FBI agent: Duncan admitted 3 other killings

Posted: Monday, Aug 25, 2008 - 10:13:57 pm PDT
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By REBECCA BOONE
Associated Press writer 

Testimony designed to convince jurors to decide to execute murderer

BOISE -- Convicted murderer Joseph Edward Duncan III confessed to killing three children before 2005, when his attack on a North Idaho family left four people dead, an FBI agent told a federal jury Monday.

FBI Agent Mike Sotka testified that after Duncan's arrest in the Groene family case, he confessed to the 1996 slayings of half-sisters Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias in Seattle and the 1997 slaying of Anthony Martinez in Riverside County, Calif.

The testimony in U.S. District Court is designed to convince jurors in this sentencing hearing that Duncan should be executed for the kidnapping, torture and murder of 9-year-old Dylan Groene in 2005. In the next few days Duncan will be given the option to present evidence to try to sway jurors toward a life sentence without parole.

Of the seven people Duncan has acknowledged killing, only two are adults -- the rest are between the ages of 9 and 13. All but one were bludgeoned to death. Dylan Groene was shot twice.

Duncan is representing himself in the case, and his former defense lawyers have been made "standby attorneys," charged with serving as a legal resource as he presents his case. At Duncan's request, standby attorney Mark Larranaga asked U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge to bar the testimony about Cubias, White and Martinez, saying it was irrelevant and prejudicial.

Since the jury only has two choices when it comes to sentencing Duncan, there's no likelihood he could prey on children in the future, Larranaga said.

But Lodge sided with Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson, who argued the confessions to multiple murders show a lifelong pattern of violence.

"All of his crimes ... certainly illustrate that he could be a danger in the prison setting," Olson said.

Prosecutors in Riverside County already have charged Duncan in Martinez' slaying and are seeking the death penalty. The 10-year-old boy was bound with duct tape, and a partial fingerprint found on a roll of the tape near the body matched Duncan's thumbprint, Richard Kinney, a fingerprint expert with the California attorney general's office, told the jury.

Duncan is expected to be sent to California to stand trial once the death penalty proceedings in Idaho are complete.

Law enforcement officers in Washington state say the White and Cubias cases remain open.

"He certainly is still a person of interest; that has not changed," King County Sheriff's Sgt. John Urquhart said Monday afternoon in Seattle. "It's an open and ongoing investigation, especially in light of the trial that's going on in Boise."

Urquhart declined to say if any information has come forward that would corroborate Duncan's confession.

"I can't say if he's anything more than a person of interest," Urquhart said.

Margaret Delaney, the mother of Cubias, 9, and White, 11, testified Monday about the day her daughters disappeared, frequently sobbing on the stand.

Delaney said she left the two girls with their 15-year-old brother and another younger sibling with instructions to stay at the Crest Motel, where they were staying. Then Delaney went to pick up a change of clothing for the children and to a friend's house where she could get money to buy some groceries.

While she was gone, the two girls decided to walk to a nearby fast food restaurant to see if they could get some food, Delaney said.

Their bodies were found months later in a suburban Bothell, Wash., subdivision. Duncan said he grabbed the girls on an impulse, and that he killed them by hitting them in the head with a crowbar, Sotka testified.

Martinez' stepfather, Ernesto Medina, told the jury about the day little Anthony disappeared, April 4, 1997. Medina said he was in his apartment with his wife, mother-in-law and 4-year-old daughter when he heard other children outside screaming "A man's got Tony! A man's got Tony!"

Medina called 911, then jumped in his car and began searching the neighborhood, thinking the abductor was on foot.

Police responded and they, too, searched unsuccessfully.

Vultures in a remote part of a canyon led authorities to the little boy's body, partially buried under a pile of rocks.

The boys who had been playing with Tony Martinez before his abduction reported that a man in a white car had offered them a dollar each to help him find his lost cat. After looking for a time they approached the car to get their money, and that's when the man grabbed Tony.

Sotka said Duncan told him he bludgeoned the boy with a rock that he found at the scene and wasn't sure whether the child was dead when he left him in the desert, but knew the wound was fatal. Duncan also said he taped the boy's mouth shut to stop him from crying out, because he'd been haunted by hearing Cubias scream "No!" after seeing her older sister murdered, Sotka said.

Testimony in the case continues today.

Associated Press writer Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed to this report.