Death Row Stories (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Killer Cop - full transcript
On this episode of "Death Row Stories"...
In a tiny Florida town, an 11-year-old girl
is found raped and murdered.
That little girl died in the dark,
alone, with a monster.
And the investigation
leads the police
back to one of their own.
- Of course we didn't want to
believe a police officer - would do this.
I had always wanted to
get in law enforcement
and here I am, going to death row.
But a Miami detective becomes
convinced
that the ex-cop is innocent.
There really was no hard evidence.
We have an innocent
guy here. This is crazy!
And the case takes an unexpected turn.
You never say, "It can't be",
because often, it is.
There's a body in the water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaim their innocence.
In this case,
there are a number of things that stink.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair
flashed in front my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
I was the Chief of Police
for city of Mascotte.
Mascotte, Florida,
it's a small, poor community,
about 1700 residents.
Uh, maybe a quarter of them
were seasonal migrant workers.
I was working in the school that morning.
Then I got contacted by a resident.
He said,
"I went down to the lake to go fishing."
- And, uh, he said, "I'm not sure,
but I think there's - a body in the water.
He said "A little girl."
The body was floating face-down.
The feet were touching the shoreline.
And her arms were spread out.
Police identified the victim as 11-year-old
Teresa McAbee.
She had last been seen the previous evening
around 10:00 p.m. at a
Circle K convenient store
located just 400 feet from her home.
She told me she had to do her math homework
and she didn't have a pencil.
And I remember I kept telling her, "No"
because I didn't want
her to leave the house.
And she said, "But, Mom, it won't take
but five minutes."
So I finally said, "Yeah."
And she left.
By the time I came back out of the store...
One of the last people
to see Teresa alive
was local police officer, James Duckett.
- I said, "Listen." I said,"It's getting
- close to 10:30 p.m."
I said, "I want you to go straight home."
Duckett reminded Teresa of the 10:30 p.m.
curfew for minors.
When she didn't come back,
I went to... Walked to
the store to make sure
she was still there, and she wasn't.
She got out of the store,
walked down in front of
the ice machines again,
and turned the corner,
I assumed, headed home.
Then I kept... I just walked places
and I couldn't find her.
When Teresa's body was discovered
the following morning
the tiny Mascotte Police Department
turned to the county
sheriff's office for help.
Investigator Rocky Harris
responded to the call.
When I got there,
the uh, child was dead in the water.
Uh,
I swam out and got her and brought her in.
How do you describe a child?
I mean, it was, uh...
It was a little tough.
Investigators summoned the rookie
officer, Duckett,
to the crime scene to
get more details about
Duckett's encounter with
the victim the night before.
At the crime scene,
there was some tire tracks.
It had rained a little bit in that area
and so the tracks was real good.
And then, later on,
Officer Duckett arrived.
We looked over at Duckett's patrol car,
and the tires matched.
At that point we had his car impounded,
and we found the child's
fingerprints all over the car,
the hood of the car.
- Of course we didn't want to
believe a police officer - would do this.
Teresa McAbee's autopsy revealed
that she had been sexually assaulted
and strangled to death.
A pubic hair was also
found in her underwear.
We got a court order and took samples
from Duckett.
And that's when they come back in
positive identification.
A policeman who may have been
the last person to see 11-year
old Teresa McAbee alive
is under investigation himself tonight.
I just couldn't believe it.
He was supposed to serve
and protect the community.
She probably thought,
"Well, he's a police officer.
He'll take me home."
But that never happened.
Residents are outraged.
You teach your children
to go to a police officer
if they, you know,
are in trouble or need help.
Despite the community uproar,
Police Chief, Mike Brady, who had hired
and mentored Duckett,
held fast in his belief
that investigators were
focusing on the wrong man.
My confidence in him hadn't been shaken.
I was of the opinion that
the truth is going to come out.
He's gonna be exonerated as a suspect.
We're going to get to
business and find out who
murdered this child.
James Duckett was arrested and charged with
first-degree murder.
Duckett's trial began on April 25,1988.
Assistant State Attorney, Steve Hurm
prosecuted the case and
sought the death penalty.
That little girl died
in the most traumatic,
terrifying way.
In the dark, alone, with a monster.
Hurm called an eyewitness,
17-year-old Gwen Gurley, to the stand.
Gurley testified that on
the night of the murder,
she saw Teresa talking to Duckett.
Moments later,
she saw Duckett leave the scene
with a small person in his police car.
Did you see the car
as it turned the corner?
Yes.
Were you able to see inside the car?
Yes.
- Two.
Prosecutors also called three women who
each testified that
officer Duckett had made sexual advances
while he was on duty.
They were all accosted by Duckett
when he was on duty in
uniform in his patrol car
on the midnight shift
and taken by him to, uh, wooded areas.
It took jury less than ninety minutes to
find James Duckett guilty
of capital sexual battery
and murder in the first degree.
On June 30th, 1988,
James Duckett was sentenced to death.
When they sentenced him,
it was probably one of
the best days of my life.
Because I took a bad cop out.
Who'd killed a child. Hmm...
Fourteen years after Duckett's conviction,
a retired Miami Police homicide detective,
named Marshall Frank,
began doing research for a crime novel
he wanted to write.
When I retired,
I moved to a little town in North Carolina
called Maggie Valley.
And it's in the mountains, it's beautiful.
I had an idea for a novel
in which the protagonist
ends up on death row.
So, being an investigator,
I wanted to talk to a death row inmate.
I got fifteen names. I
wrote each of them a letter.
Eight of them wanted to tell me how they
weren't guilty.
And one of the responses
was from James Duckett.
And he seemed logical.
He seemed articulate.
Contrary to what I promised
myself I wouldn't do,
I said, "I'm going to look more into this."
I'm not a bleeding heart.
I don't fall for people
saying they're not guilty
because I heard it all my career.
I put a lot of people in jail for murder.
I don't think I was ever wrong.
So I pulled out all the files,
read every report.
- When I started assembling all
of the evidence, - it's like a mosaic.
- You get a little piece of this tile,
a little - piece of that tile,
- a little piece of that tile, you put
them together - and you get a picture.
And the picture was innocent.
Former police officer,
James Duckett,
was on death row for the murder of
11-year-old Teresa McAbee
when retired Miami homicide detective,
Marshall Frank
began corresponding with him.
I just wanted to see if this needed to be
investigated further
if there's an innocent man on death row.
- I have no problem with punishing
people for - doing a terrible crime.
I put many away myself.
But this guy may have been railroaded.
Watch out for that stuff
here. You're going through.
I'm James Arden Duckett
and we are currently at
Florida State Prison in Starke.
Uh, I'm sentenced to death,
so I am currently on death row.
Been here since June 30, 1988.
- I wrote Duckett a letter. "Tell
me more about - this situation."
Well, I got a big letter back.
He reached out to me,
said, "I'm a retired detective
from Miami Police Department
"He said,"I wanna help you out.
I wanna see what your case is."
Uh,
I told him that I walked in this building
scared to death, as a young man.
Never been inside a prison,
never been in any trouble before,
and here I am, going to death row.
I had a career going.
I had a beautiful wife.
I had two young sons.
I had a future that I was moving towards
and all of that was taken for no reason
except to satisfy somebody's idea
that I was the one that did this.
Frank decided to put the novel he was
writing on hold
and get more involved in Duckett's case.
So I go to Florida and I
poured over the reports
and I began to see flaws.
This young woman, her name was Gwen,
she says she saw the
child get into the police car.
