Murder trial of WyCo DA Mark Dupree’s nephew should not be held in his courthouse | Opinion

Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree’ s 39-year-old nephew, Billy Ivan Dupree , is scheduled to go on trial next month for the 2014 murder of 16-year-old Deleisha Kelley. She was strangled in Kansas City, Kan. and then dumped in Kansas City, Mo, where a homeless man looking for cans found her body covered with branches in an abandoned garage. This young woman, who was part of a dance team at her church and talked to her family about becoming a cop, was tossed out with the garbage.

And as of now, the trial of her alleged killer will be held in the county where the defendant’s uncle is the most powerful law enforcement officer. It will be held in the courthouse that’s the DA’s home turf.

This important case has been a long time — far too long — in coming, and I hope prosecutors will reconsider the decision to try it in Wyandotte County.

It isn’t being prosecuted by Dupree’s office, but by the Kansas attorney general’s office. After I emailed Jessica Domme , the associate deputy attorney general in charge of the prosecution, and asked why the trial is being held in Wyandotte County, given the relationship between the defendant and the DA, a spokeswoman for the AG’s office called me back.

The case is definitely going to be tried there, she said, beginning on Sept. 16. And that’s not a problem, she said, because “the local DA isn’t prosecuting the case.”

It is a problem, though.

Mark and Billy Dupree aren’t distant relations; Billy is the eldest son of Mark’s eldest sister, Ivy Dupree Bradley. Would you want to serve on a jury in a homicide case against the DA’s nephew in his own house?

Would you feel comfortable as a witness for the prosecution there? Every judge in that courthouse has a longstanding relationship of some kind with the DA, and no matter how the case is handled, why put that cloud of doubt over the proceedings in such a serious matter?

That’s especially the case since one of the key witnesses is Billy Dupree’s brother, Glen Blount. Another key witness, the mother of one of Blount’s children, years ago fled to another state out of fear for her own safety.

Further complicating this all-in-the-family situation, Billy Dupree’s court-appointed defense attorney is Antwone Floyd, who used to work for Mark Dupree .

Floyd was fired from the DA’s Conviction Integrity Unit in 2021 after he and another attorney were caught on tape disparaging several whole swaths of humanity, including gay and disabled people, and laughing that convicts claiming to be innocent are already right where they belong, in prison.

There is a lot of damning physical evidence in this case, and according to pretrial motions, some compelling testimony, too: In a probable cause hearing, Billy Dupree’s former next door neighbor testified that “the defendant came to his apartment one day and essentially asked him to help get rid of a body. The defendant said he had found out the girl was 16 years old and that he had (choked) and killed her.”

Why? According to a motion from the prosecution, “The state asserts that the defendant’s prior convictions for sex crimes involving minors is relevant to his motive in killing (Deleisha Kelley)” because “he did not want to go back to prison if someone had found out he had had sex” with yet another underage girl.

A cousin of the murder victim testified at the pretrial hearing that Deleisha, who was called DeeDee, had been staying with Billy Dupree and that he “beat her up.”

Why did it take 8 years to arrest Billy Dupree?

Because Kelley’s body was dumped in KCMO, the case was originally investigated by the Kansas City Police Department, and then when it became clear that the crime had been committed in KCK, by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

But the way the case was handled raises questions, too: Why did eight years go by between the time Billy Dupree was first brought in for questioning on Jan. 28, 2015, and the time he was charged in January of 2023?

Why did it take years even after a DNA hit from semen found in the young woman was matched to Billy Dupree for him to be charged?

Why were the six search warrants of Billy Dupree separated by years, with the first two being executed in January and February of 2015 and the last two in 2022?

The last call placed from Kelley’s cellphone, at 4:33 p.m. on the day of her death, was to 911. It lasted two seconds, and never really connected. According to a motion from the prosecution, cell tower information “places the victim’s phone within .1 miles of the defendant’s residence.”

People can lie, but cell towers do not.

Billy Dupree was already in prison in Lansing for another violent crime when he was finally charged in January of 2023.

A Kansas Court of Appeals opinion denying his appeal in that earlier, 2019 case summed it up this way: “A jury convicted Billy Dupree of robbery, criminal restraint, and possession of methamphetamine all stemming from a long, erratic day involving accusations of adultery, drugs, threats, and marital strife — most of which Dupree captured on video.”

“The facts support a nexus between the crime and the defendant’s residence,” one of state’s motions in the murder case says. They also support the necessity of Mark Dupree staying a million miles away from this case against his nephew. If he’s the upright man that he purports to be, then he’ll be among the first to say this case should absolutely not be tried in his town.