Shasta Groene told authorities that while Joseph Duncan held her captive at a Montana campsite, he described killing at least three other children – a tip that prompted authorities to investigate Duncan as a possible serial killer.

In federal court hearings in Boise this week, documents submitted into evidence and law enforcement witness testimony showed that the then-8-year-old girl told police about Duncan’s possible prior crimes shortly after her rescue on July 2, 2005.

Two weeks later, an FBI Special Agent interviewed Duncan at the Kootenai County Jail about the prior crimes - an interview that defense attorneys are trying to have suppressed. They also claim that Duncan asked for his attorney, and the agent ignored the request.

The next day, the agent returned to the jail with two detectives from California, but Duncan refused to speak with them. Duncan is a suspect in the killings of a 10-year-old boy in Riverside in 1997, and two young Seattle-area girls in 1996.

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge took under advisement defense motions to suppress Duncan’s statements to the FBI agent and to suppress evidence gathered from Duncan’s vehicle after his arrest.

Duncan already has pleaded guilty to killing three people at the Groene family home east of Coeur d’Alene, kidnapping and molesting the family’s two youngest children and then killing one of them, 9-year-old Dylan Groene.

Duncan faces a possible death penalty in federal sentencing hearings set for April.