Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said Thursday that James Duckett was responsible for the 1987 abduction, rape and murder of 14-year-old Jeanifer Weldon, a cold case that remained open for decades. Judd made the announcement after Duckett’s Tuesday execution at Florida State Prison.
Judd said Weldon disappeared on Saturday, Sept. 19, 1987, three days before her 15th birthday. He identified her as a teen from Lakeland who lived on North Socrum Loop Road and spent that day with Johnny Marsh, Angel Sullivan and Marsh’s mother before the group traveled to Tampa.
North Socrum Loop Road in Lakeland
Judd said Marsh’s mother dropped Weldon and Sullivan off at Sullivan’s house on Highway 98 North. Weldon and Sullivan stayed there until 9 p.m., then Weldon started the two-mile walk home and never arrived. A phosphate mine worker later found shoes and smelled a decomposing body on Oct. 2, 1987.
Detectives found Weldon’s skeletonized body in a wooded area along with the T-shirt she wore the day she disappeared. Authorities determined that her cause of death was strangulation and the manner of death was homicide. Judd said Duckett left for his phosphate mine job five hours early that night, drove past where Weldon was walking and arrived two hours late to work hot, sweaty, agitated and with dirty hands.
Florida State Prison for the
Judd said Duckett gave his wife a green bag containing candy and a gray stuffed kitten at 9 a.m. the next morning, and that she threw the bag away after questioning why he brought one toy for two children. Detectives also tied the story to the Tampa trip by noting the store Weldon visited used green bags and sold stuffed kittens.
At the press conference, Judd said, “James Duckett viciously abducted, we suspect raped, and we know from circumstance, murdered, violently murdered this little girl,” but he stopped short of describing a trial verdict in Weldon’s case. He also said Duckett claimed scratches on his back came from barbed wire.
Judd called Weldon’s disappearance a life cut short before she could finish school or reach adulthood, saying, “She wasn’t able to graduate from high school,” and adding that she never had the chance to marry, have children or become a mother. The announcement gives Weldon’s family a public attribution for a killing that authorities say began with a day spent with friends and ended on a dark walk home in Polk County.
