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"I got out and I got even, but did not get caught," the blogger wrote earlier this year, describing his losing battle with the "demons" that he said had driven him to rape and murder children.
"I got even twice," he added, "actually more."
How many times more?
Authorities in California and at least four other states are asking that question about Joseph Edward Duncan III.
A convicted child-rapist from Washington state who was released from prison in 2000, Duncan, 42, became a dean's list computer science student in North Dakota. Then, last spring, he jumped bail and disappeared after being accused of molesting a 6-year-old boy in Minnesota.
He surfaced last month at a Denny's restaurant in the Idaho panhandle city of Coeur d'Alene, where an alert waitress on the overnight shift recognized the girl with him, Shasta Groene, 8, as a kidnap victim whose face was on "Missing" posters around town. Duncan was arrested July 2 and has been charged with kidnapping the child and her 9-year-old brother, Dylan. Authorities expect to charge him with the killing of Dylan, whose body was found in Montana.
He has been charged with murdering Shasta Groene's mother, Brenda, her 13-year-old brother, Slade, and Brenda Groene's boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, who were bound inside their rural Idaho home and apparently killed with a claw hammer.
Wednesday, authorities in Riverside County announced that Duncan had become the prime suspect in the 1997 molestation and killing of 10-year-old Anthony Martinez, whose disappearance from outside his home in Beaumont coincided with a period when Duncan was out of prison. The case generated widespread attention at the time and had remained unsolved.
Now, authorities in several states, reacting to the news of Duncan's alleged role in the Martinez killing, say they are combing credit-card records and other evidence of his whereabouts to look for links to unsolved crimes. In addition to the investigations in California, Idaho and Minnesota, officials in Washington are examining the possibility that Duncan may have committed additional crimes there. He is also being investigated by authorities from Montana, where Dylan Groene's body was found July 4.
Even before the announcement Wednesday of his alleged link to the killing in California, Duncan's case had stirred widespread anger in...