- Marshall discovered there was more
to Gwen Gurley, - the only eyewitness,
Than jurors had been led to believe.
I just wanted to know more
about how that come about,
that she would testify against,
uh, Duckett.
Gwen Gurley was always
getting involved in thefts
or involved in, you know, disturbances
and then all of a sudden,
she becomes a star witness
with the worst credibility
you could ever have.
Let's see, in '87, I was 16.
I was a typical teenager, I would say,
except I was getting
in a little bit of trouble.
Gwen Gurley was in the Leesburg City Jail.
Three counts of grand theft.
And the news report of
Duckett's indictment came on the news.
...James Duckett in
connection with the killing.
And she saw that, and she called a female
corrections officer over
and told her,
"I was there. I know something about
that case."
The Sheriff's department of,
um, Lake County
come talk to me.
The inference was,
"We can give you a break if you, you know,
"if you saw something that we should know
about. Hint, hint."
Gwen testified against Duckett
and was let out of jail
having served less than six months
of a two-year sentence.
But a year after James
Duckett was sentenced to death,
Gurley recanted her original testimony
and said she never
actually saw officer Duckett
with Teresa McAbee.
In a sworn affidavit,
Gurley claimed that she
had been induced into
testifying against Duckett by investigator,
Rocky Harris.
Rocky Harris took me
in and out of the jail,
asked a lot of questions.
A lot of questions.
Best I can recall,
I never offered her any deal whatsoever.
After learning that Gwen Gurley
had recanted her testimony,
Marchall Frank also discovered
that Duckett had an alibi
for the time of Teresa's murder.
An alibi the jury had never heard.
- He told me that he couldn't have
been there at the murder - right then
Because he got a call from the Jiffy Stop,
another convenience store
in a different part of town.
So he went over there around the time
the little girl was being murdered.
He jotted everything down
in his little spiral logbook,
time, activities, traffic stop.
The notebook has her information in it
that I wrote down that night.
I said, "Did that log sheet
get introduced into trial?"
- And he said, "No." He said,"I don't know
- what happened to it."
It was confiscated from him by the police.
Well, they took the notebook
when they impounded the patrol car.
The notebook's got Teresa's information
that I wrote down at 10:30 p.m. that night,
and then at 11:00 p.m.,
I was at the Jiffy Store.
How can you be assaulting Teresa
and be on a well
They could have went and spoke to the clerk
and, and, and confirmed that.
This alibi would be very
good and there was no reason
for his attorney not
to produce this in court
as a defense.
But if Duckett was innocent,
how could Frank explain
the pubic hair found in
Teresa McAbee's underwear?
Pubic hair that an FBI
forensic analyst said
matched James Duckett's?
Mike Malone was a long-time FBI expert,
and Malone took at look
at it and he said it was
indistinguishable from Duckett's hair.
Marshall Frank wasn't so sure
and what he soon learned about FBI expert,
Mike Malone,
would further convince him
that Duckett was innocent.
Overall, it stunk to high heaven.
The whole thing stunk.
Retired homicide detective,
Marshall Frank
was investigating James Duckett's case
on death row.
At the same time, Beth Wells,
an appeals attorney
from Atlanta,
was also fighting to
prove Duckett's innocence.
I represent Jim Duckett.
I have been representing him since 1990.
- When I started,
it was a bloody time period - in Florida.
There were seven execution warrants,
um, the day I was hired.
We had seven active warrants.
That means seven men
were going to be executed.
And Jim was one of my very first clients.
If there ever is a God-sent person,
I believe Beth is mine.
Uh, she's never gave up on me.
I started investigating his case
- and every time I would look
into something, - I would discover,
- "Well, hang on. That's not as they said it was at trial.
- That doesn't flesh out."
- And then you realize, "Wait, we have
- an innocent guy here."
The Prosecution's key evidence against
James Duckett
was pubic hair that had been found in
Teresa McAbee's underwear,
but neither Beth Wells nor
Marshall Frank were buying it.
Duckett was accused of
sexually assaulting her.
One of the things that troubled me a lot
is that the Prosecution was
saying that the pubic
hair inside her panties
was from the killer,
but it wasn't uncommon
for Teresa to put her
mommy's panties on.
So maybe that pubic hair was
already there in those panties.
Records also show that the Prosecution took
unusual steps
to connect the pubic hair to Duckett.
The sheriff's department had been
with her hair analysis, shopping it around.
FDLE,
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement
had told them, "Nope,
there ain't nothing there."
FDLE said that the hair
was probably not mine.
- Twenty-eight out of thirty
characteristics - didn't match the hair.
Lifecodes told them, "Nope.
Ain't nothing there."
- Lifecodes says, "We can't do it because
- there's no root in it."
- The state of DNA testing at the time is,
"We can't - do anything with it.
So we went to the FBI
because they're the mack daddy of,
uh, labs.
And we asked them to take a look at it.
Mike Malone is the FBI expert.
He tests it and he comes up and says,
"Oh yeah.
This is Jim Duckett's hair.
Microscopically consistent."
- So you have the pre-eminent
investigative agency - in the country,
Saying it's Jim Duckett's hair.
That's powerful evidence to a jury.
There is no question
they're going to believe that.
With advanced DNA science not yet available
at time of the trial,
the Prosecution relied on
inexact hair-testing methods,
- yielding results that would not
be accepted in - a court of law today.
- I consulted a couple of forensic
experts myself - who I knew.
And there was no way anybody, FBI,
no matter where they're from,
could say that that pubic hair
belonged to James Duckett.
There's no way they could say that.
As it turned out, the FBI's hair and fiber
analyst, Mike Malone,
had a long history of
controversial findings.
Over the years, Mike Malone,
in many cases, has given
evidence that,
through DNA testing, we've discovered
is just simply incorrect.
Recently the FBI hired
an independent expert to
re-examine Mike Malone's
testimony in all these cases.
Because they're concerned
that he's exaggerating.
For the State to even use the guy
was like, "Shame on them. Shame on them."
- A jury should have known that that
hair could not be - identified to anybody.
But Duckett's defense attorney,
Jack Edmund,
had not questioned the
pubic hair results at trial.
He also neglected to gather evidence
of Duckett's alibi
and to depose some key witnesses.
Jack assured me that he would handle this.
"Don't worry about it.
Consider it a short vacation,"
And he said,
"We'll get this straightened out."
I kept telling Jack,
"I think you're over-confident.
"You're taking too much for granted.
You think they don't
have that strong of a case,
but you're not trying to convince me.
You're trying to convince 12 other people.
In order to retain Jack Edmund,
- James Duckett's family had
taken out a mortgage - on their home,
Putting their hopes in
one of the most renowned
defense attorneys in Florida.
From everything I could find,
this,
this attorney did a horrendous job in, uh,
in defending James Duckett.
Defense Attorney 101.
You take depositions
from the State's witnesses,
the key witnesses anyway.
This was never done.
In 1997, Beth Wells appealed Duckett's case
to the Lake County
Circuit Court in Florida.
Hoping to get new trial for Duckett,
Wells called Jack Edmund to the stand
to account for his poor performance.
Edmund told the court, I blew it."
I trusted Jack Edmund.
I trusted that 25 years of experience as
a criminal attorney,
uh, that he would correct this.
And, uh, I was wrong.
Beth Wells also offered alternate suspects
for the crime,
starting with ex-cons
and migrant workers who
stayed at the McAbee home.
Teresa's uncle testified that
she had complained to him
- that there was one man in particular
who stayed - over there with her mother
Who would try to pull her down on the couch
and touch her inappropriately.
