Wesley Ira purkey Execution + Crime + Last words + Last Meal | US Federal Indiana Death Row Inmate
As we mentioned at the top of the broadcast, one family waited 17 years for this day. William and Olivia Long traveled from the Kansas City area to witness Perky’s execution. They’re Jennifer Long’s father and stepmother. William said the execution won’t bring any closure for them, but it was important for them to be there nonetheless.
They said he was a changed man. After spending 17 years behind bars for shooting a man in the head, Wesley Perky had earned an associate degree, completed drug treatment, and even worked in the prison paint shop. Counselors called him reformed. His family wrote letters begging for his release.
The parole board agreed, and in March 1997, Perky walked free. They never changed. A man who was killed before has the tendency of killing again. But less than two years later, that decision would haunt everyone who vouched for him. In the span of just 10 months, Perky took not one but two lives. A vulnerable 16-year-old girl whose body was never recovered, and an 80-year-old widow beaten to death inside her own home.
His actions sparked outrage, led to a federal death sentence, and ignited a national debate about mental illness, the death penalty, and whether some people are truly capable of change. Years later, after a long legal battle and a lastminute fight over his mental state, Perky was executed at USP Terraote. His final meal, fried fish and onion rings.
His last words, an apology to the families he devastated. This is the disturbing story of a man who fooled the system and the deadly price of second chances. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe for more real life Death Row stories like this because some truths are too chilling to ignore.
Let’s go back to the beginning because the Wesley Perky story isn’t just about crime. It’s about justice, betrayal, deception, and the haunting question. What do we do with a man who destroys every chance at redemption? Wesley Ira Perky was born on January 6th, 1952 in Lancing, Kansas, a small Midwestern town surrounded by prison walls and quiet farmland.
But there was nothing peaceful about his upbringing. From an early age, Wesley’s world was marked by dysfunction. His mother struggled with alcohol addiction, and his father, known for his harsh temper, often turned violent at home. Wesley Perky suffered multiple head injuries and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, depression, and antisocial disorder before adulthood.
But is that enough reason to become a cold-blooded killer? According to records later presented during sentencing, Perky was exposed to physical abuse and instability throughout his formative years. By the time he was 6 years old, Wesley had already started using alcohol. At age 11, he began sniffing glue and other substances.
Teachers described him as disruptive and angry. He was expelled multiple times and arrested for petty crimes before reaching high school. In his early teens, he was sent to the Boy’s Industrial School, a juvenile detention facility in Kansas. It was here, according to testimony, that he endured further trauma. Locked away and left to navigate a harsh institutional system alone.
As the years passed, his behavior grew worse. Perky dropped out of school, struggled with drug dependency, and bounced between county jails. He seemed trapped in a cycle. No education, no support, and no plan for the future. Long before Wesley Perky’s name would make national headlines, he was already known inside the Kansas prison system as a man with two faces.
Polite and intelligent on the surface, but cold and dangerous underneath. His first serious conviction came in 1970 when he was just 18 years old. It was a burglary charge and the court gave him a chance parole, but Perky couldn’t stay out of trouble. He violated the terms, was rearrested and sent back to prison.
In 1980, he was released on parole again. But within weeks of being freed, Perky committed a crime that would haunt one man for the rest of his life. In Witchah, Kansas, Perky and a friend approached a man and robbed him at gunpoint. It wasn’t enough to take his money. As the man pleaded for his life, Perky pulled the trigger twice, shooting him in the head.
Then he fled the scene, leaving the man for dead. But by some miracle, the victim survived. Though he was left partially disabled for life, he was able to identify his attacker. Perky was quickly arrested and charged with aggravated battery, aggravated kidnapping, and aggravated robbery. He was sentenced to 15 years to life. At first, prison didn’t reform him.
He was described in reports as violent, aggressive, and manipulative. He refused to cooperate with staff, got into fights, and burned bridges with fellow inmates. In fact, he was stabbed twice. once over a personal dispute and another time over a drugrelated conflict behind bars. But by 1986, something began to shift.
