James Duckett, a rogue cop turned child killer, was the 136th person executed by Florida since 1976, for the 1987 murder of a young girl in Lake County, and he is suspected of two additional murders. Not much is known about Duckett's background outside his being a Florida native born September 4, 1957.
On May 7, 1986, an unidentified dead woman was found in a watery pit near Lakeland, about 5'2", red-brown hair, and hazel eyes. She was fully clothed and wore an aqua-colored shirt and blue jeans and had been strangled. The woman was last seen entering a dark blue car, and in fact James Duckett was then driving a blue '82 Buick Regal. Duckett joined the Mascotte Police Department the following November. Two women accused him of sexual harassment over the next few months. In February 1987, a 19 year old woman encountered Duckett in his patrol car and told him she was looking for her boyfriend. He told her he was looking for him too and offered her a ride in his car. Duckett tried to kiss the woman, she refused, and he stopped and let her out.On May 1, he picked up an 18 year old while she was walking along the highway. Duckett drove to an isolated spot in an orange grove, parked, touched her breast, and tried to kiss her. She refused, after which he stopped and took her to the location she requested. Additionally, Duckett had two consenting encounters with a 17 year old girl early in the year, who performed oral sex on him when he stopped his patrol car at isolated spots.
On the evening of May 11, Duckett was on patrol in Mascotte when 11 year old Teresa McAbee walked to a convenience store two blocks from her house to run an errand. She left the store accompanied by a 16 year old Latinx boy who was doing laundry next door. They walked to the dumpster behind the convenience store and chatted for 20 or so minutes when Duckett approached. He went in the store and asked for her name and age. The clerk told him he estimated she was between 10 and 13. Duckett said he had to check up on her, so he went back outside and towards the dumpster, where he saw McAbee and the older boy. He talked with them and told McAbee to go home. The 16 year old claimed that after the encounter with Duckett, he went back to the laundromat to wait for his uncle, who soon showed up, that Duckett and McAbee were standing by the patrol car, and he asked the uncle the boy's age. Duckett then proposed the uncle talk to his nephew while he spoke to McAbee. They said Duckett put the girl in the passenger's side of his patrol car, closed the door, and walked over to the driver's side. The uncle said he didn't see McAbee touch the hood of Duckett's car.After McAbee didn't come back, her mother went to the convenience store looking for her. The clerk said he thought Duckett took her downtown to the police station. She and Teresa's sister drove around town for some time trying to find her. They didn't see any police cars around and eventually went to the Mascotte police station, but it was deserted. Mrs. McAbee then went to the nearby Groveland police station and said she wanted to report her daughter missing. An officer explained that it wasn't in his jurisdiction, but he would call the Mascotte PD and get an officer to meet her at the station there. She went back to the Mascotte station and waited 15 or so minutes.
At length, Duckett showed up, told her he met her daughter at the convenience store, gave her a ride in his patrol car, and told her to go home. The mother filed a missing persons report. Duckett went to the McAbees' house to obtain a photo of Teresa, called the police chief to tell him about the missing persons report, and said he'd printed out a flyer and was not in need of assistance. Duckett went back to the convenience store with a flyer, but told the clerk it was a poor quality picture and not good enough to post. He claimed he'd come back with a better photo, but never did. Duckett also brought flyers to two other convenience stores. One of the clerks at these stores said that the police regularly patroled the street out front once an hour or so, but Duckett did not show up from 9:30 PM until bringing back the flyer later that evening. His taped radio calls showed that he made none from 10:50 to 12:10 AM. Duckett went to the uncle's house to ask his nephew about Teresa, and at 3:00 AM returned to the mother's house.McAbee's body was found floating in a lake the morning of May 12 not far from the convenience store, raped, strangled, and drowned. Her underwear had bloodstains and her jeans had a semen stain on them (however no blood was found in Duckett's car). A technician for the sheriff's department examined the tire tracks at the crime scene and noticed they were quite unusual. While leaving the location, he noticed that one Mascotte patrol car had very similar tracks. The technician pulled over, examined the tracks, and noticed they matched those at the crime scene. The tracks were made by Goodyear Eagle winter weather tires, which were of little use in Florida and not sold there. A local tire center had been sent two sets of these tires by mistake, and not knowing what else to do with them, gave them to the Mascotte PD to put on their patrol cars.