- And for that reason, she had
asked to stay - at the uncle's house.
He's never been examined by the police.
They didn't take hair follicles from him.
He left town soon after.
- We don't know where he is. We don't have
- a full name for him.
- There was always a lot of people
around that home - that didn't live there,
Like a little gathering.
There was always more guys than girls.
There was a lot of stuff
to raise suspicion about,
you know,
you have an 11-year-old female child
in the house.
I think the person who was
harassing Teresa at home
killed her, dressed her, took her
and dumped her in the lake.
- But once they honed in on Jim Duckett,
which was - very early in the case,
They stopped looking at other people
And that's not good police work.
Wells also called Gwen Gurley to testify.
Gurley,
the only eyewitness who placed Teresa in
Duckett's patrol car,
had recanted her original testimony.
If they used Gwen Gurley as a key witness
to put me here
and if she's not longer telling their lies,
that should count for something.
I can remember when we talked to Gwen.
"Well, this is great stuff. She's recanted.
She's the only person that
saw the victim in the car."
So we think,
"This is going to get us a new trial.
Nine years after James Duckett had been
sentenced to death,
the key witness in prosecution,
Gwen Gurley,
was prepared to testify that she had lied
at his original trial.
But the presiding judge put a stop to
Gwen's admission,
warning her of perjury charges
if she changed her testimony.
Judge Lockett told me if I perjured myself,
that I would have to be
sentenced to the maximum.
Uh, I think it was seven
years for each perjury.
So, um, I plead the 5th.
We asked the judge to grant immunity
and he just didn't do it.
How can you kill somebody,
how can you execute somebody,
and you've got a State's key witness
that wants to tell the truth,
and yet because it's
not what the State wants,
- they're going to threaten her with
perjury and send her - back to prison
What kind of system is that?
While Duckett's appeal
was severely weakened
without Gurley's recanted testimony,
Beth Wells was still able to
attack the Prosecution's case,
starting with the tire tracks
found near Teresa's body.
That little dirt road had
these tire tracks on it,
which was a pretty good
catch by the detective.
And so they did the right thing,
they preserved the tracks,
they did a mold of it and everything else.
And sure enough,
those tracks had the same tire pattern,
tread pattern that the police cars had,
But just because someone had a tire tread
with the same basic pattern,
doesn't mean it was that car.
Duckett's former boss,
Police chief Michael Brady,
was also suspicious of
the tire track evidence.
Soon after Lake County investigators
left the crime scene,
he made a discovery that convinced him
the evidence was flawed.
We went out and could find no evidence that
- the investigators had lifted any kind of
a tire imprint - from the crime scene area.
Then we walked back to the car.
That's when Smith said, "Wait a minute.
Here's something' over here."
We found residue from plaster of Paris.
And I realized the investigators lifted
that tire imprint from
outside the roped off crime scene
and where we had been
driving the car all day long.
- And nobody's ever going to convince me of
- anything different.
Investigators also conducted
soil comparison tests
- between Duckett's patrol car
and samples from - the crime scene.
They did soil tests. No matches.
There's not one bit of
soil that's consistent with
coming from the crime scene
and it being on the police car.
But after presenting the tire track
evidence at the appeal,
Beth would have to contend
with the fingerprints on
Duckett's police car.
When we hd his car impounded,
- the first thing that came back was the
child's fingerprints - on the hood of the car.
That, that in itself told a tale.
Uh,
you seen how her little hands kept getting
further and further back,
and his were right in there between them.
Mike Brady had separate notion of
what happened that night.
- We later developed a theory that
she could have - jumped up on the car,
- which would have been hot from an engine
already having - run for several hours.
- So she might have jumped back off of it and
that would - leave her fingerprints there.
- His could have been on there from using it as a
desk, - you know? I mean, they had their theory,
We had our theories.
I'll be honest with you.
Had James Duckett said,
"Yeah, she sat on the hood of my car.
You know,
that's why the fingerprints are there."
And if he had said when
he was looking for her,
"I drove down past that pump house
and went through there after the rain",
that would've explained
away the tire tracks.
And we might never have,
have focused in on him as a suspect.
After Beth Wells finished making her case
for a new trial,
Judge Lockett denied the appeal.
In 2003,
Marshall Frank was ready to go to bat
for James Duckett
and called Beth Wells to offer his help.
Beth was a little, uh, dubious about me.
She's dubious about anybody who would be in
the law enforcement side.
Uh, didn't know for sure
that I was really sincere,
uh, in, in my probe.
Marshall Frank contacts Jim
- and I remember initially, I was like,
"Whoa, whoa, - whoa", you know?
I know nothing about this guy.
I have no reason to trust him.
I don't know where he's coming from.
But from Jim's point of view,
maybe this will be the person who's able
to get somebody to listen.
With the case at a dead end
and Duckett headed towards execution,
Marshall Frank had an idea.
- He said, "I've got a friend that
used to work for - the 'Miami Herald'."
And I had read Edna Buchanan's stories
before, over the years.
And so I knew who the name
was. And so I felt excited.
Edna Buchanan was a Pulitzer Prize-Winning
crime reporter for the "Miami Herald".
Edna was, uh, an outstanding reporter,
one of the best I've ever known.
- I wanted to tell her what the story was
- that I had for James Duckett.
Marshall Frank kept
calling me. I'd known him.
He'd been a source of mine over the years.
He said he'd found this
case where he's convinced
that a man on death row was innocent.
I was dubious because if
the wrong person is convicted,
it's usually uh,
someone who's poor, uh, minorities,
not a white cop.
And I kept saying, "Well,
how sure are you?"
And he was saying,
"A hundred and fifteen percent
sure this guy's innocent."
So it didn't seem likely,
but so many cases in
Miami and in South Florida
and in the whole state...
You know,
sometimes it's like "The Twilight Zone"
and Rod Serling is the governor.
You never just say, "It can't be",
'cause often, it is.
With Frank's help, in 2003,
Edna Buchanan wrote
three front-page stories
- for the "Miami Herald" about
Duckett's possible - innocence.
She started writing
stories and I started getting
all these media requests.
I mean,
from TVs and newspapers and "48 Hours"
and "Primetime Live".
I mean,
they-they were just flooding in my cell.
As publicity grew around Duckett's case,
Marshall Frank was finally
able to convince Beth Wells
to show him a key piece of evidence.
I wanted to see a copy
of the notepad that Duckett
told me about.
According to the Defense,
- Duckett's police notebook from the
night of the murder - contained his alibi.
- The notebook should have
been in the trial record, - and it's not.
The jury never sees it.
And when you see it when you look at it,
you go, "There's evidence right here."
Beth faxed me copies of those pages.
And I looked at them and...
That began to give me some doubts.
I could be wrong all along.
Marshall Frank was working to prove
Duckett's innocence.
- But once he gained access to Duckett's
police notebook - from the night of the crime,
One particular entry
aroused Frank's suspicions.
There were certain notations.
- His log had certain times of night,
traffic stops - and all the little things
That he, you know, that he did.
Everything was in normal order.
But the Jiffy Stop check
that he talked about
wasn't in the same order
as all the other loggings.
And I thought that was odd.
The way it was written,
looks as though it was put in there to
establish the alibi.
As I said, "Uh-oh uh-oh."
All right, well,
I'm still pursuing this because
I believe the guy is innocent.
With the notebook entry
raising his suspicions,
Frank decided to look more
closely at evidence he had
previously discounted,
including the testimony of
three young women who said
Duckett had made sexual
advances towards them.
They all looked about the same age.
They had similar physical appearance.
