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.
but the presiding judge put a stop to gwen s admission, warning her of perjury charges if she changed her testimony. judge lockett told me if i perjured myself that i could be sentenced to the maximum of i think it was seven years for each perjury. so i pled the fifth. we asked the judge to grant immunity and he just didn t do it. how can you kill somebody, how can you execute somebody and you have a state s key witness that wants to tell the truth and yet because it is not what the state wants, they re going to threaten her with perjury and send her back to prison. what kind of system is that? while duckett s appeal was severely weakened without gurley s recanted testimony, beth wells was still able to attack the prosecution s case starting with the tire tracks
people always want to believe that somebody is innocent but it is really dangerous years after the fact to get a new trial for somebody, for some legal flaw like maybe his lawyer didn t work hard enough or maybe some witness was unreliable. in fact, gwen gurley, who recanted her original testimony against jim duckett now claims she was coerced into recanting by an investigator work for the duckett family. he was at my house. if i was hanging up clothes he was behind the clothesline. he was always around. he never let my life at peace. so i told him what he wanted to hear to leave me alone. what he told me happened, i said okay, it happened. the only reason i even agreed to do this interview was just on record to let it be known that the last time i saw teresa mcabee, she was in james
we don t have a full name for him. there were always a lot of people around that home that didn t live there. like a little gathering. there were always more guys than girls. there was a lot of stuff to raise suspicion, you have an 11-year-old female child in the house. i think the person who was harassing teresa at home killed her, dressed her, and took her and dumped her in the lake. once they honed in on jim duckett, they stopped looking for other suspects and that s not good police work. wells also called gwen gurley to testify. the only eyewitness who placed teresa in duckett s patrol car had recanted her original testimony. if they used gwen gurley as a key witness to put me here and if she s no longer telling their lies, that should count for something. i can remember when we talked to gwen. this is great stuff. she s recanted. she s the only person that saw the victim in the car.
i know something about that case. the sheriff s department of lake county come talk to me. the inference was, we can give you a break if you saw something that we should know about. hint, hint. gwen testified against duckett and was let out of jail having served less than six months of a two-year sentence. but a year after james duckett was sentenced to death, gurley recanted her original testimony and said she never actually saw ducat with theresa mcabee. in a sworn affidavit, she claimed she had been induced into testifying against ducat by investigator rocky harris. rocky harris took me in and out of the jail. they asked a lot of questions, a lot of questions. the best i recall, i never offered her any deal whatsoever. after learning that gwen gurley had recanted her testimony, marshall frank also