COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho (AP) – Preliminary DNA tests showed no traces of the blood of two missing children in the home where three other people were slain, raising hopes that Dylan and Shasta Groene are still alive, officials said Thursday.

Only the blood of the three murder victims – the missing children’s mother and older brother and the mother’s boyfriend – was found at the scene, according to initial analysis by the FBI.

“There is no indication that any of the blood is from the children,” Kootenai County Sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. “It bolsters our feeling the children are alive and we’ll recover them and bring them home.”

“We are not looking for bodies,” he added.

Dylan, 9, and Shasta, 8, have been missing since the three bodies were discovered in the rural home on May 16. Investigators believe the children were in the house as the victims were bound and bludgeoned, and may have been abducted by the killers.

The FBI has placed a high priority of this case and has been rushing the processing of evidence from the home, located eight miles east of Coeur d’Alene. More results are expected Friday, Wolfinger said.

Officers on Thursday also began searching a nearby garbage dump, looking for evidence, Wolfinger said. That search, covering about a half-acre of land, is expected to take five to 10 days, he said.

Authorities have already searched across the Northwest and fielded more than 1,150 tips in hopes of finding the children.

A memorial service was held Wednesday at the Real Life Ministries church for Brenda Groene, 40, and 13-year-old Slade Groene. Mark McKenzie, 37, will have a private service.

“Those who hurt children, God will take care of,” said Pastor Bill Putman. “I tell you, hell’s a long time.”

Brenda Groene and other family members had done drugs and committed petty crimes over the years, but investigators have not publicly connected any of that to the slayings.

Watson has speculated there was more than one killer because all the victims were bound. Officers also suspect the victims knew the killer because there was no sign of forced entry.

Public suspicion has centered on Steven Groene, Brenda’s ex-husband. But deputies insist he is not a suspect, even though he has no alibi for the night of the slayings, failed a lie detector test when asked if he knew the whereabouts of the children, and issued a puzzling public plea for the return of Dylan and Shasta.

Although he attended Wednesday night’s memorial, he said nothing at the service, or afterward to reporters.

“Please, please release my children safely,” Groene said last week. “They had nothing to do with any of this.”

Officers could not say what “any of this” referred to.

Because the Groene home is close to Interstate 90, just west of a pass in the Rocky Mountains, investigators have said it is possible a random motorist committed the crimes and then jumped onto the highway heading toward Montana or Seattle.

Steven and Brenda Groene were married in 1986 and had five children before they divorced in 2001. In a television interview, Steven Groene said he and his ex-wife had squabbled over visitation rights as recently as a few days before the slayings, but otherwise got along.

AP-ES-05-26-05 1453EDT

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