Unseen - 8-Year-Old Solves Her Family’s Murders | The Case of Shasta Groene | UNSEEN

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

“His entire world revolved around her” When cops break into the Groene home on May 16th 2005 after receiving a call from a concerned neighbor, no one is prepared to find the family murdered, and as they identify everyone, they notice that the younger children, Dylan, 9, and Shasta, 8, are missing. As the authorities race against time to find the missing kids, Shasta is trapped in the woods with her family’s killer, nearly 100 miles away, and starts to plan her own escape. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Pay attention to the little girl in the blue shirt. To someone walking by, this might look like a normal interaction, a father stopping at a gas station with his daughter and buying her a drink. But notice how she is keeping her distance from the man, crossing her arms and avoiding eye contact with him. Behind this security footage is a disturbing secret. She calls this man Dad, but he is not her father. I've got a little girl here with a tall gentleman, and she looks so much like this chest. And we're not sure.

I just, I don't know. It's just something weird to me. The girl looks exactly like the little girl in the season. It's July 2nd, 2005. Almost two months ago, 8-year-old Shastoghroni and her brother Dylan disappeared near Cordillane, Idaho, and there's been a killer on the loose ever since.

I don't think anything that prepared me for the experience in the Groney murder investigation. That's the type of case that I go home and have nightmares about. He would pass by a location that clearly children lived there. They see Shasta playing in the front yard and surveils the house. He had thought about everything to make sure that he was going to commit the perfect crime. But at just eight years old, Shasta outsmarts an obsessed serial killer, and make sure he will never terrorize anyone again.

Shasta had an amazing ability to control him. It was Shasta that orchestrated her own rescue. Just outside of Cordellane, Idaho, 8-year-old Shasta She's Groney lives with her two older brothers, Dylan and Slade, her mom Brenda and Brenda's boyfriend, Mark. Shasta's parents divorced when she's only two years old, and they don't have much money, but they enjoy their life as a tight-knit family. My mom loved music. We were just dancing around the living room, and she always wanted to cook and have food on the table every night when everyone was home, and I helped her cook a lot.

Shasta and her nine-year-old brother, Dylan, are inseparable. They often spend their time with their family going camping, fishing, and playing outside together. I've never met anybody in my life that was like him. He was friends with the kids that got picked on, but then he was also super popular. He was my best friend. No one could imagine what was in store for the Growny family. At 6 a.m. on May 16, 2005, Shasta is sleeping in her room when her mom frantically wakes her up.

She had actually come into the room and said that there's a man here that doesn't want us to be here. Shasta tries to understand what's happening. She follows her mom into the living room, where she sees her mom into the living room where she She sees a man with a shotgun. At first, Shasta thinks he's a police officer, but when he tells them to lie face down on the ground and uses zip ties and duct tape to bind their hands together, she realizes that something is horribly wrong.

My stepdad Mark had said we don't have money. We were hearing bangs, and then he was screaming and yelling. One by one, the man beats Mark, Brenda, and Slade, attacking them each with a hammer. I was in the house with my family members and I didn't know if they were dead or not. Next, he turns to the two youngest kids, Shasta and Dylan, but he has different plans for them. He grabbed me, picked me up, and took me into the backyard, and laid me under the tree next to my brother. The kids have no idea what the attacker is going to do to them or why they've been separated from the rest of their family. Suddenly, their brother Slade stumbles out of the house, injured, but desperately trying to escape.

The man chases after him and beats him more. When he stops, Slade is barely alive. He was sitting on the picnic table, and he was just sitting up and then he just laid down. The man puts the two youngest kids in the car. They can only watch in horror as they drive away, not sure of the fate of the rest of their family. He drives them almost 100 miles away to a remote campground outside St. Regis, Montana, in the low-lo National Forest, where he reveals what he did. He grabbed the hammer.

