Convicted killer Ralph Leroy Menzies spotlights Utah's capital punishment conundrum. 

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I was working the night shift at The Salt Lake Tribune on Feb. 23, 1986, when police-scanner radio traffic grabbed my attention. It was something to do with a possible abduction.

Maureen Hunsaker—a 26-year-old wife and mother—had been kidnapped from a gas-and-go where she worked late hours. Two days later, her body was found in Big Cottonwood Canyon tied to a tree, her throat slit.

Shortly thereafter, Ralph LeRoy Menzies was arrested on an unrelated charge and, when he changed into a jail jumpsuit, Hunsaker's driver license was found in his street clothes. On March 8, 1988, Menzies was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

Now, 37 years later, the state of Utah is still trying to determine if he should be executed.

I'm not a capital punishment advocate, but every time I hear his name my blood boils. He murdered a young woman for no reason and put her young family through hell, from which there would be no closure or reclaiming what should have been a rich life.

Presently, the 66-year-old Menzies is said, by his defense attorneys, to be suffering from dementia and should thus be spared the death penalty, because he is not competent to understand the sentence. Third District Judge Matthew Bates could make that determination in the coming weeks.

As a reporter for Salt Lake City Weekly in October 1999, I watched another killer, Joseph Mitchell Parsons, be executed by lethal injection. In August 1987, he stabbed 30-year-old Richard Lynn Ernest—who had picked him up hitchhiking—nine times at a rest stop near Cedar City.

Members of Ernest's family also witnessed the execution, but it didn't bring them any peace. At a news conference afterward, they were furious that Parsons died so peacefully, while Ernest, no doubt, suffered greatly.

Parsons had stopped the appeals process, because he could no longer bear to live in a small cell on death row for 23 hours out of each day. I always thought that was a worse punishment than execution.

In Utah, a convicted killer can file numerous appeals and may have a number of public hearings before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. With high-profile cases and media coverage, the families and friends of murder victims often suffer their loss over and over again.

That was the case with the family of one of the men killed by Ronnie Lee Gardner. In October 1984, Gardner shot and killed Melvyn Otterstrom, 37, at a bar, because he didn't want to leave at closing time. In April 1985, Gardner shot and killed Michael Burdell, 36, in an unsuccessful escape attempt. He was sentenced to life in the first homicide and got the death penalty in the second.

Not long before Ronnie Lee Gardner's execution on June 18, 2010, I interviewed the widow of Melvyn Otterstrom and his son, who was 2 years old when his father was killed. Although 25 years had passed, both were shaken to the core. During that time, Gardner made headlines often and they had to relive the horror of Otterstrom's murder.

This country has a history of meting out capital punishment unevenly.

In one of Utah's most notorious cases—the so-called "Hi-Fi Killers"—Dale Selby Pierre and William Andrews, two Black airmen at Hill Air Force Base, sought to rob Ogden's Hi-Fi Shop in April 1974.

In the aftermath, Carol Naisbitt, 52, Stanley Walker, 20, and Sherry Michelle Ansley, 19, were dead, two others were seriously injured.

Pierre forced the victims to drink drano and also tortured them; he raped Ansley repeatedly.

The men were tried together and both got the death penalty, although Pierre did the killing and torturing, while Andrews stood by.

By contrast, in December 1990, white men Von Lester Taylor and Edward Deli broke into a cabin near Kamas shortly before the owners returned. Beth Potts, 72 and Kaye Tiede, 49, were shot dead. Rolf Tiede, 51, was shot in the head but survived.

They were tried separately. Von Lester Taylor was sentenced to death. Edward Deli got life imprisonment.

According to an October 2023 Gallup poll, 50% of Americans believe the death penalty is applied unfairly.

There's no doubt Ralph LeRoy Menzies murdered Maureen Hunsaker in cold blood. The question is why, after all these years, hasn't the state of Utah executed him? Another question is, should the state execute anyone at all?

With a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, killers like Ralph LeRoy Menzies and Ronnie Lee Gardner would be locked away with much less hoopla, media coverage and court costs. The families and friends of murder victims would be spared much of the emotional and psychological impacts that Utah's system can thrust upon them.

Twenty-three states have abandoned the death penalty; the federal judicial system has not. I have no sympathy for Menzies, but he is no longer the person he was in 1986. Is it just to execute someone after decades in custody?

Is it justice for the victims' families when the killer's sentence is not meted out in a timely fashion?

We should all ask ourselves this question: Is justice delayed justice denied?

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