LEESBURG - Monday marks one year since Trenton Duckett vanished and people around Central Florida and the world started a desperate search for the missing toddler.

During that time, the disappearance has sent police halfway around the globe. It has generated false sightings of the child far beyond Central Florida and created a legion of online detectives obsessed with the case. But the agencies looking for the missing boy remain stymied and no closer to finding Trenton than they were last Aug. 27.

Trenton's case gained international attention soon after the 2-year-old was reportedly abducted from his mother's Leesburg apartment. The suicide of his mother, Melinda Duckett, after a contentious interview with Headline News host Nancy Grace sparked a national story. Duckett, 21, emerged as the prime suspect.

As Monday's anniversary approaches with no sign of the boy, law-enforcement officials in Marion and Leesburg vow they'll keep his case active despite a lack of evidence indicating that Trenton is alive -- or dead.

But investigators from both agencies admit the tips have all but dried up, and Leesburg detectives say they haven't received a viable lead since Melinda shot herself in her grandparents' home in The Villages on Sept. 8.

"I know what the statistics are and what they say [about missing children]," said Melinda's mother, Beth Eubank. "I can just hope for the best and prepare for the worst."

Last week, Leesburg police released photographs of items that authorities say Melinda threw out of her apartment shortly after Trenton's disappearance -- baby food, family photos, clothes and a sonogram image.

While detectives say Melinda staged an abduction, Marion authorities still suspect that she handed him off to someone near a Wendy's restaurant in Belleview where they have a witness who passed a polygraph and a person of interest who didn't.

Days after Trenton's disappearance, police never charged Melinda for sending a false, threatening MySpace message through the online account of her estranged husband, Josh Duckett, now 22. They could have made an arrest, but investigators say they didn't want to lose her as a source. They also knew the couple's relationship had been through court files.

Shortly before Trenton went missing, Melinda had gained custody of her son, and she was trying to divorce Josh.

And after her death, a court battle continues as lawyers for Melinda's adoptive parents filed a wrongful-death suit against Grace, the cable-TV host.

After thousands of hours interviewing and sifting through financial and phone records, the lead detectives from Leesburg and Marion law-enforcement agencies recently spoke with Sentinel reporter Christine Dellert for the first time since Trenton's disappearance.


After a year into this investigation, are you any closer to finding Trenton?

Leesburg Police Det. Rich Giles: "I'd have to say no... The problem that we really have is a lack of information, and in particular a location of Melinda and Trenton from [late Saturday, Aug. 26 to early Sunday, Aug. 27]."

Marion sheriff's Det. Art King: "There's always hope... We have no evidence that he's dead, so we're going on what our evidence shows... The phone records, her timeline, her being in Ocala, people that we've interviewed that are very close to her all told us that she would do nothing to harm the child, that she was a very loving mother. All of those indicate to us that there's still a good possibility that he's alive. We've found no evidence otherwise."

How often do you hold briefings with other agencies, and who's still involved?

Giles: "I'm in contact with the FBI and FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement] on a weekly basis, and anytime that there's a lead that comes into any of the other agencies, they make me aware of it."

How far have detectives gone in their search?

Giles: "South Korea. Interpol got involved. Boy, all over the place: the islands, Bahamas and the Caribbean. We've followed up leads literally both locally, nationally and internationally."

Have there been any solid leads?

Giles: "We haven't had a solid investigative lead since Sept. 8 [the day Melinda committed suicide]."

How often do you have leads coming in now?

King: "We've received a few here this month. It was Trenton's birthday."

 How involved are the families on either side, and are they kept abreast of the investigation?

King: "I stay in regular contact with the Eubanks [Melinda's grandparents]. I've been to Lockport, New York, and in person sat down with Beth Eubank [Melinda's adoptive mother] and discussed the case with her... So the families are in the know."

Why didn't you arrest Melinda on charges of sending a false, threatening message from Josh's MySpace account?

Giles: "That's something that we actually considered doing. You have to remember that in the early days of the investigation what we were hoping was that once Melinda became the focus of the investigation, we were hoping that she would actually lead us to where Trenton was at --whether it was a hand off or whatever scenario that you wanted to look at at the time. So there were basically eyes on her, and her whereabouts were being monitored in hopes that she would actually lead us to it.

"The theory that we had was given the fact that she had walked out of interviews we were afraid that if she was actually placed under arrest, at first arraignment you're basically assigned an attorney, and since the threatening e-mail was working kind of hand and hand [with the investigation into Trenton's disappearance]... We could still make contact with her, and we were afraid that we would lose all contact with her and that concerned our primary mission was to find Trenton."

