Dr. Sharon Cooper, a renowned medical and child abuse expert and one of only 500 forensic pediatricians in the country, testified this morning that Dylan’s abdominal wound likely wasn’t immediately fatal. “No, not at all,” she said, calling such a wound, “a very potentially salvageable injury – we see this in soldiers on the battlefield rather often. They can live for several hours like that,” she said, and careful surgery can repair the damage. She described a range of possible injuries to a child from a gunshot to the abdomen, and said based on Shasta’s description, Dylan likely suffered an evisceration wound, the second-least damaging of five possible types of injuries she described. In that type of injury, internal organs protrude through the wound, but they can be put back in and the damage repaired, she said.

Duncan closely questioned Cooper, first asking if in her experience, traumatized children tend to exaggerate what they’ve seen, and if her testimony was “based primarily on a potential exaggeration from a traumatized child.” Cooper disagreed, and said a child would typically expect a gunshot victim to fall down dead instantly, as happens in movies. “They would not likely describe an evisceration if an evisceration hadn’t occurred,” she said. Duncan then suggested that food Dylan had eaten – ramen noodles – were actually all that protruded from the wound. Cooper said that’s very unlikely; ramen noodles that had been eaten would appear to have the consistency of grits, and the stomach itself would protrude along with its contents. The organs that protrude in an evisceration wound, she said, have a “snake-like appearance.”

Duncan’s cross-examination, in which he asked the medical expert five questions, marked his first real dispute of evidence or testimony offered by prosecutors in their bid to persuade jurors he should be executed.

An FBI firearms expert who extensively tested the murder weapon testified this morning that Joseph Duncan’s Browning 12-gauge shotgun could not fire accidentally, such as from being dropped, and that multiple tests showed that 5 pounds of pressure was required on the trigger to get the gun to fire. That suggests that Duncan’s first shot, which hit 9-year-old Dylan Groene in the stomach, was no accident, though that was what he led the boy’s sister to believe.

Here’s a link to my full story in today’s Spokesman-Review on Tuesday’s revelations in court, and here’s a link to our slide show of items of evidence submitted in the case, including the murder weapon. Yesterday, it seemed like the biggest revelation was how cruel Joseph Duncan was to the two children he held captive; he also was alternately kind, but the level of cruelty was stunning. As little Shasta put it in her videotaped interview with police the night of her rescue, “Jet was sometimes nice to us, and sometimes really, really mean.” She described beatings, molestation and harrowing threats, along with apologies and Duncan’s ravings about God and forgiveness. Another revelation was how helpful the child’s information was to police, who located the campsite where the children were held within a day, and found key evidence.

Another theme also has emerged: The randomness with which Duncan selected his victims, first considering numerous others, then shifting westward after confusing the date. “He said that he was out looking for children to kidnap,” Shasta said.

As a child’s voice told of horrors suffered by herself and her 9-year-old brother, jurors listened intently, some clasping their hands over their mouths, other leaning forward or occasionally jotting a note on a clipboard. The victims’ father, Steve Groene, sat in the audience, where he clutched a tissue and left at the end of the day with reddened eyes. Duncan himself sat looking down, sometimes writing a note on a legal pad, but often closing his eyes.

Then-8-year-old Shasta told of a killer who plotted carefully, but then kept changing his mind. He selected the campsite because it was heavily treed, she said. “He was trying to find a camp with a lot of trees so no one would hear us scream or anything.” At one point, Duncan threw a large knife off into the woods, after telling the children that he wouldn’t hurt them any more, and that the knife was one he had bought “to scare children,” Shasta said. She said he did the same with an ax. “He said he was going to kill me and Dylan with the ax … but he was too afraid to, so he threw it in the woods.” Shasta said Duncan swung the ax near her head before that. “I thought that he was going to kill me,” she told officers. “But I knew that he couldn’t do it, because he tried to do it like 50 times before. … He tried to kill us with a whole bunch of other weapons.” After throwing away the ax, Duncan then bought another ax on one of his trips to town so he could chop fire wood, the child said.

