Missing boy's mother kills herself in Florida

LEESBURG, Fla. -- Two weeks after telling police that her son had been snatched from his crib, Melinda Duckett found herself reeling in an interview with television's famously prosecutorial Nancy Grace. Before it was over, Grace was pounding her desk and loudly demanding to know: ``Where were you? Why aren't you telling us where you were that day?"

A day after the taping, Duckett, 21, shot herself to death, authorities said , deepening the mystery of what happened to the boy.

Police have refused to say whether she left a suicide note, and said nothing they have found in their investigation of her death has shed light on the whereabouts of her 2-year-old son, Trenton.

Investigators have stopped short of calling her a suspect, but have focused increasing attention on her movements just before the boy vanished.

Duckett's family members disputed any suggestion that she hurt her son. They said that the strain of her son's disappearance pushed her to the brink and that the media sent her over the edge.

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

Janine Iamunno, a spokeswoman for Grace, said in an e-mail that Duckett's death was ``an extremely sad development" but that the program would continue covering the case. ``We feel a responsibility to bring attention to this case in the hopes of helping find Trenton Duckett, who remains missing," Iamunno said.

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