He said, see this hammer? This is the hammer that I murdered your mom and your stepdad and your stepdad and your son. your brother with. And he was like, they're not alive and you're never going to see them again. Back at the house, a neighbor stops by, planning on dropping in for a quick visit. But as soon as he sees the home, he calls the police immediately. I went through the door to pay the little kid $10 for low in the lawn and there's blood all over the door. Nobody comes through the door. Police arrive, discovering the worst crime they've ever seen.

I don't think anything prepared me for the experience in the group. Groney murder investigation. We have a homicide scene with one adult male, one adult female, and one juvenile male. Our main concern right now are the two children we cannot find. They discover the bodies of Brenda Groney, her boyfriend Mark McKenzie, and her 13-year-old son, Slade. Before he died, Slade found the strength to pull himself back in the house, to be with his mom, and his body is found right next to hers. There's no sign of the two youngest children, Dylan and Shasta.

Investigators search around the property, desperate for anything that could help lead them to the kids. Officers also check with other family and friends, hoping they weren't home at the time, but no one knows where they are. In many cases of child abductions, it's a family member who kidnapped them. Police approached Dylan and Shast his dad, Steve. He admits to having a fight with his ex-wife just a couple days earlier about the custody of the kids. He also makes a plea on the news that draws suspicion. I'd like to address my children's abductors or abductor. Please, please release my children safely.

They had nothing to do with any of this. It sounds as if the children's father might know something about the attack. Police give Steve a polygraph test. When they ask if he knows where the kids are, there is a fluctuation. He fails the test, but continues to say he knows nothing. Investigators use computer forensics to determine that he was at his home, at the time of the murders, and they clear him from suspicion. It is back to square one in the search for two Idaho children missing since Monday.

Police are following up hundreds of tips in their search for Shasta and Dylan Groney. With two kids missing and a killer on the loose, fear is spreading through the community, police issue an Amber Alert, and residents of Court Elaine are doing all they can to help. Thousands of tips come in, but nothing makes sense. Investigators don't think this could be a random attack. None of the family's valuables were stolen, and the crime seems very personal. personal. The fact that the bodies were so beaten up so badly, it made the crime appear to be a crime of passion. You begin to think about who could have been so angry at this family to want

to inflict such injury on these people. Shasta and Dillon lost three family members over the course of a few hours. Now, all they have is each other, and they're trapped with a murderer where no one can see or hear them. Their abductor doesn't even give them time to grieve the loss of their family, as he immediately begins to abuse them at the campsite and in a nearby cabin. He got really mad, started throwing things. He took more of his anger out on Dylan and was really mean to him. He would abuse him and then make me watch. And then if I cried, then he would abuse him worse. One night, their kidnapper takes the abuse to another level, as he begins to play twisted mind games with them. He tells them they will be able to go back home if they do what he

asks. He even has them write letters to their family, suggesting they might come back. Dear Dad, I miss you very much, and me and Dylan know what happened to Mom Mark and Slate, and we both feel very sorry for them, and we both miss you and Jesse and Vance, and we might see you guys again. Dylan and Shasta think their nightmare might come to an end soon, but the letters are never sent. It was just another cruel way the kidnapper manipulated them. He just wanted us to believe that there was a chance that we would live or that we'd get out safe. I think after a certain amount of time, Dylan had started to lose hope that it was going to turn out good for him. With every second the kids are missing, there's a lower chance of finding them alive.

Police desperately continue to look for leads. They learn about a barbecue that happened at the house, a day before the murders. They find a fingerprint on the door that matches a man who was at the gathering, Robert Lutner. He has a criminal record, and he allegedly owed Brenda and Mark money. Finding a possible motive, investigators try to talk to Lutner, but they can't find him. Adding to the suspicion, his parole officer says he left town just after the murders. However, when Lutner contacts his parole officer and hears that police want to speak with him, he immediately comes back on his own. Somebody's going to turn themselves in that quickly.

It's either going to be somebody who's feeling so much remarks for what they have done and they want to confess to it, or it's somebody that is completely innocent and wants to get it off their back. They question him for hours. He denies having anything to do with it, and he offers to take a lie detector test. He passes. Police don't find anything suspicious, and they rule him out. As every clue in the investigation leads to a dead end, Shasta begins to realize that their captor has no plans to let them go.

