The state of Florida executed former Mascot police officer James Aaron Duckett on July 28, 2026, bringing a long-delayed end to a case that shattered a small community and 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 the darkest 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮 of a badge. He was pronounced dead at 1:19 p. m.
inside Florida State Prison. The 68-year-old spent 38 years on death row for the 1987 rape and murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee. He offered no final words, no apology, and no explanation.
Outside the prison, Teresa’s mother, Dorothy Tula, broke down before cameras. “I waited nearly 40 years to have him dead,” she said, her voice cracking under decades of grief. Her niece, Tracy McFall Buskirk, stood beside her and spoke with quiet fury.
“This man took advantage of his badge. You teach children to go to cops for help. This man had no right to do what he did.”
The family of another murder victim, Jennifer Weldon, was also watching through the glass.
The execution came after a final month of legal turmoil. Governor Ron DeSantis had signed a death warrant in February, but Duckett’s legal team won a stay to pursue DNA testing they had ignored for decades.
The results came back inconclusive. The Florida Supreme Court lifted the stay on July 8, and a second warrant was signed six days later. By then, the case had already split public opinion, with a retired detective, a former police chief, and a sitting mayor once insisting Duckett was innocent.
Teresa McAbee was a fifth grader at Mascot Elementary School. People who knew her described her as bright, loving, and responsible. She had never been in trouble.
She had never engaged in any sexual activity, the medical examiner later confirmed in open court. On the night of May 11, 1987, she needed a pencil to finish her homework. It was nearly 10:00 p.
m. Her mother said no, but Teresa promised she would only take five minutes. She walked to a convenience store less than a mile away.
She never came home. James Duckett had joined the Mascot Police Department in late 1986. On the night Teresa vanished, he was exactly seven months into the job, and he was the only officer on patrol.
The entire town was his responsibility alone. To the public, he looked like the ideal cop. He wore the uniform, drove the marked patrol car, and represented safety.
But court records later revealed a pattern of predatory behavior that had been building for months.
Three young women testified at trial about what Duckett did while on duty. All three had the same petite build as Teresa.
One said he tried to kiss her inside his patrol car. Another said he pulled up beside her ten days before Teresa’s murder, offered her a ride, and drove her to a remote orange grove instead of taking her home. A third described repeated encounters with him in uniform, in the same patrol car Teresa was last seen entering.
No one reported him at the time. Who do you call when the threat is the police officer himself?
On the night of the murder, Duckett arrived at the convenience store and went inside.
He walked up to the clerk and asked two questions: “What’s her name? How old is she?” The clerk said Teresa was between 10 and 13.
Duckett said he would check on her. He stepped outside, spoke to Teresa and a 16-year-old boy, and sent them away. Then the patrol car pulled away with Teresa in the passenger seat.
Between 10:50 p. m. and 12:10 a.
m. , the exact window she disappeared, Duckett’s radio was completely silent.
No transmissions.
Not one. Over an hour of silence from the only officer on duty. Teresa’s mother arrived at the store around 11:00 p.
m. The clerk told her the officer may have taken Teresa to the station. She drove every street in Mascot and found nothing.
The station was empty. She filed a missing person report in the next town. At 12:10 a.
m. , Duckett’s radio came back on. Ten minutes later, he walked into the Mascot station and took the missing person report himself, the report about the girl he had last been seen with.
He drove to her home to collect a photo. He told the police chief he had already prepared a flyer and did not need help. He took the flyer to the convenience store and told the clerk not to post it.
He said it was not a good picture and promised to return with a better one. He never came back. The next morning, a fisherman spotted Teresa’s body at the edge of Knight Lake, less than a mile from the store.
She had been sexually assaulted alive, then strangled and drowned. She was 11 years old.
Investigators had no confession and no eyewitness to the actual murder.
But they had physical evidence. Tire tracks near the lake were made by Goodyear Eagle mud and snow tires, a type built for cold climates and rarely seen in Florida. A local tire center said they had only ever received two sets of those tires by mistake in nine years.
Both sets were fitted onto Mascot Police cars. One of those cars belonged to Duckett. Palm prints placed both Duckett and Teresa on the hood of his patrol car.
Her prints suggested she had been sitting backward and sliding upward.
An FBI analyst testified that a single pubic hair found in Teresa’s underwear matched Duckett’s samples with a high degree of probability. Duckett denied everything.
