Killer Took His Secrets To The Grave Family Of Murdered Coeur D’Alene Girl Doesn’t Get Hoped-For Confession

Duncan McKenzie Jr. took some dark secrets to the grave with him.

What he left behind was a mystery that has haunted a Coeur d’Alene family for more than 20 years.

Sentenced to death in 1975 for murdering a rural Montana schoolteacher, McKenzie was executed in Montana State Prison on Wednesday. He never confessed to that crime.

Before he died by lethal injection, he also refused to admit whether he had murdered a 15-year-old Coeur d’Alene girl named Debra Prety in 1973.

It is a crime many suspect he committed. But without a confession or a conviction, it has left the girl’s family with a painful burden of doubt, said Paul Prety Jr., the girl’s older brother.

“It leaves us right back where we have been - still wondering,” he said after McKenzie was executed. “We still don’t know for sure who killed my sister.”

On Oct. 27, 1973, Paul Prety found his kid sister’s body in a neighbor’s yard. He was 26.

He watched how his mother suffered afterward. She rarely left the home, often sat staring across the street to where her daughter had been found dead.

Paul and his wife, Sandi, now worry when their own children have to walk far to a bus stop or stand outside school for long.

“The kids don’t even flinch any more when I call one of them Debbie,” he said.

For years, McKenzie has been the primary suspect.

He had lived only a few blocks from the girl’s home on 17th Street. At the time of her death, he was on parole for brutalizing another woman. Three months later, he killed Lana Harding in Montana.

Police never had enough evidence to charge him with killing the blond girl with soft green eyes. But as McKenzie’s execution drew near, her family and Coeur d’Alene police hoped he would confess.

Capt. Carl Bergh sent a letter to McKenzie asking questions about the Coeur d’Alene murder.

The inmate returned it unanswered, Paul Prety said he was told by Bergh on Wednesday.

Minutes before his execution, McKenzie was asked if he had any last words. He shook his head and said nothing.

“It was a disappointment, but it wasn’t unexpected,” Paul Prety said.

Confession or not, Steve Schauer is convinced he knows who killed Debra Prety. The retired Coeur d’Alene police officer was the first investigator to handle the case.

“There’s no doubt in my mind and there hasn’t been for years,” he said. “There’s so many similarities between the two cases, it’s got to be McKenzie.”

Both victims were raped and both were choked. Investigators are not yet discussing other aspects of the case.

Schauer has followed the case over the years, even when it was passed on to other detectives.

“You never give up,” he said.

Prety plans to meet with investigators to discuss ways the mystery still might be solved.

He and his wife waited into the night for McKenzie’s execution. They didn’t rejoice when the lethal mix of chemicals stopped the killer’s heart at 12:22 a.m.

Without a straight answer to their lingering question, Paul Prety said, “It was certainly not the ending we were hoping for.”