JUST IN: Florida EXECUTES Cop Who R4ped & Drowned a Girl For Fun | Final Meal & Words

Former Mascotte police officer James Duckett spent nearly forty years on death row. Now he was set to be put to death after the governor signed a second death warrant for him.

On July 28, 2026, inside Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida, correctional officers moved with quiet urgency within one of America’s most heavily guarded facilities. The state of Florida was about to execute two men on the very same day for the first time in sixty-two years.

The first man led to the gurney was sixty-eight-year-old James Aren Duckett, a former police officer and convicted child killer. He had spent thirty-eight years on death row insisting he did nothing wrong.

When asked if he had any final words, he looked up and said just two words: “No, sir.” There was no remorse, no explanation, and nothing more.

At 1:19 in the afternoon, James Aren Duckett was pronounced dead.

Here is where the story grows deeply complicated. The key physical evidence used to convict him—the very evidence that put him on that gurney—was later called into serious question by the FBI’s own experts.

In the final weeks before his execution, brand-new DNA tests were ordered that could have changed everything. Those tests came back inconclusive.

A man who wore a badge to protect children used that very authority to get close to a little girl. What happened in the hours that followed was something no child should ever experience.

Some people believe Florida may have executed an innocent man, while others insist justice was nearly forty years overdue.

To understand this case, one must first know who Teresa May McAbee was. Teresa was born around 1975 or 1976 in Mascotte, Florida, a small, quiet town tucked inside Lake County.

Mascotte was the kind of place where neighbors knew each other by first name, kids rode bikes after school, and parents did not worry too much. The local police officers were familiar faces rather than strangers in uniform.

Teresa lived there with her mother, Dorothy Tula.

On the night of May 11, 1987, Teresa was doing what a lot of kids her age did in a small town: just being a kid. She was outside near a local convenience store, spending time with a sixteen-year-old boy.

Nothing about that night seemed dangerous, and nothing felt out of place.

That was the last night anyone outside of her killer would see Teresa McAbee alive.

The following morning, on May 12, 1987, a fisherman made a horrifying discovery near the shore of Knight Lake. He found a young girl’s body; she had been sexually assaulted and strangled.

She was only eleven years old, and that girl was Teresa.

The detail that makes this case so hard to process is that the last person seen with Teresa that night was not a stranger lurking in the dark.

It was a uniformed police officer, a man the community trusted, and a man whose entire job was to keep people safe.

The person who was supposed to protect Teresa may have been the very person who took her life.

Dorothy Tula, Teresa’s mother, would spend the next thirty-eight years waiting for justice, waiting for the courts, waiting for answers, and waiting for a day that felt like it would never come.

That day eventually arrived, but the road to get there was longer and more painful than anyone could have imagined.

James Oren Duckett was born on September 4, 1957, in Central Florida. By the mid-1980s, he was living in the Mascotte area and had set his sights on a career in law enforcement.

In 1986, he joined the Mascotte Police Department as a rookie officer brand new to the badge and uniform.

In a town as small as Mascotte, a police officer was a key community figure. People waved at patrol cars, and parents pointed them out to their children as people to trust and run to if something went wrong.

Duckett wore that trust like a costume.

Court records confirm that in the months leading up to Teresa McAbee’s murder, three separate teenage girls came forward with disturbing accounts. Each one described a similar experience.

They detailed Duckett in uniform behind the wheel of his patrol car, offering them rides or making sexual advances toward them while he was on duty.

Three girls offered three separate accounts while he was supposed to be protecting the public.

There is no public record confirming that any formal action was taken against Duckett based on those accounts before May 11, 1987.

In his personal life, Duckett was married and had at least one son, appearing on the surface to be a family man.

However, court records told a different story about who he was when he thought no one important was watching.

His son’s life would later become entangled in its own painful tragedy, one that connected back to his father’s history in an unpredictable way.

Three girls raised red flags about James Duckett before Teresa McAbee ever stepped outside that convenience store.

Three girls gave three warnings, leaving open the question of what would have happened if someone had listened to even one of them before May 11.

James Duckett did not wake up one morning and suddenly become dangerous.

Court records and investigators later reconstructed a clear pattern that had been building for months before Teresa McAbee ever crossed his path.

During the months leading up to May 11, 1987, Duckett repeatedly used his patrol duties as an opportunity to approach young girls.

