Shasta's Story

This is a partial transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," July 6, 2005, that has been edited for clarity.

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JOHN GIBSON, GUEST HOST: In the "Unresolved Problem" segment tonight, the chilling ordeal of eight-year old Shasta Groene (search). Shasta was rescued this weekend in Idaho after allegedly being abducted more than six weeks ago by a convicted sex offender.

She's now giving authorities nightmarish accounts of what she and her nine-year old brother Dylan endured. In addition, new information has surfaced about the violent past of 42-year-old Joseph Duncan charged yesterday in the abduction. and reportedly under suspicion for murdering Shasta and Dylan's mother and other family members.

Geraldo Rivera joins us now. You just got off the phone with Shasta's father, Steve Groene.

GERALDO RIVERA, FOX CORRESPONDENT: Steve has become very close over the last six weeks or so. I really identify with his plight.

I had a long conversation with him. He sees — in fact, he stays with Shasta at the hospital. He didn't last night. The bed is too small in her room, but he has up until now been staying with her.

There he is. He's a guy who is torn between elation over the fact that his daughter was alive. He said that's what keeps him sane, the fact that he recognizes how close, in his words, he came to losing all three of his children. Now his son Slade, the 13-year-old was killed at the scene.

So he — you know, he just absolutely is clinging to his child and watching as she gives these statements. He says the questioning of Shasta is going along well, but it's very delicate. They don't want her to "shut down" again, in his words. They say they have told Steve that they are fairly certain that her brother Dylan is dead, that those remains found are his.

But according to Steve, it was out in the wild a long time. The animals got to it. Very little organic material left. That's why they will have to rely on the DNA results coming from Quantico to see if indeed it is nine-year-old Dylan. They are, you know, fairly certain — you know — as I said, "fairly certain" in his words.

The investigation, though, although they think Duncan is the only one responsible for the triple homicide at this stage because there's no signs of any other perpetrator. In Steve's words the investigation is "far from over."

He, like me and like Mark Fuhrman, can't understand how Joseph Duncan could have bound those three people, including the boyfriend of Brenda. Mark was, you know, a linebacker size guy. How do you bind all these people and then bludgeon them to death?

He's a child raper. The one thing Steve did hit on, though, John, that I think the viewers really have to know about, is this whole feeling of how could this man be free? How could he be free on $15,000 bail when he is accused of repeating the crime, the child rape that he was in for and got branded a category three sex offender?

He can't understand. Steve Groene is a simple man. He reminds me a lot of Mark Lunsford, Jessica's dad down in Florida. So many of these cases.

They just can't understand it because reasonable, ordinary, normal people can't understand how a judge can set someone free accused of raping two more kids, $15,000 bail. If you're going to stay for 38 years in prison, or he's going to split and waste the $15,000. Which would you do? Stay, 38 years in prison, run away, squander the $15,000?

GIBSON: None of us can understand and apparently is that the story didn't have the information on his desk that this guy was a level three offender.

RIVERA: I think that that's a lot of baloney.

GIBSON: That's the judge.

RIVERA: I think the judge was being lazy. I think he was being lazy. He was going by the — you know, just by rote, by memory. How do I do this? This is what I do. The prosecution asked $257,000.

Why did they only ask $25,000 anyway? The prosecution asks $25,000, that's probably too much. Let me cut it down. He does this 10 times a day, 20 times a day. He doesn't look and see what is this? This is a child raper. This is a potential child murderer. They're a child torturer. It's — what if it was his — you know, it's just something that just gets me so mad.

GIBSON: Well, what about the spec of the scene? I mean, Duncan, according to his own blogs, had these demons inside of him. And he sound like a very angry murderous man for a long time. So, why is it that you and Fuhrman and others, and Steve Groene, I guess concluded, can't imagine the scenario in which he could accomplish this thing at the house in the first place, when he killed three people, to grab two kids to molest.

RIVERA: Well, it may have happened exactly that way. But then he asked to find the house, which is in the sticks. There's no street lights, nothing. You got to know your way around that neighborhood.

Two dogs there. Dogs that are very unfriendly, according to Steve's older son, who lived there until just a couple weeks before the homicide. So you're going to get — find a house in the dark in the woods, get past the dogs. Then you got to tie up the 6'4" 220-pounder, along with Brenda and Slade, the 13-year old.

Then you got to beat them to death. It's just a lot for one child raper to do. You know, he's too far down the food chain of criminals. But it may be.

It may turn out to be exactly that. I find it hard to believe, but it may indeed turn out to be that. I don't think that — the only thing I'm concerned with is making sure that no one walks because that they want to button up the case because they have a perpetrator in custody, a hideous, vile, you know, generously eligible for the death penalty purple ready.

I don't want to shut it down, once they identify Dylan. And I want to make sure that each and every person, if there were others involved, gets exactly what's coming to him.

This is the kind of crime that defines a nation. How do you deal with people who perpetrate these kinds of crimes? I submit to you there's only one way to deal with this.

He has his day in court, but if the authorities are correct and if this child is correct, and if the evidence as we understand it is correct, this is a man who richly deserves much more than the humane lethal injection that's coming to him.

GIBSON: Bill is opposed to the death penalty. I am not. I think this is why we have a death penalty is for people like Joseph Duncan.

RIVERA: Me, too. This is not — the death penalty shouldn't be for the 7-11 robbery that goes bad. The death penalty is for a particular breed of evil that inflicts this kind of terror and this kind of torment on a child. They richly deserve the worst.

GIBSON: Geraldo Rivera. Geraldo, as always, thank you.

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