Coroner: Idaho victims had blunt head trauma
Children still missing; no strong leads in case
 |  An Amber Alert was issued for siblings Shasta and Dylan Groene. |
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| | HOT LINE | A sheriff's hot line has been established for any information about the case: 208 446-2292 or 208 446-2293.
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COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho (CNN) -- The coroner's office concluded Thursday the victims of a triple homicide in this quiet Idaho town died of blunt force trauma to the head -- a crime that has puzzled investigators and left two young children missing.
The three victims were bound and the blows to their heads left a blood-splattered scene in the home, said Capt. Ben Wolfinger, a spokesman for the Kootenai County Sheriff's Department.
The bodies of Brenda Groene, 40; her 13-year-old son, Slade; and her boyfriend, Mark McKenzie, 37, were found in the house Monday night.
Neighbors had called police when they didn't see any activity at the home on a bay of Lake Coeur d'Alene.
Sheriff Rocky Watson called the slayings "a very brutal triple homicide." He said they were not random, rather that "someone was on a mission."
Authorities have launched a massive search for Groene's missing children, 9-year-old Dylan and 8-year-old Shasta, including combing the thick woods, ponds and creeks near the home.
Their father, Steve Groene, pleaded for their safety Thursday afternoon.
"Release them in a safe area, where the law enforcement can find them. Call the help line, let them know they can be found. Please, we need the safe return of those children," Groene said.
Groene, who was divorced from the children's mother, has been ruled out as a suspect, Watson said.
According to the coroner's office, Groene's ex-wife and their son died from "lacerations and contusions of the brain due to skull fractures" from the blunt force trauma. McKenzie died of contusions, or bruises, to the brain.
The time of deaths could not be immediately determined.
Authorities said the five were last seen alive Sunday night at a barbecue at the home.
Among those seen at the house that night was 33-year-old Robert Roy Lutner, who has been cleared as a "person of interest" in the case.
Sheriff's deputies and FBI agents interviewed him for more than seven hours about the murders and concluded he "had nothing to do" with the crimes, Wolfinger said.
In addition, Lutner voluntarily took a polygraph test "that confirmed his truthfulness," Wolfinger said.
Aside from Lutner, no one who went to the barbecue had yet contacted authorities, Wolfinger said.
"We want these people to call us," he said. "We need to talk to these folks and we need to get their elimination prints, so we can figure out who was here legitimately, and who may have been involved in this crime."
Authorities say they are no closer to finding the children or the suspect behind the brutal killings.
Wolfinger said authorities had received more than 200 tips from "all kinds of people, all walks of life" but had no other strong leads.
In the Amber Alert issued Tuesday, authorities described Dylan as 4 feet tall, 60 pounds, with crew-cut blond hair and blue eyes, and Shasta as 3 feet 10 inches tall, 40 pounds, with long auburn-brown hair and hazel-green eyes.
Wolfinger said authorities remained optimistic the children were alive.
"Why would the killer come in, kill three people and take two children? Does that give us hope for the children? You bet it does," he said.
"That's all we have to go on at this point is hope. Without solid leads, we're going on hope and those prayers."
"Our hope is, this is one of those miraculous cases where those kids are still being well taken care of and someone, somewhere is going to see them at a restaurant, at a gas station -- somewhere," Wolfinger said.
Forensics experts from Spokane, Washington, were helping county investigators review fingerprint evidence and state police were helping process DNA evidence, Wolfinger said.
Crime scene evidence has been sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia.
CNN's Betty Anderson, Ninette Sosa and Alina Cho contributed to this report.
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Associated Press contributed to this report.