The badge got him close, the uniform made him appear safe, and the patrol car gave him direct access.

Teenage girls later described encounters where Duckett offered them rides or made comments that had no place coming from an officer on duty.

This was not a one-time lapse in judgment; it was a pattern that was moving in one dangerous direction.

In most true crime cases, there is a network, a co-conspirator, or someone who helped plan it and said nothing.

That was not the case here, as James Aren Duckett acted completely alone.

There were no accomplices, no middlemen, and no one he called afterward. There was just one man, one patrol car, and one decision that destroyed a family forever.

That is what makes this case so deeply unsettling.

His approach was not the result of weeks of careful planning; it was opportunistic, yet absolutely deliberate.

He was the only officer on duty in Mascotte that night, with no partner riding alongside him and no supervisor checking in.

There was no detailed radio trail to account for his exact movements.

On May 11, 1987, in Mascotte, Florida, the evening started like any other in a small town, with nothing unusual to make anyone stop and take notice.

Teresa McAbee, eleven years old, was outside near a local convenience store with a sixteen-year-old boy.

There were no alarm bells or warning signs, just a regular night in a town where people felt safe.

James Aren Duckett was the only police officer on duty in Mascotte that night, giving him an entire town to himself.

At some point during the evening, Duckett pulled up near the convenience store.

Before he approached anyone outside, he went into the store first and spoke to the clerk, asking about the girl standing outside, specifically inquiring about her age.

Court records confirm that he asked about her age before he approached her.

This was not a casual question from a concerned officer; it was purposeful and targeted.

He then walked outside and approached both Teresa and the sixteen-year-old boy.

He questioned them and then did something that, on the surface, sounded completely reasonable: he told Teresa to go home because it was late.

The boy left the area, but he later returned with his uncle.

When the two of them returned to the store, what they saw stopped them cold.

Teresa and Duckett were standing together beside his patrol car.

They watched right there in front of them as Teresa got into the front of Duckett’s police vehicle.

The car pulled away from the store and disappeared into the night.

That was the last confirmed sighting of Teresa May McAbee alive.

The following morning, May 12, 1987, a fisherman near Knight Lake made a discovery that no person should ever have to make.

He found a young girl’s body left near the water’s edge; she had been sexually assaulted and strangled at eleven years old.

Dorothy Tula had already reported her daughter missing overnight, and now she was receiving the news no mother should ever hear.

Where was James Duckett during those overnight hours?

According to reports, he was out in the community helping to distribute missing person posters featuring Teresa’s face.

She was the very girl he allegedly drove away from that convenience store and never brought back.

That detail would haunt this case for decades.

There was no other officer on duty that night, no other suspect seen with Teresa, and no other vehicle identified leaving with her.

Court records show the investigation had one clear, unavoidable starting point: one officer, one patrol car, one road leading to Knight Lake, and an eleven-year-old girl who never made it home.

When Teresa McAbee’s body was pulled from the shore of Knight Lake, the investigation moved quickly because the pool of suspects was narrow.

One officer had been on duty that night, one officer had been seen with Teresa, and one officer had watched her get into his patrol car and driven away into the dark.

That officer was James Aren Duckett.

On June 16, 1987, just over one month after Teresa’s murder, Duckett was suspended from the Mascotte Police Department.

Three days later, on June 19, 1987, he was fired, ending his law enforcement career after just seven months.

No arrest came immediately, as investigators were still building their case, gathering evidence, and working to construct a timeline that would hold up in court.

Duckett walked free for the time being.

He quietly relocated and took a job as a night shift laborer at a phosphate mine in Polk County.

On the surface, it looked like a man trying to move on after losing his job.

However, his commute to that mine took him directly through a specific stretch of road that would become deeply significant just months later.

It was the same area where the body of fourteen-year-old Jennifer Weldon would eventually be found.

Duckett’s wife, who had no involvement in any crime, would unknowingly provide investigators with one of the most damaging pieces of information in the Weldon case without realizing what she had handed them.

Investigators arrived at Knight Lake and got to work.

They secured the scene, examined Teresa’s body, and began canvassing the surrounding area for anything that could tell them what happened between the convenience store and the water’s edge.

What they found was significant.

Tire tracks near the shoreline matched the model of patrol car used by the Mascotte Police Department.

Palm prints lifted from the hood of Duckett’s police vehicle belonged to two people: Duckett himself and Teresa McAbee.

