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Joseph Duncan repeatedly threatened to kill the two children he held captive for weeks at a remote Montana campsite in 2005, the surviving victim told police shortly after her rescue.
In a videotaped interview shown to jurors in Duncan's death penalty sentencing trial Tuesday, Shasta Groene told police that at one point Duncan brandished the claw hammer that he'd used to fatally bludgeon three members of her family.
"This is what I killed your parents with," he told Shasta and her brother, Dylan, then 8 and 9, "and I think he said, 'I'm gonna kill you with it too,' " Shasta told Kootenai County sheriff's Capt. Dan Mattos in an interview at Kootenai Medical Center. "Me and Dylan were crying."
The video shows a slight child wrapped in a white quilt with teddy bears on it, clutching a stuffed animal under the blanket, her bare legs sticking out as she huddled in a chair at the Coeur d'Alene hospital for the interview. It was the middle of the night, shortly after Duncan had been spotted with her at a Coeur d'Alene Denny's restaurant and apprehended.
Jurors watched and listened intently, some clasping their hands over their mouths. The children's father, Steve Groene, sat in the audience, where he held a tissue and left at the end of the day with red eyes. Duncan, sitting alone at the defense table, looked down. For much of the video, he closed his eyes and rested his chin on clasped hands, appearing to be praying.
The videotaped interview and three additional audiotaped interviews of Shasta were played for jurors Tuesday as they prepare to decide whether Duncan should die for his crimes or live out his days behind bars. He's already pleaded guilty to all charges of kidnapping and molesting Shasta and Dylan and killing Dylan, after murdering three...