The Campaign - Part Two

Nov 16, 2006 Nancy Grace show Transcripts:


DUCKETT: They said to me that just because she was making pornographic videos and pictures didn`t make her a bad mother. Their words were exactly that they have prostitutes that are good mothers
GRACE: Well, you bring up a very interesting point, Kathy. I know where you`re going. Could the baby be stashed with a relative police haven`t encountered yet? As a matter of fact, Josh, you spoke with one of her good friends out of state last night. What did she tell you?

DUCKETT: She felt very strongly that Melinda had actually stashed Trenton with somebody. She had no idea anybody who possibly would be involved in it. But she has the same feelings that we do all along. She feels that Trenton`s alive and he`s well, it`s just a matter of finding him.

GRACE: Do you believe, Josh, that the police approached her about the alleged porn?

DUCKETT: I think they approached her, but they didn`t check into it as much as they should have.

DUCKETT: ... and there`s a picture of her with a guy holding -- and she was reaching over her shoulder, holding a bottle for Trenton.

GRACE: Could you make out that it was Trenton`s face?

DUCKETT: Yes.

GRACE: Are you sure it was Trenton?

DUCKETT: Almost 100 percent.

GRACE: From your knowledge, did anything look doctored about the picture?

DUCKETT: Not at all.

Sept 8, 2006 NG show

JOSH DUCKETT: I’ve given my whole story. I’ve cooperated. Everything that I have, that I’ve been doing, they checked it out, and so far, they’re satisfied with what they’ve found.

To me, it would have to be somebody that’s cold-hearted, I mean, to take somebody`s little kid away from them.

GRACE: You know, something was mentioned by Lisa Pinto, Josh, regarding Melinda -- God rest her soul -- self-mutilating. What do you know about that? And if that’s true, why would the baby be kept in her custody? Why was DCF continuing to give the child back.

J. DUCKETT: I knew for a fact that she was a cutter and -- as her family did. I mean, they had told me...
GRACE: What do you mean by cutter?

J. DUCKETT: Self-mutilating with razor blades, any sharp object she could use to cut herself with, but she done that in places where not everyone could see.

GRACE: Like?

J. DUCKETT: Her hips, like, underneath her shorts or underneath her shirt, where no one else could see. Her grandparents for a fact told me about the hundreds of razor blades that they had taken out of her room. So I mean, they knew. Her parents in New York knew.

GRACE: How did you put your head to the pillow at night knowing Trenton was there?

J. DUCKETT: It was difficult. I mean, I didn’t really sleep that much at night. I mean, I tended to Trenton when he woke up throughout the night and...
GRACE: Actually -- oh, I`m sorry. Go ahead.

J. DUCKETT: And I mean, I mostly slept during the day.

Here in the studio with me, his dad, Josh Duckett. Josh, did you know that she had had -- she had been forced to go to anger management classes?

J. DUCKETT: Yes, I knew. It was in DCF case records that she needed to go. A case plan is what it’s called down there. It’s just assignments of tasks that you have to complete in order to...

GRACE: Did she complete it?

J. DUCKETT: Yes.

GRACE: And why was she told to go to anger management?

J. DUCKETT: Because of her outrages. I mean, she would fly off the handle over the littlest thing. I mean, anything in the world would just make her...

GRACE: I know, at one juncture, right before you two got married, you agreed to drop any charges against her, and you two got married and you had the baby. Why did you drop the charges?

J. DUCKETT: Basically, I was -- I was young, I was trying to make a family, or I was trying to keep my family from being separated. So I went back to her and really tried to work things out, went to her attorney and asked how we could resolve things with all the legal stuff that was going on, and her attorney said that the only way would be to sign this document recanting.

GRACE: So her attorney convinced you to drop the charges against her?

J. DUCKETT: Yes. And I signed the recantment statement, and shortly after I signed the recantment statement, they tried to put perjury charges on me for recanting statements.
GRACE: And what happened to that?

J. DUCKETT: Basically, they were -- basically, they couldn’t do anything with it because it was considered conflict of interest because it was Melinda’s attorney.

September 29, 2006 Nancy Grace Show

GRACE: Did she want to have the baby?

J. DUCKETT: I guess, to an extent, she did, but then to an extent she didn’t.

GRACE: Why?

J. DUCKETT: She told me later, after she had already had him and everything, that she had gotten pregnant on purpose because we were having trouble, and we were on again and off again. And she told me she got pregnant on purpose as a way -- she knew my beliefs, as far as not leaving her if she was pregnant. And so that was a way to kind of trap me.

J. DUCKETT: As soon as they came to my house and they said they had to search my house and search all of my stuff, I mean, that kind of told me right there. And then I found out later that she had pointed the finger at me. And, I mean, to an extent it didn’t surprise me at all.

GRACE: Why?

J. DUCKETT: Because of all the setup before, I mean, the e-mail. I knew I didn’t do it. I knew she was tied into it.

GRACE: You mean, the e-mail where she hacked into your e-mail and sent herself and Trenton a threat?

