'Killer in Question': Who is James Duckett? ID show's Episode 2 offers fresh look at 1987's Teresa McAbee case
Whenever a crime is committed, there are always a lot of questions – about the nature of the crime, the victim and, of course, the culprit. However, sometimes what appears on the surface may not be so simple. Investigation Discovery’s new miniseries ‘Killer in Question’, which debuted last week, explores those cases where questions still arise, even after they appear to be “solved”. Each episode will feature both sides of the story.
The first episode, titled ‘The Hunted’, featured the 1990 case of hunters Doug Estes and Jim Bennett. Episode two 'The Girl in the Lake', delves into the 1987 case of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee, whose body was found face down in a lake and the local rookie cop named James Duckett was the alleged culprit, who was given a death sentence.
Here’s what happened
According to a 2003 Orlando Sentinel report, in May 1987, Teresa Mae McAbee went to a store to buy a pencil and never came back. Around 10 pm, Teresa told her mother that she needed a pencil. Dorothy Mae McAbee didn't want her daughter to go alone anywhere that late, but the store was just a few doors down. So, she gave Teresa the money and told her to be quick. The fifth-grader said she’ll be back soon.
James Duckett was in one of Mascotte's two patrol cars. He was in front of a laundry when he supposedly saw a girl talking to a group of boys and then walking behind an ice machine with one, standing close to him. Too close, Duckett believed. She was young, it was late, and the boy kept leaning back, looking at Duckett. Later Duckett told the detectives, according to the Orlando Sentinel report, that, "It just brought up my curiosity. You know, why was he watching me?" He went over for a routine curfew check and scribbled a sentence or two in his notebook.
A few hours later, there was chatter on Duckett's radio. The dispatcher asked him to come to the Mascotte police station because someone wanted to report a missing person. It was Dorothy. The report states that after she told him that her daughter hadn’t returned home, he asked the girl’s age and enquired, “Your daughter don't happen to be a small girl named Teresa?" He informed that he had seen the girl talking to some boys but had sent her home because of the curfew.
Duckett radioed a missing-person's report to the Lake County Sheriff's Office and told the dispatcher that she was last seen by him. The next day, Jim Clark, while fishing found the body of Teresa, reportedly raped, choked and drowned. He informed Mascotte police Chief Mike Brady. He then notified the Lake County Sheriff's Office. Lake County sheriff's Detective Rocky Harris came in.
Harris’ boss Sgt Chuck Johnson wondered why Duckett hadn’t come in. Brady told him that Duckett wanted to come in, but the chief told him he wasn't needed. Johnson asked Chief Brady to have Duckett come in. Duckett spent 15 minutes recounting his meeting with Teresa by the Circle K. He told them he sat the girl in his car, “chewed her out a little bit about being out so late” and sent her home.
However, Johnson still had his doubts. Just then, another officer noticed that the fresh tire tracks left by the two Mascotte police cruisers matched the tire tracks found at the scene.
According to a 2003 Associated Press report in the Herald-Tribune, Duckett’s and Teresa’s fingerprints were found on the hood of the car. At the trial, three teens had testified that in the months prior to the murder, Duckett had allegedly given rides to each of them and had allegedly made sexual advances. Duckett was convicted in May 1988 and Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced him to death in July 1988.
His wife divorced him, and his attorney, Jack Edmund, was killed in a car accident in March 2002. The report mentions that Marshall Frank, a former homicide investigator in Miami-Dade County, started researching the Duckett case on his own after he started work on a novel. In a two-part series published in The Miami Herald that time, he had said that he had concluded that the prosecution misjudged the fingerprint evidence, mishandled both the tire cast and pubic hair identification and failed to pay attention to things that might have been in Duckett’s favor.
However, the very next month that year, as reported by The Ledger, Frank took a different stance and thought Duckett was responsible for the crime. According to the report, Frank realized he was wrong, he says, when sheriff’s detectives in Lake County opened the McAbee case file to him and Polk County sheriff’s detectives revealed their cases. The alleged Polk County connection happened when Duckett was a suspect in Teresa’s murder.
After being fired from the police department, Duckett was working as a night-shift laborer at a phosphate mine in Polk County. That’s when someone murdered 14-year-old Jennifer Weldon. Jennifer was last seen in September 1987, walking home alone on US 98, just north of Lakeland. She was returning from a carnival and was carrying a lime green shopping bag containing a stuffed animal, Frank said, as mentioned in the report. The same route was taken by Duckett for work.
Her decomposed body was found in October, in a remote region of the county near a phosphate mine. Gasoline receipts placed Duckett close by and at the night of the murder, he had allegedly arrived at work disheveled and two hours late, police said. When the girl’s body was found, her green shopping bag and stuffed toy were missing. Polk County investigators said that after Duckett’s arrest in Teresa’s murder, they went to see his wife, Carla.
She told them about a stuffed animal that her husband had allegedly brought home at the time of Jennifer’s disappearance. She had said that she was miffed because he brought only one and they had two children, Frank said. Polk County police said a relative “got rid of the toy”.
In a 2017 Orlando Sentinel report, it is mentioned that the crucial pieces of evidence that convicted Duckett were his squad car's tire tracks at the scene, testimony of an expert about the single hair found in Teresa’s underwear and the girl’s fingerprints on Duckett's cruiser. However, Duckett had an explanation for Teresa’s palm print on his hood. He said he saw and spoke with her at the store and asked her to go home.
Later, he said, he drove around Knight Lake looking for her after her mother notified the police, and that’s why his tire tracks were found there. Later, as the report mentions, an “expert” FBI senior agent who provided a critical piece of testimony at the trial was discredited. Michael Malone swore that a sample of more than 20 of Duckett’s hairs had “exactly the same characteristics” and were “completely indistinguishable” from the lone hair found in Teresa’s undergarments.
Eventually, the Justice Department’s inspector general and a 2014 FBI report both stated that Malone’s testimony “exceeded the limits of science and were, therefore, invalid”. The inspector general report stated that Malone didn’t just stretch the truth but “falsely testified” in some cases. The Supreme Court, however, concluded in its opinion that jurors would not have felt the “reasonable doubt” needed to acquit Duckett even if they knew about the hair evidence.
A 2019 report in the Daily Commercial said, the Florida Supreme Court rejected the resentencing plea of Duckett. The justices in the opinion wrote, “After reviewing Duckett’s response to the order to show cause, as well as the state’s arguments in reply, we conclude that Duckett is not entitled to relief.” They also said, “... the hair evidence was by no means the only evidence supporting the conviction in this case.”
'Killer in Question' new episode will air on Sunday, November 8, at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery.
These remarks were made by a third-person and individual organizations, MEAWW cannot confirm them independently nor does it support these claims and the respective references are linked in the article