A Hungarian judge sentenced a Dublin man to 14 years in prison for the murder of an American nurse and attempting to hide her body.
The Dublin man, who cannot be named due to Hungarian legal restrictions, killed Mackenzie Michalski (31) in November 2024 during what he claimed was a one-night stand in Budapest, and hid her body.
The 38-year-old had insisted her death arose as a result of an accident during consensual sex.
However, the prosecutor in the case argued at the previous hearing that based on evidence presented during the trial, it is highly unlikely that the victim asked the Irish man to strangle her, as he claimed, as she was suffering from an old neck injury and had not shown any interest in violent sex previously.
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In reaching his verdict, the judge agreed with the prosecution’s case. He said it was inconceivable that someone with chronic neck pain would ask a complete stranger to choke her.
He said it was not believable that the victim asked for the sexual encounter to be violent, that she asked the man to tie her up with belts and that she was “dominant” during the encounter, as the convicted man claimed at trial.
The man’s defence team is expected to appeal the murder conviction. The court also expelled him from Hungary for 10 years after the completion of his prison sentence.
The judge ordered the Irish man to pay €7,250 towards the court’s expenses for the case.
According to Hungarian law, accused and convicted people cannot be named or pictured unless they give their consent.
The Dublin man did not consent to being named or his face being published. Only public figures or politicians can be named or pictured when standing trial or after conviction without consent.
Following the verdict, Nicholas Michalski, the victim’s brother, said thefamily welcomed that the judge chose a harsher sentence than what the prosecution originally asked for.
“The important thing is that the murderer is kept off the streets. That he can’t do this to other people,” Michalski told The Irish Times.
“We don’t want other people to go through what Kenzie went through.”
The victim’s family had attended every hearing in the Dublin man’s case, wearing ribbons in teal, Mackenzie’s favourite colour.
Standing outside the courtroom, her mother, Jill Michalski, held up a white T-shirt with her daughter’s photo on it.
“Justice for Kenzie! We love you to infinity and beyond,” she said.
On Tuesday, Jill Michalski spoke of the “immense trauma” the loss of Mackenzie had caused, recalling how family members had been forced to see her unrecognisable face after arrival in Hungary following her disappearance.
The “heinous crime” of Mackenzie Michalski’s murder “deserves the harshest penalty allowed by law”, the grieving mother told the court.
Following the verdict, the Dublin man’s lawyer, György Magyar, argued that his client should have been tried for manslaughter instead of murder and should have received a shorter prison sentence.
“This verdict is a complete nonsense,” the lawyer said.
On Tuesday, the accused had addressed the court in Budapest in his closing statement at the trial.
“Everything I did, I did because Kenzie asked me,” the Dubliner told the judge during a hearing.
“I didn’t want to take her life,” he told the court.
His last words to the judge were: “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know, I’m very sorry.”
Earlier this week, the Irish man’s defence team called for further evidence to be presented to the court, arguing that the trial has been biased towards the victim.
Magyar argued that the sexual encounter was clearly consensual in his opinion, and called claims that the defendant willingly killed the victim “absurd”.
The court previously heard that Michalski, a nurse who came to Hungary as a tourist a few days before meeting the accused, suffocated after the man strangled her for at least two to three minutes.
Dozens of further injuries were found during the autopsy, including signs of blunt-force trauma to the head.
Clinical psychiatrists told the court at a hearing in April that the man told them he had kissed Michalski’s dead body. They said he could have been in bed with her body for up to four hours after her death, but that he had provided conflicting accounts about the length of time involved.
The police found disturbing footage of the missing woman’s naked, tied-up, lifeless body on the suspect’s phone.
The Irish man’s computer and a “spy pen” seized by the police showed further evidence of the suspect’s perversion, the court was told.
At a previous hearing, the Dubliner had told the court he arrived in Hungary less than a week before the incident, and met Michalski at a popular bar in Budapest frequented by tourists on November 4th, 2024.
The pair had drinks at the bar and in a nightclub before going to the man’s apartment, where Michalski died in the early hours of November 5th.
The police report showed the Dublin man attempted to cover up his crime by cleaning the rented apartment and purchasing a suitcase to place his victim’s body in.
He then rented a car and drove to Lake Balaton, about 145km southwest of Budapest, where he dumped the body in a wooded area outside the town of Szigliget, hoping wild boars would eat the remains.
The man was detained in Budapest the day afterwards and led police to the location where he had hidden the body.
