The Fifth Nail

Brenda Groene, 40, lived in a rural home at Wolf Lodge Bay, east of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, with her children and her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, 37. Joseph Duncan was a registered sex offender from Fargo, North Dakota, who had spent much of his adult life in prison and kept an online journal called The Fifth Nail.

Duncan broke into the Groene home in May 2005 and beat Brenda, Mark and 13-year-old Slade to death with a hammer. The bodies were found on May 16. Nine-year-old Dylan and eight-year-old Shasta were missing, and he had taken them to a remote campsite in Montana’s Lolo National Forest, where he later killed Dylan. On July 2, 2005, a waitress and a customer inside a Denny’s in Coeur d’Alene recognized Shasta from news coverage when Duncan brought her in, and they called police. Dylan’s remains were found two days later.

Duncan pleaded guilty to the Idaho murders and kidnappings in October 2006 and was given three back-to-back life terms without parole. In federal court he pleaded guilty to charges tied to Dylan’s kidnapping and death, and in August 2008 a jury sentenced him to death. In 2011 he also received life terms in California for the 1997 murder of Anthony Martinez, 10. He died of brain cancer at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, on March 28, 2021.