November 26, 2025 / 8:08 PM EST / CBS/AP
A Utah man who was spared execution this fall after developing dementia during his 37 years on death row died Wednesday of apparent natural causes, the state Department of Corrections said.
Ralph Leroy Menzies died at 1:45 p.m. local time at a hospital, the department said. His next of kin and the family of Maurine Hunsaker — the woman he was convicted of abducting and killing in 1986 — have been notified.
Menzies, 67, had been set to die by firing squad in September, but the Utah Supreme Court blocked the impending execution in August after his attorneys argued his dementia had become too severe. A judge had scheduled a new competency hearing for mid-December to reevaluate his mental state.
The Utah Department of Corrections said it would not release further details about Menzies’ condition or medical information.
Menzies was convicted of abducting Hunsaker nearly 40 years ago from a convenience store where she worked near Salt Lake City and killing her. The 26-year-old mother of three was found dead two days later. Menzies was sentenced to death in 1988.
“Maurine Hunsaker was a cherished wife and mother whose life was stolen in an act of horrific violence by Ralph Menzies,” Utah Attorney General Derek Brown said. “For decades, the state of Utah has pursued justice on her behalf. The path has been long and filled with pain, far more than any victim’s family should ever have to endure.”
Menzies would have been the seventh U.S. prisoner executed by firing squad since 1977. He had chosen that method when given the option decades earlier. The Utah Supreme Court this summer said the progression of his disease raised a significant question about his fitness for execution.
Police say Hunsaker was abducted from the store on Feb. 23, 1986, while Menzies was on parole. She called her husband to say she had been robbed and kidnapped and that her abductor planned to release her. Two days later, a hiker found her body at a picnic area in Big Cottonwood Canyon, about 16 miles away. She had been strangled and her throat was slashed.
Investigators say Hunsaker’s thumbprint was found in a car Menzies was driving, and her purse was recovered in his apartment. Menzies also had her wallet and other belongings when he was jailed on unrelated matters.
“We’re grateful that Ralph passed naturally and maintained his spiritedness and dignity until the end,” his legal team said in a statement.
Utah’s last execution, by lethal injection, occurred just over a year ago. The state hasn’t used a firing squad since Ronnie Lee Gardner was executed in 2010.
Earlier this month, South Carolina executed a man by firing squad. Stephen Bryant, 44, was convicted in the 2004 killing of Willard “TJ” Tietjen; prosecutors said Bryant shot Tietjen, burned his eyes with cigarettes and painted a message on the wall with his blood. Bryant was the third man this year in South Carolina to die by its newly adopted firing-squad option. In March, the state carried out the nation’s first firing-squad execution in 15 years after a pause in executions tied to a lack of lethal-injection drugs.