They were slight of build,
about the same length hair.
They were all accosted by Duckett
and taken by him to, uh, wooded areas.
For nearly a year,
Frank had only corresponded with Duckett
or spoken to him on phone.
Now, for first time, they decided to meet
face-to-face.
I was very apprehensive of
meeting a guy on death row.
At that time, he'd been on death row
already for about 16 years.
That's a long time to be
cooped up in a walk-in closet.
- But when I walked into room, it was
almost like seeing - some old friend.
He was so happy to see me.
I believe it was on Father's Day
he showed up here,
and I thought we had a
good conversation. You know?
We ate a hamburger, had a soda.
We talked about the case and this and that.
- I asked him about the three girls
and he said, - "That never happened.
"That was all a lie."
Well, I don't know those girls,
but I didn't believe him when he said that,
because if one said it, maybe it's a lie.
But all three, independently of each other,
it was not likely they were all lying.
But that didn't prove
anything about murder.
So I finally come to the big question.
And the big question was this,
"When you were questioned
the night after the murder,
you knew then that you had
written down on a notepad
that you'd gone to Jiffy
Stop at the time of the murder.
And you're being questioned by detectives
and you had an alibi.
Did you tell them about it?"
He said, "No." I said, "Why not?"
And he said, "You know, I don't know why
I didn't tell them that."
I didn't even think about it.
You know, as far as being an alibi or...
I never even thought about the notebook
during trial.
Never even dawned on me.
The blood seeped from my head.
I felt cold.
Someone's questioning
you and you have an alibi
for where you were at the
time of a murder somewhere,
and you don't tell the
authorities that alibi,
that's for a reason.
And the reason's got to be,
that there is no alibi.
I knew then um, this was a guilty man.
I knew then.
Marshall Frank called
and said something like,
"Whoops. You'll never guess what happened.
And I had this sinking feeling,
and he said, "I think he's guilty."
And I said, "What?"
I thought this seasoned homicide detective
was reliable and trustworthy.
I was wrong.
And I crawled under a...
Under the bottom of a molehill
so I could hide from the rest of the world
because I was a little bit embarrassed.
I loved the "Herald".
My entire career, I never had a retraction.
I was always credible.
- And to have my last story that I wrote
- for the "Herald"
- be a piece of dreck because
Marshall Frank - was careless
With my reputation, with his reputation...
So I got burned on that one.
What can I say, you know?
It was a noble purpose.
One day, Marshall Frank calls up,
"He's guilty."
- Next thing we know, there's a big article
- in the "Miami Herald".
And I was angry. I was very angry.
I was angry at him. I
was angry at the reporter.
This is a man's life and
you're printing this stuff.
And it's dangerous, because now everybody
reads the "Miami Herald".
The courts are reading
it. Everybody reads it.
People always want to believe that,
you know, somebody's innocent.
But it's really dangerous,
years after the fact,
to get a new trial for somebody.
You know, for some legal flaw.
Like,
maybe his lawyer didn't work hard enough
or maybe some witness was unreliable.
In fact, Gwen Gurley,
who recanted her original testimony
against Duckett,
now claims she was coerced into recanting
by an investigator working
for the Duckett family.
This man was at my house.
If I was hanging up clothes,
he was behind the clothesline.
He was always around. He was...
He never let my life at peace.
- So I just told him what he wanted to hear
- to leave me alone.
What he told me happened,
I said, "Okay, it happened.'
And the only reason I even
agreed to do this interview
was just to let it...
On record...
To let it be known that
the last time I saw Teresa McAbee,
she was in James Duckett's police car.
That's the last time
I saw that little girl.
- The next time I heard about her,
- she was dead.
Earlier in his investigation,
- Marshall Frank was urged to meet
with detectives - from Sheriff's Office
In a neighboring county.
Until now, Frank hadn't thought it was
important to do so.
Someone told me that
James Duckett was being investigated
by another agency.
So I go to the Polk
County Sheriff's Department
and talk to the detectives.
They allowed me to read
the significant reports,
and the more they talked to me,
the more I began to think,
"Oh, dear,
he may have killed another child."
Marshall Frank had become convinced that
James Duckett was in
fact guilty of murdering
Teresa McAbee.
And he soon learned that
Duckett was the prime suspect
in the murder of another
girl named Jennifer Weldon.
The evidence that I learned
about the Jennifer Weldon murder
was stronger than the evidence
in the Teresa McAbee murder.
While awaiting trial,
Duckett had a job at a local phosphate pit,
located near the same road
where 14-year-old Jennifer
Weldon was last seen.
A young girl apparently
had been walking home
or hitchhiking or something
and had disappeared and they found her
a week or two later.
They came up here and attempted to
question me on that.
This girl had been in a carnival
that was on a road Duckett used to take.
Jennifer Weldon, who was 14 then
was last seen walking along State Road 98
in the evening time.
The Lake County Sheriff's
Department talked to
the supervisors at the phosphorus plant.
- They said Duckett showed up late the
night that - Jennifer Weldon disappeared.
And when he did show up at work,
he was quite disheveled
and seemed to be upset
and he wasn't himself.
Jennifer Weldon was
carrying a lime-green bag
with a stuffed animal inside,
the night she disappeared.
I got a call one day from Duckett's wife,
out of the blue
And she said, "Mr. Hurm, I think
"Jimmy may have had
something to do with that case."
I said,
"Why say that?" She said,"I remember him
coming home
"with a bag with a little stuffed animal,"
and she said "The reason I remember it is,
I was mad at him
"because we had two boys.
"And I said,
'Why wouldn't you bring two toys?
"Because you know they'll fight over it.'"
And I get goosebumps thinking about this.
Police never charged Duckett
with the Weldon murder.
But they have said they will
pursue Duckett for the crime
if he is ever let off death
row for the McAbee murder,
a possibility Beth Wells is counting on.
- They're presently reviewing Jim's case,
and I'm - 100% confident
- that when they evaluate this evidence, they're
gonna say, - "You know what? We got it wrong.
We have to give this guy a new trial."
- I mean, if you look, the hard evidence
- was tire tracks
That can't be identified to his car,
a pubic hair,
nothing that can even
say that the pubic hair
belonged to James Duckett.
Gwen, her truthfulness is in doubt.
We've been doing this a long time.
Hopefully we won't be doing it much longer.
You know,
he'll be out and not needing an attorney.
In the meantime,
Duckett's appeals have left
Teresa's mother in limbo.
I just want justice for my daughter.
That's what I want.
And 26 years, I'm tired.
I don't think I'll ever have closure
'cause he's not going to admit it.
These years, looking back,
I should have drove Teresa home,
walked her up to the door,
should have handed her over to her.
Absolutely.
And that was my fault.
I didn't kill your daughter, though.
Yeah, I didn't.
Eleven-year-old was killed. That's tragic.
Murder should never have happened.
But you don't have a smoking gun.
You don't have what a lot
of people demand in a case.
From a legal point of view,
he really should never have been convicted.
It's a good thing that he was,
because there'd probably
be other dead kids out there.
You know, I'm not a "fry them all,
fry them sooner"
you know, that sort of thing.
I feel the weight of the State
deciding to take someone's life.
But if the death penalty is
appropriate for any case,
it's appropriate for this case.
Because of what he did to Teresa McAbee.
God forbid if he got off death row
and was a serial sex killer,
- how many more victims would there
be before - they caught Duckett again?
Grant a new trial.
I'm not asking to walk out the door.
- Grant me a new trial. Let's
put everything - on the table
And do it right and see what happens.