But she and Dylan depend on each other, and as she sees her older brother lose hope, Shasta knows she needs to stay strong to give him the courage to go on. I said, I promise that we're going to make it out of life. That was my way of comforting my brother, just letting him know that we would never stop fighting. The kids lean on each other to help get through the trauma, but the abuse is far from over. The man begins forcing drugs and alcohol on them, and when he believes they're under the influence, he would freely tell horrifying stories of what he did to other children.

He had no clue that the eight-year-old girl would remember everything and eventually use it to take him down. He very vividly and in detail described murders of two sisters from Seattle, Amidja White and Carmen. He would tell us the way that he had done it, where he had placed their bodies. When he had started telling us about the murders, I was like, okay, well, I'm going to pretend like I'm drinking this. As Shasta learns about the man's past crimes, she comes up with a plan.

She knows he feels some kind of connection to her, and she decides to use that against him by acting like she's his friend. I would ask questions about his life, ask him about his family, and could I meet them one day? It was a conscious thing, like, I need to make him think that I love him or that I want to be here with him. At first, her question seemed to be working. The man even starts acting a little nicer to them, but a month into the kidnapping, things take an even more tragic turn.

The captor had told the kids that if they caught a squirrel, they would be able to go home. It keeps returning to the campsite just out of reach. Finally, Dylan is able to catch the squirrel. After completing the challenge the man gave them, they have new hope that this all might be coming to an end. They think their abductor is having them pack up to go back. But again, he lied to them, and Shasta's brief moment of relief with Dylan immediately comes crashing down. I had just given him a hug, and so I was holding his hand, and I heard a loud bag. And then I felt my brother's hand slipped from mine.

I couldn't even say anything. Like, I couldn't scream. I couldn't. I just didn't even know what to do. The man shoots Dylan twice, right in front of Shasta. She has lost everything. He came up to me and was crying. He said it was an accident.

He didn't mean to. I didn't know what the first shot was, but I knew that the second time was on purpose. He said that he did it so that Dylan wouldn't have to feel pain. She has just had to watch another brother get killed, and now the deranged man forces her to help him move Dylan's body onto a tarp, where he burns it. Dylan and Shasta were helping each other to go on,

but now the little girl is left all alone to face what no eight-year-old should ever have to go through. I was just confused, and I remember, like, I think for about a week I just didn't talk. I couldn't talk, I couldn't say anything. I was just frozen. Six weeks since the kidnapping, Shastas captured. decides to move her to a different campsite. At first, they were in a remote spot where no one could see or hear them.

But after her brother's murder, he takes her to a lower point on the mountain. As she's chained up inside the tent, she can even see people passing nearby. Shasta is desperate to escape, but the man continues to threaten her. She knows he will kill her if she tries to get the attention of the strangers,

so she stays silent. One night, even after Shasta has been following all of his orders, he decides that he needs her gone. He was just like you have the choice to be strangled or you have the choice to be shot like your brother and that one's going to be quicker. I felt like if I had chose the strangulation that I might have a chance to talk him out of what he was doing. The man puts a rope around Shast's neck and begins to pull. After losing her family and going through nearly two months of torture, she almost gives up. I kind of remember seeing my mom's face.

I heard her voice and then like I started to see white and then everything. Everything kind of came back. Even after they're gone, Shasta's family helps give her the strength to keep fighting, but her captor is strangling her, and she has to come up with an idea fast. I had worked up enough breath to say, please don't Jett. Jett is the man's nickname that he told the kids about. Shastas' last attempt to survive is to manipulate her captor, the man who took her entire family away by relying on his emotional attachment to her.

