Nancy Grace Badgers a Woman into Suicide

A Florida woman who claimed her toddler son was abducted from her home shot herself to death a day after bulldog CNN host Nancy Grace harshly interrogated her during an interview.
Melinda Duckett told police that her 2-year-old son, Trenton, was snatched from his crib on Aug. 27 as she watched TV in the next room.

Two weeks later, former prosecutor Grace trampled on the woman's timeline for the 26 hours before the alleged abduction took place and pressed her on her refusal to take a lie-detector test.

In the telephone interview, taped Sept. 7, Grace slammed her hand on her desk as she demanded, "Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?"

Duckett, 21, committed suicide the next day - and bombshell evidence possibly implicating the mom in her son's disappearance has now surfaced, Grace and local media reported last night.

On Aug. 11, some 16 days before the boy vanished from his home in Leesburg, Fla., Duckett "placed the child's car seat for sale in an ad in a local newspaper," Grace reported on her Headline News cable show last night.

The ad ran for 10 days, reporter Marilyn Aciego of The Daily Commercial told Grace.

"She actually placed the ad on Trenton's second birthday," Aciego added.

Florida law mandates car seats for children up to age 3. Aciego said it was not known if Duckett had bought a replacement seat.

A defiant Grace denied responsibility for the young mom's death.

"I do not feel our show is to blame for what happened to Melinda Duckett," she said before last night's show, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Cops won't say if Duckett left a suicide note, and said nothing they have found so far in their probe of her death has shed any light on the whereabouts of the little boy. They also won't call Duckett a suspect in her son's disappearance.

But they have focused increasing attention on her movements before the boy vanished and seized notes, computers, cameras and other items from her house.

Duckett's relatives insist that she wouldn't have hurt her son and that his disappearance, and the media spotlight, led to the second tragedy.

"Nancy Grace and the others, they just bashed her to the end," said Duckett's grandfather Bill Eubank. "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."


Duckett had told cops that after she finished watching a movie Aug. 27, she went to check on Trenton and found an empty crib - and a 10-inch cut in the window screen above it.

She had just been laid off and was living with the baby while going through a messy divorce with his father, Josh Duckett.

The dad was closely questioned after Trenton disappeared.

Local newspapers reported that his wife had taken out a temporary restraining order against him.

But the 21-year-old dad took a polygraph test and has answered all police questions satisfactorily, Capt. Ginny Padgett said.

Josh Duckett said he doesn't blame Grace for his estranged wife's death.

"Nobody made her do the show," he told the Sentinel. "Nobody made her do anything."