A court in Hungary on Thursday sentenced an Irishman to 14 years in prison for strangling an American tourist to death in the country’s capital in 2024.
The victim, 31-year-old Mackenzie Michalski from Portland, Oregon, was in Hungary on vacation and was reported missing on November 5, 2024, after being last seen at a nightclub in central Budapest.
Police launched a missing person investigation and reviewed security footage from nightclubs where they saw Michalski, who went to “Kenzie”, with a man later identified as the suspect at several clubs on the night of her disappearance.
The man, whom police identified by the initials LTM and was 37 years old at the time, was detained on November 7 and questioned, and later confessed to the murder.
Investigators said Michalski and the suspect met at a nightclub and danced before leaving for the man’s rental home. The man beat and strangled Michalski during a “close 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 approximately 1.5 years he has already spent in detention will be counted towards his sentence, at the end of which the court ordered his deportation from Hungary.
