Duncan McKenzie (murderer)
Duncan McKenzie | |
|---|---|
McKenzie in 1990 | |
| Born | Duncan Peder McKenzie Jr. October 5, 1951 |
| Died | May 10, 1995 (aged 43) |
| Cause of death | Execution by lethal injection |
| Criminal status | Executed |
| Convictions | Deliberate homicide Aggravated kidnapping resulting in death 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 was on death row for twenty years, receiving eight stays of execution. His ninth stay of execution was denied by the United States courts of appeals.
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. He was the only person of the three to be executed involuntarily.
In 2021, DNA tests posthumously linked McKenzie to a separate sexual assault and murder of a 15-year-old girl in Idaho in 1973.