James Aren Duckett (September 4, 1957 – July 28, 2026) was an American convicted child murderer, sex offender and suspected serial killer sentenced to death in Florida. Duckett, a former police officer under the Mascotte Police Department, was charged with the kidnapping, rape, and murder of 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee on May 11, 1987. Duckett was said to have abducted the girl, who was raped and later strangled, and her body was found abandoned near a lake. Apart from McAbee's murder, Duckett was also a suspect in the 1987 unsolved murder of 14-year-old Jeanifer Shyan Weldon and 22-year-old Ronette Lynn Peterson in 1986. Duckett was convicted of McAbee's murder and sentenced to death. He was executed on July 28, 2026.
Murder of Teresa McAbee On the night of May 11, 1987, 29-year-old James Aren Duckett first encountered 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee. Duckett was a police officer affiliated with the Mascotte Police Department, and was on patrol duty throughout the city of Mascotte, Florida. He spotted McAbee walking out of a convenience store with a 16-year-old boy. Duckett apparently asked the convenience store clerk about the girl's age before he approached both McAbee and the boy, questioning them before he instructed McAbee to go home.Duckett v. State , Florida Supreme Court (United States).
The boy later returned to the convenience store where he was met by an uncle, and the pair witnessed Duckett and McAbee standing near Duckett's patrol car. According to the boy and his uncle, Duckett and McAbee entered the police car and departed the scene. It was the last time McAbee was seen alive.
A fisherman discovered McAbee's body the following day near the shore of Knight Lake. Duckett was named as a suspect because he was the last person seen with McAbee and he was also the only police officer on duty the day of the murder. As a result, Duckett was suspended from the police force on June 16, 1987, and he was fired three days later, ending his seven-month employment as a police officer.
Investigators found three key pieces of circumstantial evidence that led to Duckett's arrest and conviction. The first was a pubic hair left at the scene of the crime that matched Duckett. DNA tests on the police car showed that the palm prints of Duckett and McAbee were on the hood of his police vehicle, and investigators matched tire tracks near the crime scene to that vehicle.
Based on this circumstantial evidence, investigators deduced that Duckett had not sent McAbee home, but instead had kidnapped the child, raped her, and strangled her.
Suspected murders Ronette Lynn Peterson On May 7, 1986, an unnamed woman was discovered dead in a water-filled pit near Lakeland, Florida. The woman was petite, 5 feet 2 inches tall, with reddish-brown hair and blue to hazel eyes. She was fully clothed when her body was discovered, and wore an aqua-blue shirt and jeans. The cause of death was strangulation. The woman was last seen entering a dark blue car. Duckett owned a royal blue Buick Regal at the time, similar to the car that the victim entered before her disappearance and death.
In 2006, the victim was identified as 22-year-old Ronette Lynn Peterson, who came from Madrid, Iowa. Peterson relocated from Iowa to Florida in January 1986, four months before her death. The family filed a missing person report after Peterson, who regularly wrote letters to them, stopped writing to them. Peterson was identified after her fingerprints, which were collected after her 1983 arrest for drunk driving in Des Moines, Iowa, were matched to the victim.
As of 2026, the case remains unsolved.
Jeanifer Weldon On September 19, 1987, three days before her 15th birthday, Jeanifer Shyan Weldon disappeared. She was reportedly going to visit a friend and was last seen walking alone from a carnival.
Weldon was reported missing by her mother a day later, after she failed to return home. Weldon's body was found on October 2, 1987, near Auburndale, Florida.
Investigators working Weldon's murder suspected that Duckett was the killer. Duckett, then fired from the police force due to his suspected involvement in Teresa McAbee's murder, was working as a night-shift laborer in a local phosphate mine in Polk County and often drove to work through the area where Weldon's body was found. Gasoline receipts also showed that Duckett was near the scene of the crime on the date of Weldon's murder, and he arrived for work two hours late that day and was disheveled. Weldon was noted to be carrying a green shopping bag and a stuffed toy before she went missing, and neither were found with her body. Duckett's wife told investigators that her husband brought home a lime-green shopping bag with a stuffed toy for their two children. Later, it was made public that Duckett's wife identified "scratch marks" on his back. He told his wife that the injury was due to crawling under barbed wire.
In 2003, 16 years after Weldon's murder, the Polk County police force expressed their intent to press charges against Duckett for Weldon's murder. They wanted to ensure that Duckett remained behind bars even if he successfully appealed his conviction in the McAbee case.
On July 30, 2026, 48 hours after his execution, Sheriff Grady Judd announced during a morning press conference that investigators were confident in naming James Duckett as the suspect of the homicide. Judd added the case was being forwarded to the State Attorney's Office for a final review so that the case could be considered "exceptionally cleared," closing the nearly 39-year-old case. During the press conference, it was noted that Polk County Sheriff's Office detectives went to Florida State Prison before Duckett was executed to speak with him about the murder. Judd said that Duckett refused to leave his cell and speak with them.