At one point, Duncan, who had told Shasta that he himself was a coward, taunted Dylan for being afraid of the dark, Shasta recounted. “He also told Dylan that Dylan was a coward, which Dylan wasn’t – Dylan was a very brave boy,” she said. Shasta told the officers, “Every time that Jet said he was going to kill me or Dylan, Dylan would start crying and screaming, but I would only cry.”

When Duncan took Dylan from the campsite where he was holding the children captive to a nearby old cabin, Shasta said, “There was a hammer in the cabin, that he was going to hit Dylan in the head with it, but instead he wanted to choke Dylan and kill him that way … He told me that.”

When Capt. Dan Mattos asked Shasta why Duncan wanted to kill her, she said, “So he wouldn’t get caught – but I knew that he would get caught anyways.”

Joseph Duncan threatened to kill Shasta numerous times, she told investigators in audio tapes played for jurors this afternoon. “Jet was sometimes nice to us, and sometimes really mean,” the little girl told authorities in one of four taped interviews. She described one time when Duncan tied her 9-year-old brother Dylan to a log and beat him with a stick until the stick broke. “I saw that happen, I was tied up to a tree,” the little girl said. “Dylan was tied up to this big log. … Jet … whacked him … It was really horrible.” Another time, he put a rope around her neck while she lay on the ground, while filming his actions with a video camera on a small tripod. She said Duncan told her that before he came to her home, “He said that he was out looking for children to kidnap.”

The child told officers, “He thought that God was telling him to do it. … He told me that, and he felt that he had to or else the government was going to kill him, the secret government.” Duncan went back and forth, and told Shasta at one point that he understood that it was a sickness rather than God that told him to do those things, she said.

She described her brother’s death, saying Duncan was reaching into a clear plastic bin, rooting around for a cold can of beer, when the gun, which was in the same bin, went off, firing through the bin and hitting Dylan in the stomach. Shasta said Duncan was upset and crying, but took the gun and tried to shoot Dylan in the head at point-blank range, but it didn’t go off. She saw him reload, then put the gun to the boy’s head again and kill him.

The child’s interviews, descriptions of her captivity and the sites where she and Dylan were held helped investigators find the camp site on July 3, 2005, Capt. Dan Mattos told the court. She returned with him and other investigators to the site on July 29, 2005, and pointed out where the events occurred. She placed rocks where she was standing, where Duncan was standing, and where Dylan was standing when he was killed.

The sleepy child, speaking with difficulty, told Capt. Dan Mattos about Duncan’s molesting of her and her brother, and said he also forced them to do things he videotaped. She said she saw the movie of Duncan torturing Dylan at an old cabin near their remote campsite. “If you guys probably got hold of it, you guys would probably be crying really hard – it was just a terrible movie,” the youngster told the police officer.

While the videotaped interview played in the courtroom, jurors watched intently, some cupping their hands over their mouths. Duncan looked down, and for much of it, closed his eyes and rested his chin on his clasped hands, appearing to be praying.

A hushed courtroom just heard the entire interview little Shasta gave at Kootenai Medical Center, after being rescued from Joseph Duncan. Among the new details revealed: At some point while Duncan was holding Shasta, then 8, and her 9-year-old brother Dylan captive at a remote campsite in the Lolo National Forest, Duncan shoed the two children the hammer that he used to kill their mother, older brother and mother’s fiancé. “He told me and Dylan to get in the car – he held it up and said, ‘This is what I killed your parents with,’ and I think he said, ‘I’m gonna kill you with it too,’” the child told Kootenai County Sheriff’s Capt. Dan Mattos, who was interviewing her. “Me and Dylan were crying.”

The youngster was wrapped in a white quilt with teddy bears on it and clutching a teddy bear under the blanket, her bare legs sticking out as she huddled in a chair in a room at the hospital. She still wore flip-flops on her feet. The interview covered her entire ordeal, with some gaps, from her kidnapping from her home through Dylan’s murder to her return with Duncan to a Coeur d’Alene Denny’s restaurant.

