Irish man gets 14 years’ jail for killing US tourist in Hungary in ‘intimate encounter’
After his arrest in 2024, the man claimed Michalski’s death had been an accident. But police said he had attempted to cover up his crime
A court in Hungary on Thursday sentenced an Irish citizen 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 holiday and reported missing on November 5, 2024, after she was last seen at a nightclub in central Budapest.
Police launched a missing person investigation and reviewed security footage from local nightclubs where they observed Michalski, who went by “Kenzie”, with a man later identified as the suspect in several of the clubs the night of her disappearance.
The man, whom police identified by the initials L.T.M. and was 37 at the time, was detained on November 7 and questioned, and later confessed to the killing.