10:15 AM MDT on Wednesday, July 6, 2005

Associated Press

COEUR D'ALENE -- Investigators today are continuing to check out camping sites in western Montana where they believe a kidnapper held two children taken from their home near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

Remains found at one site near St. Regis, Montana, are undergoing a DNA test to determine if it's nine-year-old Dylan Groene, who is believed to be dead.

Sheriffs investigators and FBI agents found the site with information from eight-year-old Shasta Groene, after she was found Saturday at a Coeur d'Alene restaurant with Joseph Edward Duncan.

The 42-year-old from Fargo, North Dakota, has been charged with kidnapping the two children. He's being held without bail and could face the death penalty if convicted.

The children were missing from their home six weeks ago when the bodies of an older brother, their mother and her boyfriend were found beaten to death.

Court documents with the kidnapping charges say Shasta told investigators she watched a man tie up her family. But the documents don't say if she witnessed the killings. She says she and her brother were repeatedly molested.

Duncan is a convicted sex offender who was a fugitive at the time of his arrest. He had been released on $15,000 bail after he was accused of molesting a six-year-old boy in Minnesota.

He had served more than a decade for raping a 14-year-old in 1980 in Tacoma, Washington.

He was kicked out of a sex offender treatment program at Western State hospital for sneaking away from the hospital and having violent rape fantasies.