COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho – 20 years ago this summer, a horrific story captivated the northwest and the nation. A killer had broken into a home near Coeur d’Alene, killed three members of a family, and kidnapped the two youngest children.
By the time the 4th of July rolled around, a manhunt was over, a killer was under arrest and one little girl was alive to tell what happened.
Now, Shasta Groene McClain is telling her story – her full story – for the first time, including the parts no one previously cared to hear.
The Murders at Wolf Lodge
The details of what happened in the cinder block home near Wolf Lodge campground in May 2005 are mostly too horrific to share.
A man investigators later discovered was a convicted sex offender and child serial killer had driven past the home on I-90 as he was running from a sexual abuse charge in Minnesota. He spotted two young kids playing outside and hatched a terrifying plan.
Several days later, Joseph Duncan broke into the home and killed Brenda Groene, Mark McKenzie, and 13-year-old Slade Groene with a claw hammer. He kidnapped the two youngest children, 8-year-old Shasta and 9-year-old Dylan.
The search for the two children and the killer captivated the region, with billboards and highway reader boards screaming their names.
Six weeks later, Duncan showed up in the middle of the night at the Denny’s in Coeur d’Alene with young Shasta. Duncan had pushed past a door with the missing children’s picture on it as he came in. Shasta was quickly recognized, Duncan was arrested and the details of the grisly crime unfolded.
Duncan had tortured the kids in the mountains above St. Regis, Montana, ultimately killing Dylan. During those weeks in the mountains, he told Shasta about other kids he had killed, including two sisters in Seattle and a little boy in California named Anthony Martinez, whose kidnapping and murder had gone unsolved for years.
The criminal case that would ultimately send Duncan to federal death row in Indiana was just beginning. So was Shasta’s lifelong trauma.
PAST COVERAGE: Serial killer Joseph Duncan is dead
‘I yearned to share my story’
Now living in Boise and a mother to five sons, Shasta says she’s now sharing her story. Not just about what happened to her family, but what has happened in her life since.
It has not been easy, as she has battled addiction and criminal behavior.
“I yearned to share my story, but no one could truly listen,” Shasta wrote in an essay published this week on OprahDaily.com. “It was too much. Too terrible to hear. For a time, I even thought that containing my trauma would foster growth, but silence felt like a lie.”
She wrote the essay just as a new book is coming out by New York Times bestselling author Gregg Olsen.
Olsen, who lives in Washington, has written true crime books and also wrote The Deep Dark, a book about the Sunshine Mine disaster in the Silver Valley that killed 71 miners in 1972.
In the OprahDaily.com essay, Shasta calls working with Olsen “transformative” and says, “he was committed to telling my whole story, not just sensationalized snippets.”
“This time,” she wrote, “we explored the why.”
Olsen says the book is the result of a four-year collaboration.
“I was overjoyed when Shasta was rescued,” Olsen said in a news release about the book. “It was a miracle, a happy ending. I thought that this courageous eight-year-old would get the help, love and whatever else she needed to be all right. I was so wrong.”
“After working with her on Out of the Woods, I now know recovery for trauma survivors is long, arduous, and the goal often unattainable. She kept telling me that no one would listen to her because it was too painful for them to do so. Let Shasta, and others like her, tell her story in whatever manner they need to. It’s not about us.”
You can read Shasta’s full essay at this link.
Olsen’s book will be released on August 1. It’s called Out of the Woods: A Girl, A Killer, and a Lifelong Struggle to Find the Way Home.
The author and Shasta will be signing copies at the Well-Read Moose in Coeur d’Alene on August 8. You can find information and pre-order the book here.
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