J. DUCKETT: Yes

GRACE: Here is the e-mail that Josh is talking about. Can we go back to the first screen of that? Thanks, Liz. "I hate you because you ruined my life and took my son. I`m going to hunt you and your damn son down one day and kill both of you. Years ago, you stole my heart and F-ed me over." Next screen. "I don`t even think Trenton is my son, anyway. And you`re going to pay for what you`ve done to my life. I want you to be put through torture."

So Josh, pretty on -- early in the investigation, police realize -- they bring in experts, they realize that this letter was written by her on your e-mail account to her. How did she do that? How did she get your passcode?

J. DUCKETT: Ive had the same e-mail and same password since we were first together. I mean, I`ve had it for four years almost now. And I mean, she knew what my passwords were and everything like that. So basically, what she done was she went into my Myspace page and done a "forgot password" and had it sent to my e-mail address...
GRACE: So...

J. DUCKETT: ... and went in and checked the e-mail and logged in.

GRACE: So I guess when you tried to tell the authorities, I didn`t write this e-mail, nobody believed you at first?

J. DUCKETT: Yes. I mean, nobody believed me. But I mean, I had a full alibi for where I was. I mean, I was with my parents all night.

(Does the "forgot password" make any sense if Melinda knew for 4 years Josh's password? Maybe someone else didn't know his password?)

GRACE: So I guess when you tried to tell the authorities, I didn’t write this e-mail, nobody believed you at first?

J. DUCKETT: Yes. I mean, nobody believed me. But I mean, I had a full alibi for where I was. I mean, I was with my parents all night.

(Holy Moly, Josh ALWAYS HAS AN ALIBI, AND IT'S ALWAYS HIS PARENTS.)
Quote:
. DUCKETT: Yes, I think that -- in my eyes, I feel that that’s a lot of it. I think that it was part of a game, and the e-mail is what started it. And then she never expected the game that she was playing to get as large as it has and to get to the scale that it is now. And it was just too much.

And I mean, because just reading the letter from me, knowing her, reading the note, it was unplanned for her to write that because she was normally detailed in everything that she done. And you can tell that it was a last-minute desperation-type thing. So I feel that -- I mean, that gives us that much hope, and then in the letter, it says, As he grows up, and that gave us that much more hope.

(Just reading the "letter from me"?)

Back out to Trenton’s father, Josh Duckett. Was she an avid shooter? I mean, did she typically take the baby to target practice?

DUCKETT: No, the whole time that I was with her, she actually never shotgunned the whole time that I was with her. So I don’t know if this was a new hobby that she had collected. But I mean, it raised a flag with me. I mean, why would you take a 2-year-old to a shotgun -- or a shooting range even?

GRACE: And, again, Josh, what did we find in the trash, that she had thrown away that very day she reported him missing?

J. DUCKETT: To my knowledge, there was toys, there were sonograms, baby food, snacks for babies. And to verify for the sonogram picture, I mean, it was said that there was numerous sonograms. There was numerous sonograms, but they weren’t of the same one. They were in different stages. The doctor that she went to for the sonograms was like a learning facility at the college, and they’d done it step by step, one sonogram every month.

This is from an article in the Orlando Sentinel written by Stephen Hudak on September 21,2006.

Quote:
But Joshua Duckett, Melinda's estranged husband and the boy's father, said Wednesday he was stunned to learn that she had thrown out the toddler's keepsake pictures.

"It strikes me as very odd. I mean, I've still got all of my photos of him and all of my sonogram pictures from when she was pregnant," he said. "I've had my suspicions from the start. [but] thery're just suspicions."


http://www.wesh.com/print/9896822/detail.html

Posted Sept 20, 2006 WESH.com

On audio tape


Quote:
"she was going to hurt Trenton if Josh didn't stop," said witness Jeffrey Scott on December 27, 2005. "If she doesn't get what she wants, and things are not going her way, she likes to make little threats."

In chilling detail, Scott told Bushnell police how he listened in on Josh Duckett's phone as Melinda Duckett threatened to hurt Trenton if her husband would not get back together with her.

"She threatened to, I guess, put her hands on Trenton and stuff like that just so Josh would hear Trenton cry and comply with her and whatever she wanted," Scott said.

The interview was part of an investigation into a suspicious fire at a business owned by Josh duckett's mother. It was an arson fire where melinda Duckett was one of serveral suspects that Bushnell detectives were seriously investigating.

"Me and Melinda were arguing at the time", Joshua duckett told investigators. "I was having problems with Melinda and we were feuding at that time," he said.

Josh Duckett told a fire investigator on the scene that he was sure his wife had set the fire, although he later took that back.

"Melinda wanted child support and stuff at that time. And if she was wanting child support, it wouldn't benefit her or anything to do anything to that because that was where my income was. That was my job. That was our life. That's where every bit of money that we had came from". Josh Duckett said.

Until the DONATIONS started rolling in.