The bone chilling missives of a convicted and paroled child molester, “sexual sadist,” “sexual psychopath,” and alleged kidnapper and murderer, are recorded forever on the dark pages of a web log he maintained up until the brutal slayings of four people.
Joseph Edward Duncan III, 42, was a felony fugitive, jumping bail on charges of molesting a 6-year-old boy in a Minnesota park in July of last year.
While on the lamb, Duncan kept a regular web log of his darkening thoughts as he was “wrestling with demons.” The blog is entitled, “Blogging the Fifth Nail,” alluding to the nail intended to end Christ’s suffering on the cross.
Just four days before three people were bludgeoned to death in their homes and two children kidnapped (one to be found dead later), Duncan wrote in his blog on Google hosted Blogger.com that “the demons have taken over.”
“I am scared, alone, and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society. My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die.”
He didn’t die as he planned, nor did he turn himself in as he later suggested to readers. Instead he was arrested in an Idaho diner with eight-year-old Shasta Groene, who police said had been molested several times. Her nine-year-old brother, Dylan, is suspected dead, his possible remains found in Montana.
Police had been monitoring his web log for weeks hoping he would give away his location, which he never did. Shasta’s mother, 13-year-old brother, and her mother’s boyfriend were found beaten to death at their home on May 15. Duncan’s final blog entry was May 13.
“As far as taking people with me’ well, I don’t know if that is right or wrong. In fact, I don’t know much any more what right and wrong even is,” read the May 13 entry. “I’m not a bad person, I just have a disease contracted from society, and it hurts a lot.”
On April 24, in an entry entitled “Wrestling With Demons,” Duncan gives further insight into his dark struggle.
“I’m afraid, very afraid. If they win then a lot of people will be badly hurt, and they’ve had their way before, so I know what they can do. God has shown me the right choice, but my demons have me tied to a spit and the fire has already been lit. I don’t know if the right choice is even an option any more!”
Duncan’s history is as dark as his blog, leading many to question why he was ever released into society after 20 years of prison, convicted at the age 17 for raping and torturing a 14-year-old Tacoma boy, who was sodomized, bound, pistol whipped, and burned with cigarettes.
After his 1980 arrest, Duncan confessed to officials that he had raped as many as 13 other young boys, a confession he later recanted. He later said the confession was made up to “satisfy the beliefs of the treatment staff” at Western State Hospital, according to a report by The Seattle Times.
But after a short time in treatment at the hospital, a therapist recommended he be removed from the program and sent on to prison.
“His preoccupation with deviant sexual fantasies of one kind or another date back to the age of 12,” wrote the therapist. “Our staff believes that Mr. Duncan is a danger to the well-being of others. Mr. Duncan continues to conform to the statutory definition of a sexual psychopath.”
This came after Duncan admitted he briefly escaped the hospital to stalk potential rape victims, armed with an extension cord.
In 1992, a parole board rated him as “high risk,” followed by a 1993 report citing he had been diagnosed with “some sexual sadism.”
Though his chance of rehabilitation was rated as “poor” by a parole board in 1994, a psychologist’s assertion that Duncan was able to keep his “predatory impulses in check” ultimately secured his parole to live at a Seattle halfway house for sex offenders.
In Duncan’s web log, he alluded to other possible crimes he has committed that are unknown to anyone.
On May 11, he wrote, “All those years I dreamed of getting out…And getting even. Instead, I got out and I got even, but did not get caught. So, I got even again, and again did not get caught. So, I figured, well, I got even twice (actually more, but that’s here nor there), even if I’m the only one who knows, so now what?”
On May 13, he wrote, “I am working on an encrypted journal that is hundreds of times more frank than this blog could ever be (that’s why I keep it encrypted). I figure in 30 years or more we will have the technology to easily crack the encryption (currently very un-crackable, PGP) and then the world will know who I really was, and what I really did, and what I really thought.”
Police said they are currently working on decrypting the journal.