It seems like Joseph Duncan is trying to suggest that there’s an alternative explanation for the 36 “way points” he marked on his GPS as he traveled around on a multistate trip, during which he purchased items, considered victims, and then committed his crimes. Prosecutors say many of the points are homes that show obvious signs that children live there, and some are day care centers, school bus stops, etc. Yesterday, Duncan asked how far a home with a swingset and play equipment was from the waypoint he marked on the nearby highway; it was a quarter-mile away. Today, he questioned FBI Special Agent Mike Gneckow about why Gneckow didn’t ask Duncan what the way points were all about. “During your investigation of those way points, did you ever make any effort to contact the defendant, myself, to find out what they were about?” Duncan demanded of Gneckow. (Gneckow explained he couldn’t do that.)

The way points were created by simply pressing a button on the GPS at that location, according to earlier expert testimony. Journal entries Duncan left on his laptop computer during his trip back up the government’s theory, detailing how he traveled around searching for “flowers,” a word he apparently used to refer to potential child victims (“Saw pretty flower, tried to pick it, but it got away.” “Drove to Missoula looking for flowers.”) If there’s another explanation for the way points, it seems like Duncan, who is representing himself, could simply say it, while he’s cross-examining a witness like Gneckow, and ask Gneckow whether he agreed. He hasn’t.

An FBI financial analyst just finished tracing Joseph Duncan’s purchases in April of 2005, when he traveled around from state to state, buying various items that he then used in his crimes the next month. The purchases, shown on a map of the United States, traced a jagged line southward, occasionally veering east or west, with the easternmost point a trip to an adult store in Montrose, Ill., where he bought a DVD. He then veered back to Clinton, Okla., back up north to Commerce City, Colo., and then up to the Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area in Wyoming, where the receipts for six of those purchases he made on the meandering trip were recovered from trash scattered from a campground garbage can by a bear.

Bryan Olson, a forest service worker from South Dakota, testified this morning that he encountered Duncan near the campsite the admitted murderer had set up near Stryker, Mont. in May of 2005, while Olson was spraying for weeds at a nearby gravel pit. “He was walking across the gravel pit from the west side with an armload of bamboo poles under his arm,” Olson told the court; the poles were used at a nearby Forest Service tree nursery. Duncan approached Olson. “We had backpack spray units ... (and) a spray truck,” Olson said. “He approached us probably two or three feet away. … He looked a little bit scruffy, like he’d been out camping for quite a bit of time. I woulda guessed he was in his 40s. … He asked us what we were doing in the area, and why we were working on a Saturday.” Olson said, “It was actually Monday, and we were treating noxious weeds in the area.” Duncan accepted the answer and left.

Joseph Duncan just got into a back-and-forth on cross examination of FBI Special Agent Mike Gneckow, asking Gneckow why he never contacted Duncan himself to ask about the meaning of the various “way points” that Duncan marked on his GPS. Gneckow said he was prohibited from contacting the defendant, who at the time was represented by attorneys and had exercised his 5th Amendment right to silence. The exchange came after five other witnesses testified this morning, most of them focusing on the camp Duncan set up near Stryker, Mont. and his casing of homes with children about 100 miles to the south. Numerous items were recovered from Duncan’s abandoned campsite and entered into evidence today, including a pink children’s bicycle with training wheels, an unused blue hand shovel, a rolling backback with the purchase receipt still inside, several newspapers, a container of “strawberry motion lotion” personal lubricant, a camera tripod and more.

