Vigilante bloggers and Oak Harbor police are investigating a possible connection to alleged serial killer Joseph Edward Duncan III and the 1997 unsolved murder of 7-year-old Deborah Palmer.

“Anytime a child abductor gets arrested, we always look to see if some connection is there (to the Palmer case),” said Sgt. Jerry Baker, a detective with the Oak Harbor Police.

“We can’t put him up here at this point, but there’s still a lot of work to be done on this guy. What else he could be responsible for, we don’t know yet.”

Duncan made national headlines after he was arrested and charged in a killing and abduction spree in Idaho this summer that left two adults and two children dead. Police caught him at a Denny’s restaurant in Coeur d’Alene with the 8-year-old girl he allegedly kidnapped and sexually assaulted.

After the arrest, police in Riverside, Calif., tied Duncan to the unsolved, 1997 abduction and murder of a 10-year-old boy.

This week, a number of media organizations reported that Duncan, a convicted child molester, also confessed to FBI agents that he killed two little girls in 1996 while he was living in Seattle.

Kara Admundson of Minneapolis, Minn., is a moderator for a blog, or weblog, that has followed the Duncan case. The Cellar is a web-based publication that contains the collaborative writings of a community of bloggers and self-styled detectives.

Its Web address is jetd63.blogspot.com.

Admundson claims that the bloggers first made the connection between Duncan and Anthony Martinez, the 10-year-old California boy who was kidnapped and killed, weeks before law enforcement did. She sent a letter to the FBI and spoke to a reporter in Riverside about the possible tie-in earlier this summer.

Now the bloggers have turned their eyes to Oak Harbor and other communities with unsolved child murders or disappearances.

Admundson recently sent an e-mail message to the Oak Harbor police noting the similarities between Palmer’s mysterious disappearance and murder and the child-murder cases Duncan has been tied to.

She even provided a timeline that puts Duncan in Seattle on March 26, 1997, the day Palmer disappeared on her way to Oak Harbor Elementary School. Five days later, a beach walker found her body washed up at Strawberry Point in North Whidbey.

Admundson knows that Duncan had a polygraph test in Seattle the day Palmer disappeared. If the bloggers or authorities can figure out what time of day the test was given, they can rule him in or out.

“This guy is really a predator,” she said, “and could be responsible for a lot more that we know about.”

Oak Harbor Police Capt. Rick Wallace said detectives have been in contact with the FBI and Idaho police to see if it’s possible that Duncan could be Palmer’s killer.

“Anyone with an unsolved child murder case would be derelict, I think, in not contacting the FBI” about Duncan, Wallace said.

“We are going to jump all over it and see that comes of it,” he added.

In a way, Deborah Palmer has haunted the city for the last eight years. While many residents in the transient Navy community didn’t live here at the time, most people know the name and have heard the story.

Her case is the Oak Harbor Police Department’s only unsolved murder.

Wallace said it would be a great relief to the department if Duncan did turn out to be Palmer’s murderer, but nobody is holding their breath. He said detectives have identified several “people of interest” in the case who they have been looking at for years, though nothing has panned out.

Baker said he and other detectives have been through every possible angle in the murder and have run down hundreds of tips. They recently asked members of the state Attorney General’s homicide tracking team to review their investigation.

“Sometimes a fresh set of eyes can help,” he said.

Again, nothing.

“We did all we could do,” he said. “It’s one of those cases that’s going to require a lucky break.”

You can reach Jessie Stensland at jstensland@whidbeynewstimes.com or 675-6611.