When a mother of a missing two-year-old boy commits suicide, it suggests to me that the mom knows her missing boy is never coming home -- or at a minimum is too wrapped up in her own pain to put her child's well-being first.
The effort by some to blame CNN's prosecutorial Nancy Grace for Melinda Duckett's suicide (for having asked the mother tough questions about her whereabouts on the day her child disappeared) is out of line.
Most innocent parents of missing children can handle close scrutiny. They may not enjoy it, but they know that it is part of the necessary process if they are to have any hope of getting their child home safe again.
Being able to quickly and reliably rule out the parents and other caregivers as possible suspects is helpful, and often essential, to any missing child case. Thus, the parents and families of missing children like Elizabeth Smart, Adam Walsh (son John Walsh of America's Most Wanted), and Danielle Van Dam, to name just a few, were all investigated.
Being able to reconstruct where you were on the day your child disappeared is also key if you are to have any hope of identifying possible abductors. Taking your own life before you've even finished scouring your memory for information that might help in the search for your missing child is bizarre.
Melinda Duckett may have had nothing to do with her son's disappearance, but at this point we know at least three worrisome things: This mom wasn't able to account for where she took her child shopping in the period before he disappeared; she refused a polygraph test; and she shot herself after being sharply questioned about her son's disappearance, at a time when the search for her son is still ongoing and he might yet be alive.
Something is not right here. And yet we must hope against hope that Trenton Duckett still lives, and the search must continue. Here is the FBI web page on Trenton Duckett. When it comes to finding missing kids, Americans don't give up easily.
i have been watching this case on nancy grace, i am so shocked to hear people saying that ,nancy garce is to blam. this is very sad. i am glad that she asked these questions and im sure that she had been asked the same questions before nancy had said them. i am a mother of 5 and i would want some one to ask me any thing and every thing to help find my child. there may be some thing that some one says to help me remember some small detail that could help me find my child.i am sorry to say this but it worries me to think that she could kill her self with out ever finding her child. i cant imagine a mother not living on to look for her child if she truly believe some one has takin him or not having a once of hope, i could understand this if it had been after finding him dead or knowing that hes not coming back. but what this tells me is this, that this child may not be coming home , and i dont think that she is truly worried or sorry but that she only worried what others would think of her or what she might have to face when her child might be found . from the letters she letf behind , it says that she knows that this child would one day be found , that may be she tought that this would not be put back on to her she tought she could munipulate this in her favor and that she would be the poor mother, and she would find the attention that she some how was looking for in doing this. and she hoped this would hurt the father, and i know that it did. she seem to be a young girl who wanted what she wanted and need a lot of attention and then she seen that the child was getting more she couldnt stand it then with the father seeing her needednes he couldnt take it and she could know longer hide what she was feeling , and she didnt want the world to see that she really didnt care for the child, that it was the man she wanted, the attention, and some how she thought the child would bring that to her, and yet as a mother you have to give all that up the world has to be about your child, and you become a second , she seems as if she couldnt give that up being the center of it all, i do believe that she knew that the child was no longer alive and she just couldnt imagine living with what she would have to live with , when the world knew what she had done. she seems to be some one who need attention but could not handle the neg. attention that she knew was going to come. she never thought it all out. she did what she tought was going to get what she thought would be alot of attention, affection and lots of love and she knew it abck fired on her, not because of nancy or any one person. it just hit her that she was not going to get this to work for her like she believed in the beginning. and she couldnt bear living with what was surly coming next.
Posted by: morena | December 22, 2006 at 02:36 AM