been shaken. i was of the opinion that the truth is going to come out. he is going to be exonerated as a suspect. we re going to get to business and find out who murdered this child. last time i seen her she turned the corner and was headed home. do you want to know something? yes, sir. you re not telling me the truth. yes, sir. no, you re not. james duckett was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. duckett s trial began on april 25th, 1988. assistant state attorney steve hurm prosecuted the case and sought the death penalty. that little girl died in the most traumatic, terrifying way, in the dark, alone with a monster. hurm called an eyewitness 17-year-old gwen gurley to the stand.
he was so happy to see me. i believe it was on father s day he showed up here. and i thought we had a good conversation. ate a hamburger, had a soda. we talked about the case and this and that. i asked him about the three girls and he said that never happened. it was all a lie. well, i don t know those girls but i didn t believe him when he said that. because if one said it, maybe it s a lie. but all three, independently of each other it s not likely they were all lying. but that didn t prove anything about murder. so i finally come to the big question, the big question was this. when you were questioned the night after the murder, you knew then that you had written down on a notepad that you had gone to jiffy stop at the time of the murder. and you re being questioned by detectives and you had an alibi. did you tell them about it?
this guy. i have no reason to trust him. i don t know where he is coming from. from jim s point of view, maybe this will be the person who is able to get somebody to listen. with the case at a dead end and duckett headed toward execution, marshall frank had an idea. he said i ve got a friend that used to work for the miami herald. and i had read edna buchanan s stories before over the years. and so i knew who the name was. and so i felt excited. edna buchanan was a pulitzer prize winning crime reporter for the miami herald. an outstanding reporter, one of the best i ve ever known. i wanted to tell her what the story was that i had for james ducat. marshall frank kept calling me. i had known him. he had been a source of mine over the years and he said he found this case where he is convinced the man on death row was innocent. i was dubious because if the wrong person is convicted it is usually someone who is poor, minorities, not a white cop. and i kept saying, well, how
disappeared. i got call one day from duckett s wife out of the blue, and she said, mr. hurm, i think jimmy may have had something to do with that case. i say why do you say that? she said, because i remember him coming home with a bag with a little stuffed animal and she said, the reason i remember it is i was mad at him because we had two boys and i said why wouldn t you bring two toys because you know they ll fight over it. i get goose bumps thinking about this. police never charge duckett with the weldon murder, but they have said they ll pursue duckett for the crime if he is ever let off death row for the mcabee murder, a possibility beth wells is counting on. they re presently reviewing jim s case, and i m 100% confident that when they evaluate this evidence, they ll say, you know what? we got it wrong. we have to give this guy a new trial. the hard evidence was tire tracks which can t be identified to his car.
happened. but you don t have a smoking gun. you don t have what a lot of people demand in a case. from a legal point of view, he really should never have been convicted. it s a good thing that he was because there would probably be other dead kids out there. you know, i m not a fry em all, fry em sooner, that sort of thing. i feel the weight of the state deciding to take someone s life. but if the death penalty is appropriate for any case, it s appropriate for this case. because of what he did to teresa mcabee. got forbid if he got off death row and was a serial sex killer, how many more victims would there be before they caught duckett again? grant a new trial. i m not asking to walk out the door. grant me a new trial. let s put everything on the table and do it right and see