I noticed that when I would use that name with him, it would like soften a little bit. like it would soften him. And he's like, what did you say? He just started crying and he was like, I can't do this. Shasta convinces him to let go and allow her to live at least a little longer. Even after he just tried to kill her, she continues to build their relationship in hopes that it will help her survive. Anytime me going home was brought up, I would tell him, no, I don't want to go. I want to stay here with you. He'd be like, really? You could tell that it was starting to catch him off guard a little bit. It's July 2nd. 2005, seven weeks since the kidnapping.

After gradually getting her abductor to open up to her, Shasta finally sees a real chance to get home. He basically sat me down and asked if I would be his kid and I would stay with him, you know, that I would call him dad. He's like, I want to take you to meet my mom. Would you meet her? And I had said yes. The little girl is inching closer to the possibility of being back in an area with people around who might notice her. But she knows she has to do more to make sure she's seen. in public. And I said, can you take me to where I grew up?

Like, I want to show you where I went to school. And I want to show you where my best friend lives. Like, I want to show you all these places that are important to me because you're important to me. And he was like, yeah, of course, I would love to. Almost two months after Dylan and Shasta Groney disappeared, Shasta has her kidnapper drive her right back to Cordelaine, even stopping at a convenience store, praying that someone will notice her and intervene.

Police get a tip. But not until the manager reviews this. security footage to identify Shasta after they have left the store. I remember just holding on to hope but still feeling like there wasn't going to be any. The man asks if she is hungry, knowing there will probably be people that would see her where they eat. Shasta says yes, and they go to the Denny's restaurant in Corr Delaine. As I was walking in, I noticed that my missing person's poster was right there. There was this guy standing outside and he was with his friends and he nodded his head and I nodded

my head and he went up to the counter and made it kind of seem like he was conversating with one of the waitresses and then I seen her look over at me. They were my only table at the time and I immediately recognized her. His entire world revolved around her. She didn't speak without his permission or something just not okay. Waitress Amber Dean has no idea who the man with her is or what he's capable of, but she can't risk him knowing she's suspicious. I'd spoken to my manager, said, you know, I think we should probably call Cortland PD.

I'm pretty positive. That's Shasta growing over there. I'll pay for their meal if I'm wrong. We need to get somebody up here. Others at the restaurant also noticed the little girl, and officers finally get the call they have been waiting for for months. I've got a little girl here with the tall gentleman, and she looks so much like this. Shasta, and we're not sure. You know, I just, I don't know.

Shasta can tell that they recognize her, but she still doesn't know if she'll make it out alive. I remember thinking that he's so smart, and I was like, even if they know that I'm with him, maybe he will have an excuse and they'll just leave, and they won't think that anything was wrong. Everyone is waiting for the police to get there, but the man is ready to leave. If he gets away with the girl, there's no telling what he'll do next. The people at Denny spring into action. Amber pretends to have problems printing the check so that he'll stay in his seat longer. Others in the restaurant positioned themselves so they can stop him at the door if he tries to get out.

Finally, the police arrive and to ask her for her name. After the little girl says who she is, they immediately take the man away and she can breathe a sigh of relief. The whole entire restaurant started clapping. Like, they all knew who I was. They all knew that I was a missing person. And it was kind of like they all played a factor into my rescue. Before they even leave the Denny's, Shasta tells the police that the man with the her is the one who killed her family and abducted her. He is 42-year-old Joseph Duncan, a level

three sex offender. He was only 15 years old when his first sex crime was recorded. In 2004, he was charged with molesting a boy in Minnesota, and he is currently a fugitive after borrowing $15,000 for bail and leaving town. Police investigate the car Duncan had been driving, which was stolen. They find a shotgun, along with video equipment with recordings of Dylan and Shasta while he was holding them captive. Shasta is finally safe, but Dylan is nowhere to be found. Duncan immediately goes silent,

and officers can't get any information from him. They have to turn to the little girl. She immediately opens up, revealing what happened to her brother. She goes on to explain the unimaginable horrors that she and Dylan went through over the past seven weeks. The start of an eight-year-old girl having to observe this and then having to relive it to an investigator

after the fact is just amazing to me. She witnessed things that grown people would be traumatized for the rest of their lives and never be able to speak about. Shasta finds an incredible amount of strength to tell her story, and she even reveals the information that Duncan told her about other murders. I remembered everything, and then when I was found, I told the investigators what he had told me. Joseph Duncan eventually confesses, telling the police that he hunted his targets. He drove around and used a GPS to mark houses with children where he could possibly stop.

