COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho (AP) – When waitress Amber Deahn spotted 8-year-old Shasta Groene at a Denny’s restaurant around 2 a.m., something about the little girl’s face was familiar.

Cautiously, carefully, she talked to the child and the man with her, bringing her a milkshake and offering her crayons to keep her occupied. The child looked so much like photos of a girl who had been missing since her mother, brother and mother’s boyfriend were slain a few miles away that the waitress called police.

“It clicked in my brain,” said Deahn, 24. Her restaurant and businesses across the area had been displaying photos of the girl and her brother since the youngsters disappeared six weeks earlier.

As the officers arrived and talked to the little girl early Saturday, Shasta broke down and told them her name.

The man with her, a 42-year-old register sex offender, was arrested. But Shasta’s 9-year-old brother, Dylan, remained missing Saturday and was feared dead, Kootenai County Sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said.

He said investigators believe the boy had been alive when he disappeared and were continuing to search for him, but initial information wasn’t promising. He wouldn’t elaborate.

The man Shasta had been eating onion rings, cheese sticks and chicken fingers with was identified by authorities as Joseph Edward Duncan III of Fargo, N.D. He was charged Saturday with kidnapping and was being held without bond, with more charges possible, Wolfinger said.

It was not known whether Duncan had any connection to the victims.

“We don’t have any idea who Duncan is, other than a very, very sick individual. Sick and stupid to go to a Denny’s at 2 a.m. with a child,” Bob Price, Shasta Groene’s paternal uncle, said by telephone from Tacoma, Wash.

Shasta’s father, Steve Groene, and her oldest brother, Vance, spent much of the day Saturday at a hospital with Shasta. They did not make any statements to reporters, but when asked when he was driving away from the hospital if he was relieved, Vance Groene said, “more than relieved.”

Duncan had seemed jittery and jumpy, Deahn said, not unusual for Denny’s at 2 a.m., the hour that bars close in Idaho. But she wondered about the little girl.

The waitress said she gave Shasta crayons and coloring papers and a mask from the movie “Madagascar” to keep her busy while she talked to the restaurant manager and called police.

“I was trying to figure out a way to keep them there so the officers would have time to get there,” Deahn said.

She offered the girl dessert and then took her time making a vanilla milkshake. She said she and manager Linda Olsen were careful not to alert other co-workers or customers to the situation as they discussed whether the girl might be the missing Shasta.

Duncan had an outstanding warrant for failing to register as a high-risk sex offender and was facing charges of molesting a 6-year-old boy in Minnesota. He had been released on bail in April, a few weeks before the children disappeared.

When Deahn spotted the two, they were less than 10 miles from the home where Shasta’s mother and two others were discovered bound and bludgeoned to death on May 16.

It was not yet known where the girl had spent the past six weeks. She was being interviewed at the hospital Saturday but appeared physically well, Wolfinger said.

“She’s a little girl,” Wolfinger said. “Obviously she’s been through a pretty traumatic time.”

Tom Kraus, Brenda Groene’s great-uncle in Whitefish, Mont., said family members were elated by the news.

“Obviously, we were very excited they found Shasta,” Kraus said. “We are hopeful they can find Dylan. We’re very happy those folks at Denny’s recognized her and that they found her.”

Dylan and Shasta had been missing since at least May 16, when sheriff’s deputies responded to their rural home after a neighbor reported that dogs were barking and the door of one vehicle was open but no one was in sight.

The deputies found the bound, brutalized bodies of Brenda Groene, 40, Slade Groene, 13, and Mark McKenzie, 37.

Investigators had interviewed hundreds of people, searched through 800 tons of trash and fielded more than 2,000 tips in their search.

Police were seeking a warrant Saturday to search a stolen red Jeep that officials said Duncan had been driving. In Fargo, officers were securing Duncan’s apartment in a neighborhood where a number of North Dakota State University students live, police Sgt. Shannon Ruziska said.

Duncan, whose criminal history dates back to 1980, enrolled at the university in 2000, majoring in computer science, and made the Deahn’s list. When he moved to Fargo, more than 300 people attended a community-notification meeting.

Kerstin Haugen, who lives in an apartment building next door, said she had not seen Duncan for several months. Police stopped by looking for him, she said.

“He seemed normal,” Haugen said. She said she was not aware that he was a registered sex offender when she first moved in, but found out later from neighbors. She said he kept to himself.

Ruziska said police were doing quarterly checks on Duncan.

“The call from Idaho was a surprise to us,” Ruziska said.

Duncan was convicted in 1980 of raping a 14-year-old boy in Tacoma, Wash., when he was 16. The Groene home is within easy sight of Interstate 90, the most direct route between Fargo and Tacoma.

Last July, Duncan was accused of molesting a 6-year-old boy at a school playground in Minnesota. He had been released by Becker County, Minn., authorities in April on $15,000 bond and ordered to stay in touch with a probation officer. In May, authorities said they were seeking Duncan on a warrant after he failed to comply.

Becker County Attorney Joseph Evans did not immediately return a call Saturday seeking comment.

Minnesota has moved to crack down on sex offenders since the slaying of college student Dru Sjodin across the state line in North Dakota. A sex offender from Minnesota is accused in that slaying.

A federal law creating a Web site with state-by-state information on sex offenders was inspired in part by the Sjodin case.

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Associated Press writers Dave Kolpack in Fargo, N.D., and John K. Wiley in Spokane, Wash., contributed to this report.

AP-ES-07-02-05 1932EDT

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