Florida Executes James Duckett, Police Officer Who Brutally Murdered an 11-Year-Old Girl

Although the police officer seen on screen may appear to be a good, upstanding man, behind that uniform was a true monster.

Today, a former police officer was executed in Florida for an extremely heinous crime.
PBS

His name was James Aaron Duckett.

He was 68 years old and died by lethal injection at Florida State Prison.

Stay until the end to learn about the brutal crime that sent him to death row.
Wikipedia

You will also hear about the details of his trial, his execution, and his final words before he died.

A policeman who may have been the last person to see 11-year-old Teresa McAbee alive fell under investigation.

Teresa McAbee was a beautiful 11-year-old girl in the fifth grade at Mascotte Elementary School.
Wikipedia

On the night of May 11th, 1987, at around 10:00 p.m., she told her mother she needed a pencil for homework.

Her mother told her she did not want her going outside so late at night.

Teresa assured her mother that she would be back within 20 minutes.

After insisting, her mother finally let her go out into the night.

Teresa walked to a convenience store near her home and bought the pencils.

A few minutes later, she left the store and ran into a 16-year-old neighbor at the laundromat next door.

They left together and walked to the store’s dumpster, where they talked for about 20 minutes.

That was when Officer James Duckett arrived in his patrol car.

James was 29 years old and had been a police officer for only seven months.

He was the only officer on duty that night, leaving the entire town of Mascotte under his responsibility.

When he saw the two young people talking, Duckett became sickeningly attracted to Teresa.

He went inside the store and asked the employee about the girl.

He wanted to know her name, personal details, and how old she was.

The employee told him Teresa was between 10 and 13 years old.

James said he was going to speak with her and walked out toward the dumpster.

According to James’ own testimony, he questioned the two children and told Teresa to go home.

There was a curfew for minors at the time, meaning Teresa was not supposed to be out alone after 10:30 p.m.

The boy’s uncle arrived to pick him up and offered to drive Teresa home as well.

Officer James said that was not necessary and told the uncle and the boy to leave.

Once they were gone, he placed Teresa in the passenger seat of his patrol car.

He closed the door, walked around to the driver’s side, started the vehicle, and drove away with her.

At around 11:00 p.m., Teresa’s mother walked to the convenience store looking for her daughter.

The employee told her that Officer James had possibly taken Teresa to the police station.

Teresa’s mother and her sister spent the next hour driving around Mascotte, but they did not see a patrol car.

They went to the Mascotte Police Station looking for the officer, but no one was there.

They went to the nearest police station in Groveland and reported Teresa missing.

Afterward, Teresa’s mother returned to the Mascotte Police Station and waited.

Between 15 and 20 minutes passed before James finally showed up.

When he arrived, he said he had spoken with Teresa at the store and that she sat in his car talking with him.

He claimed she had later left on foot and headed home alone.

Unbeknownst to her, Teresa’s mother had just filed a missing person report with the very man who murdered her daughter.

After taking the report, James drove to Teresa’s home to get a photograph of her.

At first, it appeared that he was taking initiative and trying to help move the search forward.

He called the police chief to say he had prepared a missing person flyer to distribute throughout town.

This was where things slowly began to raise suspicions about the officer.

James took the flyer to the convenience store, but only to tell the employee not to put it up.

He claimed it was not a good photograph and promised to return with a better one, but he never did.

There was another troubling detail regarding his shift that night.

James’ police radio traffic showed that between 10:50 p.m. and 12:10 a.m., there were no transmissions at all.

There was more than an hour of complete silence during the exact window when Teresa disappeared.

Things were about to get even worse for the investigator’s view of the officer.

An employee at another store later testified that police officers normally passed by every 45 minutes to an hour.

James had driven by around 9:30 p.m., but he never came back to patrol as he was supposed to.

The next morning, a fisherman made a horrifying discovery in Knight Lake, less than a mile from the convenience store.
Wikipedia

At first, he was not sure what he was looking at in the water.

After alerting authorities, the new officer on duty quickly confirmed it was Teresa.

The search was officially over, turning into a murder investigation.

That night, James had taken her against her will to the area around Knight Lake.

He parked the patrol car, forcibly removed her from the vehicle, pinned her against it, and sexually assaulted her.

He then strangled her, and once she was unconscious, threw her body into the lake.
Wikipedia

The investigation immediately focused on James as the primary suspect.

He had been the last person seen with Teresa and was the only patrol officer on duty that night.

The circumstantial evidence against him continued to pile up rapidly.

