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

Former Mascotte police officer James Duckett has been on death row for nearly 40 years. Now he’s set to be put to death after the governor signed a second death warrant for him.  July 28th, 2026. Florida [music] State Prison, Raiford, Florida. Inside one of America’s most heavily guarded [music] prisons, correctional officers move with quiet urgency.

 The state of Florida has just done something it has not done in 62 years, execute two men on the very same day. The first man led to the gurney is 68-year-old James Aren Duckett, a former police officer, a [music] convicted child killer, a man who spent 38 years on death row insisting he did nothing wrong.  [music]  He is asked if he has any final words.

He looks up and says just two words, no remorse, no explanation, nothing. I’m going to tell you what he said. At 1:19 in the afternoon, James Aren Duckett is pronounced dead. But here is where this story gets complicated. The key physical evidence used to convict him, the evidence that put him on that gurney, was later called into serious question by the FBI’s own experts.

 And in the final weeks before his execution,  [music]  brand new DNA tests were ordered, tests that could have changed everything. Those tests came back inconclusive. A man who wore a badge to protect children used that very badge to get close to little girl. And what happened in the hours that followed is something no child should ever experience.

 By the time you finish this video, you will understand why some people believe Florida may have just executed an innocent man and why others insist justice was nearly 40 years overdue. Welcome back to If you are new here, hit that subscribe button and tap the bell. We cover real stories, real crimes, and real justice.

Now, let’s go back to where this all began. To understand this story, you first need to know who Teresa May Macabbee was. Teresa was born around 1975-1976 in Mascotte, Florida, a small, quiet town tucked inside Lake County. Mascot was the kind of place where neighbors knew each other by first name, where kids rode bikes after school, and parents did not worry too much, where the local police officers were familiar faces, not strangers in uniform.

 Teresa lived there with her mother, Dorothy Tula. On the night of May 11th, 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 16-year-old boy. Nothing about that night seemed dangerous. Nothing felt out of place.

 That was the last night anyone outside of her killer would see Teresa McAfee alive. The following morning, on May 12th, 1987, a fisherman made a horrifying discovery near the shore of Knight Lake, a young girl’s body. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. She was still 11 years old. That girl was Teresa. Here is the detail that makes this case so hard to sit with.

 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, 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 38 years waiting for justice, waiting for the courts, waiting for answers, 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. Now, let’s talk about the man on the other side of this story. James Oren Duckett was born on September 4th, 1957 in Central Florida. By the mid-1980s, he was living in the Mascot area and had set his sights on a career in law enforcement.

 In 1986, he joined the Mascot Police Department. He was a rookie, brand new to the badge, brand new to the uniform. In a town as small as Mascot, a police officer was not just a law enforcement figure. He was a community figure. People waved at patrol cars. Parents pointed them out to their children as people to trust.

 People to run to if something went wrong. Duckett wore that trust like a costume. Court records confirmed 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. 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, three separate accounts, all 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 11th, 1987. In his personal life, Duckett was married and had at least one son.

 He appeared, on the surface, to be a family man. But 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 crimes in a way nobody could have predicted. But we will get to that. What matters right now is this.

 Three girls raised red flags about James Duckett before Teresa McAbee ever stepped outside that convenience store. Three girls, three warnings. What would have happened if someone had listened to even one of them before May 11th? James Duckett did not wake up one morning and suddenly become dangerous. Court records and investigators later reconstructed a clear pattern.

 One that had been building for months before Teresa McAbee ever crossed his path. In the months leading up to May 11th, 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. The patrol car gave him 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, and that pattern was moving in one direction. In most true crime cases, there is a network, a co-conspirator, someone who helped plan it, someone who knew and said nothing.

Not here. James Aaron Duckett acted completely alone. No accomplices, no middleman, no one he called afterward. Just one man, one patrol car, and one decision that destroyed a family forever. And that is what makes this case so deeply unsettling. His approach was not the result of weeks of careful planning.

 It was opportunistic, but it was absolutely deliberate. He was the only officer on duty in Mascot that night. No partner riding alongside him. No supervisor checking in. No radio trail to account for his exact movements. What happened next is almost impossible to believe. Drop a comment and let us know your thoughts so far. And if you have not subscribed yet, now is a great time.

 Hit that button and keep watching because this story is far from over. May 11th, 1987, Mascot, Florida. The evening starts like any other in a small town. Nothing unusual. Nothing that would make anyone stop and take notice. Teresa Maccabee, 11 years old, is outside near a local convenience store with a 16-year-old boy.