Ready? - All right.
Thank you. Y'all take care.
In a tiny Florida town, an 11-year-old girl
is found raped and murdered.
That little girl died in the dark,
alone, with a monster.
And the investigation
leads the police
back to one of their own.
- Of course we didn't want to
believe a police officer - would do this.
I had always wanted to
get in law enforcement
and here I am, going to death row.
But a Miami detective becomes
convinced
that the ex-cop is innocent.
There really was no hard evidence.
We have an innocent
guy here. This is crazy!
And the case takes an unexpected turn.
You never say, "It can't be",
because often, it is.
There's a body in the water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaim their innocence.
In this case,
there are a number of things that stink.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair
flashed in front my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
I was the Chief of Police
for city of Mascotte.
Mascotte, Florida,
it's a small, poor community,
about 1700 residents.
Uh, maybe a quarter of them
were seasonal migrant workers.
I was working in the school that morning.
Then I got contacted by a resident.
He said,
"I went down to the lake to go fishing."
- And, uh, he said, "I'm not sure,
but I think there's - a body in the water.
He said "A little girl."
The body was floating face-down.
The feet were touching the shoreline.
And her arms were spread out.
Police identified the victim as 11-year-old
Teresa McAbee.
She had last been seen the previous evening
around 10:00 p.m. at a
Circle K convenient store
located just 400 feet from her home.
She told me she had to do her math homework
and she didn't have a pencil.
And I remember I kept telling her, "No"
because I didn't want
her to leave the house.
And she said, "But, Mom, it won't take
but five minutes."
So I finally said, "Yeah."
And she left.
By the time I came back out of the store...
One of the last people
to see Teresa alive
was local police officer, James Duckett.
- I said, "Listen." I said,"It's getting
- close to 10:30 p.m."
I said, "I want you to go straight home."
Duckett reminded Teresa of the 10:30 p.m.
curfew for minors.
When she didn't come back,
I went to... Walked to
the store to make sure
she was still there, and she wasn't.
She got out of the store,
walked down in front of
the ice machines again,
and turned the corner,
I assumed, headed home.
Then I kept... I just walked places
and I couldn't find her.
When Teresa's body was discovered
the following morning
the tiny Mascotte Police Department
turned to the county
sheriff's office for help.
Investigator Rocky Harris
responded to the call.
When I got there,
the uh, child was dead in the water.
Uh,
I swam out and got her and brought her in.
How do you describe a child?
I mean, it was, uh...
It was a little tough.
Investigators summoned the rookie
officer, Duckett,
to the crime scene to
get more details about
Duckett's encounter with
the victim the night before.
At the crime scene,
there was some tire tracks.
It had rained a little bit in that area
and so the tracks was real good.
And then, later on,
Officer Duckett arrived.
We looked over at Duckett's patrol car,
and the tires matched.
At that point we had his car impounded,
and we found the child's
fingerprints all over the car,
the hood of the car.
- Of course we didn't want to
believe a police officer - would do this.
Teresa McAbee's autopsy revealed
that she had been sexually assaulted
and strangled to death.
A pubic hair was also
found in her underwear.
We got a court order and took samples
from Duckett.
And that's when they come back in
positive identification.
A policeman who may have been
the last person to see 11-year
old Teresa McAbee alive
is under investigation himself tonight.
I just couldn't believe it.
He was supposed to serve
and protect the community.
She probably thought,
"Well, he's a police officer.
He'll take me home."
But that never happened.
Residents are outraged.
You teach your children
to go to a police officer
if they, you know,
are in trouble or need help.
Despite the community uproar,
Police Chief, Mike Brady, who had hired
and mentored Duckett,
held fast in his belief
that investigators were
focusing on the wrong man.
My confidence in him hadn't been shaken.
I was of the opinion that
the truth is going to come out.
He's gonna be exonerated as a suspect.
We're going to get to
business and find out who
murdered this child.
James Duckett was arrested and charged with
first-degree murder.
Duckett's trial began on April 25,1988.
Assistant State Attorney, Steve Hurm
prosecuted the case and
sought the death penalty.
That little girl died
in the most traumatic,
terrifying way.
In the dark, alone, with a monster.
Hurm called an eyewitness,
17-year-old Gwen Gurley, to the stand.
Gurley testified that on
the night of the murder,
she saw Teresa talking to Duckett.
Moments later,
she saw Duckett leave the scene
with a small person in his police car.
Did you see the car
as it turned the corner?
Yes.
Were you able to see inside the car?
Yes.
- Two.
Prosecutors also called three women who
each testified that
officer Duckett had made sexual advances
while he was on duty.
They were all accosted by Duckett
when he was on duty in
uniform in his patrol car
on the midnight shift
and taken by him to, uh, wooded areas.
It took jury less than ninety minutes to
find James Duckett guilty
of capital sexual battery
and murder in the first degree.
On June 30th, 1988,
James Duckett was sentenced to death.
When they sentenced him,
it was probably one of
the best days of my life.
Because I took a bad cop out.
Who'd killed a child. Hmm...
Fourteen years after Duckett's conviction,
a retired Miami Police homicide detective,
named Marshall Frank,
began doing research for a crime novel
he wanted to write.
When I retired,
I moved to a little town in North Carolina
called Maggie Valley.
And it's in the mountains, it's beautiful.
I had an idea for a novel
in which the protagonist
ends up on death row.
So, being an investigator,
I wanted to talk to a death row inmate.
I got fifteen names. I
wrote each of them a letter.
Eight of them wanted to tell me how they
weren't guilty.
And one of the responses
was from James Duckett.
And he seemed logical.
He seemed articulate.
Contrary to what I promised
myself I wouldn't do,
I said, "I'm going to look more into this."
I'm not a bleeding heart.
I don't fall for people
saying they're not guilty
because I heard it all my career.
I put a lot of people in jail for murder.
I don't think I was ever wrong.
So I pulled out all the files,
read every report.
- When I started assembling all
of the evidence, - it's like a mosaic.
- You get a little piece of this tile,
a little - piece of that tile,
- a little piece of that tile, you put
them together - and you get a picture.
And the picture was innocent.
Former police officer,
James Duckett,
was on death row for the murder of
11-year-old Teresa McAbee
when retired Miami homicide detective,
Marshall Frank
began corresponding with him.
I just wanted to see if this needed to be
investigated further
if there's an innocent man on death row.
- I have no problem with punishing
people for - doing a terrible crime.
I put many away myself.
But this guy may have been railroaded.
Watch out for that stuff
here. You're going through.
I'm James Arden Duckett
and we are currently at
Florida State Prison in Starke.
Uh, I'm sentenced to death,
so I am currently on death row.
Been here since June 30, 1988.
- I wrote Duckett a letter. "Tell
me more about - this situation."
Well, I got a big letter back.
He reached out to me,
said, "I'm a retired detective
from Miami Police Department
"He said,"I wanna help you out.
I wanna see what your case is."
Uh,
I told him that I walked in this building
scared to death, as a young man.
Never been inside a prison,
never been in any trouble before,
and here I am, going to death row.
I had a career going.
I had a beautiful wife.
I had two young sons.
I had a future that I was moving towards
and all of that was taken for no reason
except to satisfy somebody's idea
that I was the one that did this.
Frank decided to put the novel he was
writing on hold
and get more involved in Duckett's case.
So I go to Florida and I
poured over the reports
and I began to see flaws.
This young woman, her name was Gwen,
she says she saw the
child get into the police car.
- Marshall discovered there was more
to Gwen Gurley, - the only eyewitness,
Than jurors had been led to believe.
