James Aren Duckett | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 4, 1957 [1] Florida, U.S. |
| Conviction | First-degree murder |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
| Details | |
| Victims | 1 confirmed, 2 suspected |
| Date | May 7, 1986 (suspected) – September 19, 1987 |
| Location | Florida |
| Imprisoned at | Union Correctional Institution [1] |
James Aren Duckett (born September 4, 1957) [1] is an American convicted child murderer and suspected serial killer sentenced to death in Florida. Duckett, a former police officer under the Mascotte Police Department, was charged with the kidnapping, rape and murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee on May 11, 1987. Duckett was said to have abducted the girl, who was raped and later strangled to death, and her body was found abandoned near a lake. Apart from McAbee's murder, Duckett was also a suspect behind the 1987 unsolved murder of 14-year-old Jeanifer Shyan Weldon and a third unsolved murder of an unidentified woman in 1986. Duckett was ultimately convicted of McAbee's murder and sentenced to death. He is currently on death row awaiting execution.
On the night of May 11, 1987, 29-year-old James Aren Duckett, a police officer affiliated with the Mascotte Police Department, was on patrol duty throughout the city of Mascotte, Florida, when he first encountered 11-year-old Teresa McAbee, who was walking out of a convenience store with a 16-year-old Mexican teenage boy. Duckett inquired the convenience store clerk about the girl's age before he approached both McAbee and the boy, questioning them before he instructed McAbee to go back home. [2]
The boy later returned to the laundromat to wait for his uncle, who came back soon after, and he witnessed both Duckett and McAbee standing near the patrol car. According to the teenager and his uncle, Duckett and McAbee entered the police car and departed the scene, and that was the last time McAbee was seen alive. Based on the circumstantial evidence, it was deduced that McAbee was not sent back home by Duckett, but was kidnapped by the police officer himself, and subsequently raped and strangled to death. [2]
The body of McAbee was found by a fisherman the next day nearby the shore of Knight Lake. Duckett was named as a suspect because he was the last person seen together with McAbee before she was murdered, and he was also the only police officer to be on duty that day itself. As a result of his connection to the murder of McAbee, Duckett was suspended from the police force on June 16, 1987, and he was fired three days later, thus ending his seven-month employment as a police officer. [3] [4]
Investigations showed that a pubic hair left at the scene of crime was matched to Duckett, and DNA tests on the police car showed that the palm prints of both Duckett and McAbee were found on the hood of the vehicle, and the tire marks nearby the crime scene also matched to the police car of Duckett, which were among the circumstantial evidence that implicated Duckett in the murder of McAbee. [5] [2]
On May 7, 1986, an unnamed woman was discovered dead in a water-filled pit near Lakeland, Florida. According to sources, the woman was described to be petite, 5 feet 2 inches tall, with reddish brown hair and eyes blue to hazel. She was fully clothed when her body was discovered, and wore an aqua blue shirt and jeans. The cause of death was strangulation. The woman, whose identity could not be traced, was last seen entering a dark blue car, and at that time, James Duckett owned a royal blue Buick Regal, similar to the car that the victim last boarded before her disappearance and death. [6]
The victim remains unidentified till today, in spite of extensive investigations and DNA testing to establish her identity. Due to the similarities between this homicidal death and the murder of Teresa McAbee, Duckett remains a suspect behind this alleged murder. [7]
On September 19, 1987, three days before her 15th birthday, 14-year-old Jeanifer Shyan Weldon, who reportedly went to visit a friend, disappeared after she was last seen walking home alone from a carnival somewhere in the north side of Lakeland. Weldon was reported missing by her mother a day later on September 20, 1987, after she failed to return home. Weldon's body was found on October 2, 1987, near a rural part of Polk County. [6] [8]
Based on investigations into Weldon's killing, it was suspected that Duckett was the killer, given the fact that Duckett, then fired from the police force due to his suspected involvement in Teresa McAbee's murder, was working as a night-shift labourer in a local phosphate mine inside Polk County and often drove the same route to work around the area where Weldon's body was found. Gasoline receipts also showed that Duckett was nearby the scene of crime on the date of Weldon's murder, and he arrived for work two hours late and also disheveled. Also, Weldon was noted to be carrying a green shopping bag and a stuffed toy before she went missing, and both the bag and toy were missing. Duckett's wife told investigators that her husband brought home a lime green shopping bag with a stuffed toy for their two children. [6] [9]
In 2003, 16 years after Weldon's murder, the Polk County police force expressed their intent to press formal charges against Duckett for the murder of Weldon, in the event that his appeals against conviction were successful. As of 2025, no charges were filed. [10]
In October 1987, five months after the murder of Teresa McAbee, James Duckett was officially charged with murdering the girl, after a Lake County grand jury formally indicted him for first-degree murder. [11] [12]
In early 1988, Duckett stood trial before a Lake County jury for first-degree murder, and the prosecution confirmed they would seek the death penalty. During the trial itself, Michael Malone, a forensic expert of the FBI testified that based on his examinations of 20 pubic hairs taken from Duckett, there was match between them and the pubic hair found at the murder scene, but the defence argued that the hair could be from another person and challenged the validity of the evidence. The prosecution similarly submitted the tire mark and palm print evidence to prove the defendant's guilt in court. [13] [2]
On May 10, 1988, the jury found Duckett guilty of first-degree murder. On that same day, the jury recommended the death penalty for Duckett. [14] [15]
