Duncan McKenzie (murderer)
Duncan McKenzie | |
|---|---|
McKenzie in 1990 | |
| Born | October 5, 1951 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | May 10, 1995 (aged 43) Montana State Prison, Montana, U.S. |
| Criminal status | Executed by lethal injection |
| Convictions | Deliberate homicide Aggravated kidnapping Sexual intercourse without consent Second degree assault |
| Criminal penalty | Death (March 3, 1975) |
| Details | |
| Victims | Debra Prety, 15 Lana Harding, 23 |
| Date | October 26, 1973 January 21, 1974 |
| Country | United States |
| States | Idaho and Montana |
Duncan Peder McKenzie Jr. (October 5, 1951 – May 10, 1995) was convicted of the murder of a schoolteacher from Conrad, Montana named Lana Harding on January 21, 1974. After his conviction in March 1975, he spent 20 years on death row, receiving eight stays of execution. His ninth stay of execution was denied by the United States courts of appeals.
After exhausting all legal avenues, McKenzie was executed on May 10, 1995. He was the first person executed in Montana since 1943, and also the first ever U.S. death row inmate to spend twenty years or more on death row and still eventually be executed. He is one of only three people to have been executed in Montana since the reinstatement of the death penalty. McKenzie, who maintained his innocence to the end, was the only one of the three to be executed involuntarily.
In 2021, DNA tests posthumously linked McKenzie to a separate rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Idaho in 1973. The police publicized their findings in 2023. McKenzie had long been a suspect in the murder, but had refused to admit his guilt for any of his crimes and had rejected pleas from the girl's family to confess to her murder prior to his execution.