Cassandra Murphy and Brian Brazill of Arlee, Mont. both testified, and said the bike belonged to their then-7-year-old daughter, Breanna. They also said Breanna and her twin brother Colt talked to a man in a red Jeep matching Duncan’s description when he stopped at their school bus stop near their house in May of 2005. Brazill, who is Native American, said he saw the man as he pulled out of his driveway on the way to work, and his presence was “out of place.” He waved at the mustached, Caucasian man, who waved back, and then Brazill saw the school bus approaching, so he knew his kids were about to board and he went on to work. Another mom from Missoula whose home was marked as a way point on Duncan’s GPS testified that in addition to her four kids ranging in age in 2005 from 3 to 9, her house was always filled with kids, “I guess because I gave out the most popsicles.”

Joseph Duncan was all set to commit his crimes in northwestern Montana, with different children as his victims, before he changed his mind, drove to Idaho and targeted the Groene family. The convicted child-rapist went so far as to set up a remote campsite in Flathead National Forest near Stryker, Mont., with children's toys and a tall tripod for a video camera, according to evidence presented in court Monday in Duncan's death penalty sentencing trial. He cased numerous homes with small children about 100 miles to the south, even contacting children at one isolated home.

That story emerged as 13 witnesses testified Monday in Duncan's sentencing trial, which is speeding along as Duncan, who is representing himself, continues to raise no objection to evidence against him and to ask only an occasional, odd question of the witnesses on cross-examination. FBI Special Agent Steve Liss, of Kalispell, Mont., said he spoke with the occupants of one home near Arlee, Mont., that had been marked as a "way point" on Duncan's Global Positioning System. They said one or more of their children "had contact in May 2005 with an individual in a red Jeep Grand Cherokee," Liss said under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson. That's the stolen vehicle Duncan drove to North Idaho.

Barbara Hampton, of Lovell, Wyo., whose home also was marked on Duncan's GPS, testified that at that time, her 7-year-old granddaughter and 3-year-old grandson were spending their days at her home, where playground equipment filled the front yard and toys were scattered about. The picture that's emerging is one of a hate-filled, anguished predator who prowled the region for just the right child victims, with elaborate plans for their torture and murder, and then, after fits and starts, carried out all but the final step in his plan in a blood-soaked crime spree. You can read my full story here in today’s Spokesman-Review; testimony resumes this morning at 9 Mountain time.

After 13 witnesses testified, one of them twice, court has wrapped up for the day. Much of the afternoon focused on what was at a series of “way points” that Joseph Duncan marked on his GPS, and what could be seen when one visited those exact spots. One woman testified that one was her home, where her two young grandchildren, then aged 7 and 3, were visiting. Another was the “Learn & Grow” day care center in St. Ignatius, Mont.

Jurors are being taken on a photographic tour of the “way points” Joseph Duncan marked on his GPS in 2005, including a hillside 25 to 30 miles north of Casper, Wyo., where Duncan left an odd inscription on a rock: “Deep in my dunjun (sic), I welcome you here 366231.”

FBI Special Agent Mike Gneckow, who is back on the stand, said that number written on the rock is the Washington Department of Correction inmate number for Duncan when he was incarcerated for more than a decade in that state.

Already today, prosecutors have called seven witnesses to testify in the Joseph Duncan sentencing trial. There were seven witnesses called on Friday and eight on Thursday, so that makes 22 so far (though a couple have been repeats), and it’s just midway through the third day of testimony. With a total of about 90 prosecution witnesses expected in the first phase of the sentencing trial, they’re already a quarter of the way done – so this phase may take less than the estimated three weeks. The sentencing trial is divided into two phases; first, jurors will decide if they’ll declare Duncan “eligible” for the death penalty, and then, if so, they’ll move to the second phase to determine which penalty they select – death, or life in prison without the possibility of release.

Joseph Duncan submitted a letter to the court first thing this morning asking that he be able to “establish a standing ‘non-objection’ with the court on all evidence submitted, and on all witnesses dismissed.” He also wanted the court to assume that he’s agreed with all stipulations, unless he states otherwise. “I am making this request in accordance to my option of remaining silent during these proceedings,” Duncan wrote.

