Joshua Duckett was 3 years old when his father was sent to Florida’s Death Row. Then, nearly 20 years later, his 2-year-old son disappeared.
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Amid his father’s bid to avoid execution, Joshua Duckett focuses on finding his son
Joshua Duckett was 3 years old when his father was sent to Florida’s Death Row, convicted of raping, choking and drowning a fifth-grade girl while on duty as a police officer for the small rural town of Mascotte in Lake County.
As the elder James Aren Duckett awaits his execution at the end of this month, his lawyers are scrambling for a last-minute stay, counting on new DNA testing that could either prove his innocence after 38 years or seal his fate.
For the family of Teresa McAbee — who was 11 years old in May 1987, when she was killed and her body dumped by the side of a lake — Duckett’s execution will mean justice.
But for the Duckett family, it’s just another dark chapter.
In 2006, Joshua Duckett’s 2-year-old son, Trenton Duckett, went missing on a warm August night in Leesburg, sparking a nationwide search and global media sensation. His ex-wife, Melinda Duckett, killed herself weeks later at her grandparents’ home in The Villages.
Today, Joshua Duckett, 40, prefers not to talk about his father. He said Thursday he does not keep up with his father’s case and is focused on finding his son.
“I’ve tried my hardest to keep those two cases separate,” he said. “I don’t want the negativity from his case to affect our search for Trenton.”
Trenton Duckett — a dark-haired, cheery child, who loved Chicken McNuggets and chasing ducks at a pond — has never been found. But Joshua Duckett still holds annual vigils in the belief that Trenton, who would now be 21 years old, will come home someday.
“We continue to be hopeful, to locate him, to get any information that we can,” Joshua Duckett said. “That’s our goal.”
He acknowledged that he and his family have been handed tragic fates from multiple directions.
“Life’s hard in general,” Joshua Duckett said. “We’re all dealt certain hands in life. You live and push forward. Or you give up. And I don’t want to give up. My son still deserves to be found and be brought back home, to be with his family.”
An 11-year-old disappears
During his father’s trial in the spring of 1988, Joshua’s mother, Carla Duckett, would take him and his older brother, Justin, to stand outside the Lake County Jail and look toward the fourth floor with binoculars, hoping to get a glimpse of their “Daddy.” Carla Duckett could not be reached for comment.
The boys, holding children’s books and flash cards, were too young to understand when their father was found guilty by a jury, which recommended by an 8-4 vote to sentence him to death for first-degree murder and sexual battery on a child younger than 12.
James Duckett, now 68, has since lived in a cell at Florida State Prison in Raiford. He is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on March 31 after
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant in late February. It is the fifth death warrant DeSantis signed this year and would be the third execution carried out this month.
James Duckett has always maintained his innocence. His lawyers have argued his conviction was based on circumstantial evidence — including an FBI report that has largely been discredited, the testimony of a pregnant 16-year-old who later recanted, tire tracks of a police car, palm prints, and a single piece of hair that has never been tested for DNA until now.
Just before 10 p.m. on May 12, 1987, Teresa McAbee told her mother, Dorothy, that she needed pencils to finish her homework assignment at Mascotte Elementary. She asked her mom if she could walk to a convenience store about a block north at the corner of Sunset Avenue and State Road 50.
Across the highway, James Duckett, a rookie police officer barely seven months into his job, sat in his patrol car running radar checks. With roughly 1,600 residents, Mascotte was a mostly agricultural community and a notorious speed trap for lead-footed drivers.
He watched as the skinny, brown-haired girl walked into the store and came out talking to a group of boys in the parking lot, according to court documents.
Duckett testified one of the teen boys kept looking around nervously and eyeing the patrol car, so he went inside to ask the clerk about the boy and the girl. He then told the boy to leave, according to records, and the boy walked to a nearby coin laundry, where his uncle waited for clothes to dry.
Duckett said that Teresa briefly sat inside the patrol car while he “chewed her out” for being out late at night and violating a city curfew for children. He then watched as she walked around the store to head back home on Sunset Avenue. Other witnesses also said they saw Teresa walk away.
When Teresa did not return by midnight, a frantic Dorothy McAbee drove to the police station to report her daughter missing.
James Duckett walked into the station, took down the information and told McAbee he saw Teresa at the convenience store, according to court records. Duckett then printed and posted flyers about the missing girl.
Teresa’s body — still wearing high-top sneakers and jeans — was found early the next morning along the shore of a lake, less than a mile south of the store.
Investigators discovered tire tracks that matched Duckett’s patrol car along the dirt road leading to the lake where her body was found. But Duckett’s attorneys argued that he and other officers had searched the lakeshore after Teresa was declared missing.
Investigators also found palm prints on the hood of Duckett’s patrol car that matched Teresa, which prosecutors claimed was from her being raped while on the car and trying to push away.
Duckett insisted those prints were from when he was talking to her in the parking lot. His attorneys argued the car’s hood was too hot to sit on, based on testimony from other officers, and her body didn’t show evidence of burns.
A teenaged Gwen Gurley testified she saw the officer drive away from the convenience store, then return and leave with “a small person” in his patrol car. A year after Duckett’s conviction, Gurley said she made up the story.
Duckett also is a suspect in the strangulation murders of an unidentified woman in 1986 and a 14-year-old girl in 1987, both in Lakeland, before he became a police officer.
But the most compelling pieces of evidence in the Mascotte murder, according to prosecutors, were a single hair found in Teresa’s underwear and a now-dried vaginal swab with semen. Those were never tested for DNA, a procedure not commonly used in the late 1980s. An FBI analyst’s report — which was later called into question — stated the strand of hair was nearly identical to Duckett’s hair.
This month, Duckett’s attorneys successfully argued for Circuit Judge Brian Welke to order the evidence sent from the Lake County Sheriff’s Office to a private lab in Deerfield Beach to be tested.
Those DNA results, they hope, could overturn his conviction.
But Welke on Friday denied Duckett’s attorneys’ request for a 30-day stay of his execution to allow more time to analyze the test results, which are to be completed by Wednesday — less than two weeks before he is to be put to death.
A toddler goes missing
From his cell nearly 20 years ago, James Duckett watched as the world searched for his missing 2-year-old grandson, Trenton Duckett, and relied on family visitors and a prison chaplain to keep him updated. He kept photos of Trenton in his cell.
The toddler disappeared on Aug. 27, 2006, from his bedroom after his mother, Melinda, put him to sleep. She told investigators that someone had cut through a screen window while she watched a movie in another room with friends.
But Melinda Duckett soon became a person of interest after detectives found sonogram photos and other items from Trenton in a dumpster at the family’s Leesburg apartment complex.
Two weeks later, Melinda Duckett was interviewed by CNN host Nancy Grace, who grilled the 21-year-old about her son’s whereabouts and accused her of hiding something. Before the episode aired, Melinda Duckett shut herself inside a closet at her grandparents’ home in The Villages and killed herself, according to police reports.
Leesburg police said Trenton Duckett’s disappearance is still an active investigation. Joshua Duckett said he often talks to investigators, and photos of the boy at 2 years old and what he might look like today are on the department’s website.
Last August, a candlelight vigil was held at Leesburg Town Square to mark 19 years since Trenton went missing.
“It’s always hard every time you hit a birthday, every time you hit an anniversary,” Joshua Duckett said at the event. “But I still have hope that one day we’ll get answers.”
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