An Irish citizen is sentenced to 14 years for killing a U.S. tourist in Hungary

Photos showing Mackenzie Michalski, an 31-year-old American tourist who was murdered while on vacation, hang at a candlelight vigil in Budapest, Hungary, on Nov. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)

BUDAPEST, Hungary — 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 vacation and reported missing on Nov. 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 Nov. 7 and questioned, and later confessed to the killing.

Investigators said that Michalski and the suspect met at a nightclub and danced before leaving for the man’s rented apartment. The man beat and strangled Michalski while they were engaged in an “intimate encounter,” police said.

The Budapest Metropolitan Court on Thursday found the man guilty of murder and sentenced him to 14 years imprisonment without the possibility of parole. The roughly one and a half years he has already spent in detention will count toward his sentence, at the end of which the court ordered his deportation from Hungary.

The man must also pay 2.5 million forints (US$7,995) in court costs. His attorney has appealed the verdict.

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 by cleaning the apartment and hiding Michalski’s body in a wardrobe before purchasing a suitcase and placing her body inside.

He then rented a car and drove to Lake Balaton, around 150 kilometres southwest of Budapest, where he disposed of the body in a wooded area outside the town of Szigliget.

Video released by police at the time showed the man guiding authorities to the location where he had left the body. Police said he had made internet searches before being apprehended on how to dispose of a body, police procedures in missing person cases, whether pigs really eat dead bodies, and the presence of wild boars in the Lake Balaton area.

He also made an internet search inquiring on the competence of Budapest police.

Justin Spike, The Associated Press