Judge Edward Lodge told him, “I have your letter, Mr. Duncan, but you are going to have to go ahead and state ‘no objection’ and ‘so stipulated.’ Even though you feel you know exactly what the government” will present, the judge said, something unexpected could come in. “You do have to agree on the record, ‘no objection’ or ‘so stipulated.’”

So Duncan has said those phrases when it was his turn to do so, and he’s stipulated, or formally agreed in writing, to quite a bit – including acknowledging that he stole the gun used in the crime from a turkey shack in Missouri, modified it and that it’s the same sawed-off shotgun found in his vehicle after his arrest. Duncan’s not raised objections to anything thus far today, nor has he asked any questions of any of the seven witnesses called so far. He’s stayed awake, however, and appeared to perk up and listen alertly when John Vavrus, former chief software architect and chief engineer for Magellan, detailed how he “used some commands that are not generally known to extract a memory footprint” from Duncan’s GPS unit. Duncan, of course, is a computer aficionado.

He’s dressed in his usual outfit of garish gold sweatshirt and yellow jail-issue scrubs, his long hair flowing wildly about his shoulders. When witnesses who knew him as a clean-cut college student in Fargo were asked to identify him by where he was in the courtroom today and what he has on, they struggled to describe the bearded defendant’s apparel – a “yellow jumpsuit” and “yellow top” were their best approximations.

Prosecutors have just introduced into evidence a letter that Duncan wrote from prison to Dawn Hauff, in which he wrote, in part, “Okay, I’ll tell you this – even though I shouldn’t, my attorneys and the FBI might get jealous – there was a GPS unit in the Jeep I was driving that was on constantly from the time I left Fargo until my arrest at Dennys. So the police had a very detailed map of everywhere I was.”

The introduction of the hand-written, multipage letter came after two witnesses testified about what was found on the GPS unit in the Jeep. First, John V. Vavrus, who as chief engineer and chief architect for Magellan designed the software in the unit in the Jeep, described how the unit records near-exact locations via satellite transmissions, and how he helped the FBI download and examine the information. Then, Kootenai County Sheriff’s Det. Jerry Northrup went over some of the same information and how he downloaded the positions, put them on a map for analysis, and loaded them into GPS units officers could take into the field to visit the sites pinpointed. The unit’s “auto-track” function is “like a bread crumb trail,” Northrup told the court, “so that you can go back in and follow the dots to where you were.” “Way points” can be marked along the way by a user; Duncan had marked dozens, including several that he first marked on May 12, 2005 in the Lolo National Forest – four days before he kidnapped the two children who he eventually held captive at a remote campsite there.

Northrup said the reason he quickly mapped and downloaded the locations into officers’ GPS units was “to follow the trails to either look for evidence or the child who was still missing at that point.” The GPS unit taken from the Jeep, when Northrup first turned it on in the basement of the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office, brought up a map of the region with a dashed line running from near 4th Street in Coeur d’Alene – where Duncan was arrested at a Denny’s restaurant – eastward.

Enterprise rental car employee Jonathan Hager told the court today that when Joseph Duncan came to his counter in Minneapolis in 2005 to rent a Jeep Cherokee, he didn’t have a reservation and said he wanted the vehicle to take up north to do some scuba diving in the Duluth area, “which at the time I felt was a little odd.” It was April in Minnesota. “The lakes are frozen over still that time of year,” Hager said.

FBI Special Agent Mike Gneckow was called back up to testify again today, and this time, he gave the details of how Joseph Duncan stole a shotgun from a turkey shack in Missouri – and Duncan “stipulated” to the agent’s account – that means he officially admits it’s all true. Gneckow also displayed to the jury a “Fat Max” framing hammer of the type that Duncan admits using to kill three members of the Groene family in 2005.

Dr. Richard Wacksman, the third witness called today, said he first met Joseph Duncan at a coffee shop in San Francisco in 1997, and then kept in touch with him weekly by phone or email. When Duncan moved to Fargo to attend college, Wacksman, a physician who lived in Fargo then, helped get him a car and helped him out financially with tuition and getting an apartment. Wacksman, 55, told the court, “There’s probably a half a dozen people that I’ve helped try to either get in college or finish their high school diploma or G.E.D.” After Wacksman moved away from Fargo in 2002, he stayed in touch with Duncan, who sometimes visited him.

