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After almost four decades, the execution of James Duckett brought closure for two families who believe they both lost young girls to the same killer.
The 68-year-old was executed by lethal injection July 28 for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee while on duty as a cop for the Mascotte Police Department.
McAbee’s family attended his execution at the Florida State Prison in Raiford.
They were joined by family and friends of 14-year-old Jeanifer Weldon. Authorities believe she also was killed by Duckett four months after he murdered McAbee.
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But law enforcement officials stopped pursuing a conviction out of fear it would prolong his life, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a news conference.
It had been decided that piecing together evidence on the case could “jam up” the process or “create more defense, or more arguments, or more excuses why he shouldn’t be executed,” Judd told reporters on July 30.
So once Duckett was sentenced to die for McAbee’s murder, authorities stopped pushing to secure a conviction for the killing of Weldon, Judd said.
Two lives lost
McAbee went missing in May 1987. She was last seen with Duckett in his patrol car on an evening when he was the only officer working the streets.
When her body was found, evidence showed she’d been sexually assaulted, strangled and drowned, according to court records.
A month later, Duckett was named a suspect and was fired from his job as a cop. Very strong fingerprint and DNA evidence linked Duckett to the case, Judd said.
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Then three months later, another girl went missing in Central Florida.
Weldon disappeared on Sept. 19, 1987, in Polk County, about an hour south of the town where Duckett had worked as a police officer.
It was three days before her 15th birthday.
She’d spent the Saturday with friends on a trip to town to Tampa, where she’d bought a fluffy kitten to add to the stuffed animal collection in her bedroom, Judd said.
Around 9 p.m., she left her friends to walk about two miles home, carrying her new stuffed kitten in a green plastic bag, Judd said. She never made it home.
For “13 frantic days, we looked for Jeanifer to no avail,” Judd told reporters almost 39 years later. There were few leads, until a phosphate miner pulled over to investigate a pair of shoes he spotted on the side of the road in Fort Meade. It had been about two weeks since Weldon had disappeared.
When he got out of his car, he was hit with the pungent smell of a decomposing body, Judd said.
Weldon’s “skeletonized” remains were found behind tall grass and a berm in a wooded area away from the road, Judd said.
Duckett eventually became a suspect in that killing, too.
Investigators believed Duckett had used his old law enforcement uniform to convince Weldon he could provide a safe ride home.
Family members and investigators felt Weldon wouldn’t have gotten in a car with Duckett without that reassurance and confidence that he was a police officer and someone she could trust, Judd said.
She died by strangulation, he said.
Investigators suspect she was raped before her death.
A heartbreaking clue
A month after Weldon’s death, Duckett was arrested for the killing and sexual battery of McAbee.
He quickly became a suspect in Weldon’s killing, too. But the evidence wasn’t as strong, and was more circumstantial, Judd said.
The night Weldon disappeared, Duckett had left for work at his new mining job five hours early. He drove down the highway “exactly past where Jeanifer Weldon would have been walking home,” Judd said.
He arrived at work sweaty and two hours late, saying that he’d had car trouble. But investigators learned that his hands weren’t “greasy or nasty or dirty,” Judd said. The next day, Duckett brought home a gift for his children—a stuffed kitten in a green plastic bag.
It matched the one purchased by Weldon.
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There also were “fingernail marks or scratches on his back,” Judd said. When his wife asked him about the marks, he told her, “I was climbing under a barbed wire fence at work,” Judd said. Polk County investigators spent tens of thousands of hours working to pursue a conviction in the Weldon case, Judd said.
Then a few years ago, after Duckett was convicted of McAbee’s murder and had received the death sentence, they questioned whether they should continue pursuing it, he said.
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They continued to “chip away” at finding DNA evidence, Judd said. And they hoped Duckett would confess during one of his interviews before his execution.
He declined to talk.
Though he was never convicted of her killing, Duckett’s execution still brought some sense of closure to Weldon’s still-grieving family.
“I’m confident the right person was executed,” said Amy Weldon, Jeanifer Weldon’s younger sister. “I don’t like how long it took, but I am confident 100% that the right person died.”
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Judd was less satisfied with the execution of the former cop.
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“The problem is we didn’t put him to death soon enough,” Judd said. “You know, it’s never too soon to kill a psychopathic, child predator … It’s never too soon.”
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For 38 years, Duckett was given multiple appeals.
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“He just didn’t pay soon enough, but he did pay,” Judd said.
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Judd also suggested that controversial surveillance cameras on roadways might have prevented Weldon’s death.
“Today, we may have found him before he ever got a chance to rape and murder her,” he said. “We would have found him within hours.”
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Addressing the debate over the cameras, Judd railed, “Yet there’s some nut jobs that don’t think we should be able to look at a camera that’s on a public right of way, only looking at a tag and the color of a car.
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“We’re going to find lost children, lost Alzheimer’s patients, warrant suspects, and we’re never going to invade your privacy to do it.”
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