James Duckett was the only police officer on patrol in the town of Mascot, Florida on the night of May 11, 1987.
Around 10:00 p.m., 11-year-old Theresa McCabe went to a supermarket to buy pencils. After leaving the store, she stopped to talk to a 16-year-old boy outside the store.
Shortly after, Duckett arrived at the supermarket and, after asking the clerk McCabe’s age, approached McCabe and the boy. After a brief conversation, Duckett told McCabe to go home and tell the boy to wait for his uncle. When the boy’s uncle arrived, the boy and his uncle saw McCabe get into the passenger side of Duckett’s patrol car.
At 11pm, McCabe’s mother went to the supermarket to look for her daughter. The clerk told the mother that McCabe had left with Duckett, possibly at Mascot Police Station.
When no one was found at Mascot Police Station, the mother drove to nearby Groveland Police Station to report her daughter missing. Groveland police contacted Mascot police and Duckett arrived at the Groveland Police Department within twenty minutes. Duckett created a flyer using McCabe’s photo, which he intended to post at local convenience stores, but he did not.
The store clerk reported that police drove by the store every hour, but she reported that Duckett was stopped at 9:30 p.m. But he didn’t come back for several hours. Additionally, Duckett made no radio calls between 9:50 and 10:00 p.m. and 12:10 p.m.
McCabe’s body was found the next morning in a lake, less than a mile from the supermarket where she was last seen. Medical testimony revealed that she had been sexually abused and then drowned. Blood and pubic hair, later identified as a possible match to Duckett, were found in her underwear, and semen was found on her jeans.
Clear tire marks found at the scene were consistent with tires found on the Mascot Police Department patrol car. Duckett and McCabe’s fingerprints were found on the car’s hood, indicating she was sitting backwards on the car’s hood.
At the trial, three girls aged between seventeen and nineteen testified that Duckett sexually molested each of them in the six months before the murder. One of the girls testified that she had sex with Duckett.
