Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd announced Thursday that executed Florida prisoner James Duckett was responsible for the 1987 abduction, rape, and murder of 14-year-old Jeanifer Weldon in Polk County.
Duckett, a former Mascotte police officer, was executed at Florida State Prison on Tuesday for the separate 1987 rape and murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee in Lake County.
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Authorities never formally charged Duckett in Weldon's case to avoid delaying his capital punishment proceedings.
Weldon vanished on Sept. 19, 1987, while walking to her Lakeland home.
A phosphate mine employee found her skeletonized remains on Oct. 2, 1987, in Fort Meade, with strangulation listed as the cause of death.
Sheriff Judd detailed the circumstantial evidence gathered over decades during a press conference at the PCSO Sheriff's Operations Center in Winter Haven, displaying an age-progression photo of Weldon.
"She wasn’t able to graduate from high school," said Sheriff Grady Judd. "She couldn’t go to college.
She never had the opportunity to marry the love of her life.
She never had the opportunity to have the children and raise the children and enjoy the wonders of being a mother.
She never had the opportunity to send her children away to elementary or kindergarten on their first day or to watch them graduate from high school.
Who knows?
Maybe she or her children would have been one who turned into the scientist that found the cure for cancer.
