POLK COUNTY, Fla. – Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd will brief the media at 10:00 a.m. today regarding the 1987 cold case homicide of 14-year-old Jeanifer Weldon, two days after the state of Florida executed convicted killer James Duckett.
The press conference will take place at the Sheriff’s Operations Center in Winter Haven. Weldon’s sisters, Amy Weldon and Hope Limansah, along with her childhood best friend Mindy Oakley, are scheduled to attend. Detectives have worked to solve Weldon’s murder since October 2, 1987, when her body was found in Fort Meade. She had been reported missing the previous month after leaving a friend’s house in Lakeland.
Duckett, a former Mascotte police officer, was long suspected in Weldon’s death alongside other unsolved cases in the region. On Tuesday, July 28, the state executed the 68-year-old by lethal injection at Florida State Prison for the May 1987 rape and murder of 11-year-old Teresa McAbee…