He happened to drive by the Groney House and he saw Shasta and Dylan playing in the yard. He studied the house and family for days, preparing for the night of the attack. I remember him telling me that he was able to get the dog to come to him, and he gave retreats and stuff and befriended our pit bull so that when he did come into the house to do what he was going to do, there was not that type of issue to get in the way. about everything to make sure that he was going to commit the perfect crime. At the trial, the jury has to watch video that Duncan himself recorded of what he did to the kids. The footage shows the horrifying extent of his brutality.

I think it's probably the single most disturbing piece of evidence disturbing thing I've ever seen in my entire life. While the video is extremely disturbing, it is the absolute key piece of evidence prosecutors can use to send Joseph Duncan to death row. It's October 16, 2006, Joseph Duncan pleads guilty to three counts of kidnapping and three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Brenda, Mark, and Slade. He receives three life sentences. He later pleads guilty to 10 federal charges in connection to the kidnapping and sexual assault of Shasta and Dylan and the murder of Dylan. He is sentenced to death.

31 years of being involved in the criminal... He is sent to federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, and he is on death row until March 28, 2021, when he dies from brain cancer. Shasta is finally free of the monster, and she begins the long healing journey. The community comes together to celebrate her late brother Slade's birthday.

He was just a really good brother to me and that he was really sweet to people. Happy birthday and tell mom, Dylan, and Mark, I love them and stuff, and hopefully we'll get to see them again. Shasta tries to move on with her life, but after all that she went through at such a young age, growing up isn't easy. I was happy to be in a safe place, but there was still that part of me that's like, well, if this happens again.

Fighting severe PTSD, Shasta hates being recognized everywhere and going to therapy all the time. I just wanted to be a normal teenage girl. There was still court stuff going on with Joseph Duncan. There was still counseling that I had to do, and I didn't feel good about myself or the person that I was. So I think that that all kind of pushed me over the edge. Shasta turns to drugs and alcohol to try to escape. She spends her early teenage years in a correctional facility,

where she meets other girls who had been through similar experiences with substance abuse. The judge was very honest with me, and she's like, Shasta, I feel like you do have a lot of help you can give people, I feel like you're way better than what you're being. She begins to turn her life around after having kids and meeting her husband, who is related to Sammy Joe White and Carmen Cubias, the half-sisters from Seattle that Joseph Duncan also confessed to killing. For a long, a long time, like I always had this feeling that I could not have kids, but

he's not going to steal the fact that I can bring children into this world. Things happen for a reason I feel and I believe in like my youngest son, had I never his dad, you know, he wouldn't be here and how just things like that work. It was supposed to happen like that. Shaston now focuses on all the support she's gotten from people she's met because of what happened to her. I still keep in contact with the guy that I made eye contact with outside of the restaurant. His name is Nick Chapman. A couple of the other investigators and officers that worked on my case, they brought me to their

house and I met their kids. They completely made my life so much easier. They allowed me to be a kid when I felt like I couldn't. With the life she has built and all the love she has around her, she knows it's important to look forward and not let her abuser dictate her life. I don't hate him for the things that he's done. I forgive him, actually. If I don't forgive him, then he's going to control my life.

I want him to know that I'm doing good things with my life too, so that he knows that he doesn't control my life and that he doesn't affect me anymore. Today, Shasta enjoys spending time with her family, and she hopes to be a counselor so she can use her experience to support others who have gone through hard times. I know that I lived for a reason, and I know that there's a reason that I'm on this planet still and that I know that I'm here to help other people. If there's anybody in the world right now that's being abused and they hear that I'm giving up, what would that do for them?