Response to "The Babe in the Bunker"

Hey Barbara,

If you're going to express an opinion on a given subject, it's usually best to inform yourself of all aspects of the case first. Melinda Duckett is not all that you've made her out to be. This was a mother who had allegedly threatened to snap her baby's neck, dangled him over water, squeezed him hard enough to cause him to scream, leaving marks on his chest, and held a knife to his little leg. This was a woman who concocted a hate-filled e-mail to herself, riddled with threats of violence and death, and hacked her estranged husband's e-mail account to send it to herself. Then she promptly used it to request a protective order from the court. That protective order prevented Trenton and his father from seeing or speaking to each other throughout what will probably turn out to be the last two months of the little boy's life.

Furthermore, Melinda was not living with her grandparents. She had her own apartment -- the apartment from whence Trenton was allegedly abducted through a slashed screen on his bedroom window. Oh, and by the way, Melinda Duckett immediately pointed the finger at Joshua Duckett, accusing him of taking the child and proffering the forged e-mail to support her accusation.

As for the stresses in her life, you're basing your evaluation on things that we've heard only from Melinda. Was she going to school full-time, or is that an exaggeration on her part? How many jobs did she have at the same time? She liked to throw around the number two, but it appears that she was having trouble keeping employment. Just to be thorough, let's fill out the activities list: searching MySpace for Prince Charming, weekly beer pong competitions, target shooting with a shotgun, manipulating others into joining in her vendetta against Joshua Duckett. There are probably other things to add to that list, but that's all I can come up with off the top of my head.

The picture you painted of Ms. Duckett is worse than a whitewash. You omitted critical elements. Melinda Duckett was not a poor, put-upon, single mom being systematically mistreated by her estranged husband and the system. I guess the truth -- that Melinda Ducket was a conniving, controlling, manipulative, and abusive woman who used her baby as a weapon of vengeance agaist his father -- wouldn't have been all that helpful in your endeavor to slam Nancy Grace though; would it?

As for those women's groups you're trying to rally, they'd better be more discerning in choosing whom to hitch their wagon to. [Yeah, I ended that sentence with a preposition. So what?]