Once days away from a firing squad execution, Utah death row inmate Ralph Menzies has died of natural causes

Menzies, who was 67, died at a hospital early Wednesday afternoon.

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Ralph Menzies appeared in court for his commutation hearing in August. Menzies died of natural causes on Wednesday.

Ralph LeRoy Menzies, who spent more than 37 years on Utah’s death row for kidnapping and killing a young mother in 1986, died on Wednesday at an area hospital, prison officials announced. He was 67.

Menzies — who was once just days away from a violent death by firing squad — died of presumed natural causes, prison officials said. He had vascular dementia, and his health had declined in recent years to the point where his defense team questioned whether Utah officials could legally execute him.

“Ralph Menzies was deeply loved by his family, friends, legal team, and by everyone who knew him well,” his lawyers said in a statement Wednesday. “In his later years, he devoted himself to helping others in every way he could. We’re grateful that Ralph passed naturally and maintained his spiritedness and dignity until the end.”

Menzies was expected to be in court in early December for a competency hearing, where court records indicate that at least one state evaluator had determined he was not competent and could not be legally executed.

The Utah attorney general’s office had been expected to argue that Menzies could be executed. The office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

In 1986, Menzies kidnapped 26-year-old Maurine Hunsaker while she was working at a Kearns gas station. He held her hostage in the Storm Mountain area of Big Cottonwood Canyon overnight, before strangling her and cutting her throat. Two days after he kidnapped her, a hiker found Hunsaker’s body.

Hunsaker’s family released a statement Wednesday afternoon describing her as “a vibrant and loving woman whose kindness and warmth touched everyone who knew her.”

“Her life was taken in a brutal, violent, and depraved act that shocked the Utah community nearly forty years ago,” the statement reads. “The pain of her loss remains deeply felt by her family and friends to this day. ”

Menzies’ death does not bring them closure, the family said in the statement.

“The Hunsaker family was denied the lawful and just execution that Utah courts ordered decades ago,” the statement reads. “At this time, the family asks for privacy as they process the news, reflect on their cherished memories of Maurine, and seek peace together.”

Menzies’ death row case dragged on for decades, which frustrated Hunsaker’s family.

As his appeals ran out and he got closer to an execution date in recent years, his attorneys argued that his dementia had progressed to the point where he could no longer understand what’s happening — and they argued that meant it would be unconstitutional to execute him. (Utah’s and the United States’ constitutions prohibit the government from executing someone if they don’t understand that they are being executed and the reasons why.)

Just a week before he was scheduled to die by firing squad in August, the Utah Supreme Court called off the execution and ruled that more evaluation was needed to determine if Menzies was competent and could legally be executed. That evaluation process had been underway when he died of natural causes.

Menzies had a lengthy criminal history prior to killing Hunsaker, which a clinical psychologist concluded during a 1988 court hearing stemmed in part from an extremely abusive childhood. Menzies’ sister testified at that hearing that she and her brother were emotionally and physically abused as children by a succession of brutal stepfathers, including one who she said raped their mother in front of them. That stepfather beat Menzies and his sister and forced them to live in a bunk bed for nearly two years, according to other witnesses who testified.

Menzies’ criminal behavior started when he was 7 years old, according to the sentencing judge’s findings. The death row inmate’s attorneys noted in a more recent filing that Menzies had been diagnosed with having brain damage during a stay at a Nevada juvenile lock-up when he was younger.

Prior to Hunsaker’s murder, Menzies had been convicted of aggravated robbery, kidnapping, aggravated assault and escape in other cases. He was 28 years old and on parole for robbery and awaiting sentencing on theft convictions when he kidnapped Hunsaker.

Menzies had chosen to die by firing squad, a decision he made shortly after a judge in 1988 announced that he was sentencing Menzies to death.

Utah last executed an inmate in 2024, when Taberon Honie died by lethal injection. It hasn’t used a firing squad since 2010, when Ronnie Lee Gardner was killed. With Menzies’ death, there are now three men on Utah’s death row. (Two other former death row inmates had their sentences overturned and are awaiting new trials.)