Guards noticed that Perky was keeping his head down. He was now working in the prison paint shop. He enrolled in community college, eventually earning an associate degree in literature. He joined Alcoholics Anonymous, completed mental health counseling, and took courses in substance abuse recovery. It all looked good on paper, but in 1992, a team of prison psychologists ran a deep evaluation.
Their conclusion was chilling. Perky was a classic psychopath, a man who lacked empathy, remorse, or a sense of responsibility. But he was also highly intelligent, and that intelligence, they warned, could help him hide who he really was. Still, by 1996, a different counselor painted a more hopeful picture. This one described him as rehabilitated, a man who had used his time wisely and was ready for life outside.
When the Kansas parole board reviewed his case in early 1997, dozens of people wrote letters on his behalf, friends, family, and even some correctional staff arguing he had matured and deserved another chance. But not everyone agreed. prosecutors, law enforcement, and his shooting victim, now disabled and still living with the trauma, all strongly objected.
That victim stood before the board and said, “This man should never walk free again.” Despite it all, the board voted to release him. In March 1997, after 17 years behind bars, Wesley Ira Perky walked out of prison. He told the world he was a changed man. But less than a year later, that lie would unravel in the most horrifying way imaginable.
On January 22nd, 1998, Wesley Perky left his home in Lancing, Kansas, and made the short drive to Kansas City, Missouri for a plumbing job interview. But what began as a simple trip soon spiraled into something far more disturbing. After the interview, instead of heading home, Perky smoked crack cocaine and began aimlessly cruising the city streets in his white Ford pickup truck.
At some point that day, he spotted Jennifer Long, a 16-year-old girl, walking alone along the sidewalk. He pulled over and started a conversation. According to his later confession, he asked if she wanted to party. Jennifer agreed to ride with him and they drove to a liquor store where Perky purchased Jyn.
But the situation changed when Perky told her they were heading back to Kansas. Jennifer asked to be let out of the truck. Instead, Perky reached into his glove compartment, pulled out a bon knife, and threatened her. He then drove across state lines back to his house in Lancing, Kansas. Once inside, Perky led Jennifer to the basement where he forced her to undress and sexually abused her.
After the assault, Jennifer tried to escape, but Perky became violent. He attacked her with the knife, stabbing her multiple times in the chest, face, and neck, resulting in her death. He then placed her body inside a metal toolbox and left it in the basement. That same evening, Perky went to a local bar where he drank for hours.
On the way home, he stopped to purchase an electric chainsaw. Over the next few days, Perky dismembered Jennifer’s body, separating the remains into bags. He then burned them piece by piece in the fireplace. Some bones didn’t fully burn, so he crushed them by hand. When the process was complete, he gathered the ashes and bone fragments and drove to a septic pond in Clear Water, Kansas, where he disposed of everything.
Back at home, he asked his stepchildren to help clean the basement using bleach, never revealing the true reason why. Meanwhile, in Kansas City, Jennifer Long’s mother was growing desperate. When her daughter didn’t come home, she called police, friends, and relatives, but no one had seen her. Law enforcement initially listed Jennifer as a runaway, but her family never accepted that explanation.
They put up flyers and posters. They searched, they waited, but no leads came in. Jennifer Long had simply disappeared and the man responsible had returned to his life as if nothing had happened. After Jennifer’s murder, he was ready to strike again. On the morning of October 26th, 1998, Perky was dispatched to a modest home in Kansas City, Kansas to fix a kitchen faucet.
The customer was Mary Ruth Bales, an 80-year-old widow who had survived polio and walked with a cane. She lived alone, kind, trusting, and vulnerable. Perky walked into her home wearing a uniform and holding a toolbox. He spoke politely, then asked for payment upfront. Mary agreed and handed him some cash. But instead of fixing the faucet, Perky left and used the money to hire a sex worker and purchase crack cocaine.
