“It’s almost bed time.”

Those are the first words Joseph Edward Duncan III wrote in his blog on Sunday, January 4, 2004.

Joe was 43 years old when he started the blog he called The Fifth Nail. By 2004, he had already served 17 years in prison for stealing cars and raping at least two young boys at gunpoint. Duncan himself told his therapist that he’d raped over a dozen younger boys by the time he was 16 years old. In his own words, Joe grew up in prison.

He was in and out of jail in 90s, living all over the west coast before starting the blog. By the time he was let out of prison in 2000, he moved to Fargo, North Dakota in apparent attempt to begin a new life.

Almost bed time, I hope I can get some sleep after sleeping in to noon today.

In his first post, Joe wrote about wasting time playing video games, feeding his cat and the self-delusion he noticed suffered by millions about the supposed heights human intelligence. It was an unremarkable start. No one was reading what he wrote.

Joe slept in the next day, missing his alarm. He worked late to make up time lost. When he got home, he wrote a 1400 word essay on why sex offenders do what they do. Offenders are victims of their badly distorted view of reality, he wrote, and of a justice system ill equipped to handle anyone from sex offenders to drug addicts. The offenders don’t believe they’re hurting the children, he blogged, and the system doesn’t know how to react to that. He insists that “the system” — that is, the justice system, the mental health system and society at large — has to tell the offenders the truth, though it becomes clear that the truth is a moving target for Joe.

The most poignant passage in the blog is this:

I am not a pedophile nor have I ever been accused of being one. Also, I was a child (age 16) when I committed my crime. And possibly most significant; because of my appearance and family circumstances I was molested so often and by so many different people that, up until the time of my offense, I actually thought it was normal and that everybody did it.

The following day, Joe made it into work on time. He found time in the evening to berate the existence of the Prison Industrial Complex after setting up motion-detecting security cameras in his home because he felt paranoid about going back to prison. Every time he heard about a child being hurt on the news, he’d check his alibi. He thought the cameras documenting his life might help if another case came up.

But it still doesn’t give me any real sense of security, because a crafty prosecutor can tear apart the best alibi. They know the law doesn’t work by its self and they think it is up to them to make it work. The law is just a bunch of rules, and whoever can manipulate those rules the best wins. It’s a very sad game, where nobody wins. While the prosecutors and police focus on the “little victories” the overall situation is getting worse.

—-

Joe wrote multiple lengthy blog posts every day about the sort of stuff you expect to see on any personal blog: computer programming, artificial intelligence, relationships, cats, Hitler, injustice, oppression and then, without fail, he went back to the inescapable thought of sex crimes. Once or twice, he quoted Noam Chomsky’s writings on prison profiteering. Still, no one read the blog.

I feel so frustrated knowing that I can see solutions to many problems in our society where most people don’t even see the problems (or at least not the real problems). And I’m sure the solutions are correct becuase they are typically coroborated by experts. And the expert are also frustrated because no-body will listen to them iether. Society is so full of fear, it just can’t see striaght, and it is our government that propogates the fear.

Through all the pain and suffering, Joe tended to think rather highly of himself. He admitted that he committed terrible acts but, he said, he was a confused young victim himself. Now, with the blog, he was simply telling truths that others could not or would not see. He advocated for sex offenders’ rights and against an oppressive state. Joe knew that the truth would make him enemies.

The blog continued through January 2004. Joe wrote about his belief in God, his dreams, quotes that resonated with him, his passion for scuba diving, his computer programming classes at North Dakota State University and, of course, Joe continued to write about sex offenders. The blog had a few readers by now, according to Joe’s posts. On some days he’d have 400 hits and on other days, there would be 40 or 4. On days when he had almost no visitors, Joe would launch into rants against Google for censoring his site from the search results. They were oppressive like the rest, he’d write on blogger, a Google product. But Joe would convey his thoughts no matter what stood in his way.

Almost every day for a month, many times a day, Joe wrote on the blog. Days after being frustrated with his lack of readers, he noted that the blog was really for himself anyway.

This blog is my connection to who I am and who I am becoming. It is a way for me to connect to who I was, so I can better understand who I will become. Just like the guy in the movie The Butterfly Effect, I can’t explain, so why do I even try. Because I know what I know, and that is all anyone can know.

Soon, Joe set up a streaming web cam, a novelty in 2004. He railed against the war in Iraq which, in early 2004, was front and center in the American psyche. Joe is somewhat difficult to precisely categorize politically but in the midst of many of his more unique ideas, one can see a clear identification with left wing politics borne of his education in prison. He frequently quoted communist and socialist ideas while showing disdain for what he characterized as the inhumane profiteering of capitalism.

—-

Joe’s paranoia about being “checked up on” by the police, arrested and returning to jail continued. Cops showed up at his home for regular checks. Whenever a child disappeared or was harmed, Joe feared that he would be blamed. He had nightmares about being arrested and wondered if people recognized him on the street or in airplanes. He wrote that “the propoganda against Sex Offenders is getting worse, soon there will be seperate restrooms and drinking fountains for us.” He repeatedly accused Google of blacklisting him as he showed that he did not understand the basics of Google’s PageRank. Joe called the paranoia his “daily torment.”

I am a mere citizen’s complaint away from going back to jail at anytime.

For a tormented person, his day-to-day existence bears many similarities to yours and mine. He worried for his cats, one aging and one younger. He also wondered how to let his neighbor’s romantic advances down gently because he couldn’t give her the love she deserved.

