HUNTSVILLE, Texas, Nov. 17 -- Kenneth Allen McDuff, a serial killer described by one prosecutor as 'the monster who comes out of the dark,' has been executed for the slaying of a Central Texas store clerk. The 52-year-old killer was pronounced dead at 6:26 p.m. CST today after receiving a lethal injection at Huntsville for the murder of Melissa Northrup. The 22-year-old woman was pregnant with her third child when she was abducted from a Waco convenience store on March 1, 1992. Before he was injected, McDuff said: 'I'm ready to be released. Release me.' Northrup's mother, Brenda Solomon, said: 'I'm glad this is over. My children are going to rest in peace now. And he's going where he ought to go. I know where he was released to.' One of the most notorious killers in Texas history, McDuff was originally sentenced to death for the 1966 slayings of three Fort Worth teenagers. But he was spared from the electric chair, which Texas used at that time, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1972. His sentence was commuted to life in prison. To the horror of Central Texas lawmen, McDuff was paroled in 1989 because of overcrowding in the Texas prison system. His subsequent killing spree spurred the Texas Legislature to enact sweeping reforms of the state's parole process. McDuff was convicted of killing two other women and is a suspect in 11 other slayings. During one of his trials, a prosecutor called McDuff 'the monster who comes out of the dark and snatches innocent people off the street and slaughters them.'
The Austin American-Statesman reported today that McDuff was the secret informant who helped authorities find the missing bodies of three slain women this fall. The newspaper said McDuff was taken off death row for two days to help law officers locate one of the bodies buried near Waco. The victim was Colleen Reed, who was abducted from an Austin car wash in December 1991. Although there was no deal for the information, the American- Statesman says a Waco federal judge reduced the sentence of McDuff's nephew from 15 to 10 years. Michael Wayne Royals was convicted in 1992 on a drug charge. Court files show Royals was the leader of a distribution network for amphetamines and methamphetamines in the Waco area in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Prison officials say McDuff, who reportedly had a terminal case of hepatitis C and cirrhosis of the liver, requested a last meal of two T- bone steaks 'and all the fixings.' McDuff was the 17th convicted killer executed in Texas this year and the 161st since the state resumed executions in 1983. ---
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