A technician from the sheriff’s department examined tire tracks found at the crime scene near Knight Lake.

He noticed that the tracks were highly unusual and distinct.

As he was leaving the scene, he observed that the tracks appeared to match those left by a Mascotte police vehicle.

An expert who later testified at trial confirmed the exact match.

The tires were Goodyear Eagle mud and snow tires designed for northern climates and uncommon in Florida.

Over the previous nine years, the local tire center had accidentally received only two sets of that particular model.

Both sets had been installed on the two vehicles belonging to the Mascotte Police Department.

Then came the crucial fingerprint evidence gathered by crime scene technicians.

Both James’s and Teresa’s fingerprints were found on the hood of his patrol car.

Teresa’s fingerprints indicated that she had been sitting backward on the hood and had slid upward across the vehicle.

Despite the evidence, James continued to deny any involvement in her disappearance.

Meanwhile, blood and bodily fluids from both Teresa and James were found on the girl’s underwear.

One key piece of evidence was a single pubic hair found inside Teresa’s underwear.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Investigators concluded at the time that there was a high degree of probability the hair belonged to James.

Nearly seven months passed before James was finally arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

He was suspended from the police force on June 16th, 1987, and fired three days later.

During the trial on May 10th, 1988, the jury found James guilty of sexual assault and first-degree murder.

In an 8-to-4 vote, the jury recommended the death penalty.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced James to death in the electric chair for the murder.

He also sentenced him to life in prison without parole for the sexual assault.
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This was not the only murder he was suspected of committing during that era.
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In May 1986, an unidentified woman was found dead in a well near Lakeland.

She was last seen getting into a dark blue car similar to the blue Buick Regal James owned at the time.

In September 1987, four months after Teresa disappeared, 14-year-old Jennifer Weldon vanished.

She disappeared after leaving a carnival, and her body was found two weeks later.

It was located in a rural area that James regularly passed through because of his job at a phosphate mine.

At this point, it was revealed that James was living a double life.

He had a wife and children, but his actions outside the home told a different story.

Gas receipts placing him near the scene of Jennifer’s murder were actually found by his wife.

On the day of that crime, James arrived late and disheveled at work.

His wife later told investigators that he had brought home a green bag and a stuffed animal.

These items were remarkably similar to those belonging to Jennifer before she went missing.

In 2003, authorities planned to charge James in connection with Jennifer’s murder if his conviction was overturned.

However, that never happened, and he was ultimately never charged in the case.
Wikipedia

During his decades on death row, James filed one appeal after another, but every single one was denied.

The courts consistently ruled that even if the pubic hair evidence was questioned, other evidence remained strong.

The tire tracks, fingerprints, radio silence, and witness testimony all pointed directly to one person.

On February 27th, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed James’s death warrant.

It was the fifth execution warrant he had signed that year.

The execution was originally scheduled for March but was postponed due to controversy surrounding DNA evidence.
PBS

James requested DNA testing on the pubic hair found at the crime scene.

He had been offered the opportunity to have the same test performed back in 2004, but he had refused.

Ultimately, the new DNA test produced inconclusive results.
PBS

It did not prove that the hair belonged to James, but it also failed to establish his innocence.

After further appeals were exhausted, his execution was rescheduled for July 28th, 2026.
Death Penalty Information Center

James Duckett, 68, woke up at 4:45 a.m. on July 28th, 2026.

At 6:00 a.m., he was served his last meal in his cell.

Duckett did not choose a special meal himself.

Instead, he was given the prison’s regular breakfast menu.

It consisted of eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits, and chocolate milk.

Later, Duckett received a visit from a spiritual adviser, whom he spoke with for some time.

At noon, he was taken to a holding cell right next to the execution chamber.

At 12:30 p.m., he was escorted into the execution chamber at Florida State Prison in Starke.

He was strapped to a gurney and executed by lethal injection.
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Before the execution began, the warden gave Duckett an opportunity to make a final statement.

He declined to speak and remained silent until he passed away.

This marked a historic day in Florida’s judicial history.
PBS

For the first time in many years, the state executed two people on the exact same day.
PBS

Hours later, 80-year-old Dominic Anthony Accocone was also executed for the murders of his girlfriend’s parents.
PBS

The dark chapter involving James Aaron Duckett was finally brought to a permanent close.

For the family of Teresa McAbee, the decade-long wait for legal resolution finally ended.
Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty

The memory of the 11-year-old girl lives on long after the shadow of her killer has faded.