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, it s getting close to 10:30. 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 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. i kept, just walked to places. 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
gwen, she said 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 wanted to know how that came about that she would testify against duckett. gwen gurley was always getting involved in thefts and involved in disturbances and all of a sudden she becomes a star witness with the worst credibility you could ever have. in 87, i was 16, i was a typical teenager, i would say. except i was getting in a little bit of trouble. when gurley was in the leesburg city jail three counts of grand theft. the news report of duckett s indictment came on the news. james duckett in connection with the killing and she saw that. she called a female corrections officer over. and told her, i was there.
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. 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. 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. the records show the prosecution took unusual steps to connect the pubic hair to duckett. the sheriff s department had been with the hair analysis shopping it around.
yet available at the 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 i knew and there was no way anybody, fbi, no matter where they re from could say 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 simply incorrect. recently, the fbi hired an endocrine expert to reexamine mike malone s testimony in all these cases because they re concerned that he is 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 ducat s defense attorney, jack edmond, had not questioned the
this alibi would be very good. 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 an long-time fbi expert. malone took a look at it and said it was indistinguishable from duckett s hair. marshall frank wasn t so sure. 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.