The two checked into a nearby motel where they spent the night using drugs and drinking. The next morning, Perky wasn’t finished with his twisted plan. He returned to Mary Bale’s home again, carrying his company toolbox. But this time, he didn’t come to fix anything. He walked into her bedroom, raised a claw hammer, and bludgeoned her repeatedly in the head.
The strikes were so violent, the cause of death was ruled as blunt force trauma from multiple blows to the skull. After taking her life, Perky didn’t flee. Instead, he and the woman he was with stayed inside the house for several hours, smoking more drugs and eating food from Mary’s refrigerator as if nothing had happened.
But the next day, reality started to close in. Perky returned to the scene carrying gasoline, planning to burn down the house and destroy any evidence. But this time, neighbors noticed something suspicious. They saw the same ready Rudar van parked outside and someone moving around the property. They called police. By the time officers arrived, Perky had already fled.
But inside, they made a horrifying discovery. Mary Ruth Bales beaten to death in her own bedroom. Witness statements quickly pointed investigators toward the plumbing company. Within days, police had a name, Wesley Ira Perky. On October 29th, just 3 days after the murder, Perky was formally charged with first-degree murder. He was arrested the very next morning while walking out of a home in Levvenworth, Kansas. The aftermath didn’t end there.
Mary Bale’s family later filed a lawsuit against Ready Rudar, arguing that the company had failed to conduct a background check on Perky, a man with a long criminal history and a violent past. The company agreed to settle for $500,000. But by then, the damage had already been done.
An 80-year-old woman had lost her life at the hands of a man who should have still been behind bars. And the full weight of Perky’s actions, both in this case and the one from earlier that year, was about to come crashing down. By December 1998, Wesley Perky was already facing a life sentence in state prison for the brutal murder of Mary Ruth Bales.
But behind bars, he had a plan, and it didn’t involve staying in Kansas. On December 15th, while awaiting trial, Perky sent a letter to Detective Bill Howard of the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department. In it, he claimed to have information about an unsolved kidnapping and murder that had taken place earlier that year.
He also made a specific request, bring an FBI agent to the meeting. Perky’s motive wasn’t guilt, it was strategy. He believed that a federal sentence would be easier to serve than a state one. He’d made enemies in the Kansas prison system and saw federal time as a safer, more manageable option. His goal, confess to a federal crime and serve his sentence at a federal facility.
The next day, Howard arrived with FBI agent Dirk Tarpley. In the interview room, Perky laid out his offer. He said he was prepared to plead guilty to the bail’s murder, but also wanted to confess to a second killing on one condition. He wanted to be prosecuted under federal law. He gave a brief account of what happened.
He said he had kidnapped a teenage girl, taken her across state lines, and killed her. At that point, he refused to say her name. He also made it clear that he would not provide further details unless guaranteed a federal case. Howard and Tarpley brought the information to assistant US attorney Kurt Shernuk, who was skeptical. It seemed like a play for better conditions, not real remorse.
Still, he was open to federal prosecution if Perky gave them more. Over the following days, Perky did just that. He wrote out a full confession, gave a detailed oral statement, and took authorities to the exact location where he had disposed of Jennifer Long’s remains, a septic pond in Clear Water, Kansas.
He told them the measures he had taken made recovery of the body impossible. When officers presented him with a photo lineup of missing girls, he pointed at Jennifer Long without hesitation. Throughout this process, sentencing was never discussed. Perky assumed that by helping, he’d secured a life sentence in federal prison. Exactly what he wanted.
In March 2000, he pleaded guilty in Wandot County District Court to first-degree murder and aggravated robbery for killing Mary Bales. The following month, he was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 32 years. At the hearing, he told the court, “Words cannot express my remorse for this hideous and senseless murder.
