HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Kenneth Allen McDuff, the man once called the worst of the worst among Texas criminals, was pronounced dead at 6:26 p.m. Tuesday, executed by lethal injection for a wave of murders that spanned three decades and forced an entire state to confront the failures of its criminal justice system.
The 52-year-old condemned man, strapped to a gurney inside the Walls Unit’s execution chamber, offered no apology and no last-minute declaration of innocence. Instead, he stared at the ceiling and spoke words that stunned those packed into the witness room.
“I’m ready to be released. Release me.”
Five minutes later, the chemicals took hold. His breathing turned ragged almost immediately. Then a long exhale.
Then stillness. Kenneth Allen McDuff was gone.
For the families who had waited decades for this moment, the execution was the culmination of a nightmare that refused to end. One father, whose child fell victim to McDuff’s violence, murmured through tears, “I’ve been waiting for this for 32 years.”
McDuff’s path to the death chamber was anything but straightforward. He was originally sentenced to death in 1966 for the murders of three teenagers — Edna Louis Sullivan, Robert Brand, and Mark Dunham. The teens had been taken from a parked car, and the events that followed earned McDuff the chilling nickname “Broomstick Killer.”
That conviction landed him on death row, but in 1972 the U. S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty nationwide.
McDuff’s sentence was reduced to life in prison. Then came the unthinkable.
Due to severe prison overcrowding, McDuff was paroled. The decision would prove catastrophic. A trail of devastation across Texas followed, with McDuff eventually linked to at least nine additional murders — a brutal spree that triggered one of the largest manhunts in state history.
The FBI, U. S. Marshals, and Texas Rangers all joined the hunt.
When McDuff was finally captured, he made history: the only American ever to be returned to death row after being freed from a prior death sentence.
His crimes also reshaped Texas policy. Lawmakers passed tougher parole laws and authorized billions in prison expansion — a direct response to public outrage over McDuff’s release. A single psychopath had changed the trajectory of an entire state’s criminal justice system.
In the final 24 hours, McDuff remained defiant. On the evening of November 16, 1998, inside the Ellis Unit’s death row, he was visited by ATF agent Charles Meyer and Austin Detective J. W.
Thompson — two familiar faces from years of investigations.
“I don’t know why you’re here. I got nothing to say to you,” McDuff shrugged at first.
But the bravado didn’t last. For hours, he rambled — rehashing old details, speculating on delays, clinging to a fragile belief that the courts would once again spare him. “You know, they never execute anyone from the appeals court,” he said, almost convincing himself.
Detective Thompson smiled slightly. “Mac, you’re special.”
As the night wore on, McDuff’s confidence eroded. His voice dropped. Almost to himself, he muttered, “Godamn, they’re going to end me tomorrow.”
One of the officers gently suggested he start preparing to meet his maker. McDuff shook his head. He didn’t believe in God, he said.
With a smirk, he added, “I can’t see myself floating on a cloud playing a harp.”
For a moment, even McDuff laughed.
By morning, he was wide awake, having slept without incident. At 8:30 a. m.
, he was quietly moved — a 20-minute ride from death row at Ellis to a holding cell inside the Walls Unit, Texas’s oldest prison and home to its execution chamber.
Officials described him as calm, almost eerily so. No outbursts. No panic.
He followed every instruction without resistance, as if at last he understood: this time, the clock wouldn’t stop.
Texas Governor George W. Bush made his position clear that day. With no clemency recommendation from the parole board, he said he had no grounds to intervene.
“I support the death penalty because I believe it saves lives,” Bush said.
But McDuff’s attorneys weren’t finished. They launched a final desperate move: an appeal to the U. S.
Supreme Court. Every prior appeal in state and federal courts had failed. This was the last door.
The lawyers argued more time was needed — that additional testing on hair samples allegedly tying McDuff to one of the cases remained incomplete. It was a last-minute curveball that could have changed everything.
Dinner came early. McDuff’s request was extravagant: two 16-ounce T-bone steaks, five fried eggs over easy, a heap of fries with ketchup, a vegetable medley, coconut pie for dessert, and a large Coca-Cola.
But this was death row, not a diner. He received salsberry steak and peach pie instead. Not what he wanted.
Just what was on offer.
By mid-afternoon, members of the Texas Board of Criminal Justice arrived for a final check on the prisoner. Board chairman Alan Pollinsky spent about 15 minutes with McDuff inside his death watch cell.
Pollinsky later described him as very calm, very tranquil — lounging on his bunk, hands clasped behind his head, completely at ease. At one point, McDuff offered a strange, almost detached reflection.
“Sometimes people do things that they don’t have any control over,” he remarked.
Pollinsky, who had once publicly called McDuff the worst of the worst among criminals, walked away struck by how nonchalant the condemned man remained. Even in his final hours, he showed no fear, no remorse.
Outside the red brick Walls Unit, tension thickened as the clock ticked down. A crowd of reporters packed the press area, cameras perched on a jungle of tripods. Victims’ family members arrived, some traveling long distances to be present for the moment they had awaited for years.
A few were scheduled to witness the execution firsthand. Others simply wanted to be there. “I see no benefit in watching Kenneth McDuff take his last breath,” said the sister of one victim.
“What matters is that he never again has the chance to harm another’s soul.”
A mixed crowd gathered outside. Death penalty protesters stood quietly with candles and signs, but they were outnumbered by supporters who had come to see the sentence carried out.
Even national anti-death penalty groups acknowledged that McDuff’s execution drew little public defense, even among hardened opponents of capital punishment. Kenneth McDuff was a man for whom sympathy was hard to find.
Then the last barrier fell. The U. S.
Supreme Court rejected McDuff’s final appeal — a decision that landed just minutes before the death warrant was set to expire. There was nothing left standing between Kenneth McDuff and the execution chamber.
The news swept like a pulse through the crowd outside. Relief and grim satisfaction mixed among victims’ families, law enforcement, and onlookers. For many, it marked the long-awaited end of a brutal chapter.
The movement of witnesses set the next stage in motion. Victims’ family members, McDuff’s own relatives, and journalists all took their places in the viewing rooms, ready for the final act.
A team entered the holding cell. One minute later, Kenneth Allen McDuff was strapped to the gurney inside the Walls Unit’s chamber.
His mask began to crack. The composure he’d carried all day wavered. “The veins in his neck were just pounding…
he was scared,” one witness later recounted. His large frame trembled slightly as he stared up at the ceiling, an IV line already feeding into his right arm.
In the witness room, relatives of four victims stood in silence. But the man on the gurney never looked their way. His eyes stayed fixed on the ceiling tiles above.
When asked for final words, McDuff spoke the eerie phrase that would be his last: “I’m ready to be released. Release me.”
Seconds later, the lethal drugs flowed. His breathing turned ragged as the chemicals took hold. Then a long exhale.
And then there was no further movement.
At 6:26 p. m. , 30 years after his first victims were taken, Kenneth Allen McDuff was pronounced dead.
He was 52 years old — the 17th inmate executed in Texas in 1998. The procedure lasted just five minutes.
The question that lingers in the aftermath is one that haunts the Texas criminal justice system: how much blame falls on those who opened the prison gates and set McDuff free to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 again? It’s a question without easy answers, and for the families of his victims, no answer could ever be enough.
What is certain is that Kenneth McDuff left behind a legacy that extends far beyond the lives he took. He forced Texas to confront its failures, to tighten its laws, to expand its prisons. A monster who slipped through the cracks — and in doing so, changed the state forever.