I just wanted to know more
about how that come about,
that she would testify against,
uh, Duckett.
Gwen Gurley was always
getting involved in thefts
or involved in, you know, disturbances
and then all of a sudden,
she becomes a star witness
with the worst credibility
you could ever have.
Let's see, in '87, I was 16.
I was a typical teenager, I would say,
except I was getting
in a little bit of trouble.
Gwen Gurley was in the Leesburg City Jail.
Three counts of grand theft.
And the news report of
Duckett's indictment came on the news.
...James Duckett in
connection with the killing.
And she saw that, and she called a female
corrections officer over
and told her,
"I was there. I know something about
that case."
The Sheriff's department of,
um, Lake County
come talk to me.
The inference was,
"We can give you a break if you, you know,
"if you saw something that we should know
about. Hint, hint."
Gwen testified against Duckett
and was let out of jail
having served less than six months
of a two-year sentence.
But a year after James
Duckett was sentenced to death,
Gurley recanted her original testimony
and said she never
actually saw officer Duckett
with Teresa McAbee.
In a sworn affidavit,
Gurley claimed that she
had been induced into
testifying against Duckett by investigator,
Rocky Harris.
Rocky Harris took me
in and out of the jail,
asked a lot of questions.
A lot of questions.
Best I can recall,
I never offered her any deal whatsoever.
After learning that Gwen Gurley
had recanted her testimony,
Marchall Frank also discovered
that Duckett had an alibi
for the time of Teresa's murder.
An alibi the jury had never heard.
- He told me that he couldn't have
been there at the murder - right then
Because he got a call from the Jiffy Stop,
another convenience store
in a different part of town.
So he went over there around the time
the little girl was being murdered.
He jotted everything down
in his little spiral logbook,
time, activities, traffic stop.
The notebook has her information in it
that I wrote down that night.
I said, "Did that log sheet
get introduced into trial?"
- And he said, "No." He said,"I don't know
- what happened to it."
It was confiscated from him by the police.
Well, they took the notebook
when they impounded the patrol car.
The notebook's got Teresa's information
that I wrote down at 10:30 p.m. that night,
and then at 11:00 p.m.,
I was at the Jiffy Store.
How can you be assaulting Teresa
and be on a well
They could have went and spoke to the clerk
and, and, and confirmed that.
This alibi would be very
good and there was no reason
for his attorney not
to produce this in court
as a defense.
But if Duckett was innocent,
how could Frank explain
the pubic hair found in
Teresa McAbee's underwear?
Pubic hair that an FBI
forensic analyst said
matched James Duckett's?
Mike Malone was a long-time FBI expert,
and Malone took at look
at it and he said it was
indistinguishable from Duckett's hair.
Marshall Frank wasn't so sure
and what he soon learned about FBI expert,
Mike Malone,
would further convince him
that Duckett was innocent.
Overall, it stunk to high heaven.
The whole thing stunk.
Retired homicide detective,
Marshall Frank
was investigating James Duckett's case
on death row.
At the same time, Beth Wells,
an appeals attorney
from Atlanta,
was also fighting to
prove Duckett's innocence.
I represent Jim Duckett.
I have been representing him since 1990.
- When I started,
it was a bloody time period - in Florida.
There were seven execution warrants,
um, the day I was hired.
We had seven active warrants.
That means seven men
were going to be executed.
And Jim was one of my very first clients.
If there ever is a God-sent person,
I believe Beth is mine.
Uh, she's never gave up on me.
I started investigating his case
- and every time I would look
into something, - I would discover,
- "Well, hang on. That's not as they said it was at trial.
- That doesn't flesh out."
- And then you realize, "Wait, we have
- an innocent guy here."
The Prosecution's key evidence against
James Duckett
was pubic hair that had been found in
Teresa McAbee's underwear,
but neither Beth Wells nor
Marshall Frank were buying it.
Duckett was accused of
sexually assaulting her.
One of the things that troubled me a lot
is that the Prosecution was
saying that the pubic
hair inside her panties
was from the killer,
but it wasn't uncommon
for Teresa to put her
mommy's panties on.
So maybe that pubic hair was
already there in those panties.
Records also show that the Prosecution took
unusual steps
to connect the pubic hair to Duckett.
The sheriff's department had been
with her hair analysis, shopping it around.
FDLE,
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement
had told them, "Nope,
there ain't nothing there."
FDLE said that the hair
was probably not mine.
- Twenty-eight out of thirty
characteristics - didn't match the hair.
Lifecodes told them, "Nope.
Ain't nothing there."
- Lifecodes says, "We can't do it because
- there's no root in it."
- The state of DNA testing at the time is,
"We can't - do anything with it.
So we went to the FBI
because they're the mack daddy of,
uh, labs.
And we asked them to take a look at it.
Mike Malone is the FBI expert.
He tests it and he comes up and says,
"Oh yeah.
This is Jim Duckett's hair.
Microscopically consistent."
- So you have the pre-eminent
investigative agency - in the country,
Saying it's Jim Duckett's hair.
That's powerful evidence to a jury.
There is no question
they're going to believe that.
With advanced DNA science not yet available
at time of the trial,
the Prosecution relied on
inexact hair-testing methods,
- yielding results that would not
be accepted in - a court of law today.
- I consulted a couple of forensic
experts myself - who I knew.
And there was no way anybody, FBI,
no matter where they're from,
could say that that pubic hair
belonged to James Duckett.
There's no way they could say that.
As it turned out, the FBI's hair and fiber
analyst, Mike Malone,
had a long history of
controversial findings.
Over the years, Mike Malone,
in many cases, has given
evidence that,
through DNA testing, we've discovered
is just simply incorrect.
Recently the FBI hired
an independent expert to
re-examine Mike Malone's
testimony in all these cases.
Because they're concerned
that he's exaggerating.
For the State to even use the guy
was like, "Shame on them. Shame on them."
- A jury should have known that that
hair could not be - identified to anybody.
But Duckett's defense attorney,
Jack Edmund,
had not questioned the
pubic hair results at trial.
He also neglected to gather evidence
of Duckett's alibi
and to depose some key witnesses.
Jack assured me that he would handle this.
"Don't worry about it.
Consider it a short vacation,"
And he said,
"We'll get this straightened out."
I kept telling Jack,
"I think you're over-confident.
"You're taking too much for granted.
You think they don't
have that strong of a case,
but you're not trying to convince me.
You're trying to convince 12 other people.
In order to retain Jack Edmund,
- James Duckett's family had
taken out a mortgage - on their home,
Putting their hopes in
one of the most renowned
defense attorneys in Florida.
From everything I could find,
this,
this attorney did a horrendous job in, uh,
in defending James Duckett.
Defense Attorney 101.
You take depositions
from the State's witnesses,
the key witnesses anyway.
This was never done.
In 1997, Beth Wells appealed Duckett's case
to the Lake County
Circuit Court in Florida.
Hoping to get new trial for Duckett,
Wells called Jack Edmund to the stand
to account for his poor performance.
Edmund told the court, I blew it."
I trusted Jack Edmund.
I trusted that 25 years of experience as
a criminal attorney,
uh, that he would correct this.
And, uh, I was wrong.
Beth Wells also offered alternate suspects
for the crime,
starting with ex-cons
and migrant workers who
stayed at the McAbee home.
Teresa's uncle testified that
she had complained to him
- that there was one man in particular
who stayed - over there with her mother
Who would try to pull her down on the couch
and touch her inappropriately.
- And for that reason, she had
asked to stay - at the uncle's house.