” But for Mary Bale’s family, it was too little too late. Her grandson, Lonie Bales, called it a soba story, saying Perky blamed everyone but himself. Then came the twist Perky didn’t see coming. On October 10th, 2001, federal prosecutors filed charges against him for kidnapping a child resulting in death, a capital offense.
Since Perky had placed no conditions on his confession, they announced their intent to seek the death penalty. When he learned this, Perky tried to retract everything. He claimed his statements were a manipulation, that he’d made up the kidnapping just to secure a federal case, but it was too late. His trial began in October 2003. He admitted to killing Jennifer Long, but now claimed she had traveled with him voluntarily.
He portrayed her as a sex worker and said he fabricated the kidnapping element to upgrade his case to federal court. The jury didn’t buy it. On November 5th, 2003, Perky was convicted of kidnapping resulting in death. During sentencing, the government brought in witnesses who painted a darker picture of his past. One inmate said Perky had sexually assaulted him at knife point in a prison kitchen.
A prison gang expert testified that Perky bore white supremacist tattoos, including swastikas and KKK symbols, tying him to the Aryan Brotherhood. After 10 hours of deliberation, the jury returned their recommendation death. On January 23rd, 2004, Wesley Perky was formally sentenced to death and transferred to USP Terraote in Indiana, home of the federal death row.
The plan that was supposed to make his life easier had backfired completely. By October 14th, 2014, Wesley Perky had exhausted all of his appeals. But at the time, the US government hadn’t carried out a federal execution in over a decade. For a while, it seemed like he might live out the rest of his life on death row.
That changed in July 2019 when the Justice Department announced it would resume federal executions for the first time since 2003. Perky was one of five inmates selected. His execution was set for December 13th, 2019, but legal challenges followed quickly. A judge blocked the execution, citing concerns that the drug pentobatital might violate the Federal Death Penalty Act.
The stay didn’t last. In April 2020, a federal appeals court lifted the injunction. The new execution date was set for July 15th, 2020. That morning, a federal judge granted another delay. This time based on claims that Perky had developed dementia and was no longer mentally competent to be executed. His lawyers argued he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and could no longer understand why he was being punished.
The Justice Department appealed immediately. Just after midnight on July 16th, the Supreme Court in a 5 to4 decision ruled that the execution could go forward. A few hours later, Wesley Perky was escorted into the execution chamber at USP Terraote in Indiana. He was offered a final meal, fried fish, onion rings, and a fruit drink.
As he lay on the gurnie, Perky gave his last words. He apologized to Jennifer Long’s family and to his own, saying, “I deeply regret the pain I caused.” At 8:19 a.m., he was pronounced dead by lethal injection. A man who once begged for a life sentence in federal prison had become the second person executed by the US federal government in nearly 20 years.
And for the families left behind, the pain never truly ended. Wesley Perky’s story didn’t end with his execution. It ignited new controversy in death penalty debates nationwide. After he was put to death by lethal injection on July 16th, 2020, his family authorized an autopsy. The procedure conducted by Dr.
Joyce Dong at Western Michigan University revealed something disturbing. According to the report, Perky had suffered from severe acute pulmonary edema, a condition where fluid builds up rapidly in the lungs. Forensic expert Dr. Gail Van Norman reviewed the findings and drew a chilling conclusion. Wesley may have experienced flash pulmonary edema while still conscious.
In plain terms, it would have felt like drowning from the inside. According to her, it’s a sensation described as one of the most intense forms of human suffering. Tight chest, burning throat, panicked gasps for air. She believed this condition could affect anyone executed with penttoarbital, the drug used in federal executions.
Her opinion sparked immediate backlash. Federal prosecutors disagreed, stating that Perky’s death was quick, painless, and humane, but the debate still lingers. Was Wesley Perky’s final punishment carried out in silence or through hidden suffering? Was it justice or something darker? What’s certain is this? Behind every execution lies a human body, a state procedure, and a haunting question.
How much pain is hidden behind the curtain? Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more real death row stories that dig deeper than headlines.
