JUST IN: Florida Executes James Duckett, Police Officer Who Brutally Murdered an 11-Year-Old Girl
While the police officer you see on screen may seem like a decent person, behind that uniform was a real monster. A former police officer was executed in Florida today for an extremely heinous crime. His name was James Aaron Duckett. He was 68 years old and died by lethal injection in Florida State Prison .
Stay until the end, because in this video you will learn about the brutal crime that sent him to death row, the details of the trial, how the execution took place, and what his last words were. The police officer who may have been the last person to see 11-year-old Teresa McCabe alive is himself under investigation tonight.
Teresa McCabe was a beautiful 11-year-old girl in the fifth grade at Mascot Elementary School. On the night of May 11, 1987, at around 10:00 p.m., she told her mother that she needed a pencil to finish her homework. Her mother said she didn’t want her to go out so late, but Teresa assured her she would be back in 20 minutes.
After persistent requests, her mother finally allowed her to leave. Teresa went to the store near her house and bought pencils . A few minutes later, she left the store and met a 16-year-old neighbor who was at the laundromat next door . They left almost at the same time and walked together to a trash can near the store, where they talked for about 20 minutes.
Just then, Officer James Duckett arrived in his patrol car. James was 29 years old and had only been a police officer for 7 months. He was the only officer on duty that night, which meant that the entire town of Mascot was under his responsibility. Seeing the two young people talking, Duckett felt a painful attraction to Teresa.
First, he went into the store and asked the employee about the girl. He wanted to know her name, some personal details, and how old she was. The worker told him that Teresa was between 10 and 13 years old. James said he was going to talk to her and left the store towards the trash cans. According to James’ own testimony, he questioned both children and ordered Teresa to go home.
At that time, there was a curfew for minors, meaning Teresa was not allowed to be outside alone after 10:30 p.m. Then the boy’s uncle arrived to pick him up and offered to give Teresa a ride home. But Officer James said there was no need for that and ordered the uncle and the boy to leave. When they left, he put Teresa in the passenger seat of his patrol car, closed the door , walked around the car, got behind the wheel, started the engine, and drove off with her. Around 11:00 p.m.
, Teresa’s mother came to the store looking for her daughter. The worker told her that Officer James may have taken Teresa to the police station. Mother Teresa and her sister drove all over Mascot for the next hour but didn’t see a single patrol car. So they went to the Mascot police station looking for an officer, but no one was there.
They then went to the nearest police station, which was in Groveland, and reported Teresa missing. After that, Teresa’s mother returned to the Mascota police station and began to wait. It was 15–20 minutes before James finally showed up. When he arrived, he told her that he had spoken to Teresa at the store and she had been sitting in his patrol car talking to him, but later walked home alone.
Teresa’s mother, unbeknownst to her, had just filed a missing person report against the man who killed her daughter. After accepting the application, James drove to Teresa’s house to get her photo. At first, it seemed like he was taking the initiative and trying to help speed up the search. He even called the police chief to say that he had already prepared a missing person’s report to distribute around the city.
But it was here that the situation began to raise suspicions about the officer. James brought the ad to the store, but only to tell the employee not to hang it, stating that the photo was a bad one. He promised to come back with a better photo, but never did. There was another disturbing detail. James’ radio transmission that night showed that there was no communication from 22:50 to 00:10 .
Over an hour of complete silence, exactly the time that Teresa disappeared. But then the situation became even worse. An employee at another store later testified that police officers typically drove by every 45–60 minutes. James drove by around 9:30 p.m. but never returned. He was supposed to patrol the area, but he didn’t . The next morning, a fisherman made a gruesome find on Knight Lake, less than a mile from the store.
At first he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but after calling the police, the new officer on duty quickly confirmed it. It was Teresa. The search is over. That night, James took her to the Night Lake area against her will. He parked the patrol car, forcibly pulled her out of the car, pinned her down, and sexually assaulted her while she was still alive.
He then strangled her and, when she lost consciousness, threw her body into the lake. The investigation immediately focused on James. He was the last person seen with Teresa. He was the only patrolman on duty that night, and circumstantial evidence against him continued to pile up. A technician from the sheriff’s office examined the tire tracks at the crime scene near Knight Lake and noticed that they were highly unusual.
As he left the scene, he noticed that the tracks matched those left by police cars from the city of Mascot. An expert who later testified in court confirmed this match. These were Goodyear Eagle Mud and Snow tires, designed for northern climates and rare for Florida. In the previous nine years, the local tire center had only happened to receive two sets of this model, and both were installed on two vehicles of the Mascot Police Department.
And there were also fingerprints. Both James’ and Teresa’s fingerprints were found on the hood of his patrol car . Teresa’s prints indicated that she had been sitting with her back to the hood and had slid across the car, but James continued to deny this. Meanwhile, blood and all kinds of biological fluids from both Teresa and James were found on the girl’s underwear.
One of the key pieces of evidence was a pubic hair found inside Teresa’s underwear. Investigators concluded that this hair most likely belonged to James. It was almost 7 months before James was finally arrested and charged with first- degree murder. On June 16, 1987, he was suspended from police service, and 3 days later he was fired.
During the trial on May 10, 1988, a jury found James guilty of sexual assault and first- degree murder. By eight votes to four, they recommended the death penalty. District Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced James to death by electric chair for murder and to life in prison without parole for sexual assault. But this was not the only murder in which he was suspected.
In May 1986, an unidentified woman was found dead in a well near Lakeland after being seen in a dark blue car similar to the blue Buick Regal James owned at the time. And in September 1987, 4 months after Teresa’s disappearance, 14- year-old Jennifer Weldon disappeared after leaving a carnival. Her body was found 2 weeks later in a rural area where James regularly drove through due to his work at a phosphate mine.
At this point in the story, I forgot to mention that James lived a double life. He had a wife and children, and some of the gas receipts indicating his presence near the scene of Jennifer’s murder were actually found by his wife. On the day of the crime, James arrived at work late and disheveled, and his wife later told investigators that he had brought home a green bag and a stuffed toy that looked like those belonging to Jennifer.
In 2003, authorities planned to charge James in Jennifer’s murder case if his conviction was overturned. However, this 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 each one was rejected. Courts have consistently held that even if the pubic hair evidence was questionable, tire tracks, fingerprints, radio silence, and eyewitness testimony all pointed to one person.
On February 27, 2026, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed James’ death warrant, the fifth execution warrant he had signed that year. His execution was originally scheduled for March, but was postponed due to controversies surrounding DNA evidence. James demanded DNA testing of pubic hair found at the crime scene. However, he was offered the same test back in 2004, and he refused.
Ultimately, a new DNA test yielded inconclusive results. He did not prove that the hair belonged to James, but he could not prove his innocence either. After further appeals, his execution was finally postponed to July 28, 2026. 68- year-old James Duckett woke up at 4:45 a.m. on July 28, 2026. At 6:00 AM, he was served his last meal.
Duckett didn’t choose her on his own. Instead, he was given the usual prison menu: eggs, cornbread, bacon, cookies, and chocolate milk. Later, Duckett received a visit from a spiritual mentor , with whom he spoke for some time. Finally, at noon, he was transferred to a temporary holding cell . At 12:30 p.m.
, he was transported to death row at Florida State Prison in Stark, where he was strapped to a gurney and executed by lethal injection. Before the execution began, the executioner gave Duckett the opportunity to make a final statement, but he refused 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 Aacone will also be executed for the murder of his girlfriend’s parents.
