Father of Missing Toddler Trenton Duckett Scrutinizes Investigation

After seven long months of searching for 2 year old Trenton Duckett, who disappeared from his bedroom window while his mother was in the next room in Leesburg, Florida, the father is lashing out at one of the agencies that are searching for his son.

Joshua Duckett said the Marion County Sheriff's Office is bungling the search for his son, Trenton.

A sheriff's office official said a person of interest they've been questioning in Marion County failed a lie-detector test. While that does not make him a suspect, investigators said its proof nothing has been bungled or missed.

Officials state that Joshua Duckett and his mother, Carla Masssero is just coping with the toddler's disappearance.

"He's our top priority. All we want to do is find him," said Trenton Duckett's paternal grandmother, Carla Massero.

Massero is worried the focus is off finding her grandson. She said she believes detectives are leaking investigative information to online bloggers and fueling rumors like one that says she refused to take a lie-detector test.

"They took that and ran with it, and now they have all those bloggers talking about me and Melinda's father, challenging me, and I think it's ridiculous," Massero said.

"For Marion County to say that my mom refused to do a polygraph is totally off the wall," said the child's father, Joshua Duckett.

Marion County Sheriff Maj. Chris Blair denied any detectives fed information to online bloggers, saying they offered Massero a lie detector test only after she asked for one to clear her name, but she has not taken one yet.

"There was an issue that came up with Carla that she had a lot of information going on the Internet, and ... this and that, and she was concerned about that, so a polygraph issue came up between the detective and her, at which time she thought she could clear her name by taking a polygraph," said Blair.

Trenton Duckett was allegedly taken from his bedroom window in August of 2006. His mother Melinda was in the next room. She stated that she put him to bed at 7pm, watched a movie and then went to check on him at 9pm and he was gone. There were many inconsistencies to her story. Two weeks later, she was interviewed on Nancy Grace, and came under fire due to avoiding questions and changing stories. Three hours before the Nancy Grace interview, Melinda Duckett committed suicide in her grandparents home in The Villages, about 20 miles north of Leesburg, taking with her any information that she might have been withholding. Authorities believe that there may have been a handoff of the child to someone else, or possibly somehow the child got sent back to Korea, where Melinda was from.

Source: WESH2News Central Florida "Father Of Missing Toddler Scrutinizes Investigation" www.wesh.com