An Irishman has been sentenced to 14 years in a Hungarian prison for murdering American tourist Mackenzie Michalski and attempting to cover up the murder.
An Irish citizen has been sentenced to 14 years in Hungarian prison for strangling an American tourist to death in the country’s capital in 2024.
The victim, Mackenzie Michalski, 31, of Portland, Oregon, was on vacation in Hungary and was reported missing on November 5, 2024, after being last seen at a nightclub in Budapest.
Police launched a missing persons investigation and reviewed security footage from local nightclubs where they observed Ms. Michalski, who called herself “Kenzie,” with a man later identified as the suspect at several of the clubs on the night of her disappearance.
The man, whom police identified with the initials LTM and who was 37 years old at the time, was detained and interrogated on November 7 and later confessed to the murder.
Investigators said Michalski and the suspect met at a nightclub and danced before leaving for the man’s rented apartment.
The man then punched and strangled Michalski while they had an “intimate encounter,” police said.
The Budapest Metropolitan Court on Thursday found the man guilty of murder and sentenced him to 14 years in prison without the possibility of parole.
The 18 months he already spent in detention will count towards his sentence, at the end of which the court ordered his deportation from Hungary.
The man must also pay 2.5 million forints (£6,000) in court costs. His lawyer has appealed the verdict.
After his arrest in 2024, the man claimed that Michalski’s death was an accident.
But police said he had tried to cover up his crime by cleaning out the apartment and hiding Michalski’s body in a closet before buying a suitcase and placing her body inside.
He then rented a car and drove to Lake Balaton, about 145 kilometers southwest of Budapest, where he disposed of the body in a wooded area outside the town of Szigliget.
Video released by police at the time showed the man leading authorities to the location where he had left the body.
Police said that before he was detained he had conducted Internet searches on how to dispose of a dead body, police procedures in missing persons cases, whether pigs really eat dead bodies and the presence of wild boars in the Lake Balaton area.
He also conducted an Internet search on the competence of the Budapest police.