He's never been examined by the police.
They didn't take hair follicles from him.
He left town soon after.
- We don't know where he is. We don't have
- a full name for him.
- There was always a lot of people
around that home - that didn't live there,
Like a little gathering.
There was always more guys than girls.
There was a lot of stuff
to raise suspicion about,
you know,
you have an 11-year-old female child
in the house.
I think the person who was
harassing Teresa at home
killed her, dressed her, took her
and dumped her in the lake.
- But once they honed in on Jim Duckett,
which was - very early in the case,
They stopped looking at other people
And that's not good police work.
Wells also called Gwen Gurley to testify.
Gurley,
the only eyewitness who placed Teresa in
Duckett's patrol car,
had recanted her original testimony.
If they used Gwen Gurley as a key witness
to put me here
and if she's not longer telling their lies,
that should count for something.
I can remember when we talked to Gwen.
"Well, this is great stuff. She's recanted.
She's the only person that
saw the victim in the car."
So we think,
"This is going to get us a new trial.
Nine years after James Duckett had been
sentenced to death,
the key witness in prosecution,
Gwen Gurley,
was prepared to testify that she had lied
at his original trial.
But the presiding judge put a stop to
Gwen's admission,
warning her of perjury charges
if she changed her testimony.
Judge Lockett told me if I perjured myself,
that I would have to be
sentenced to the maximum.
Uh, I think it was seven
years for each perjury.
So, um, I plead the 5th.
We asked the judge to grant immunity
and he just didn't do it.
How can you kill somebody,
how can you execute somebody,
and you've got a State's key witness
that wants to tell the truth,
and yet because it's
not what the State wants,
- they're going to threaten her with
perjury and send her - back to prison
What kind of system is that?
While Duckett's appeal
was severely weakened
without Gurley's recanted testimony,
Beth Wells was still able to
attack the Prosecution's case,
starting with the tire tracks
found near Teresa's body.
That little dirt road had
these tire tracks on it,
which was a pretty good
catch by the detective.
And so they did the right thing,
they preserved the tracks,
they did a mold of it and everything else.
And sure enough,
those tracks had the same tire pattern,
tread pattern that the police cars had,
But just because someone had a tire tread
with the same basic pattern,
doesn't mean it was that car.
Duckett's former boss,
Police chief Michael Brady,
was also suspicious of
the tire track evidence.
Soon after Lake County investigators
left the crime scene,
he made a discovery that convinced him
the evidence was flawed.
We went out and could find no evidence that
- the investigators had lifted any kind of
a tire imprint - from the crime scene area.
Then we walked back to the car.
That's when Smith said, "Wait a minute.
Here's something' over here."
We found residue from plaster of Paris.
And I realized the investigators lifted
that tire imprint from
outside the roped off crime scene
and where we had been
driving the car all day long.
- And nobody's ever going to convince me of
- anything different.
Investigators also conducted
soil comparison tests
- between Duckett's patrol car
and samples from - the crime scene.
They did soil tests. No matches.
There's not one bit of
soil that's consistent with
coming from the crime scene
and it being on the police car.
But after presenting the tire track
evidence at the appeal,
Beth would have to contend
with the fingerprints on
Duckett's police car.
When we hd his car impounded,
- the first thing that came back was the
child's fingerprints - on the hood of the car.
That, that in itself told a tale.
Uh,
you seen how her little hands kept getting
further and further back,
and his were right in there between them.
Mike Brady had separate notion of
what happened that night.
- We later developed a theory that
she could have - jumped up on the car,
- which would have been hot from an engine
already having - run for several hours.
- So she might have jumped back off of it and
that would - leave her fingerprints there.
- His could have been on there from using it as a
desk, - you know? I mean, they had their theory,
We had our theories.
I'll be honest with you.
Had James Duckett said,
"Yeah, she sat on the hood of my car.
You know,
that's why the fingerprints are there."
And if he had said when
he was looking for her,
"I drove down past that pump house
and went through there after the rain",
that would've explained
away the tire tracks.
And we might never have,
have focused in on him as a suspect.
After Beth Wells finished making her case
for a new trial,
Judge Lockett denied the appeal.
In 2003,
Marshall Frank was ready to go to bat
for James Duckett
and called Beth Wells to offer his help.
Beth was a little, uh, dubious about me.
She's dubious about anybody who would be in
the law enforcement side.
Uh, didn't know for sure
that I was really sincere,
uh, in, in my probe.
Marshall Frank contacts Jim
- and I remember initially, I was like,
"Whoa, whoa, - whoa", you know?
I know nothing about this guy.
I have no reason to trust him.
I don't know where he's coming from.
But from Jim's point of view,
maybe this will be the person who's able
to get somebody to listen.
With the case at a dead end
and Duckett headed towards execution,
Marshall Frank had an idea.
- He said, "I've got a friend that
used to work for - the 'Miami Herald'."
And I had read Edna Buchanan's stories
before, over the years.
And so I knew who the name
was. And so I felt excited.
Edna Buchanan was a Pulitzer Prize-Winning
crime reporter for the "Miami Herald".
Edna was, uh, an outstanding reporter,
one of the best I've ever known.
- I wanted to tell her what the story was
- that I had for James Duckett.
Marshall Frank kept
calling me. I'd known him.
He'd been a source of mine over the years.
He said he'd found this
case where he's convinced
that a man on death row was innocent.
I was dubious because if
the wrong person is convicted,
it's usually uh,
someone who's poor, uh, minorities,
not a white cop.
And I kept saying, "Well,
how sure are you?"
And he was saying,
"A hundred and fifteen percent
sure this guy's innocent."
So it didn't seem likely,
but so many cases in
Miami and in South Florida
and in the whole state...
You know,
sometimes it's like "The Twilight Zone"
and Rod Serling is the governor.
You never just say, "It can't be",
'cause often, it is.
With Frank's help, in 2003,
Edna Buchanan wrote
three front-page stories
- for the "Miami Herald" about
Duckett's possible - innocence.
She started writing
stories and I started getting
all these media requests.
I mean,
from TVs and newspapers and "48 Hours"
and "Primetime Live".
I mean,
they-they were just flooding in my cell.
As publicity grew around Duckett's case,
Marshall Frank was finally
able to convince Beth Wells
to show him a key piece of evidence.
I wanted to see a copy
of the notepad that Duckett
told me about.
According to the Defense,
- Duckett's police notebook from the
night of the murder - contained his alibi.
- The notebook should have
been in the trial record, - and it's not.
The jury never sees it.
And when you see it when you look at it,
you go, "There's evidence right here."
Beth faxed me copies of those pages.
And I looked at them and...
That began to give me some doubts.
I could be wrong all along.
Marshall Frank was working to prove
Duckett's innocence.
- But once he gained access to Duckett's
police notebook - from the night of the crime,
One particular entry
aroused Frank's suspicions.
There were certain notations.
- His log had certain times of night,
traffic stops - and all the little things
That he, you know, that he did.
Everything was in normal order.
But the Jiffy Stop check
that he talked about
wasn't in the same order
as all the other loggings.
And I thought that was odd.
The way it was written,
looks as though it was put in there to
establish the alibi.
As I said, "Uh-oh uh-oh."
All right, well,
I'm still pursuing this because
I believe the guy is innocent.
With the notebook entry
raising his suspicions,
Frank decided to look more
closely at evidence he had
previously discounted,
including the testimony of
three young women who said
Duckett had made sexual
advances towards them.
They all looked about the same age.
They had similar physical appearance.
They were slight of build,
about the same length hair.
