'Dallas' Star Patrick Duffy Recalls The Two Gunmen Who Killed His Parents Over Bar Cash

A sentence cut short by gunfire

The killings happened late on the night of Nov. 18, 1986, inside a bar in Boulder, Montana, that Terence and Marie Duffy owned and ran themselves. Earlier that night, Terence had thrown out two 19-year-old men, Sean A. Wentz and Kenneth A. Miller, for being drunk and disruptive. The men left, kept drinking somewhere else, and came back.

"It was very late at night," Patrick Duffy said on the "Still Here Hollywood" podcast. "There was nobody in the bar except my father and my mother. And they walked in with their shotguns."

According to testimony from the 1987 trial, as Duffy recounted it, Terence recognized the men and stepped toward them, starting to tell them he'd already ordered them out: "I told you to—" He never finished. They opened fire and killed him. Marie, who had been working a crossword puzzle at the far end of the bar, ran toward her husband and was shot too.

The gunmen then jumped over the bar, took the money from the cash register, grabbed a couple of bottles of liquor, and left.

Who was behind the bar, and who walked back in

Terence and Marie Duffy were the only two people in the building that night. Their son, Patrick Duffy, was 38 and starring as Bobby Ewing on CBS's "Dallas" when his parents were killed. He was married to ballet dancer Carlyn Rosser and raising two young sons, Padraic and Conor.

Wentz and Miller, both 19 at the time, had no prior connection to the Duffys beyond that night at the bar, according to the coverage. Page Six reports that after the shooting, the two allegedly stole a pickup truck from a car dealership and drove to the home of Wentz's 22-year-old girlfriend, who called police after the men mentioned that people had been shot dead.

"I told you to—" That's when they opened fire. — Terence Duffy's final words, as his son Patrick Duffy recalled trial testimony, told to Page Six

What the record shows: conviction, sentence, parole

The bodies were discovered by a group of people who stopped at the bar after finishing a shift at the nearby Montana Developmental Center, according to the Los Angeles Times, as cited by multiple outlets. One woman saw Marie on the floor and initially thought she had fainted. When she noticed blood on Terence, she went outside and flagged down a friend for help.

Wentz and Miller were tried and convicted in connection with the murders. Page Six reports they were sentenced to 190 and 180 years in prison, respectively. Duffy told the podcast he assumed the case could have been charged as manslaughter if the shooting had stood alone — "But it was in the commission of a felony. They were robbing a bar and committed murder. So they went off to prison," he said.

Both men have since been released on parole. People magazine, citing Australia's 9News, reported Miller was paroled in 2007 and Wentz in 2015 — 21 and 29 years after the killings.

Duffy's account, in his own words

Duffy has told this story in pieces over the years, but laid it out in sequence on the podcast with host Steve Kmetko. "My dad had thrown these two boys out because they were drunk and obstreperous," he said. "He just threw them out of the bar, and they went somewhere, finished whatever they were drinking, and the anger boiled up and they went back in."

Of his mother, he said: "My mother was on the other end of the bar doing a crossword puzzle and took a couple steps running towards dad. And they shot her too. And then, if that wasn't stupid enough, instead of just running, they jumped over the bar to the cash register, took the money and a couple of bottles of booze and then left."

The call that reached him on a Hollywood set

Duffy learned his parents were dead the next morning, when his sister — a police officer, identified by Page Six as a Washington state police lieutenant — called him on her way to Montana. "By the time I hung up the phone, there were film crews at the gate," he recalled. Lorimar Television, the production company behind "Dallas," arranged a private jet and a publicist to help him manage the press.

Before he left, Duffy told his two young sons what had happened. "The boys were getting up to go to school," he said. "And I said to the boys, I said, 'Padraic, Conor, we have to go in now. I'm going to chant with you.' ... We have to chant for grandma and grandpa because they've both been killed and we have to chant for them because they're going to understand it and hear it." He said the boys answered, "Okay."

Duffy, who had practiced Buddhism for 15 years at the time, has credited that faith with helping him process the loss without feeling severed from his parents. "There was something about the eternity of life that had set deep inside me," he told People in 2020. "As horrific as that was, I didn't feel disconnected from them."

What happens next

There is no pending hearing in this case. Wentz and Miller were convicted and sentenced decades ago — 190 and 180 years, respectively, according to Page Six — and both have already completed parole review: Miller was released in 2007 and Wentz in 2015, per reporting from Australia's 9News cited by People. The only thing still unfolding is Duffy's own retelling of it, which he brought up again on the Nov. 9 episode of the "Still Here Hollywood" podcast, nearly 40 years after the murders.