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A utah A man who was saved from execution after developing dementia while on death row for 37 years died Wednesday of apparent natural causes, according to the state Department of Corrections.
Ralph Leroy Menzies, 67, was set to die by firing squad in September, but the Utah Supreme Court blocked the impending execution in August because his lawyers argued that his dementia had become too severe. A judge had scheduled a new competency hearing for mid-December to reevaluate his mental condition.
Menzies was convicted of the 1986 kidnapping of Maureen Hunsaker from a nearby convenience store salt Lake City where she worked and killed her. The body of the 26-year-old mother of three was found two days later.
“Maureen Hunsaker was a loving wife and mother whose life was stolen by Ralph Menzies in an act of horrific violence,” Utah Attorney General Derek Brown said Wednesday. “For decades, the state of Utah has pursued justice on its own behalf. The road has been long and painful, far more than any of the victims’ families should have had to endure.”
Menzies would be the seventh American prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977. Given the choice decades ago, they chose this approach.
The Utah Supreme Court said this summer that the progression of his disease raised a significant question over his fitness to be executed at that time.
Menzies kidnapped Hunsaker from the store on February 23, 1986, while he was on parole. She later called her husband to tell him that she had been robbed and kidnapped and that the kidnapper wanted to release her. Two days later, a hiker found his body in a picnic area about 16 miles (25 kilometers) away in Big Cottonwood Canyon. She had been strangled and her throat had been slit.
Police Consider that Hunsaker’s thumbprint was found on the car that Menzies was driving, and her purse was recovered in Menzies’ apartment. Menzies also had his wallet and other items with him when he was jailed on unrelated matters.
“We are grateful that Ralph passed away naturally and that he maintained his spirits and dignity to the end,” his legal team said in a statement.
The last execution in Utah had been by lethal injection just over a year earlier. The state has not used a firing squad since the execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.