Wacksman said he loaned Duncan $6,500 in March of 2005 for a lawyer after Duncan was charged with child molesting in Minnesota. Duncan cashed the check and disappeared, he said, angering Wacksman. He didn’t hear from him again until he got a call from Duncan on July 1, 2005, a day before Duncan’s arrest in Coeur d’Alene, when Duncan said, “There’s something I haven’t told you.” Wacksman said he yelled at the younger man for absconding on the Minnesota charge, and Duncan then said, “I need to go, I’m running out of time,” and the conversation ended.

Jurors learned this morning how Joseph Duncan unexpectedly trashed his apartment in Fargo, N.D. in April of 2005 and disappeared. His landlord and neighbor both testified about finding his usually neat and tidy apartment in disarray, the large cat box overflowing. Jurors saw photos of a mirror on which Duncan had written in black marker, “Time for a reality check,” and, “The only cure for crime is love and forgiveness. Everything else is just more crime.” On a desk blotter he had written, “Without forgiveness there is only insanity!”

Former neighbor Joni Buzick testified that Duncan was a computer student at North Dakota State University who liked scuba diving and who sometimes had her feed his two cats, Rusty and Copper. Both she and his landlord, Jeff Ware, said they sometimes socialized with Duncan when he lived in Fargo.

Around the time he trashed his apartment and disappeared, Duncan posted on his blog, “I am scared, alone and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society. My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die.”

Here’s an odd detail: Among the items admitted into evidence in court on Friday was a note card, found in the center console of Joseph Duncan’s stolen red Jeep, with several phone numbers and names written on it in Duncan’s handwriting. They included numbers for “Mom,” “my cell,” “Joe,” and – here’s the odd one – “Mr. Groene,” with, written above that, “Steve.” Duncan claimed he was returning his lone surviving victim, then-8-year-old Shasta Groene, to her father when he was arrested with her at a Coeur d’Alene Denny’s restaurant in 2005, seven weeks after he had kidnapped her. Had Duncan actually been in touch with Steve Groene, Shasta’s father? Possibly enough times to begin calling him by his first name? There’s been no answer to that question thus far; the father, who lost his voice to throat cancer and can speak only in the metallic monotone of an electronic voice-box, has sat wordlessly in court each day, watching the story unfold, and testified only briefly when he was called as the second witness in the sentencing trial on Thursday.

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After nearly thirty years in the news business (yes, I really did start writing for my hometown newspaper at the age of just 16), I like to think of myself as calm and fairly tough in the face of news of all types. I covered a rather gruesome murder trial during my first full-time job out of college at a small daily newspaper, and never flinched. But I was young and brash, that case didn’t involve young children, and I wasn’t yet a mother of two.

On Friday night, after three days of intense immersion in the blood-drenched reality of the Joseph Duncan case, I came home from the courthouse only to find blood smeared all over my bathroom floor. I couldn’t help it; I screamed. It turned out the cat had killed a mouse in there; my husband kindly cleaned up the mess while I freaked. Then, last night, I awoke at 2:30 a.m. to a strange noise on the back patio, followed by the sound of our back patio door softly sliding open, then back shut. I froze. Lying petrified in bed, my first, half-asleep, panicked thought was that someone had come for our kids.

Of course, that wasn’t the case. My teenage daughter, who was leaving for college in the morning, was still up, and had gone out back to spray-paint a shelf she’s taking for her dorm room. The strange noise was her shaking the spray-paint can.

But it is impossible not to be shaken by the horrific details of the Duncan case. It reaches the core of something every parent holds deep inside: The desire to protect and raise our children to live their own, happy lives. As a parent, I know that when I first looked into the beautiful face of my newborn child, everything changed. Life’s priorities rearranged, and this amazing, miraculous little person who had come into the world took an indelible place in my heart. That feeling only strengthened when my son was born three years later.

