Trenton Duckett

Claim:   A 2-year-old boy named Trenton Duckett is missing from his Leesburg, Florida, home.

Status:   True.  

Example:   [Collected via e-mail, 2006]

Origins:   A 2-year-old boy named Trenton Duckett was reported as having gone missing from the bedroom of his home in Leesburg, Florida, around 9:00 PM on the evening of 27 August 2006, his mother saying that she last saw him about 7:00 PM that day. Investigating police found

that a screen on a window in Trenton's room had been cut, evidence potentially indicating the boy had been abducted and taken out through the opening.

After several days of futile searches and no leads, the case took an unusual turn in the first week of September when Trenton's mother, Melinda Duckett, declined to take a polygraph test concerning her activities in the days before Trenton went missing, disappeared herself, and then committed suicide with a shotgun.

Since the suicide, investigators have been considering the possibility that Melinda Duckett staged her son's disappearance, and they spent five days conducting searches in and around Farles Lake in the Ocala National Forest (where Melinda said she had traveled with the boy the day before he was reported missing) without results. The case took yet another unusual turn on September 20 when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement revealed that Trenton's mother "was clearing out the apartment, emptying the refrigerator as if moving from the residence" the evening he went missing, and that invesigators had found Trenton's photographs, toys, and sonogram image in a trash bin at his mother's apartment complex the next day.

Trenton remains missing, and the search for him continues. A missing persons poster for Trenton can be viewed and printed from the web site of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Anyone with information concerning Trenton's disappearance or whereabouts is urged to call 800-CALL-FBI or 800-423-TIPS.

Additional information:
 

Missing Person: Trenton Duckett (National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)

Missing Person: Trenton Duckett (Federal Bureau of Investigation)

Last updated:   21 September 2006

  Sources:

    Hudak, Stephen.   "Police Suspected Melinda Duckett From the Beginning, Documents Show."

    Orlando Sentinel.   20 September 2006.

    Internet Broadcasting Systems.   "Police: Boy May Have Been Abducted from Bedroom."

    Local6.com.   28 August 2006.

    Internet Broadcasting Systems.   "Body of Missing Boy's Mom Found."

    Local6.com.   8 September 2006.

    Internet Broadcasting Systems.   "Search for Missing Central Florida Boy May Take New Direction."

    Local6.com.   18 September 2006.

    Internet Broadcasting Systems.   "Missing Boy's Toys, Sonogram Found in Trash."

    Local6.com.   20 September 2006.