Mother of Missing Boy Commits Suicide
<SCRIPT language=javascript> top.ch_refresher.add_ad('93179288', 160, 600, 0, '160x600_1'); </SCRIPT>
<!--req:160x600_1.aolnews.aolnews.news.article.1.20060913143209990003.broadband ad:160x600_1.aolnews.aolnews.news.article _ct:uaci--><SCRIPT type=text/javascript><!--adSetType('I');htmlAdWH('93179288', '160', '600');adSetType('');//--></SCRIPT><NOSCRIPT>
</NOSCRIPT>
LEESBURG, Fla. (Sept. 14) - 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.
On Sept. 7, Melinda Duckett gave a telephone interview to CNN Headline News' Grace, a former prosecutor known for practically cross-examining her guests. Duckett stumbled over such questions as whether she had taken a polygraph -- she said she refused on the advice of her divorce lawyer -- and where, exactly, she was shopping with the boy before his disappearance.
Hours before the interview aired, Duckett shot herself Friday with her grandfather's gun at her grandparents' house, up the road from where she was living.
Investigators are still trying to piece together a timeline of where she and Trenton were 24 hours before she reported him missing. On Tuesday, they released the make and model of her car, a 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse, and asked anyone who might have seen it during that period to call them.
