Case Explained:This article breaks down the legal background, charges, and implications of Case Explained: Family, friends of Polk murder victim plan to attend Duckett execution – Legal Perspective
Fourteen-year-old Jeanifer Shyan Weldon was walking toward her North Lakeland home from a friend’s house in 1987 with a stuffed toy in a bag from a fair she had attended earlier that day with her boyfriend’s family.
She never made it home.
The Weldon murder is still considered a Polk County cold case. No one has been charged for the girl’s murder, but law enforcement since the 1980s had a suspect in mind. And her family today believe there is enough evidence to convict death row inmate James Aren Duckett.
James Duckett’s execution delayed for now, due to last minute DNA test
Duckett, a former police officer in the small town of Mascotte, was convicted of raping and murdering 11-year-old Teresa Mae McAbee under similar circumstances to the Weldon case and at least one other unsolved homicide in Polk County.
He was set for execution on March 31.
But with less than a week before his walk to the execution chamber at the Florida State Prison in Raiford, the Florida Supreme Court granted a stay of execution on March 26, pending the results of a DNA test that his lawyers said could potentially exonerate him in McAbee’s killing.
His defense team had requested the DNA test to potentially rule out a match against evidence collected in the Lake County girl’s murder. The defense request was made after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his death warrant on Feb. 27.
In the appeal court’s ruling, the test was to be completed before 5 p.m. March 27. A test did come back on Friday with a finding considered inconclusive. The State of Florida then filed a request to lift the stay of execution, which was pending as of the afternoon of March 28.
Justice delayed?
Weldon’s family members said the last-minute legal maneuvers by Duckett’s defense made them sick to their stomachs.
“We’ve suffered enough.” said Amy Weldon, a sister who is 11 months younger than Jeanifer and was a ninth-grader at Lake Gibson Middle School at the time of her sister’s homicide.
In September 1987, the search for Jeanifer Weldon was frantic as her sister and a classmate, Mindy Oakley, recalled in a March 27 phone interview.
Amy Weldon said she and her mother knew something was not right after the first night she was missing. That night they had created missing-person flyers and distributed them “anywhere and everywhere.”
Even the Lake Gibson principal sent home a missing-person letter to parents requesting information on Jeanifer’s whereabouts as the search dragged on from days to weeks. That principal, Richard Lewis, would later attend her funeral.
Jeanifer Weldon’s sister and classmate believe Duckett killed her
About three weeks later, Jeanifer’s body was found Oct. 2, 1987, near a mining pit south of Fort Meade and not far from the mine where Duckett worked.
The night Jeanifer went missing, Duckett was two hours late for his job at the phosphate mine. Coworkers reported he appeared disheveled.
Duckett’s wife said her husband had returned from work with a bag and a stuffed toy. She recalled the items because the couple had two sons who argued over the items. So she threw the items in the trash.
For Mindy and Amy, too much of the testimony in his Lake County trial and evidence shared by detectives in Polk County point to Duckett, including the location where her remains were found.
“Where she was found, you had to know that area. Duckett clearly knew that area,” Amy said. “It was a roadway back in the mines where you had to know that area.”
“There is not any doubt that he killed my sister,” said Amy Weldon. “All this DNA stuff is unbelievable.”
She added that, until recently, Duckett had declined to allow his DNA to be tested.
Jeanifer Weldon’s classmates remain devastated
Jeanifer was a sophomore at Lake Gibson High School when she went missing, just three days before her 15th birthday.
“It devastated our whole class,” said Mindy, the classmate. “I’ve said many times, we didn’t know evil existed until he took her life. It was tough.”
“Everyone was searching for her. We were searching for her anywhere and everywhere we could think she might be,” Amy said.
Jeanifer’s mother was never the same, the sister recalled.
In an Aug. 4, 2003, Ledger report, her mother Alice Walters, who is now deceased, was devastated and still not talking publicly about her daughter’s death.
“There is an empty ache inside of me that never seems to go away,” Walters wrote in a letter to a Ledger reporter. “I have learned how to live with the grief. But there are other emotions that I have not been able to deal with.”
The Ledger report marked one of Duckett’s legal appeals. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office was very close to charging the death row inmate with murder should his appeal be successful, The Ledger reported.
But Duckett lost that appeal and charges in Polk County were never filed.
According to Oakley, the appeal’s court stay set off angry posts to Facebook by many of her classmates from the 1980s. The latest developments in the Duckett case are also the subject of a YouTuber’s report.
Oakley and Amy Weldon never stopped searching for information that might lead to charges against the killer. They have offered reward money and in recent years have continued to post flyers around Polk County about the case.
Anti-death penalty advocates say further DNA testing is needed
In a news release March 27, Floridians Against The Death Penalty wrote: “The Deputy Director of Forensic Science at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) asserted that additional expert evaluation of the male-specific DNA data derived from the sample may still be possible, meaning scientific inquiry is not yet complete. As Mr. Duckett’s most recent pleading notes, FDLE recommended further testing at the very lab Mr. Duckett initially requested three weeks ago.
