Wesley Ira Purkey

Wesley Ira Purkey (January 6, 1952 – July 16, 2020) was an American convicted murderer who was executed by the United States federal government for the January 1998 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 16-year-old Jennifer Long. Purkey confessed to the crime while serving a life sentence for the murder of 80-year-old Mary Ruth Bales, whom he beat to death with a claw hammer in October 1998.

In 2020, Purkey was one of several condemned men on federal death row selected to be executed by the federal government of the United States. He was executed via lethal injection on the morning of July 16, 2020, following a delay due to concerns that he had Alzheimer's disease and did not understand why he was being executed.

Early life Wesley Ira Purkey was born on January 6, 1952, in Wichita, Kansas. As a child, he experienced repeated sexual abuse and molestation by those in charge of his care. At age 14, he was examined for possible brain damage. He reportedly had multiple traumatic brain injuries throughout his life, which began in 1968 at the age of 16 and again in 1972 and 1976, at the ages of 20 and 24, respectively. At age 18, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, as well as depression superimposed upon a preexisting antisocial personality disorder.

Criminal history Purkey was convicted of burglary in 1970, for which he received his first parole. However, he broke his parole and was sent back to prison. He was paroled again in 1980. Following his release on parole, Purkey, accompanied by a friend, robbed a man in Wichita at gunpoint. Purkey then shot the man twice in the head before fleeing. The man survived the shooting, and Purkey was sentenced to fifteen years to life in prison for aggravated battery, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated robbery. While in prison, records show he was violent and uncooperative. He was stabbed on two separate occasions by other inmates, one of which was over a drug deal.

In 1986, Purkey was reported to have changed and was staying out of trouble and working in a prison paint shop. He earned an associate degree in literature from a community college, joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and took drug, alcohol, and mental health counseling. In 1992, counselors evaluated Purkey and found he was a classic psychopath; however, his education and intelligence seemed to moderate his antisocial tendencies. In 1996, a counselor concluded he had used his time in prison productively to help rebuild his life. The following year, Purkey's family and friends sent letters to the Kansas Parole Board asking for his release, arguing he had matured and was ready for freedom. Police, prosecutors, and Purkey's former victims objected to his release. The 1980 shooting victim, who was now partially disabled for life, told the parole board that Purkey should stay in prison for the remainder of his life. However, the board disagreed, citing that he had made good progress while incarcerated. In March 1997, Purkey was released from prison after serving seventeen years behind bars.

After murdering Long, Purkey stuffed her body into a toolbox and then went to a local bar where he spent hours drinking alcohol. Before heading back home, he purchased an electric chainsaw. Over the next few days, he used the chainsaw to dismember Long's body. He divided her body parts into bags and then began burning them one by one in a fireplace. The bones, however, did not burn completely, so Purkey crushed them with his hands. After burning everything, he took the leftover remains and ashes from the fireplace and dumped them in a septic pond in Clearwater, Kansas. He then had his stepchildren help him clean up the basement with bleach. He was captured the following morning as he left a house in Leavenworth.

The company which Purkey worked for, Reddi Root'r, later agreed to pay Bales' family $500,000 to settle a negligence lawsuit over their failure to perform a background check on him.

Trial and revelation On December 15, 1998, while awaiting trial for the murder of Bales, Purkey sent a letter to KCK Detective Bill Howard, saying he wanted to talk about an unsolved kidnapping and murder which had occurred earlier in the year. Purkey asked Howard to bring an FBI agent with him. He said he was facing a life sentence in state prison for the murder of Bales, and wanted to be convicted of a federal crime so he could serve his time in a federal prison. Purkey had made enemies in the Kansas prison system, and overall believed that life in a federal penitentiary would be more comfortable than in a state prison.

Detective Howard asked FBI Agent Dirk Tarpley to join him in meeting Purkey. The three men met the next day. At the start of the meeting, Purkey said he was planning to plead guilty to murdering Bales, but was willing to admit to a second murder if he was given a life sentence in federal prison. The two officers told Purkey they would give whatever information he revealed to the U.S. Attorney General, but could not make any other promises. Purkey then gave an account of how he kidnapped a female victim (initially, he did not reveal Long's name), took her across state lines from Missouri to his home in Kansas, and then raped and murdered her. Purkey refused to give up any more details unless he was assured that the case would be federally prosecuted.

On October 10, 2001, federal prosecutors charged Purkey with kidnapping a child resulting in death for Long's murder. Because Purkey's confession had no stipulations regarding sentencing, they announced they would pursue a death sentence.

Purkey's trial started in October 2003. He admitted to killing Long but denied kidnapping her. He claimed she was a sex worker who voluntarily traveled with him to Kansas and that he lied about the kidnapping aspect of the murder to ensure a federal prosecution. On November 5, 2003, the jury found Purkey guilty of kidnapping a child resulting in death. During his sentencing hearing, the government produced several witnesses who attested to Purkey's lengthy history of violence. One man said Purkey had raped him at knifepoint in a prison kitchen. A prison gang expert noted that Purkey had "Aryan Pride", a swastika, and Ku Klux Klan tattoos, indicating his involvement in the Aryan Brotherhood. After deliberating for 10 hours, they recommended a death sentence. Purkey was formally sentenced to death on January 23, 2004. He was transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana and was placed on federal death row.

Execution Purkey exhausted his appeals on October 14, 2014, but at the time, the U.S. federal government had a de-facto moratorium on capital punishment. In July 2019, the United States federal government announced that federal executions would return after a nearly two-decade gap since the previous execution of Louis Jones Jr. in 2003. Purkey was one of five condemned men on federal death row selected to be executed, with his execution scheduled for December 13, 2019. On November 20, 2019, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued a preliminary injunction preventing the resumption of federal executions. Purkey and the other three plaintiffs in the case argued that the use of pentobarbital might violate the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994. In April 2020, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated District Judge Chutkan's injunction in a per curiam decision.

The execution date for Purkey was rescheduled for July 15, 2020. However, on that same morning, a judge halted the execution due to claims Purkey had dementia. The justice department filed an immediate appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. Purkey's lawyers argued he had Alzheimer's disease and was not mentally fit enough to be executed.

In the early hours of July 16, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in a 5–4 decision that the federal government could proceed with executing Purkey and cleared the way for the execution to take place. Hours later, Purkey was executed via lethal injection at USP Terre Haute. He was pronounced dead at 8:19 a.m.

Autopsy Following Purkey's execution, an autopsy was carried out, which was authorized by Purkey's next-of-kin. It was conducted by forensic pathologist Dr. Joyce L. deJong at Western Michigan University. DeJong found that Purkey had had a "severe bilateral acute pulmonary edema" during the execution. Dr. Gail Van Norman, who reviewed the autopsy, stated Purkey experienced "flash pulmonary edema," a condition that can only occur when a person is still alive. According to Van Norman, the results affirmed the opinion that premortem flash pulmonary edema is a virtual medical certainty in any execution carried out by the federal government of the United States using pentobarbital. Van Norman said that any prisoner executed in this manner would experience a sensation of near-drowning or suffocation. She stated, "these are among the most excruciating feelings known to man." Any prisoner executed under the same method as Purkey would supposedly experience extreme pain and suffering.

DeJong's autopsy showed evidence that fluid had built up in Purkey's lungs and spilled into his airways up to his trachea, which would cause a near-drowning sensation during the execution. The autopsy results also showed that Purkey's lungs had increased in weight due to the fluid build-up. Federal prosecutors responded to the claims by saying that the execution was humane and that there were no pentobarbital-related complications.