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Freed to Kill: How a notorious serial killer escaped his death row
By Stephanie Giang-Paunon
Published March 19, 2022
Fox Nation’s new five-part series, "Freed to Kill," takes a deep dive into the investigation behind one of the country's most "sadistic" serial killers, Kenneth Allen McDuff.
In 1992, U.S. Marshal Parnell McNamara and U.S. District Attorney Bill Johnston were investigating the mysterious abduction and murder of Melissa Northrup, a convenience store clerk on a lonely stretch of Interstate 35 in Waco, Texas.
The first episode of the chilling series explores investigators discovering a 1985 tan Thunderbird near the crime scene of an apparent abduction. Authorities feared McDuff returned to his murderous ways after his shocking escape from death row.
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In August 1966, the convicted felon was sentenced to die in a Texas electric chair for the slaying of three Fort Worth teenagers — he killed two young males, before raping and murdering their female companion. McDuff received the death penalty and a nickname, "The Broomstick Killer," for the violent way the young woman was murdered. The victim allegedly had her throat crushed by a broomstick.
Fox Nation takes a deep dive into the investigation of one of the nation’s most ‘sadistic’ serial killers, Kenneth Allen McDuff.
Before "The Broomstick Killer" was executed, the U.S. Supreme Court repealed his death penalty and the triple murderer’s sentence was commuted to life behind bars.
Twenty-three years later, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted to release the notorious killer, setting the stage for a wave of murders that took the Lone Star State by storm.
When McDuff, described as "the epitome of evil," was inexplicably paroled from prison, numerous women throughout Texas started to disappear and were never seen again. Northrup was one of the victims who vanished in the dead of night.
In part one of Fox Nation’s "Freed to Kill," investigative reporter Robert Riggs and Johnston described McDuff’s target, Northrup, as a petite, brunette woman. She was a 22-year-old pregnant mother of two children who was working to make ends meet at a convenience store in Texas. What happened to Northrup next was unimaginable.
Subscribers can learn how the murderer beat the death penalty and was released from prison in "Freed to Kill," available to stream now on Fox Nation.
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https://www.foxnews.com/media/freed-kill-serial-killer-death-row-mcduff