On June 30, 1988, Lake County Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced Duckett to death for the murder of McAbee. Duckett was additionally handed a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years for the other charge of sexual battery. Prior to his sentencing, Duckett continued to insist he was innocent and asked for his life to be spared. [16] [17]
As of June 2000, Duckett was one of 370 inmates incarcerated on death row in Florida. [18]
As of 2026, James Aren Duckett remains on death row at the Union Correctional Institution. [1]
On December 6, 1989, Duckett filed his first appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. [19] [20]
On September 6, 1990, the Florida Supreme Court dismissed Duckett's direct appeal against his death sentence. [2] [21]
On August 16, 2001, Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett denied Duckett's post-conviction appeal and upheld his death sentence and murder conviction. [22]
In April 2003, the defence counsel of Duckett appealed for a review of their client's case and new DNA testing to ascertain his guilt. [23] On October 4, 2003, Circuit Judge William Law granted Duckett's application for new DNA testing on a small semen sample pertaining to his case. [24] The Florida Supreme Court later granted approval and set the deadline on January 15, 2004, to allow more time for new DNA testing. [25] Ultimately, the deadline of January 15, 2004, was passed and there was no motion filed over the DNA testing to the circuit court of the Florida Supreme Court. [26] On February 7, 2004, Circuit Judge William Law issued a court order to bar any more DNA testing in Duckett's case. [27] [28]
In February 2005, the defence counsel of Duckett appealed again to seek a review of Duckett's case, stating that one of the trial witnesses, then a 16-year-old teenage girl, had lied to the court about seeing Duckett outside the store before Teresa McAbee's disappearance and death, and was told to do so after being instructed by the law-enforcement officers and prosecution, although these allegations were denied by the police and prosecutors. [29] On October 6, 2005, the Florida Supreme Court rejected Duckett's second appeal against his death sentence. On that same day, three other convicted murderers – Jim Eric Chandler, McArthur Breedlove and Michael Duane Zack III – also lost their appeals against their respective death sentences. [30] [31]
On March 26, 2010, U.S. District Court Judge William Terrell Hodges denied Duckett's federal appeal against his death sentence. [32]
On June 26, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court denied Duckett's appeal, and also rejected his allegations of false witness testimony and disputed credibility of the pubic hair evidence against him. [33]
On October 12, 2017, the Florida Supreme Court rejected Duckett's fourth appeal against his death sentence. The court found that despite the disputed validity of the pubic hair evidence against Duckett, his guilt was supported by other evidence like the tire marks matched to Duckett's police car near the scene of crime. [34]
On December 28, 2018, the Florida Supreme Court dismissed Duckett's re-sentencing plea, finding that the hair evidence was not the only evidence used to prove his guilt and convict him, as there were other sources of circumstantial evidence that demonstrated his culpability and role in the murder. Aside from this, Duckett had already exhausted his appeals prior to June 24, 2002, the date of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that validated death sentences imposed by juries rather than judges, and hence he was not entitled to re-sentencing. [35] [36]
During Duckett's incarceration on death row, there were concerns surrounding the validity of his guilt due to the disputed evidence in his case, with some experts believing that Duckett was not guilty of the murder of Teresa McAbee. In fact, for years, the defence counsel of Duckett had advocated for a review of his case.
In May 2003, Marshall Frank, a retired homicide detective and aspiring novelist, stated that he conducted a research in Duckett's case while writing a new book, and he concluded that Duckett was innocent, claiming that the prosecution had wrongly interpreted the fingerprint and palmprint evidence, and also made a blunder with the pubic hair and tire mark evidence, as well as overlooking factors that were in Duckett's favour. Apart from Frank, former Mascotte Police Chief Michael Brady expressed that he believed in the innocence of Duckett, who previously worked under him, and Mayor Josh Thomas similarly believed that Duckett was not guilty. [37] Several years after Duckett's conviction, Michael Malone, the FBI expert who submitted the incriminating pubic hair evidence in Duckett's trial, was investigated for making false testimonies in several court cases and submitting scientifically-flawed evidence in these cases. This development of events also led to the validity of the pubic hair evidence being disputed in Duckett's case and raised doubts over the grounds of his murder conviction. [38]
On the other hand, the prosecution and police investigators who previously handled Duckett's case affirmed that Duckett was the real killer of McAbee. State prosecutor Stephen Hurm pointed out that the tire marks were distinct and could only be left behind by a police car whose model matched those of the Mascotte Police Department, and further tests matched the tire marks to Duckett's vehicle. Back then during Duckett's trial, there were three teenage girls who testified that during the past months leading up to the murder of McAbee, they were being offered rides by Duckett and they stated that Duckett made sexual advances towards them. [37]
Additionally, police investigations also revealed the possibility of Duckett's involvement in other murders, specifically the unsolved death of Jeanifer Weldon and an unnamed woman, which both shared similarities with McAbee's murder. These revelations gave rise to suspicions that Duckett was possibly a serial killer. Frank, who also conducted research on the other murders linked to Duckett, would later change his mind and conclude that Duckett was indeed guilty, not only for the murder of McAbee, but also that of Weldon. [6]
The trial of James Duckett was one of the most notable cases presided over by Jerry Lockett during his tenure as a circuit judge. Of all his past cases, Lockett also imposed the death penalty in six other murder cases apart from Duckett's. Lockett died in September 2013 at the age of 71. [39]
In 2014, Duckett appeared in Death Row Stories, a true-crime original series produced by CNN. [40]