‘Claw hammer killer’ who dismembered girl ‘suffered the most excruciating feelings known to man’ during execution
A CHILD killer who raped and dismembered a girl with a chainsaw suffered an “excruciating” death when he was executed, according to new court filings.
Wesley Ira Purkey was put to death by an injection of pentobarbital in Terre Haute federal penitentiary, Indiana, last month.
An autopsy performed on Purkey, revealed he suffered “severe bilateral acute pulmonary oedema” and “frothy pulmonary oedema in the trachea and main stem bronchi”, according to new documents lodged by lawyers representing death row inmate Keith Nelson, who is scheduled to be executed on Friday.
Those findings mean fluid quickly filled Purkey’s lungs and entered his airway up to his trachea, causing “a near-drowning” sensation and “extreme pain, terror and panic”, said Gail Van Norman, a medical expert retained by Nelson’s lawyers to interpret the autopsy.
“These are among the most excruciating feelings known to man,” she said in a filing obtained by The Sun.
According to Dr Van Norman, flash pulmonary edema, where fluid enters the lungs and airways, can only occur when someone is alive.
“It is a virtual medical certainty, that most, if not all, prisoners will experience excruciating suffering, including sensations of drowning and suffocation” from pentobarbital, she added.
Dr Van Norman said the report indicated that “Purkey’s lungs filled with fluid and that he suffered excruciating air hunger while still alive”, the documents allege.
The unofficial autopsy was performed by a Western Michigan University pathologist, Dr Joyce L. deJong, at the request of Purkey relatives.
Purkey was sentenced to death in January 2004 after he was convicted in federal court for the interstate kidnapping, raping and killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in 1998. He dismembered her body with a chainsaw then dumped it in a septic pond after luring the teen into his car outside a grocery store.
Nine months later, in October 1998, Purkey beat an 80-year-old polio sufferer to death with a claw hammer, earning himself the “claw hammer killer” moniker.
Purkey had been working for a plumbing company and had gone to the home of Mary Ruth Bales to fix a kitchen tap.
Neighbors saw him trying to burn the woman’s body and he was arrested.
Purkey pleaded guilty to Ms Bale’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison where, years later, he confessed to murdering Ms Long and was given the death penalty.
The killer made a final statement shortly before his death: “I deeply regret the pain and suffering I caused to Jennifer’s family,” he said.
“I am deeply sorry. I deeply regret the pain I caused to my daughter, who I love so very much.
“This sanitized murder really does not serve no purpose whatsoever.”
This month’s filings were part of motions to halt the execution of Keith Nelson, convicted in the 1999 rape and strangulation of 10-year-old Pamela Butler. Prosecutors said he pulled her into his truck as she skated on rollerblades back to her Kansas home after buying some cookies.
Nelson’s execution is scheduled for August 28. The execution of Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on federal death row, is set for August 26. His lawyers have made similar arguments.
The American Civil Liberties Union called the recent re-start of federal executions “a truly dark period for our country,” and criticized the federal government for executing Purkey.
“There was no reason for this administration to restart federal executions now — after a nearly two-decade hiatus, during the worst public health crisis of our lifetime — except to distract from its mainly failings, particularly its failure to keep people safe during this pandemic,” Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project said.
Department of Justice spokesperson Kerri Kupec defended the administration’s resumption of the federal death penalty, saying: “After many years of litigation following the death of his victims, in which he lived and was afforded every due process of law under our Constitution, Purkey has finally faced justice.”
“The death penalty has been upheld by the federal courts, supported on a bipartisan basis by Congress, and approved by Attorneys General under both Democratic and Republican administrations as the appropriate sentence for the most egregious federal crimes,” Kupec said.
Previous court rulings have concluded pentobarbital injections are humane.
And even if some pain is involved, that doesn’t render an execution method inhumane, government attorneys argued, citing a 2008 Supreme Court ruling.
“Simply because an execution method may result in pain, either by accident or as an inescapable consequence of death, does not establish the sort of ‘objectively intolerable risk of harm’ that qualifies as cruel and unusual,” the high court said.
Nelson’s lawyers are seeking all executions to be permanently suspended. But legal precedent requires, when arguing one form of execution is cruel, that they offer what they believe are more humane alternatives.
Among those they suggested: a firing squad.
“Historically, the firing squad has resulted in significantly fewer ‘botched’ executions,” they say in one filing.
“Execution by firing squad is both swift and virtually painless.”
Purkey’s execution was carried out two days after the US government conducted its first federal execution in 17 years, also at Terre Haute, of white supremacist Daniel Lewis Lee.
Lee was convicted of killing an Arkansas family in a 1990s plot to build a whites-only America.