A pubic hair recovered at the scene was sent off for forensic analysis.

These three pieces of physical evidence all pointed toward the same man.

Duckett’s explanation was straightforward: he claimed he told Teresa to go home and then continued his patrol.

There was a serious problem with that story, as no witness could place him back on patrol after the last sighting.

No radio check-in confirmed his movements, and no fellow officer could account for where he was.

His alibi was essentially his own word against a trail of physical evidence.

The investigation carried an added layer of difficulty because the primary suspect was a law enforcement officer.

Departments had to move carefully, documenting everything to ensure every step could withstand scrutiny.

The FBI was brought in, and hair expert Michael Malone examined twenty pubic hairs collected from Duckett, comparing them to the hair found at the scene.

His conclusion was that the crime scene hair matched James Aren Duckett.

That testimony would become a cornerstone of the prosecution’s case, though it would not go unchallenged.

Years later, Michael Malone himself came under federal investigation for providing false and scientifically flawed testimony across multiple court cases.

The reliability of his findings, including the hair evidence in Duckett’s case, would be called into serious question.

At the same time, three teenage girls separately came forward describing Duckett’s inappropriate behavior toward them while on patrol, giving prosecutors a pattern to present alongside the physical evidence.

The case looked solid, but decades later, the FBI’s forensic integrity in this matter would fall apart, putting everything built on that hair sample into question.

By the time investigators laid everything side by side, the picture was clear to them.

There were palm prints on the hood of the patrol car, tire tracks near Knight Lake matching a Mascotte Police Department vehicle, and hair evidence from the scene.

Tying it all together was the fact that James Duckett was the only officer on duty the night Teresa McAbee disappeared.

Court records state that investigators concluded Duckett had not sent Teresa home as he claimed.

They determined he had kidnapped her, assaulted her, and strangled her before leaving her body at the water’s edge.

In October 1987, five months after Teresa’s murder, a Lake County Grand Jury formally indicted James Aren Duckett for first-degree murder.

That same period brought another devastating discovery.

On September 19, 1987, fourteen-year-old Jennifer Weldon vanished while walking alone after leaving a carnival, reportedly on her way to visit a friend.

Her mother reported her missing the following day.

On October 2, 1987, Jennifer’s body was found near Auburndale, Florida, and she had been strangled.

Investigators looking into Jennifer’s death turned their attention toward Duckett almost immediately.

What they uncovered was striking.

Gasoline receipts placed Duckett in the area near where Jennifer was last seen on the day she disappeared.

He arrived at his night shift job at the phosphate mine two hours late that same day and appeared visibly disheveled.

The most damaging detail came from inside Duckett’s own home.

Jennifer Weldon had been carrying a lime green shopping bag and a stuffed toy the last time anyone saw her alive, but neither item was found with her body.

When investigators spoke to Duckett’s wife, she told them something that stopped them cold.

Her husband had come home that day carrying a lime green shopping bag and a stuffed toy, claiming they were gifts for their children.

No charges were ever filed in Jennifer Weldon’s case, but the weight of that detail never went away.

In early 1988 in Lake County, Florida, James Aren Duckett sat before a jury as prosecutors made their position clear from the start: they were seeking the death penalty.

The case they built rested on four main pillars.

First was FBI expert Michael Malone’s testimony that the pubic hair recovered at the crime scene matched Duckett.

Second was the tire mark analysis linking Duckett’s patrol car to the tracks found near Knight Lake.

Third were the palm prints of both Duckett and Teresa McAbee found on the hood of his police vehicle.

Fourth was testimony from three teenage girls who described Duckett making sexual advances toward them while on patrol, establishing a pattern of behavior that prosecutors argued did not begin with Teresa.

The defense pushed back hard with a straightforward argument.

They claimed the hair evidence was not conclusive and could have belonged to someone else.

The entire case, they argued, was built on circumstantial evidence with no direct proof that Duckett committed the crime.

The jury did not agree with the defense.

On May 10, 1988, the jury returned its verdict: guilty of first-degree murder and guilty of sexual battery.

That same day, the jury recommended the death penalty, but the vote was eight to four, rather than unanimous.

That split decision would fuel appeal after appeal for the next thirty-eight years.

Before sentencing, Duckett took the stand himself to deny any involvement in Teresa’s murder.

He looked at the court and asked for his life to be spared.