If she had been arrested, would you know where Trenton is today?

Giles: "That would be very speculative on my part to say that. I really can't answer that, and hindsight is always 20/20."

Do investigators blame Nancy Grace for Melinda's suicide?

King: "No ma'am. She was being objective, reporting, doing her job."

Giles: I watched a repeat of the interview that Nancy Grace did with her, and in reality the questions were pretty much what investigators has asked...

"If you look at the questions... it was inquiry as to where she had been based on the information that she had provided. That she had been shopping, had been to the mall, driven here visiting family and friends. And the questions very much centered around trying to get the additional information...

"Do I believe that one event is what triggered Melinda to commit suicide? In my opinion, no."

Did Melinda give detectives the same answers that she gave Grace?

Giles: "Yeah. There was absolutely no detail that was provided in the interview. And the whole purpose of asking those questions was we were dealing with a missing 2-year-old child. We knew at that point that Josh had not taken the child out through the window. And the reason for those questions was to see if maybe she had been stalked. Maybe there was a place that she stopped that would show a video of her and Trenton standing there window shopping... and panning around the camera picks somebody up that was later seen in another video."

Leesburg authorities don't think Josh abducted Trenton from Melinda's apartment. Why?

Giles: "We were relatively comfortable with that... [On Melinda's 911 call], the statement is made, 'I know who friggin' did it.' During the first interview, it was suggested that Joshua had been responsible... Before I interviewed Melinda, in fact when that statement was made, and the first detectives arrived at the scene that night there was immediately a request for assistance sent out to Sumter County Sheriff's Office who actually went to Joshua's residence and interviewed Joshua, interviewed [his mom] Carla, everybody that was in the house. [They] Searched the house, searched the surrounding property... to determine whether or not Trenton was there or had recently been there, and there was no evidence of that that was discovered."

Did police suspect Melinda from the first night of Trenton's disappearance?

"It wasn't an immediate thing, no... Immediately we looked at everybody. Immediately we looked at Joshua. Immediately we looked at Melinda. Immediately we looked at the area sexual offenders."

He later added, "When I first came in to interview Joshua, I'll be quite honest with you, I expected to arrest Joshua that night [because of the couple's rocky history]... But [us] looking a little closer at Melinda was probably prior to when she committed suicide."

When did police suspect Melinda?

 Giles: "When we started getting information and going over the scene and it appeared that the scene had been staged and wasn't what you would consider a true crime scene... The layout of the room, the layout of the window, the timeframe... [In late August] it really doesn't start getting really dusk until about 8:45 [p.m.]. So that would mean that someone would have to approach the window, which is in the front part of the apartment, basically in broad daylight."

Late last year, Marion investigators said they found a witness at a Wendy's in Belleview who saw Melinda at least twice the day Trenton was reported missing. And detectives think it could be more than a coincidence that Melinda's friend, Chai-Wen Chen, works across the street from the restaurant. Why do Marion detectives still believe that Trenton is alive - that he was handed off?

King: "The one thing about the Wendy's lady is she passed the polygraph test. We have the timeline [the day he disappeared.] We also have phone records... "

How do two different agencies have such divergent views of what's happened in this case?

King: "They have their theory and we have ours... It's really nice that we're both going down different roads because it broadens your investigation and gives you two different perspectives to look at it from."

Giles: "We had at one time 200 or more investigators in this department... Each agency was involved in running down various leads... And a totality of all of that information was obtained from all of those agencies, to include Marion County, has failed to show us any evidence of a hand-off."

Has Josh's mom, Carla Massero, taken a polygraph?

Giles: "No. Carla offered to take a polygraph, and it was primarily as a result of a lot of the online posting that was going on... We had confirmed Carla's timeline not only on Aug. 27, but for several days prior to that... I have no doubt whatsoever that she would sit down and take a polygraph."

King: "Well if she's perfectly willing to take it, from our standpoint, we'd like for to come in and be administered one... She may have information that we would like to ask that she may not even know she has."

How much has this investigation cost your agency?

Giles: "The amount of money that was spent on this investigation, the amount of manpower spent on this investigation, really is irrelevant to what the primary goal was, and the primary goal is to find Trenton."

Is there anything in this investigation you could have done differently a year ago?

Giles: "If there is, I don't know what it would be... We did a tremendous amount of physical searches. We've pulled financial records. We've pulled cell phone records. Actually without having precognitive views and being able to say, 'OK, we know on Sunday that this child is going to be reported missing. So we need to find out what happened the Saturday before,' I really can't think of anything."

How much longer will this remain an active investigation?

King: "Actually it could go on forever until there's evidence that leads us to Trenton Duckett."

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