He said he had stopped for coffee during the missing hour. No one confirmed it. He said Teresa was never on the hood.
The evidence said otherwise. In October 1987, a grand jury indicted him for first-degree murder. The prosecution sought the death penalty.
The trial began in early 1988, and the three women’s testimony made it clear that Teresa was not a random incident but the culmination of a pattern.
On May 10, 1988, the jury deliberated for less than 90 minutes. They returned guilty verdicts on first-degree murder and sexual battery.
By a vote of 8 to 4, they recommended death. Judge Jerry Lockett sentenced Duckett to the electric chair, with an additional 25 years to life for the sexual battery. Then came the appeals.
Nearly four decades of them. The Florida Supreme Court dismissed his first appeal in 1990. Post-conviction motions were denied in 2001.
A claim of witness coaching failed in 2003. DNA testing was approved that same year, but the deadline passed without a single motion being filed.
By 2004, a court order barred further DNA testing entirely.
Federal appeals were denied in 2010. More appeals failed in 2014, 2017, and 2018. Every court reached the same conclusion.
The evidence was overwhelming. For a time, Duckett had prominent supporters who believed his innocence claims. Retired detective Marshall Frank had initially doubted the conviction.
So did former Police Chief Michael Brady and the mayor of Mascot. But Frank kept digging. The deeper he looked into Teresa’s case and the unsolved murder of 14-year-old Jennifer Weldon, the more his opinion shifted.
He eventually concluded Duckett was guilty of both killings.
Jennifer Weldon had vanished from a carnival in September 1987, just four months after Teresa’s murder. Her body was found near Lakeland, and she had last been seen getting into a dark blue car.
Duckett owned a royal blue Buick Regal at the time. The connection never resulted in charges while he was alive, but the families kept the case alive. On February 27, 2026, Governor DeSantis signed Duckett’s death warrant.
The execution was set for March 31. Suddenly, the man who had let DNA deadlines expire wanted testing done. The Florida Supreme Court halted the execution to allow it.
The results came back inconclusive. They did not exonerate him. Six of the seven justices voted to lift the stay, but the warrant expired before the order could be finalized.
The court then ordered deeper analysis. For months, the case sat in uncertainty. On July 8, the court lifted the stay.
Six days later, the governor signed a second warrant. The date was set for July 28, 2026. The night before his execution, Duckett met with four family members.
He woke at 4:45 a. m. His last meal consisted of eggs, grits, bacon, biscuits, and chocolate milk.
At noon, he was taken to the execution chamber. Thirty-five witnesses sat behind the glass. Teresa’s family was there.
Jennifer Weldon’s relatives were there. The warden asked if Duckett had any final words. His response was two words: “No, sir.”
No apology. No acknowledgment. At 1:00 p.
m. , the drugs began to flow. Four minutes later, the warden stepped forward, shook the man on the table, and called his name.
There was no response. At 1:19 p. m.
, James Aaron Duckett was pronounced dead. He was 68 years old. He had spent 38 years on death row insisting he was innocent.
Teresa McAbee’s mother spent those same 38 years without her daughter. The execution did not bring Teresa back. It did not erase the image of an 11-year-old girl walking to a convenience store for a pencil and never returning.
It did not undo the horror of a police officer using his uniform to lure a child into his patrol car while the rest of the town slept. But it closed a chapter. Two days later, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd announced that investigators were formally naming Duckett as the suspect in Jennifer Weldon’s murder, closing a case that had stood open for nearly 39 years.
The families, bound together by loss, had quietly supported each other through the decades. They stood outside the prison together and spoke of closure. Teresa’s niece said it should never have taken four decades for her aunt to see this day.
The system moved slowly. The appeals dragged on. But in the end, the state of Florida carried out the sentence for a man who had sworn to protect and instead became the predator the community never saw coming.
The badge that should have been a shield was used as a weapon, and an 11-year-old girl never came home.
This case will stay with those who followed it for years. A police officer, a quiet town, a child who just needed a pencil for her homework.
Every detail, from the radio silence to the tire tracks to the final two words spoken in the death chamber, paints a portrait of a man who hid in plain sight. The justice system eventually caught up with him. But for Dorothy Tula, for Tracy McFall Buskirk, and for everyone who loved Teresa McAbee, the wait was unbearable.
They waited nearly 40 years to have him dead. On July 28, 2026, they finally did.
