Execution Put On Hold

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TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — A planned execution today at the Terre Haute Federal prison is now on hold.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., imposed two injunctions this morning prohibiting the federal Bureau of Prisons from moving forward with execution of 68-year-old Wesley Ira Purkey.

Wesley Ira Purkey

Purkey was convicted of the 1998 kidnapping and killing of 16-year-old Jennifer Long in Kansas City, Missouri. Prosecutors said he raped and stabbed her, dismembered her with a chainsaw, burned her and dumped her ashes in a septic pond in Kansas. Purkey was separately convicted and sentenced to life in the beating death of 80-year-old Mary Ruth Bales, of Kansas City, Kansas.

Purkey’s attorneys claim that he suffers from Alzheimer’s disease. They also say that he was subject to sexual and mental abuse as a child and, at 14, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression and psychosis.

Federal officials are appealing.