Evidence showed that the vehicle that left the impressions had driven through a mud hole, but there was no evidence that Duckett cleaned his car, nor was any debris from the scene found on it. Witnesses also testified that Duckett was neat and clean later that night. The hood of his patrol car had his and McAbee's fingerprints on it and her prints were mixed with his, suggesting she was seated backwards on the hood and scooted up the car. A single pubic hair was found on her underwear. A couple of experts said they could not be certain it was Duckett's, but Michael Malone, an FBI investigator with a specialization in hair and fiber evidence, believed there was a high likelihood it was, and that the hair definitely did not belong to the 16 year old boy, his uncle, or any other male she had encountered that evening.Duckett had also been the only officer on patrol in Mascotte that evening and the last person seen with McAbee. He was suspended from the force on June 16 and fired three days later, but was not arrested or charged with anything at the moment as the investigation was still ongoing. Duckett got a new job as a laborer at a phosphate mine in Polk County. On September 19, Jeanifer Weldon, 14, went missing while going to a friend's house and her mother reported her disappearance to police. Weldon's body was found October 2 near Auburndale and had badly decomposed so the cause of death and any evidence of sexual assault were gone. Duckett was suspected in her murder due to gasoline receipts from September 19 proving he was in the area and he was also reported to have come into work at the mine two hours late and disheveled.
Weldon was noted to be carrying a green shopping bag and a stuffed toy before she went missing, and neither were found with her body. Duckett's wife told investigators that her husband brought home a lime green shopping bag with a stuffed toy for their two children.Duckett was indicted for Teresa McAbee's murder shortly after Weldon's body was found and he went on trial in January 1988. He denied having killed her, although he agreed in part with the Mexican boy and his uncle's accounts of May 11, 1987. The defense argued there was insufficient proof that the hair and tire tracks were from him. He was found guilty May 10, almost at the one year anniversary of the murder, and sentenced to death. He appealed his sentence to the state supreme court the following year and was turned down. Further appeals over the years were rejected, including the defense's demand for DNA testing, but the body fluid samples recovered from McAbee were too degraded to be useful by then.Duckett was one of seven defendants that Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced to death in his career, and his trial was the most high profile of the seven.
In 2006, the unidentified woman found strangled in 1986 was identified as Ronette Peterson, 22, of Lakeland. Peterson had recently moved from her hometown of Madrid, Iowa to Florida, and her family grew concerned and reported her missing after she stopped writing them letters. Peterson was identified from her fingerprints as she had once been arrested in Des Moines for DUI.Duckett had several defenders, including retired homicide detective Marshall Frank, who in 2003 was writing a book and said he believed the prosecution mishandled the physical evidence at the crime scene. Mascotte police chief Michael Brady and former mayor Josh Thomas also believed in his innocence, and Michael Malone also got in trouble for making false testimonies at several trials and submitting flawed evidence. However, the prosecution countered that the tracks made by the snow tires on Duckett's vehicle proved his guilt, and there were also the two women who reported that he sexually harassed them while on duty.
In 2006, Duckett's 2 year old grandson Trenton went missing in a high profile case and his Korean mother Melinda Duckett, stressed by the constant media attention, committed suicide a month later. Duckett was asked by police what he knew about this, and he revealed that Melinda, who was then formerly married to his son before their divorce, was part of an effort by Duckett's son to re-establish his relationship with his father and Melinda also intended to visit Duckett in prison with Trenton on the weekend of the boy's disappearance. Trenton has never been found.Governor Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant on February 27, 2026. The execution was scheduled for March 31, but got delayed when the state supreme court ordered a stay while DNA testing could be performed. The stay was lifted on July 8 and several final attempts at appealing to the state and Federal courts were unsuccessful. He was executed by lethal injection on July 28 after a last meal of eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits, and chocolate milk.
>>18617078>>18617073>>18617068wtf? why couldn't boomers just stop killing people?
>>18617075>Duckett's wife told investigators that her husband brought home a lime green shopping bag with a stuffed toy for their two children.>this psycho had a wife and kidswhy does this happen so often?
>>18617068>>18617066i wonder how many more pigs did this stuff before body cams? if you think they're bad now it was 5x worse in those days.
>>18617078>Mascotte police chief Michael Brady and former mayor Josh Thomas also believed in his innocenceof course you guys would. why wouldn't you?
>>18617093They can always turn them off.
>>18617093Body cams vindicated cops lmao
>>18617133>>18617093Trust me, they're more paranoid than they used to be and can't so easily kick your face in at a traffic stop when it's being recorded. The good ol' days never were.
>>18617141Yeah yeah. Let me guess, black people used to be peaceful and tranquil then "muh black family" got broken up in the 60's and they suddenly turned violent and impulsive?
>>18617068>She left the store accompanied by a 16 year old Latinx boy who>Latinxget the fuck out
>>18617068>LatrinexNigger
