On the morning of July 16, 2020, Wesley Ira Purkey was pronounced dead at 8:19 a.m. at the Federal Correctional Complex in Terre Haute, Indiana. He was 68 years old. His execution by lethal injection made him the second man put to death by the federal government in a single week — and only the second federal execution carried out in nearly two decades.
Purkey had been sentenced to death for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Jennifer Long, a 16-year-old girl abducted from the Kansas City, Missouri area in January 1998. Court records established that Purkey took Long across state lines to Lansing, Kansas, where he raped and killed her. He then dismembered, burned, and disposed of her remains — post-crime violence that shaped how prosecutors and courts viewed the case for years to come. The interstate nature of the abduction brought the matter under federal jurisdiction.
Purkey's connection to Long's murder came to light while he was already behind bars for a separate killing. In 1998, Purkey had also beaten 80-year-old Mary Ruth Bales to death with a claw hammer in Kansas City, Kansas. Convicted of that murder, he was serving a life sentence when he confessed to Long's abduction and killing — a confession that opened the door to the federal prosecution and eventually the death sentence that defined the remainder of his life.