 No alarm bells. No warning signs. Just a regular night in a town where people felt safe. James Aaron Duckett is the only police officer on duty in Mascot that night. One officer, one patrol car, an entire town to himself. At some point during the evening, Duckett pulls up near the convenience store. But before he approaches anyone outside, he goes into the store first. He speaks to the clerk.

He asks about the girl standing outside, specifically how old she is. Court records confirm this. He asked about her age before he approached her. This was not a casual question from a concerned officer. This was purposeful. This was targeted. He then walks outside and approaches both Teresa and the 16-year-old boy.

 He questions them and then he does something that on the surface sounds completely reasonable. He tells Teresa to go home because it is late. The boy leaves the area, but then the boy comes back this time with his uncle. And when the two of them return to the store, what they see stops them cold. Teresa and Duckett are standing together beside his patrol car.

 They watch and then right there in front of them, Teresa gets into the front of Duckett’s police vehicle. The car pulls away from the store and disappears into the night. That is the last confirmed sighting of Teresa May Maca be alive. The following morning, May 12th, 1987, a fisherman is out near Knight Lake when he makes a discovery that no person should ever have to make.

 A young girl’s body left near the water’s edge. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. She was 11 years old. Dorothy Tula had already reported her daughter missing overnight. Now she was getting the news no mother should ever receive. And where was James Duckett during those overnight hours? According to reports, he was out in the community helping to distribute missing person posters.

 Posters with Teresa’s face on them. 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 had been seen with Teresa. No other vehicle had been 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 11-year-old girl who never made it home. When Teresa Maca be’s body was pulled from the shore of Knight Lake, the investigation moved quickly because the pool of suspects was almost immediately narrow. One officer had been on duty that night.

 One officer had been seen with Teresa. One officer had watched her get into his patrol car and driven away with her into the dark. That officer was James R. N. Duckett. On June 16th, 1987, just over 1 month after Teresa’s murder, Duckett was suspended from the Mascotte Police Department. 3 days later, on June 19th, 1987, he was fired. 7 months.

 That was the entire length of his law enforcement career. No arrest came immediately. Investigators were still building their case, gathering evidence, and working to construct a timeline that would hold up in court. Duckett walked free, for now. 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. But his commute to that mine took him directly through a specific stretch of road. A road that would become deeply significant just months later. It was the same area where the body of 14-year-old Jennifer Weldon would eventually be found.

 And Duckett’s wife, who had no apparent involvement in any crime, would unknowingly provide investigators with one of the most damaging pieces of information in the entire Weldon case. She had no idea what she had just handed them. Investigators arrived at Night 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 in those dark hours 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 Maccabee. And a pubic hair recovered at the scene was sent off for forensic analysis.

 Three pieces of physical evidence, all pointing toward the same man. Duckett’s explanation was straightforward. He claimed he told Teresa to go home and then continued his patrol. But there was a serious problem with that story. No witness could place him back on patrol after the last sighting. No radio check-in confirmed his movements.

 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. The primary suspect was a law enforcement officer. Departments had to move carefully, documenting everything, making sure every step could withstand scrutiny. The FBI was brought in.

 Hair expert Michael Malone examined 20 pubic hairs collected from Duckett and compared them to the hair found at the scene. His conclusion, the crime scene hair matched James Aaron Duckett. That testimony would become a cornerstone of the prosecution’s case, but 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 own house would fall apart, and it would put everything built on that hair sample into serious question. By the time investigators laid everything outside by side, the picture was undeniable. The palm prints on the hood of the patrol car, the tire tracks near Knight Lake matching a Mascot Police Department vehicle, the hair evidence from the scene, and the one fact that tied it all together, James Duckett was the only officer on duty the night Teresa Maccabee disappeared. Court records

state that investigators concluded Duckett had not sent Teresa home as he claimed. They determined he had kidnapped her, raped her, and strangled her before leaving her body at the water’s edge. In October 1987, 5 months after Teresa’s murder, a Lake County Grand Jury formally indicted James R. N. Duckett for first-degree murder.

 But that same period brought another devastating discovery. On September 19th, 1987, 14-year-old Jennifer Weldon vanished. She had been walking alone after leaving a carnival, reportedly on her way to visit a friend. Her mother reported her missing the following day. On October 2nd, 1987, Jennifer’s body was found near Auburndale, Florida.

