's who has spoken publicly about the crimes his brother has been charged with. He has also shared portions of letters his brother sent him on the blog of East Coast crime blogger Jules Hammer.

Hammer said earlier this week that she knew who was blogging on Duncan's behalf, and they were doing so in an effort to prevent someone else from profiting from the jailhouse writings. She said the person also was hoping the suspected killer would offer incriminating evidence.

Bruce Duncan told the Coeur d'Alene Press in November that he believed his brother would tell him more than he would tell anyone else, the Associated Press reported. If his brother did talk, Bruce Duncan said, he would turn the information over to authorities.

Attempts to reach Bruce Duncan for comment Friday were unsuccessful. Buzick, Duncan's former neighbor in Fargo, N.D., also couldn't be reached.

She has written Duncan 11 times, and he has replied on nine occasions. Buzick was mentioned in the suspected killer's former blog, The Fifth Nail. Duncan asked her to care for his two cats when he left Fargo last May.

A woman named Jessica Kowalski has written Duncan a dozen times, as has a woman named Pamela Petty. Duncan has replied to both women.

Women that The Spokesman-Review contacted, who shared the same names, said they hadn't been writing to Duncan. Like many of the names on the mail log, there were several possible matches throughout the United States.

Another woman, Vanessa Ellis, scented a letter with perfume according to a notation on the mail log. It's unclear whether Ellis may be the same woman Duncan dated years earlier – Dee Ellis, a Tacoma mother of two.

The mail log indicated that Vanessa Ellis had written Duncan five times, and he replied once.

Mike Schuler, the owner of a Spokane sign company, wrote a letter to Duncan that is also posted on an online forum run by Citizens for a One Strike Law.

Schuler is the Spokane-area coordinator for the group, which is trying to get Initiative 921 on the ballot, requiring life imprisonment without parole for first-time sex offenders. The law is named Dylan's Law after the 9-year-old Groene boy Duncan is accused of kidnapping, molesting and killing.

"Dylan's Law is going to cause a drastic reduction in the number of sex crimes," Schuler said Friday. "Most sex offenders would have taken a cold shower if they knew they were going to spend life in prison."

In the letter to Duncan, Schuler urges Duncan to "forgo all defenses" and confess to all of his alleged crimes.

"Prove to the world that you are really a man after all," Schuler wrote. "If you ever believed in God … plead guilty to all charges and accept the judgment."

Duncan initiated contact with most of the people on the mail log – including his mother, brother and Buzick. He has written his mother six times, and she has sent him one letter. He wrote to his brother six times and has received six responses.

A sister, Teena Novotney, didn't write back to Duncan, according to the log.

Neither did Dr. Richard Wacksman. The former North Dakota physician, now residing in Florida, met Duncan in 1997 at a San Francisco coffeehouse. Duncan was a fugitive at the time.

Wacksman later told parole officers that he thought Duncan was honest and sincere, and he asked the state to parole Duncan to his home in North Dakota – where he lived with his wife and two children.

Officials rejected his offer.

Wacksman was helping Duncan even as recently as 2004, when Duncan was arrested for allegedly molesting two boys and released on bail. Wacksman gave him $6,500 for attorney fees, according to the Fargo Forum newspaper.

Duncan skipped bail on the molestation charges and missed an April 2005 court appearance. A warrant was issued for his arrest.

Within weeks, three bodies were discovered – bound and bludgeoned – at a Wolf Lodge home, just east of Coeur d'Alene.

Duncan is expected to be tried beginning April 4 in the killings and is facing the death penalty. Federal prosecutors have said once the state case is through, federal charges will be filed in connection with the abduction of the two younger Groene children – Dylan and Shasta – and for Dylan's murder.

Staff writer John Craig contributed to this story.