The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has scheduled the execution of Wesley Ira Purkey, who was convicted of two murders, including one in Kansas City, Kansas.
According to a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice, Purkey, who was a resident of Lansing, Kansas, was convicted of the violent rape and murder a 16-year-old Independence, Missouri, girl, Jennifer Long, in 1998. His execution date is Dec. 13, 2019.
Six people on death row in the federal prison system who were convicted of murdering children or the elderly have been scheduled for execution, according to the news release. For nearly two decades, there have not been executions on federal prison death row.
Purkey dismembered, burned, and dumped the young girl’s body in a septic pond, according to federal authorities.
He also was convicted in state court for using a claw hammer to bludgeon to death an 80-year-old Kansas City, Kansas, woman, Mary Ruth Bales, who suffered from polio and walked with a cane.
On Nov. 5, 2003, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri found Purkey guilty of kidnapping a child resulting in the child’s death, and he was sentenced to death.
According to a court document from 2005, Purkey was in the Wyandotte County Jail in December 1998 awaiting trial for Bales’ murder when he contacted a Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department detective and said he wanted to speak with the FBI about the Jennifer Long case. He told the police detective that he wanted to spend his time in a federal, not a state, institution, according to the court document. Purkey then gave information about the Long case to the FBI.
Before the 1998 murder, Purkey had been incarcerated in the state prison for a number of years, including a burglary case out of Sedgwick County (Wichita area) in 1969. He had been paroled in 1997.
In 2010, Purkey’s efforts for further appeals were turned down. (http://courtweb.pamd.uscourts.gov/courtwebsearch/mowd/80juFC_z4a.pdf)