The man with Shasta, Joseph Edward Duncan III, was arrested and charged with kidnapping, but he has requested a lawyer and is refusing to talk to authorities, Kootenai County sheriff's Capt. Ben Wolfinger said Sunday.

Duncan won't be appointed a public defender until a court hearing Tuesday, Wolfinger said.

In the meantime, the search for Dylan continues, though investigators say the information they have points to the boy being dead.

''Our goal is to find Dylan one way or another,'' Wolfinger said.

Investigators haven't revealed what they believe happened to Dylan or how long they believe the boy was alive after the children's mother, 13-year-old brother and their mother's boyfriend were bludgeoned to death in their home May 16.

Sunday night, the children's father, Steven Groene, spoke publicly for the first time about being reunited with his daughter at the hospital Saturday and his hopes for still finding his son.

''When I walked in the door, her face just lit up,'' Groene told Fox News' Geraldo Rivera, choking back tears. ''She put her arms out and said 'Daddy, Daddy!' It was one of the better moments of my life.

''She looks real good. Very upbeat. She acts just like the little girl I saw three weeks before she disappeared.''

Groene said police instructed him not to ask Shasta questions about what happened. He said he had never heard of Duncan before Saturday and still didn't know much about the man. Authorities weren't telling him much about the evidence involving Dylan, either, he said, but he said they didn't tell him to give up hope.

''Obviously, in the case of Shasta, someone can be missing a long time and still come back safe,'' he said.

There was no sign of Dylan when Shasta was recognized by a waitress, who called police around 2 a.m. Saturday.

The arrest of Duncan, a 42-year-old from Fargo, N.D., who had spent more than a decade in prison for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint, has raised many questions and provided few answers.

''Where have Duncan and Shasta and Dylan been the last six weeks? Was Duncan involved in the triple homicide? Were other people involved? Is so, who and where are they?'' Wolfinger said.

''Why is probably the biggest question we have,'' he said.

Shasta spoke at length with investigators on Saturday, but authorities are treating her gently, Wolfinger said.

''She's a little girl who's been through who knows what in the past six weeks,'' he said.

Authorities believe Duncan, who was raised in Tacoma, Wash., remained in the Pacific Northwest with the children during the six weeks they were missing. Wolfinger hasn't said whether authorities believe Duncan was involved in the slayings, and it wasn't known whether he had any connection with the victims.

Halfway across the country, officials were facing another tough question: Why had Duncan been released on bail earlier this year after being charged with molesting a 6-year-old boy at a Minnesota school playground?

Becker County, Minn., District Judge Thomas Schroeder, who set bail at $15,000 despite prosecutors' request that it be $25,000, said Sunday that he barely remembers the case and isn't sure whether he knew then that the man was a registered Level 3 sex offender.

''Usually on a bail hearing you have limited information, and so you set it in an amount that you think is appropriate,'' the judge said. He said if he had known Duncan's record, he would have set it high enough that Duncan would not have gone free.

Police in Fargo said they had been looking for Duncan since May, but had no indication he had fled to Idaho.

Days before the children disappeared, an ominous message was posted on a Web site that officials said Duncan maintained. ''I am scared, alone and confused, and my reaction is to strike out toward the perceived source of my misery, society,'' the May 11 entry said. ''My intent is to harm society as much as I can, then die.''

Forty investigators were working the case Sunday, with the FBI and Idaho State Patrol backing up city and county police.

A search of the stolen Jeep Duncan was driving has been completed, and the evidence was forwarded to the FBI, Wolfinger said. He declined to describe that evidence.