Patrick Duffy
The “Dallas” star’s unbelievable family tragedy
Patrick Duffy in June 1986 with his wife Carlyn Rosser († 78) – five months before the brutal murder of his parents.
© Ron Galella, Ltd. / Getty Images
In Hollywood, incredible stories not only happen in front of the camera, but also behind it. GALA looks back at the dream factory’s most incredible deaths and fates. This time: The brutal murder of Patrick Duffy’s parents.
One night in November 1986 was to change the life of Changing Patrick Duffy, 75, forever. After eight years of “Dallas”, his face was known worldwide; the US actor had reached the peak of his career when a tragic family fate befell him. Two 19-year-old young men extinguished his parents’ lives within seconds. Terence and Marie Duffy were brutally gunned down in their bar in the town of Boulder, Montana. At the age of 37, Patrick Duffy felt the rug was pulled out from under him.
Patrick Duffy: “They shot both my mother and my father”
“My father had thrown the two young men out of the bar at some point in the evening,” recalled the US series star in a 2019 interview with “Closer Weekly” about the fatal night in November 1986. Sean A. Wentz and Kenneth A. Miller, both 19 years old at the time of the crime, from the city of Helena, Montana, then went somewhere else to drink.
Patrick Duffy in June 1986 with his wife Carlyn Rosser († 78) – five months before the brutal murder of his parents.
© Ron Galella, Ltd. / Getty Images
Then it happened: “When they with their pistols [zurück] came into the bar,” says Patrick Duffy, “they got him [seinen Vater, Anmerkung der Redaktion] “There was no one else in the bar. “So they shot both my mother and my father.”
Fast-paced chase between police and bloodied perpetrators
Terence and Marie Duffy were probably murdered by shotgun blasts, the “Los Angeles Times” reported in 1986. Such a weapon and money from his parents’ bar were confiscated by the officers.
After a tip from a friend and a high-speed chase involving two cars each, the perpetrators were caught a short time later, Al Brockway, Helena’s deputy police chief, confirmed at the time. One of the perpetrators was “covered in blood”.
Patrick Duffy was in Los Angeles filming “Dallas” at the time of the crime and immediately flew to Montana. “It goes without saying that everyone is overwhelmed by grief,” said “Dallas” producer Leonard Katzman, † 69, to the “Los Angeles Times” at the time.
180 years in prison
The bodies of Patrick Duffy’s parents were found by a group of people who had stopped by for a drink after a shift change at the Montana Development Center. People went for help. Terence and Marie Duffy were described by a resident of the bar as peace-loving people who “kept most of the riffraff away,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The then 19-year-old perpetrators were found guilty. According to the Los Angeles Times, Sean A. Wentz was sentenced to 180 years in prison, and his accomplice Kenneth A. Miller was released on parole in 2007.
Patrick Duffy went through ‘every emotion’ after his parents’ murder
“When my parents were murdered, I experienced all the emotions of the terrible event – shock and anger and everything – but I never felt separate from it [ihnen]” Patrick Duffy recalled in an interview with Closer Weekly in 2019.
He would never have “felt that immediate loss.” What the actor only later realized was that it was a result of his faith. At the time of his parents’ murder, Patrick Duffy had been a practicing Buddhist for 15 years. “There was something about the eternity of life that had taken root deep within me,” he explained in a 2020 interview with US magazine People. Therefore, he always felt a connection to his parents, which helped him to deal with this difficult loss and learn to live. Today, after the death of his wife Carlyn Rosser in 2017, Duffy is in love again.
Sources used: closerweekly.com, latimes.com, people.com