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Wednesday, November 18, 1998

Infamous Texas killer put to death

By MICHAEL GRACZYK Associated Press Writer

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) - Kenneth Allen McDuff, whose nearly three-decade history of ghastly murders earned him the tag of predator and monster, was put to death Tuesday evening for the abduction, rape and strangling of a pregnant mother of two.

"I'm ready to be released; release me," McDuff, 52, said before dying.

McDuff, whose first death sentence was commuted in the 1970s when the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional, is believed to be the only condemned inmate in the nation ever paroled and then returned to death row for another murder.

He was pronounced dead at 6:26 p.m., five minutes after the lethal dose began flowing.

McDuff became the 17th Texas inmate put to death this year. He receiced lethal injection for the 1992 death of Melissa Ann Northrup.

"I think my daughter will be at rest," said Brenda Solomon, the victim's mother, in contemplating McDuff's death.

While McDuff asked for a final meal of two T-bone steaks, his attorneys were at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a delay so additional tests could be conducted on hair samples that authorities said linked him to Ms. Northrup's slaying. Justices refused Tuesday night to stop the sentence from being carried out.

Ms. Northrup, 22, was abducted March 1, 1992, from a Waco convenience store where she worked. Her body surfaced weeks later and dozens of miles away in a Dallas County gravel pit. Her hands were tied behind her and she had been strangled with a rope.

McDuff also had a second death sentence for the 1991 abduction and slaying of 28-year-old Austin accountant Colleen Reed, and authorities say he may have killed as many as a dozen other people, primarily in central Texas between Austin and Waco.

"What a worthless being," said Ms. Reed's sister, Lori Bible.

McDuff, first imprisoned in 1965 for burglary, went to death row in 1968 for fatally shooting in the face two teen-age boys in Fort Worth and raping and strangling with a broomstick their 16-year-old female companion.

But while he was awaiting execution, the Supreme Court in 1972 struck down the death penalty as unconstitutional and McDuff's sentence was commuted to life.

He won parole about 17 years later when parole board members, facing severe crowding in Texas prisons, released him along with thousands of inmates so they could free space for newly convicted felons. Ms. Northrup and Ms. Reed were killed a short time later.

The subject of a nationwide manhunt, McDuff was arrested without incident in 1992 in Kansas City, where under an assumed name he was working as a trash collector.

It wasn't until last month that authorities found Ms. Reed's skeleton, buried along the Brazos River south of Waco. Unearthed nearby were the remains of two other women, also believed to be McDuff victims.

The Austin American-Statesman reported Tuesday that McDuff secretly helped authorities by taking them to Ms. Reed's body and drawing maps to show where the other women were buried in exchange for a reduced sentence for his convicted drug dealer nephew. Prison officials refused to confirm the story.

Justice Department statisticians, victims' rights groups and Texas corrections officials said they knew of no other former death row inmate ever paroled or freed to wind up back among the condemned for another murder.

"That's not a common occurrence," said Richard Samp, chief counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation, which works in the federal courts with victims' rights groups. "I am not aware of anyone else in that situation."

In Texas, the publicity about McDuff and anger over the circumstances of his release and subsequent killing spree prompted parole officials to tighten their procedures. His name also served as a buzzword as Texas embarked on an unprecedented $2 billion prison construction program.