On June 30, 1988, Lake County Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett handed down the sentence: death by electric chair, plus twenty-five years to life with no possibility of parole for the sexual battery conviction.

The appeals began almost immediately.

In 2005, defense attorneys alleged that a key teenage witness had been coached by law enforcement to lie on the stand, though police and prosecutors denied it.

The Florida Supreme Court rejected the claim on October 6, 2005.

In 2017, the Florida Supreme Court acknowledged the pubic hair evidence was disputed, but ruled that the tire marks and remaining evidence independently supported the guilty verdict.

In 2018, Duckett’s resentencing plea was dismissed.

The court ruled he had exhausted his direct appeal rights before a landmark 2002 US Supreme Court ruling that could have influenced his case.

Every legal door he tried to open stayed shut.

By June 2000, James Oren Duckett was one of 370 inmates sitting on Florida’s death row.

Years turned into decades as appeals came and went, while Teresa McAbee’s family waited.

Duckett’s case attracted national attention over the years.

He appeared in CNN’s true crime series Death Row Stories in 2014 and was later featured in Real Detective and Killer in Question.

His case became a reference point in debates about the death penalty across the country, largely due to the serious questions that had emerged about the evidence used to convict him.

Retired homicide detective Marshall Frank publicly stated, after conducting his own research, that he believed Duckett was innocent, arguing that investigators had misread the forensic evidence.

Former Mascotte Police Chief Michael Brady and Mascotte Mayor Josh Thomas also expressed public doubt about Duckett’s guilt.

For a period, it seemed like momentum was shifting in his favor.

Then, Marshall Frank went back and studied the Weldon case and other related files more carefully.

He reversed his position entirely and concluded that Duckett was likely guilty of multiple crimes.

On February 27, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Duckett’s first death warrant, setting the execution for March 31, 2026.

Five days before that date, the Florida Supreme Court stepped in and halted the execution, ordering DNA testing that Duckett’s attorneys argued could clear him.

On March 27, the results came back inconclusive.

The state pushed to proceed anyway while courts stalled and more hearings followed.

On April 7, 2026, the death warrant expired without an execution taking place.

On July 8, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court lifted the stay entirely, clearing the path for a new warrant.

One week later, on July 14, 2026, Governor DeSantis signed another death warrant.

The execution date was set for July 28, 2026, at 12:00 noon.

Duckett would be executed on the same day as eighty-year-old Dominic Achille Coney, making it Florida’s first double execution in sixty-two years.

The night before his execution, four family members visited Duckett at Florida State Prison.

He woke the following morning at 4:45 AM and ate his final meal consisting of eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits, and chocolate milk before speaking with a spiritual advisor.

At noon, his final appeal to the US Supreme Court was still pending.

The court denied it approximately thirty minutes after his scheduled execution time, delaying the lethal injection by over an hour.

At 1:19 in the afternoon on July 28, 2026, James Aren Duckett was pronounced dead at sixty-eight years old.

Asked for a final statement, he said two words: “No, sir.”

Five hours later, at 6:13 in the evening, Dominic Achille Coney was executed in the same room on the same gurney.

It marked Florida’s first double execution since May 12, 1964.

Teresa McAbee’s mother, Dorothy Tula, had waited nearly forty years for this day.

When it finally came, she broke down while speaking to the press after experiencing decades of grief, court dates, denials, and disappointment.

All of it ended with two final words from the man convicted of taking her daughter: “No, sir.”

Teresa’s cousin stated plainly that Duckett took advantage of his badge, arguing that the execution was not painful enough given what the eleven-year-old girl had endured.

Jennifer Weldon’s family was also present, with her sister noting that the execution brought a measure of closure.

Two families connected by tragedy were bound together for nearly four decades by one man’s actions, sitting in the same room to watch the process unfold.

State Attorney Bill Gladson called it the final administration of justice.

Conversely, organizations like the ACLU and the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers raised concerns, warning that the legal system must remain vigilant regarding scientific proof.

Judge Jerry Lockett, the man who sentenced Duckett to death on June 30, 1988, died in September 2013 at age seventy-one, never living to see the sentence carried out.

Additionally, Duckett’s grandson, Trenton Duckett, went missing in 2006 and has never been found.

A man who swore an oath to serve and protect ultimately left a long shadow of unanswered questions and pain.

He served no one, protected no one, and left this world in silence after decades of legal proceedings.