Crazy Nancy Grace
Mother of missing boy commits suicide
By TRAVIS REED
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
LEESBURG, Fla. -- Two weeks after telling police that her son had been snatched from his crib, Melinda Duckett found herself reeling in an interview with TV's famously prosecutorial Nancy Grace. Before it was over, Grace was pounding her desk and loudly demanding to know: "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?"
A day after the taping, Duckett, 21, shot herself to death, deepening the mystery of what happened to the boy.
Police have refused to say whether she left a suicide note, and said nothing they have found so far in their investigation of her death has shed light on the whereabouts of her 2-year-old son, Trenton.
Investigators have stopped short of calling her a suspect but have focused increasing attention on her movements just before the boy vanished and the notes, computer, camera and other items seized from her house.
Duckett's family members disputed any suggestion that she hurt her son. They said that the strain of her son's disappearance pushed her to the brink, and the media sent her over the edge.
"Nancy Grace and the others, they just bashed her to the end," Duckett's grandfather Bill Eubank said Tuesday. "She wasn't one anyone ever would have thought of to do something like this. She and that baby just loved each other, couldn't get away from each other. She wouldn't hurt a bug."
Janine Iamunno, a spokeswoman for Grace, said in an e-mail that Duckett's death was "an extremely sad development," but that the program would continue covering the case.
"We feel a responsibility to bring attention to this case in the hopes of helping find Trenton Duckett, who remains missing," Iamunno said.
Duckett had told police that after she finished watching a movie Aug. 27, she went to check on Trenton in his bedroom, and all she found was an empty crib - and a 10-inch cut in the window screen above it. At the time, she was living with her son, wading through a messy divorce with the boy's father and trying to get her life back on track after getting laid off from her job with a lawn care company.
The boy's disappearance in this town of 19,000 people about 45 miles northwest of Orlando stretched the 75-member police force to its limits. Fliers were posted on gas station doors around town, asking for information from anyone who might have seen the boy, a brown-haired youngster wearing denim shorts and a diaper.
Trenton's father, 21-year-old Josh Duckett, was closely questioned after the boy disappeared. Newspapers reported that his wife had taken out a temporary restraining order against him. But Josh Duckett took a polygraph test and has answered all police questions satisfactorily, Capt. Ginny Padgett said.
It's easy to blame Grace, and her theatrics can rub me the wrong way, but I don't buy this woman with a missing child killed herself over a TV interview. It is more likely that Grace hit a nerve.
Look at the case. The mother is young, in a nasty custody case, and can't recall where her toddler son is for a day? Grace may have had a flawed record as a prosecutor, but she's not an idiot.
Grace has victims on her show every day, and while she can get weird, like with Elizabeth Smart, and most get the kid glove treatment. For this woman to fumble on where she was with her toddler son before his disappearance would make cops real suspicious.
Then she blows her head off with a shotgun before the kid is found?
Nah, if you've ever had a toddler in your care, they don't go missing. You don't forget where they are or where you are with them. They're usually in a stroller. If he went missing, we're talking a gap of minutes. You don't leave a two year old eating a pizza.
Her story is hinky to say the least.
Why would she kill the kid and lie about it?
Because she was scared she'd lose custody. Now, the kid could be out of state and alive, but why would she kill herself? Because of Nancy Grace? That's just too easy to believe. Especially when the mother is sketchy about where she was with a toddler.
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