It’s been nearly 40 years since Maurine Hunsaker was murdered, and her family members are closer now than they’ve ever been to what they believe will be justice: Watching her killer, Ralph Menzies, be executed.
That’s supposed to happen in 21 days. But Menzies has asked Utah’s parole board to commute his sentence, and spare him from a death by firing squad on Sept. 5 — a method he chose shortly after his conviction decades ago.
Hunsaker’s family on Friday tearfully pleaded with parole board members to deny Menzies’ pleas for mercy.
They were frustrated that this court process had taken so long. They spoke about how traumatic it has been to see Menzies in court or on the news for decades, a wound reopening each time he filed another appeal or a new challenge to his conviction.
Of the eight family members who spoke Friday, none were as angry as Matt Hunsaker.
He was 10 years old when his mother was killed, and has been a constant presence in courtrooms throughout his adult life as an advocate for his mother. On Friday, calling in from hundreds of miles away during a work trip, he gave a lengthy, emotional statement expressing frustration at the board for giving Menzies this commutation hearing and another chance to plead for his life.
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Matt Hunsaker, the son of Maurine Hunsaker, speaks remotely during the commutation hearing for Ralph Menzies, the man who murdered his mother.
But Matt Hunsaker’s strongest words were directed at the man who kidnapped his mother while she was working at a gas station, before taking her to the Storm Mountain area in Big Cottonwood Canyon. There, Menzies tied her to a tree, and strangled her with an extension cord before cutting her throat. He deserves no mercy, Matt Hunsaker said, and needs to be executed.
“I pray to God, that if there is a God, that in 21 days from right now, your dead body is in a bag,” he told Menzies. “Ralph, I’ll see your ass in the execution chamber in 21 days.”
Hunsaker’s family spoke Friday about the void that’s been left in their lives since her murder. Nicholas Hunsaker, who was 18 months old when Hunsaker was murdered, has only a single photo with him and his mother together, he told the parole board. His sister, Dana Stinson, was six months old when her mother died.
Stinson said she’ll turn 40 years old soon, and she’s lived a lifetime where the only memories she has of her mother are a court case and what she’s watched on the news.
“We have suffered long enough,” she told the parole board, “and have been traumatized long enough.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Dana Stinson, the daughter of Maurine Hunsaker, becomes emotional as she speaks during the commutation hearing for Ralph Menzies, the man convicted with Hunsaker's murder, at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025.
Menzies has vascular dementia and has not spoken during his commutation hearing.
Eric Zuckerman, one of Menzies’ attorneys, told the parole board on Friday that he would not have long to live if the parole board gave him that chance. He said executing the frail man would be a “spectacle of gunfire” when Menzies could instead fade into obscurity at the prison during his final days.
Zuckerman said that the long delays in the case are indicative of a “flawed system,” but said Menzies was not to blame for the decades the case has dragged on. He noted that there were years where Menzies had no movement in his legal fight because there were no public defenders who would work on his case.
“I’ve heard their pain, the perpetual lack of closure,” he said about Hunsaker’s family. “I understand this four-decade process has been cruel.”
(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) A photograph of Maurine Hunsaker is seen during Ralph Menzies' commutation hearing.
Thomas Brunker, a lawyer with the Utah attorney general’s office, argued to the parole board on Friday that Menzies’ sentence was “fair and just,” and deserved for what he did to Hunsaker. He urged the parole board to not change the sentence and let Menzies be executed — as was promised to Hunsaker’s family decades ago when a judge sentenced Menzies to death.
“It’s what they need to bring them closure,” he said. “It’s what they’ve been waiting for. Mr. Menzies’ sentence is fair and just and should be carried out without further delay.”
The parole board is expected to issue a written decision sometime before Menzies’ Sept. 5 execution date.
Separately, Menzies’ attorneys have recently argued to a district court judge that the man is not legally competent to be executed because they say his dementia has worsened and he can’t understand what’s happening. (Utah’s and the United States’ constitutions prohibit the government from executing someone if they don’t understand that they are being executed and the reasons why.)
But Menzies was dealt a blow on Thursday when the district court judge ruled that he would not allow another competency review. That judge had previously ruled that Menzies was legally competent to be executed.
Now, there are only two ways that Menzies’ life could be spared: The parole board decides to commute his sentence, or the Utah Supreme Court overturns the district judge’s determination that Menzies is competent. That court will hear arguments in his case next week.