JUST IN: Florida Executes James Duckett, Police Officer Who Brutally Murdered an 11-Year-Old Girls

Although the police officer you see on screen may look like 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. His name was James Aaron Duckett. He was 68 years old and died by lethal injection at Florida State Prison.

Stay until the end because in this video, you’ll learn about the brutal crime that sent him to death row, the details of his trial, how his execution was carried out, and what his final words were before he died.  A policeman who may have been the last person to see 11-year-old Teresa McAbee alive is under investigation himself tonight.

 Teresa McAbee was a beautiful 11-year-old girl who was in the fifth grade at Mascot Elementary School. On the night of May 11th, 1987, at around 10:00 p.m., she told her mother that she needed a pencil to finish her homework. Her mother told her she didn’t want her going outside so late at night, but Teresa assured her that she would be back within 20 minutes.

 After insisting, her mother finally let her go. 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 who was at the laundromat next door. They left at nearly the same time and walked together 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 7 months. He was the only officer on duty that night, which meant the entire town of Mascot was under his responsibility. When he saw the two young people talking, Duckett became sickeningly attracted to Teresa.

He first went inside the store and asked the employee about the girl. He wanted to know her name, some 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 then walked out of the store 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. Then the boy’s uncle arrived to pick him up and also offered to drive Teresa home, but Officer James said that wasn’t 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, 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 didn’t see a single patrol car. So, they went to the Mascotte Police Station looking for the officer, but no one was there.

They then went to the nearest police station, which was 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 did, he told her that he had spoken with Teresa at the store and that she had been sitting in his patrol car talking with him, but that 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 had 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 the initiative and trying to help move the search forward.

 He even called the police chief to tell him that he had already prepared a missing person flyer to distribute throughout the town. But, this is 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, claiming that it wasn’t a good photograph.

He said he would come back with a better one, but he never did. There was another troubling detail. James’ police radio traffic that night showed that between 10:50 p.m. and 12:10 a.m., there were no transmissions at all. More than an hour of complete silence during the exact window when Teresa disappeared. But, things were about to get even worse.

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 never came back. He was supposed to be patrolling, but he wasn’t. The next morning, a fisherman made a horrifying discovery in Knight Lake, less than a mile from the convenience store.

 At first, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, but after alerting authorities, the new officer on duty quickly confirmed it. It was Teresa. The search was over. 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 while she was still alive.

He then strangled her, and once she was unconscious, threw her body into the lake. The investigation immediately focused on James. He had been the last person seen with Teresa. He was the only patrol officer on duty that night, and the circumstantial evidence against him continued to pile up.

 A technician from the sheriff’s department examined tire tracks found at the crime scene near Knight Lake and noticed that they were highly unusual. As he was leaving the scene, he observed that the tracks appeared to match those left by a Mascot police vehicle. An expert who later testified at trial confirmed the match. The tires were Goodyear Eagle mud and snow tires designed for driving in northern climates and uncommon in Florida.

Over the previous 9 years, the local  tire center had accidentally received only two sets of that particular model. And both sets had been installed on the two vehicles belonging to the Mascot Police Department. Then, there were the fingerprints. 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. But, James continued to deny it. Meanwhile, blood and all kinds of 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.

  Investigators concluded that there was a high degree of probability that the hair belonged to James. Nearly 7 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 3 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, they recommended the death penalty. Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced James to death in the electric chair for the murder and to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the sexual assault. But, this was not the only murder he was suspected of. In May 1986, an unidentified woman was found dead in a well near Lakeland after being seen getting into a dark blue car similar to the blue Buick Regal James owned at the time.

Then, in September 1987, 4 months after Teresa disappeared, 14-year-old Jennifer Weldon vanished after leaving a carnival. Her body was found 2 weeks later in a rural area that James regularly passed through because of his job at a phosphate mine. At this point in the story, I forgot to mention that James was living a double life.

 He had a wife and children and some of the gas receipts that placed him near the scene of Jennifer’s murder were actually found by his wife. On the day of the crime, James arrived late and disheveled at work and his wife later told investigators that he had brought home a green bag and a stuffed animal similar to those belonging to Jennifer.

In 2003, authorities were planning 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. During his 38 years on death row, James filed one appeal after another, but every one of them was denied. The courts consistently ruled that even if the pubic hair evidence was questionable, the tire tracks, fingerprints, radio silence, and witness  testimony all pointed to one person.

On February 27th, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed James’s death warrant  making it the fifth execution warrant he had signed that year. His execution was originally scheduled for March, but was postponed due to the controversy surrounding the DNA evidence. James requested DNA testing on the pubic hair found at the crime scene.

However, he had been offered the opportunity to have the same test performed back in 2004, and he had refused. Ultimately, the new DNA test produced inconclusive results. It did not prove that the hair belonged to James, but it also failed to establish his innocence. After further appeals, his execution was finally rescheduled for July 28th, 2026.

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. Duckett did not choose it himself. Instead, he was given the prison’s regular menu. Eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits,    and chocolate milk. Later, Duckett received a visit from a spiritual adviser, whom he spoke with for some time.

Finally, at noon, he was taken to a holding cell. At 12:30 p.m., he was escorted to the execution chamber at Florida State Prison in Starke, where he was strapped to a gurney and executed by lethal injection. Before the execution began, the executioner gave Duckett an opportunity to make a final statement, but he declined and remained silent until the end.

Subscribe to the channel because today is a historic day in Florida. For the first time in many years, the state will execute two people on the same day. In just a few hours, 80-year-old Dominic Anthony Accocone will also be executed for the murders of his girlfriend’s parents.