When Joe moved to a new apartment in the same building, the police performed a new address check as they are required to do with all sex offenders. Joe quickly reached out to the police to complain, culminating with a letter to the Chief of Police comparing his plight to the Jews in Nazi Germany. Joe worried that the police harassment would hurt his earning potential on top of the wanton trampling of his liberties. He felt dehumanized by police check ups. He felt as though he wasn’t wanted.

Sometimes, I just want to cry.

—-

“Blogging the Fifth Nail.” The Fifth Nail is the nail that was meant to peirce the Heart of Christ and end his suffering.

Around June and July of 2004, Joe’s visions became stranger. Whether they were dreams or hallucinations became more difficult to discern. One night, he saw a long rope hanging from the ceiling emitting a “strange noise.” The next morning, he felt disembodied, possessed and utterly confused. He saw animals and objects that didn’t exist. He heard noises where there were none.

When strange things like this happen to me, even if I am half asleep, it reminds me that I can not trust my own mind.

On Friday, July 9, 2004, Joe got a call from a cop.

“Apparently I am a suspect for some un-defined incident that occurred last Sunday,” wrote Joe. “He would not tell me anything about what happened, though he did not seem too concerned except to say it was a felony and all felonies are serious (in other words it probably was not too serious at least).”

Joe was asked to drive an hour to speak with the police. Instead, he paid $500 for an attorney to help him avoid the hassle.

“That was money I had hoped to use to buy a new wet suit for an upcoming scuba trip on Lake Superior,” he lamented.

Within a few weeks, police armed with a warrant came into his house multiple times. The officers took his computer, camera, camcorders and media. He blogged it all, registering his disgust with the entire fascistic process.

I am now 99.99 percent sure I will move to a different state as soon as I graduate and can find a job in a state where I’m not required to register.

By this time, the blog posts became more rare. In September 2004, following the police action, there was only post. It was made from Joe’s home on a Sunday afternoon.

Nothing to do, everything being undone. Nobody to remind me. Life is about giving your choices over to God. Chicken pot pie in the oven. Why can others not see the unity of the universe. Why are they so blind in their dungeons.

In October, Joe wrote another letter to the Chief of Police:

“Healing can not start without forgiveness. So if you don’t forgive, then you are only prolonging the pain (others pain). You are even guiltier than the culprit because you are in a better position to forgive. You can start the healing instead of continuing to hurt people, yet you choose to not forgive and ignore the most important message from Christ.”

Posts were becoming less and less descriptive of his day-to-day life. Instead, he wrote more airy thoughts that occasionally bordered on nonsensical to readers outside of Joe.

His next post was titled “Without forgiveness, there is only insanity.” Later on, he wrote that “The only cure for crime is Love. Everything else is just more crime.”

In March, Joe was officially accused of molesting two young boys in a Minnesota playground in 2004. By this point, the police were monitoring the blog. He denied the charges in a post and then wished for death. He was scared and alone, he wrote, trapped in a battle against demons (a term he did not necessarily use literally) that “have me tied to a spit and the fire has already been lit.” In May, he informed his readers that the demons had won the battle, trapping “happy Joe” in the same dungeon he had once trapped his demons.

In April, a Fargo businessman wrote Joe a $15,000 check to make bail on the molestation charges. Within just a few weeks, Joe fled from the authorities — but he didn’t stop posting on his blog.

The demonized Joe wrote a May 11, 2005 blog post that was, in retrospect, a confession to multiple homicides and rapes.

To be more specific, I am scared, alone, and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society. My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die. As for the “Happy Joe” (Jet), well he was just a dream. The bogeyman was alive and happy long before Happy Joe.

I was in prison for over 18 years, since the age of 17. As an adult all I knew was the oppression of incarceration. All those years I dreamed of getting out…And getting even. Instead, I got out and I got even, but did not get caught. So, I got even again, and again did not get caught. So, I figured, well, I got even twice (actually more, but that’s here nor there), even if I’m the only one who knows, so now what? Well that was when the “Happy Joe” dream started. I met a bunch of really great people, the kind of people I didn’t even know existed, but here they were, bunches of them, my neighbors, my landlords, my professors, my coworkers, and they were all good people, who were willing to give me a chance despite my past. They were willing to accept me and be my friend, something that was new for me, having been betrayed by many “friends” and even my own family.

So, I tried to make it work. But the problem was those demons. The ones who “got even” for me. They kept reminding me that if my new “friends” knew about them (and what they, I, had done to even), then so much for their friendship. So, “Happy Joe” was just dreaming, or pretending to be happy.

In a May 13 blog post, Joe wrote that he kept a private journal that’s “hundreds of times more frank” thank the blog but is protected by PGP encryption that is “very un-crackable. I figure in 30 years or more we will have the technology to easily crack the encryption and then the world will know who I really was, and what I really did, and what I really thought. Also, maybe then they will understand that despite my actions, I’m not a bad person, I just have a disease contracted from society, and it hurts a lot.”

On May 16, the police discovered three dead bodies in Idaho. A man, 37, his girlfriend, 40 and her son, 13, were killed in their homes at Lake Coeur d’Alene by “blunt trauma to the head” after being bound. They would later discover the her 8 year old daughter alive and her 9 year old son dead, his remains left in a remote area of Montana. The little girl would later share a vivid account of just how Joe slaughtered her family and molested her and her brother for weeks.

There were no more posts to Joe’s blog.

By the time he was arrested, Joe’s latest crimes had made headlines all over the world. His blog was subject to intense scrutiny from a curious if repulsed public. A Georgian blogger noticed the similarities between Joe and the sketch of the suspect in a 1997 murder in California, reported the Seattle Times. In time, he confessed to two more murders in Washington.

Joe is currently serving six life sentences on death row in an Indiana federal penitentiary.

More info:

• The Cellar
• Wikipedia
• Articles about Duncan