Patrick Duffy Opens Up About Parents’ Brutal 1986 Killing by Teens

Patrick Duffy has carried the memory of that night for nearly forty years. The actor best known as Bobby Ewing on Dallas and Frank Lambert on Step by Step was 37 when his parents, Terence and Marie Duffy, were shot and killed inside their own tavern in Boulder, Montana, on November 18, 1986.

The couple, both in their sixties, ran a quiet little place that kept trouble at a distance. On that evening Terence had already thrown two drunk and rowdy teenagers out of the bar. They left, finished whatever they were drinking somewhere else, and let their anger build. Hours later, with the place empty except for the Duffys, the same two young men walked back in carrying shotguns.

According to trial testimony Duffy later recounted, his father saw them and took a step forward, starting to say “I told you to” before the guns opened up. Marie had been sitting at the far end of the bar working on a crossword puzzle. She ran toward her husband and was shot as well. The men then jumped the bar, emptied the cash register, grabbed a couple of bottles, and left.

Workers from a nearby state facility for people with disabilities found the bodies when they stopped for a beer after their shift change. One woman first thought Marie had simply fainted until she noticed the blood.

The two 19-year-olds, Sean A. Wentz and Kenneth A. Miller, were arrested the same night after one of them confessed to a girlfriend. Both were convicted of deliberate homicide in the course of a robbery. Wentz, identified as the shooter, received a 190-year sentence and was paroled in 2015. Miller was paroled in 2007.

Duffy spoke about the killings with visible emotion on the Still Here Hollywood podcast with Steve Kmetko on November 9, just days before the 40th anniversary. He described the sequence exactly as it emerged in court and said his long practice of Buddhism helped him live with the loss. His parents had been proud of him; they kept his photos up in the bar and never missed an episode of Dallas.