Trial In October 1987, five months after Teresa McAbee's death, a Lake County grand jury formally indicted Duckett for her murder.
In early 1988, Duckett stood trial before a Lake County jury for first-degree murder, and the prosecution confirmed they would seek the death penalty. During the trial itself, Michael Malone, a forensic expert of the FBI testified that, based on his examination of 20 pubic hairs taken from Duckett, the hair taken from the crime scene matched the defendant. The defense challenged the validity of the evidence, countering that the hair could be from another person. The prosecution similarly submitted the tire mark and palm print evidence to show the defendant's guilt in court.
On May 10, 1988, the jury found Duckett guilty of first-degree murder and sexual battery. On that same day, the jury recommended the death penalty for Duckett.
During the sentencing phase of his murder trial, Duckett took the stand in his own defense. He denied any involvement in the murder and asked the jury to spare his life.
On June 30, 1988, Lake County Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced Duckett to death by the electric chair. He handed down an additional sentence of 25 years to life with no possibility of parole for the sexual battery charge. Prior to his sentencing, Duckett continued to insist he was innocent and asked for his life to be spared.
Death row
As of June 2000, Duckett was one of 370 inmates incarcerated on death row in Florida.
Appeals On December 6, 1989, Duckett filed his first appeal to the Florida Supreme Court. On September 6, 1990, the Florida Supreme Court dismissed Duckett's direct appeal against his death sentence.
On August 16, 2001, Circuit Judge Jerry Lockett denied Duckett's post-conviction appeal and upheld his death sentence and murder conviction.
In April 2003, defense counsel appealed for a review of their client's case and new DNA testing to ascertain his guilt. On October 4, 2003, Circuit Judge William Law granted Duckett's application for new DNA testing on a small semen sample pertaining to his case. The Florida Supreme Court later granted approval and set the deadline on January 15, 2004, to allow more time for new DNA testing. Ultimately, the deadline of January 15, 2004, passed and there was no motion filed over the DNA testing to the circuit court of the Florida Supreme Court. On February 7, 2004, Circuit Judge William Law issued a court order to bar any more DNA testing in Duckett's case.
In February 2005, defense counsel appealed again to seek a review of Duckett's case, stating that one of the trial witnesses, then a 16-year-old girl, had lied to the court about seeing Duckett outside the store before Teresa McAbee's disappearance and death, and was instructed to do so by the law enforcement officers and prosecution, although these allegations were denied by the police and prosecutors. On October 6, 2005, the Florida Supreme Court rejected Duckett's second appeal against his death sentence. On that day, three other convicted murderers – Jim Eric Chandler, McArthur Breedlove and Michael Duane Zack III – also lost their appeals against their death sentences. Ultimately, Zack was executed on October 3, 2023 for the murder of Ravonne Smith.
On March 26, 2010, U.S. District Court Judge William Terrell Hodges denied Duckett's federal appeal against his death sentence.
On June 26, 2014, the Florida Supreme Court denied Duckett's appeal, and also rejected his allegations of false witness testimony and disputed credibility of the pubic hair evidence against him.
On October 12, 2017, the Florida Supreme Court rejected Duckett's fourth appeal against his death sentence. The court found that despite the disputed validity of the pubic hair evidence against Duckett, his guilt was supported by other evidence like the tire marks matched to Duckett's police car near the scene of crime.
On December 28, 2018, the Florida Supreme Court dismissed Duckett's re-sentencing plea, finding that the hair evidence was not the only evidence used to prove his guilt and convict him, as there were other sources of circumstantial evidence that demonstrated his culpability and role in the murder. Aside from this, Duckett had already exhausted his direct appeal prior to June 24, 2002, the date of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that validated death sentences imposed by juries rather than judges, and hence he was not entitled to re-sentencing.
Alleged innocence During Duckett's incarceration on death row, there were concerns surrounding the validity of his guilt due to the disputed evidence in his case, with some experts believing that Duckett was not guilty of the murder of Teresa McAbee. In fact, for years, defense counsel had advocated for a review of his case.
In May 2003, Marshall Frank, a retired homicide detective and aspiring novelist, stated that he conducted research in Duckett's case while writing a new book, and he concluded that Duckett was innocent, stating that the prosecution had wrongly interpreted the fingerprint and palmprint evidence, and also made a blunder with the pubic hair and tire mark evidence, as well as overlooking factors that were in Duckett's favor. Apart from Frank, former Mascotte Police Chief Michael Brady expressed that he believed in the innocence of Duckett, who previously worked under him, and Mayor Josh Thomas similarly believed that Duckett was not guilty. Several years after Duckett's conviction, Michael Malone, the FBI expert who submitted the incriminating pubic hair evidence in Duckett's trial, was investigated for giving false testimony in several court cases and submitting scientifically flawed evidence in these cases. These events led to the validity of the pubic hair evidence being disputed in Duckett's case and raised doubts over the grounds of his murder conviction.