 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 2 hours late that same day and appeared visibly disheveled.

 But the most damning 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. 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, gifts, he said, for their children.

 No charges were ever filed in Jennifer Weldon’s case, but the weight of that detail never went away. Early 1988, Lake County, Florida. James R. N. Duckett sits before a jury, and prosecutors make their position clear from the very start. They are seeking the death penalty. The case they built rested on four pillars. First, FBI expert Michael Malone’s testimony that the pubic hair recovered at the crime scene matched Duckett.

 Second, tire mark analysis linking Duckett’s patrol car to the tracks found near Night Lake. Third, the palm prints of both Duckett and Teresa Maccabee found on the hood of his police vehicle. And fourth, testimony from three teenage girls who described Duckett making sexual advances toward them while on patrol, establishing a pattern of predatory behavior that prosecutors argued did not begin with Teresa. The defense pushed back hard.

Their argument was straightforward. The hair evidence was not conclusive. It 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. On May 10th, 1988, the jury returned its verdict.

Guilty on first-degree murder. Guilty on sexual battery. That same day, the jury recommended the death penalty, but the vote was eight to four, not unanimous. That split decision would fuel appeal after appeal for the next 38 years. Before sentencing, Duckett took the stand himself.

 He denied any involvement in Teresa’s murder. He looked at the court and asked for his life to be spared. On June 30th, 1988, Lake County Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett handed down the sentence. Death by electric chair, plus 25 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. Police and prosecutors denied it. The Florida Supreme Court rejected the claim on October 6th, 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 helped his case. Every 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.

Appeals came and went, and all the while, Teresa Macabys family waited. Duckett’s case attracted national attention. 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.

 Not because people celebrated him, but because serious questions 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. Then Marshall Frank went back and studied the Welden and Peterson cases more carefully. He reversed his position entirely and concluded that Duckett was likely guilty of at least two murders. On February 27th, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed Duckett’s first death warrant.

 Execution was set for March 31st, 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 27th, the results came back inconclusive. The state pushed to proceed anyway. Court stalled. More hearings followed. On April 7th, 2026, the death warrant expired without an execution taking place.

 On July 8th, 2026, the Florida Supreme Court lifted the stay entirely, clearing the path for a new warrant. One week later, on July 14th, 2026, Governor DeSantis signed a a death warrant. Execution date, July 28th, 2026 at 12:00 noon. Duckett would be executed on the same day as 80-year-old Dominic Achille Coney, making it Florida’s first double execution in 62 years.

The night before his execution, four family members visited Duckett at Florida State Prison. He woke the following morning at 4:45. He ate his final meal, eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits, and chocolate milk. He spoke with a spiritual advisor. At noon, his final appeal to the US Supreme Court was still pending.

 The court denied it approximately 30 minutes after his scheduled execution time, delaying the lethal injection by over an hour. At 1:19 in the afternoon on July 28th, 2026, James Aaron Duckett was pronounced dead, 68 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.

Florida’s first double execution since May 12th, 1964. Teresa Macabe’s mother, Dorothy Tula, waited nearly 40 years for this day. When it finally came, she broke down speaking to the press. 40 years of grief, 40 years of court dates and denials and disappointment. And then, two words from the man who took her daughter, “No, sir.

” Teresa’s cousin said it plainly, “Duckett took advantage of his badge and argued that the execution was not painful enough given what that 11-year-old girl had endured.” Jennifer Weldon’s family was also there. Her sister said the execution brought a measure of closure. Two families connected by tragedy, bound together for nearly four decades by one man’s actions, sitting in the same room watching the same needle.

 State Attorney Bill Gladson called it the final administration of justice. The ACLU and the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Practitioners warned that the state may have executed a man not proven guilty beyond every available scientific doubt. Judge Jerry Lockett, the man who sentenced Duckett to death on June 30th, 1988, died in September 2013, aged 71.

 He never lived to see the sentence he handed down carried out. And Duckett’s grandson, Trenton Duckett, has been missing since 2006. To this day, he has never been found. A man who swore an oath to serve and protect used that oath as a weapon. He served no one. He protected no one. And he left this world in silence. Which moment in this case hit you hardest? The badge betrayal, the inconclusive DNA, or that two-word final statement? Drop it in the comments below.

 If this story moved you, subscribe and share it because Teresa Maciboba’s name deserves to be remembered. We’ll see you in the next one.