Today, my oldest left home, driving off with her dad for the big trip to college. After the hugs, photos and goodbyes, I stood waving, and the cat (now forgiven) rubbed affectionately against my leg. My daughter’s indelible mark is still there in my heart; I know it always will be.

Sitting in court last week, another reporter who’s pregnant described the strange sensation of feeling her baby kick while hearing about the horrific end of another child’s life. This case gets to everyone. And it’s not just parents – the crimes involved in this case violate something central we all feel as human beings, that must be wired into our very nature to enable us to survive as a human race: The sense that innocent children are not to be harmed. That’s part of the reason why it’s so important to cover this case, even when the tale is a terrible one. The proceedings we’re seeing now in court are how we as a society deal with cases like this; it’s how justice is done in our system. Readers are free to look away; some may not want to read about such things. But I’m not. If we in the press don’t report what happens, no one will know if justice has been done, and that’s something for which we all have a deep and basic need.

Today’s proceedings in Joseph Duncan’s sentencing trial included testimony from seven witnesses, starting with ISP Detective Sgt. Fred Swanson, who also testified yesterday. Swanson introduced numerous exhibits of items that were taken from Duncan’s vehicle after his arrest, including the murder weapon, a Browning 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun. He was followed by two computer forensic experts, Stacy Evans and Loren Mercer, who testified about digital evidence that was introduced, including photos and videos, three of which were played for the jury, their content mostly consisting of relatively innocent scenes of the children and their abductor at a Montana campsite.

Many in the courtroom were on edge when Evans identified three videos of Duncan and 9-year-old Dylan retrieved from a microdrive, despite having been erased. Assistant U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson asked Evans if the videos included “three in particular, involving the young boy?” He answered, “Yes … They were all contiguous, one right after the other.” That’s how the prosecution’s opening statements described three video clips of “sadistic child sexual abuse” of Dylan by Duncan that will be shown as evidence in the sentencing trial. So far, the prosecutors haven’t given any indication as to when – among the 90 witnesses it’ll be calling over several weeks – that video will be shown. People in the courtroom braced themselves; the jurors looked on edge. But then the questioning moved on to other matters; the gruesome video wasn’t shown yet.

The uncertainty has added to the stress for the numerous reporters covering the case, including myself. Several said today that after hearing how Duncan decided he’d “abort” his crimes if the Groene family’s back door was locked – but it wasn’t – they went home and locked their back doors. Repeated requests for a witness list, which customarily is available in court proceedings, have gone unanswered so far. The stress has to be immeasurably worse for the jurors, as they try to take it all in and make sense of the huge array of evidence, while holding their tongues – they can’t talk about the case to anyone, not even each other, until their deliberations start.

Also today, four district loss prevention managers from Kmart, Best Buy, Walmart and Walgreens stores where Duncan bought items used in the crimes were called to testify, and to identify both purchase receipts and the items, which were recovered from Duncan’s red Jeep (a stolen rental car). The testimony and receipts showed that Duncan planned far in advance for his crimes, purchasing many of the items a month or more in advance. You can read my full story here in The Spokesman-Review, and read Duncan’s chilling, heartfelt letter to his mother here; it was introduced as evidence today.

Several of Joseph Duncan's journal entries, entered in Outlook files in his laptop computer, were presented to the jury this afternoon. In them, Duncan detailed his travels around the region, looking for children to attack. One of the entries said in part, “Stayed awake by smoking crack, but got tired … got a roadside hotel with a cute small little boy playing in the parking lot but he had his head shaved funny and that turned me off.” Here's a link to Duncan's journal entries, along with the bizarre spreadsheet in which he debated the plusses and minuses of committing his crimes.

The jury also was shown several photos of the children at the campsite, from a file in Duncan's compiuter labeled "for Shasta." After seeing several of those, Steve Groene got up and left the courtroom, as did the two women accompanying him.