James Duckett, 68, was executed by lethal injection on July 28 at Florida State Prison in Raiford, bringing two families together who believe he killed their daughters.
McAbee’s family attended the execution and were joined by family and friends of Jeanifer Weldon, 14, who authorities believe Duckett murdered four months after killing McAbee. The gathering marked a shared reckoning nearly four decades after the crimes.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said at a July 30 news conference that law enforcement officials deliberately stopped pursuing a conviction in Weldon’s case out of fear it would prolong Duckett’s life. It had been decided that piecing together evidence could “jam up” the process or “create more defense, or more arguments, or more excuses why he shouldn’t be executed,” Judd told reporters. Once Duckett was sentenced to die for McAbee’s murder, authorities stopped pushing to secure a conviction for Weldon’s killing.
Weldon disappeared on Sept. 19, 1987, in Polk County, about an hour south of the town where Duckett had worked as a Mascotte police officer. It was three days before her 15th birthday. She’d spent the Saturday with friends on a trip 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. 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.
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. Investigators suspect she was raped before her death.
The evidence in Weldon’s case 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. 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. 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.
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.”
Judd was less satisfied with the execution of the former cop. “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.” For 38 years, Duckett was given multiple appeals. “He just didn’t pay soon enough, but he did pay,” Judd said.
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.” 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.”
In the viral moment that defined Duckett’s notoriety, the then-rookie officer was convicted of raping and drowning 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in May 1987 while on duty for the Mascotte Police Department. McAbee was last seen getting into Duckett’s patrol car before her body was found in a nearby lake. Very strong fingerprint and DNA evidence linked Duckett to the case, Judd said. A month later, Duckett was named a suspect and was fired from his job as a cop. Then three months later, Weldon disappeared in Central Florida. 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.
Judd said his detectives visited the prison last Friday to offer Duckett one final chance to confess to Weldon’s killing. “He wouldn’t see us. He wouldn’t interview. He was a psychopathic, murdering, egotistical, vicious child pedophile up to the very end,” Judd said. Weldon’s sister, Hope Limansah, reflected on the impact of her sister’s death. “Those are big shoes to come into the world as the first child born after the last one was taken,” Limansah said. Judd said his office will present one final review to the state attorney before officially closing the case.
William Silvia, convicted of the 2006 shooting murder of his wife, Patricia, is scheduled to be executed in Florida.