20 years after escaping serial killer who murdered family, Shasta Groene McClain returns to Coeur d’Alene

A headshot of Shasta Groene. | Courtesy Deb Shapiro COEUR D’ALENE (The Spokesman-Review) — Two decades after the brutal murder of her family and her subsequent torture by their killer, Shasta Groene McClain is returning to Coeur d’Alene with a story to tell. On Aug. 8 at the Well Read Moose, Groene McClain and true crime novelist Gregg Olsen will be signing copies of “Out of the Woods,” Olsen’s new book detailing the before, during and after of her kidnapping by serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan III. “I can’t imagine how brave she is for doing this. If it were me, I wouldn’t want to,” said Liz Burkwist, who organized the signing event on request from Groene McClain and Olsen. “But she’s done a lot that I wouldn’t be able to do.” After being forced to watch and listen to Duncan bludgeon their mother, older brother and their mother’s fiancé to death in May of 2005, 8-year-old Shasta and her brother Dylan, 9, were abducted from their Coeur d’Alene home by Duncan. Duncan held the siblings in Lolo National Forest, where he repeatedly assaulted them and eventually killed Dylan. Shasta was rescued when Duncan took her for dinner at a Denny’s. She had been missing for 48 days. Olsen was working on a book about the Sunshine Mine Disaster in Kellogg, Idaho at the time of Shasta and Dylan’s disappearance. He remembers seeing the banners and billboards on the highway and hearing people talking about and praying for the missing children. “For the Pacific Northwest, I don’t think there was any story that broke our hearts more,” Olsen said, “and also brought us more joy than when she came home. I mean, we just couldn’t believe it.” As the years passed, Olsen said he – and everyone close to the case – continued to think about the surviving sibling. He reached out to her around five years ago to see if she would work with him on a book. “I always thought, well, why don’t we know this little girl’s story? You know, now she’s a young woman, and I want to know her story,” he said. “And she said she was willing to tell it.” Groene McClain said that prior to Olsen reaching out, she had been working on a book with a good friend. The friend started a fundraiser for the book, which Groene McClain didn’t have access to. “As soon as money hit the account, she took off,” Groene McClain said. “I felt really powerless, you know?” When Olsen reached out about writing a book, Groene McClain said that he had said that she didn’t need to answer right away – that the two could keep in contact for a while as she mulled it over. She decided then that he would be the one to tell her story. “For years, it felt like screaming into the void. I yearned to share my story, but no one could truly listen. It was too much. Too terrible to hear,” she wrote in an essay for Oprah Daily. Groene McClain called talking to Olsen a “transformative” experience in her writing. Before, people had only ever listened to bits and pieces of her story, leaving her “feeling incomplete.” “Previously, people who did bother to look at my life after saw only my problems,” Groene McClain wrote. “This time, we explored the why. Self-reflection helped me understand my experiences and myself better.” Shasta Groene, 8, and her brother Dylan Groene, 9, were abducted by the serial killer who murdered their family in May of 2005. | Courtesy Deb Shapiro The interviewing process took place largely during three in-person meetings lasting from noon to 2 a.m. between herself, Olsen and psychologist Robin Bailey, Groene McClain said. By the end, she considered the two to be family. “It’s weird, because you would think that that must have been tiring, but it was just complete laughter,” Groene McClain said. “Really, just focusing on the task at hand. We were able to bond.” “Out of the Woods” jumps back and forth within Groene McClain’s memories. From her troubled family life before the abductions, to the time she spent in the Montana forest with her brother and Duncan, and finally to her often-unsuccessful endeavors to become the “normal girl” she wanted to be in the aftermath. “I felt like the only way into it was really in the way that it played out in real time, in her therapy,” Olsen said. “I thought, to me, the best way was that way, because she could not give her full story to anybody because they didn’t want to hear it.” Burkwist, who lived in Coeur d’Alene at the time the Groene children were missing, described the book as “raw” and “haunting.” “This is the shocking and horrifying story of what happened to her, but it’s also everything that happened afterwards, and I didn’t know that, really. But it really is the girl that lived.” Calling her story “one of the most horrific and tragic cases in the annals of true crime,” Olsen said that he hopes people “understand the complexity of trauma, and that severe trauma is something that may take a lifetime to overcome – and maybe you can’t overcome it.” Deeply traumatized people, he said, “will always need our love and care. Always.” “She’s a wonderful person. She has got humor. She’s caring. She’s sharp. She’s all the things you would want in somebody that would be your friend,” he said. “But she also carries a heavier load, and a load that we can’t always see, and I want people to know that about her.” Groene McClain said that, for her part, she wanted other survivors of trauma to hold onto hope. She said countless counselors told her that they were unable to help her because her trauma was “too deep,” making her feel like she would never get the support she needed to heal. “I want people to know that being rescued didn’t end the trauma of what happened to me and my brother,” she wrote in her essay. “I want other survivors to know they aren’t alone, that feeling broken is okay, and that healing isn’t about feeling ‘better’; it’s about trying to keep going even when everything around you seems to tell you to give up. That’s enough.” Describing himself as simply a vehicle for her story, Olsen said that he “stand(s) by this woman and her right to be heard.” “She was an incredible little girl to survive what she survived, and she is an incredible young adult making her way through life with all that’s been handed to her,” he said. “And it’s not been pretty, but she’s a fighter and she’s proven that out in the woods in Montana, and she’s proving it right now.” Returning to Coeur d’Alene for a book signing was a no-brainer for Groene McClain. She said she wants to show the town that showered her in love and support that she is overcoming her past, and she hopes that the people who donated to her friend’s fundraiser years ago will come and get what they were promised. “I want to thank everyone that has prayed for me and supported me throughout the years,” she said. “I am forever grateful for their positivity during my darkest times.”The post 20 years after escaping serial killer who murdered family, Shasta Groene McClain returns to Coeur d’Alene appeared first on East Idaho News.
Source: eastidahonews.com