Death Row killer made final meal gaffe before 'most excruciating' execution

07 January 2024 , 15:52

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Wesley Ira Purkey, 68, was sentenced to the death penalty in 2004 (Image: Kansas Department of Corrections)

In 2004, Wesley Ira Purkey, 68, was sentenced to the death penalty for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Jennifer Long in 1998. Whilst the girl was outside a supermarket, the man persuaded the 16-year-old to enter his truck, where he sexually assaulted her and shot her dead.

Then he went about dismembering her teenage body with a chainsaw and burying her remains in a pond in Kansas, US. However, her body was never discovered.

His crimes carried on and later that year he beat an 80-year-old polio sufferer to death whilst at home installing a kitchen tap, The Daily Star reports. He was arrested at the property after Mary Bales's neighbours became aware of what had happened.

Jennifer Long was kidnapped, raped and murdered (Kansas Department of Corrections)

He confessed to murdering Bales but it wasn't until later that he admitted to murdering Long, and was then given the death penalty. Before receiving the lethal injection of pentobarbital on July 16 2020 he had requested a pecan pie as his final meal but asked to have it later - but later never happened.

Purkey had allegedly been suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and was given an injection of pentobarbital at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. Yet his autopsy later showed that he died an excruciating death because of the pentobarbital injection which meant his lungs filled up with fluid that would later have caused the sensation of drowning.

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Before receiving the lethal injection of pentobarbital on July 16 2020 he had requested a pecan pie (Getty Images)

Dr Gail Van Norman said: "It is a virtual medical certainty, that most, if not all, prisoners will experience excruciating suffering, including sensations of drowning and suffocation from (the drug) pentobarbital."

In his final words Purkey reportedly said: "I deeply regret the pain and suffering I caused to Jennifer's family. I am deeply sorry. I deeply regret the pain I caused to my daughter, who I love so very much. This sanitised murder really does not serve no purpose whatsoever."

Meanwhile Long's father who was present at the execution alongside the rest of the family said: “We took care of today, what we needed to take care of. It has been a long time coming. He needed to take his last breath – he took my daughter’s last breath. And there’s some resolve. There is no closure, and there never will be because I won’t get my daughter back.”

Danny Gutmann