Actor Patrick Duffy, star of the television series “Dallas,” has described in new detail the night nearly 40 years ago when his parents were shot and killed by two young men at the bar they owned in Montana.
Duffy, 77, discussed the killings during an appearance on the “Still Here Hollywood” podcast with host Steve Kmetko. His parents, Marie and Terence Duffy, were murdered on Nov. 18, 1986.
According to Duffy, the gunmen, Sean A. Wentz and Kenneth A. Miller, both 19 at the time, had been thrown out of the bar earlier that night by Terence Duffy for being drunk and disorderly. They later returned with shotguns.
“My parents were murdered when two young men robbed the bar that my parents owned in Montana,” Duffy said. “My dad had thrown these two boys out because they were drunk and obstreperous. He just threw them out of the bar, and they went somewhere, finished whatever they were drinking, and the anger boiled up and they went back in.”
Duffy said his parents were alone in the bar when the two men walked back in.
“It was very late at night,” Duffy said. “There was nobody in the bar except my father and my mother, and they walked in with their shotguns. As soon as my dad saw them, this is in the testimony that came out in the court, my dad turned to them and apparently took a step towards them, saying, ‘I told you to …'”
Terence Duffy never finished the sentence.
“That’s when they opened up on him and killed him,” Duffy said. “And then my mother was on the other end of the bar doing a crossword puzzle and took a couple steps running towards dad. And they shot her too.”
Duffy said the gunmen then jumped over the bar, took money from the register along with a couple of bottles of liquor, and fled.
According to a previous report from the Los Angeles Times, the bodies of Terence and Marie Duffy were discovered by a group of people who stopped in for a drink after finishing shifts at the nearby Montana Developmental Center. One woman initially thought Marie had fainted before noticing blood on Terence and going outside to flag down help.
Duffy said he learned of the murders the following morning when his sister, a police officer, called him on her way to Montana. By the time he hung up the phone, he said, film crews had already gathered outside his home. He said Lorimar Television, the production company behind “Dallas,” arranged a plane and a public relations representative to help him travel to Montana and manage the aftermath.
Duffy said his Buddhist faith helped him cope with the loss and gave him the strength to tell his young sons, Padraic and Conor, what had happened to their grandparents.
“The Buddhist philosophy is one of the continuous life cycle of your entity,” Duffy said. “… I said, ‘We have to chant for grandma and grandpa because they’ve both been killed, and we have to chant for them because they’re going to understand it and hear it.'”
Miller and Wentz were convicted in connection with the murders and sentenced to prison, according to People magazine. Miller was released on parole in 2007, and Wentz was granted parole in 2015, according to the Australian outlet 9News.
Duffy has previously described his parents as “pretty ordinary, pleasant people” who were “very social” before the killings, and has said he never felt fully disconnected from them afterward because of his Buddhist beliefs about the continuity of life.
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