They were all accosted by Duckett
and taken by him to, uh, wooded areas.
For nearly a year,
Frank had only corresponded with Duckett
or spoken to him on phone.
Now, for first time, they decided to meet
face-to-face.
I was very apprehensive of
meeting a guy on death row.
At that time, he'd been on death row
already for about 16 years.
That's a long time to be
cooped up in a walk-in closet.
- But when I walked into room, it was
almost like seeing - some old friend.
He was so happy to see me.
I believe it was on Father's Day
he showed up here,
and I thought we had a
good conversation. You know?
We ate a hamburger, had a soda.
We talked about the case and this and that.
- I asked him about the three girls
and he said, - "That never happened.
"That was all a lie."
Well, I don't know those girls,
but I didn't believe him when he said that,
because if one said it, maybe it's a lie.
But all three, independently of each other,
it was not likely they were all lying.
But that didn't prove
anything about murder.
So I finally come to the big question.
And the big question was this,
"When you were questioned
the night after the murder,
you knew then that you had
written down on a notepad
that you'd gone to Jiffy
Stop at the time of the murder.
And you're being questioned by detectives
and you had an alibi.
Did you tell them about it?"
He said, "No." I said, "Why not?"
And he said, "You know, I don't know why
I didn't tell them that."
I didn't even think about it.
You know, as far as being an alibi or...
I never even thought about the notebook
during trial.
Never even dawned on me.
The blood seeped from my head.
I felt cold.
Someone's questioning
you and you have an alibi
for where you were at the
time of a murder somewhere,
and you don't tell the
authorities that alibi,
that's for a reason.
And the reason's got to be,
that there is no alibi.
I knew then um, this was a guilty man.
I knew then.
Marshall Frank called
and said something like,
"Whoops. You'll never guess what happened.
And I had this sinking feeling,
and he said, "I think he's guilty."
And I said, "What?"
I thought this seasoned homicide detective
was reliable and trustworthy.
I was wrong.
And I crawled under a...
Under the bottom of a molehill
so I could hide from the rest of the world
because I was a little bit embarrassed.
I loved the "Herald".
My entire career, I never had a retraction.
I was always credible.
- And to have my last story that I wrote
- for the "Herald"
- be a piece of dreck because
Marshall Frank - was careless
With my reputation, with his reputation...
So I got burned on that one.
What can I say, you know?
It was a noble purpose.
One day, Marshall Frank calls up,
"He's guilty."
- Next thing we know, there's a big article
- in the "Miami Herald".
And I was angry. I was very angry.
I was angry at him. I
was angry at the reporter.
This is a man's life and
you're printing this stuff.
And it's dangerous, because now everybody
reads the "Miami Herald".
The courts are reading
it. Everybody reads it.
People always want to believe that,
you know, somebody's innocent.
But it's really dangerous,
years after the fact,
to get a new trial for somebody.
You know, for some legal flaw.
Like,
maybe his lawyer didn't work hard enough
or maybe some witness was unreliable.
In fact, Gwen Gurley,
who recanted her original testimony
against Duckett,
now claims she was coerced into recanting
by an investigator working
for the Duckett family.
This man was at my house.
If I was hanging up clothes,
he was behind the clothesline.
He was always around. He was...
He never let my life at peace.
- So I just told him what he wanted to hear
- to leave me alone.
What he told me happened,
I said, "Okay, it happened.'
And the only reason I even
agreed to do this interview
was just to let it...
On record...
To let it be known that
the last time I saw Teresa McAbee,
she was in James Duckett's police car.
That's the last time
I saw that little girl.
- The next time I heard about her,
- she was dead.
Earlier in his investigation,
- Marshall Frank was urged to meet
with detectives - from Sheriff's Office
In a neighboring county.
Until now, Frank hadn't thought it was
important to do so.
Someone told me that
James Duckett was being investigated
by another agency.
So I go to the Polk
County Sheriff's Department
and talk to the detectives.
They allowed me to read
the significant reports,
and the more they talked to me,
the more I began to think,
"Oh, dear,
he may have killed another child."
Marshall Frank had become convinced that
James Duckett was in
fact guilty of murdering
Teresa McAbee.
And he soon learned that
Duckett was the prime suspect
in the murder of another
girl named Jennifer Weldon.
The evidence that I learned
about the Jennifer Weldon murder
was stronger than the evidence
in the Teresa McAbee murder.
While awaiting trial,
Duckett had a job at a local phosphate pit,
located near the same road
where 14-year-old Jennifer
Weldon was last seen.
A young girl apparently
had been walking home
or hitchhiking or something
and had disappeared and they found her
a week or two later.
They came up here and attempted to
question me on that.
This girl had been in a carnival
that was on a road Duckett used to take.
Jennifer Weldon, who was 14 then
was last seen walking along State Road 98
in the evening time.
The Lake County Sheriff's
Department talked to
the supervisors at the phosphorus plant.
- They said Duckett showed up late the
night that - Jennifer Weldon disappeared.
And when he did show up at work,
he was quite disheveled
and seemed to be upset
and he wasn't himself.
Jennifer Weldon was
carrying a lime-green bag
with a stuffed animal inside,
the night she disappeared.
I got a call one day from Duckett's wife,
out of the blue
And she said, "Mr. Hurm, I think
"Jimmy may have had
something to do with that case."
I said,
"Why say that?" She said,"I remember him
coming home
"with a bag with a little stuffed animal,"
and she said "The reason I remember it is,
I was mad at him
"because we had two boys.
"And I said,
'Why wouldn't you bring two toys?
"Because you know they'll fight over it.'"
And I get goosebumps thinking about this.
Police never charged Duckett
with the Weldon murder.
But they have said they will
pursue Duckett for the crime
if he is ever let off death
row for the McAbee murder,
a possibility Beth Wells is counting on.
- They're presently reviewing Jim's case,
and I'm - 100% confident
- that when they evaluate this evidence, they're
gonna say, - "You know what? We got it wrong.
We have to give this guy a new trial."
- I mean, if you look, the hard evidence
- was tire tracks
That can't be identified to his car,
a pubic hair,
nothing that can even
say that the pubic hair
belonged to James Duckett.
Gwen, her truthfulness is in doubt.
We've been doing this a long time.
Hopefully we won't be doing it much longer.
You know,
he'll be out and not needing an attorney.
In the meantime,
Duckett's appeals have left
Teresa's mother in limbo.
I just want justice for my daughter.
That's what I want.
And 26 years, I'm tired.
I don't think I'll ever have closure
'cause he's not going to admit it.
These years, looking back,
I should have drove Teresa home,
walked her up to the door,
should have handed her over to her.
Absolutely.
And that was my fault.
I didn't kill your daughter, though.
Yeah, I didn't.
Eleven-year-old was killed. That's tragic.
Murder should never have happened.
But you don't have a smoking gun.
You don't have what a lot
of people demand in a case.
From a legal point of view,
he really should never have been convicted.
It's a good thing that he was,
because there'd probably
be other dead kids out there.
You know, I'm not a "fry them all,
fry them sooner"
you know, that sort of thing.
I feel the weight of the State
deciding to take someone's life.
But if the death penalty is
appropriate for any case,
it's appropriate for this case.
Because of what he did to Teresa McAbee.
God forbid if he got off death row
and was a serial sex killer,
- how many more victims would there
be before - they caught Duckett again?
Grant a new trial.
I'm not asking to walk out the door.
- Grant me a new trial. Let's
put everything - on the table
And do it right and see what happens.
Ready? - All right.
Thank you. Y'all take care.