“Instead of honoring their own crime lab’s request, the State is asking to move forward with the execution as scheduled,” the FADP wrote.
Duckett’s defense had hoped DNA results would bring “long-awaited clarity and justice”
Via an email from Floridian’s Against the Death Penalty, his defense wrote: “The stay of execution issued by the Florida Supreme Court today (March 26) is a significant step toward preventing the irreversible harm that will result if the State of Florida executes an innocent man.
“James Duckett has steadfastly professed his innocence for the nearly four decades he has been on death row,” the defense wrote. “DNA testing currently underway, as ordered by the circuit court, has the potential to conclusively establish Mr. Duckett’s innocence.”
Weldon’s death similar to Lake County girl’s homicide
Duckett was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death for the murder of Teresa McAbee in 1987 while on duty as a Mascotte police officer.
McAbee went to a convenience store to buy a pencil, and Duckett rolled up in his squad car where she was standing with a boy near a dumpster.
A previous report by The Ledger on Oct. 7, 2005, gives further credence to the victim’s family that Duckett is a suspect.
“Soon after being questioned in McAbee’s murder, Duckett was fired from the Mascotte Police Department and took a mining job near Bartow,” The Ledger report said.
“The night Weldon disappeared, Duckett would have been driving to work on U.S. 98 North, where the 14-year-old girl was walking the night she disappeared,” Polk County Sheriff’s detectives said in 2005.
Weldon’s body was found Oct. 2, 1987, off a remote dirt road south of Fort Meade.
Even with Duckett on death row, detectives still were pursuing him as a suspect in Weldon’s murder, the Ledger report said.
“He’s not going anywhere until he’s dead,” said Polk County Sheriff’s Chief William Jarvis “W.J.” Martin, who led the Criminal Investigations division at the time. “We’re still going to pursue it. It’s one of those things we’re trying to piece together.
“He’s the only suspect. We have another case he needs to be charged with,” Martin previously told The Ledger.
Martin retired in 2015. Attempts to reach him for this report were unsuccessful.
Weldon homicide remains a cold case
The Polk County Sheriff’s Office was not willing to speak on the record about the Weldon case nor any of their cold case investigations with similarities to the Lake County case.
Sheriff’s Office Communications Director Scott Wilder declined to comment March 27 on the Weldon case and what would happen if the DNA evidence points to Duckett’s involvement in the Weldon homicide, among at least one other investigation.
“The DNA evidence in question is not a part of a Polk County Sheriff’s Office investigation,” Wilder said in an emailed response.
“We are not discussing the nature of evidence, DNA or otherwise, that we may have in our open homicide cases — that information would only be disclosed as a part of general discovery after charges are filed, or if we believed the release of such information would assist in our investigation.”
Wilder added, “If DNA evidence existed related to one of our investigations, we would work with the relevant law enforcement agency to obtain that information.”
Another homicide investigation with similar circumstances to the Mascotte murder, was the Ronette Peterson.
On May 7, 1986, 22-year-old Peterson was found in a pit near Combee Road in Lakeland. She drowned after being struck in the head, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
Peterson remained a “Jane Doe” for 19 years before her body was identified via fingerprints as a missing person from Iowa, the Polk Sheriff’s Office website says. Detectives learned that she had traveled through Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina and Florida (possibly the Clearwater area) during the time period leading up to her death.
Death penalty opposition closely awaiting next steps in DNA appeal
So what happens next with the inconclusive results from the DNA test?
“The Florida Supreme Court could either lift the stay of execution and allow the legal process to proceed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, or they could leave the stay in place while a lower court evaluates the significance of the results,” said Grace Ellen Hanna, executive director of Floridians Against the Death Penalty.
“If the stay is lifted and it is not reinstated by another court (such as the U.S. Supreme Court), the execution could occur as scheduled on Tuesday, or it could be rescheduled for anytime before the warrant period expires one week later.”
When asked about Duckett being identified as a suspect in the Weldon case, Hanna said, “There’s no credible evidence linking Mr. Duckett to the Polk County cases despite many years of investigation. But anytime the state carries out an execution, it is understandable that families connected to any unsolved cases would worry that one of their paths to answers will disappear.”
“While that’s not the issue at hand here, it’s one of the fundamental issues with the death penalty,” she said.
Weldon’s friend and sisters want justice they may never get
With the execution pending, Jeanifer’s family and friends no longer expect to get the satisfaction of a conviction in her death.
“To me, it’s that he’ll never be prosecuted for her murder,” said Oakley, adding she feels sorrow for McAbee’s family.
Jeanifer Weldon also had a sister born after her death. That sister and Oakley have requested to observe the Duckett execution. Amy Weldon said she would go to the prison grounds on the day of the execution, if it moves forward.