Kansas man who made shocking confession to neighbor while trying to dispose of body gets settlement 10 years after strangling teen; family outraged

Registered sex offender Billy Dupree had been free for six months after he strangled a 16-year-old black girl named Deleisha Kelley in 2014, raped her, then drove her body across state lines from Kansas to Missouri, where he dumped her body.

Yet despite DNA evidence from semen and Dupree’s phone records, obtained in 2015, linking him to the crime, Dupree was not arrested and charged with first-degree murder until 2023.

Earlier this month, prosecutors offered him a deal that reduced the first-degree murder charge to involuntary manslaughter, the bottom level of murder. Kelley was not informed of the deal by his family.

It seems Dupree’s uncle is the district attorney for Wyandotte County, Kansas, the identical county where the trial was set to begin on Monday.

Mark Dupree’s office didn’t prosecute the case since it was handled by the Kansas attorney general’s office, however the trial was scheduled to happen in the identical courthouse, which is taken into account the district attorney’s “home turf,” the editorial said. Kansas City Star.

“Any suggestion that the judge or the Attorney General’s Office was in any way influenced by Mr. Dupree’s family ties is false,” a spokesman for the state attorney general’s office said. Fox 4.

Dupree was elected to the position of Wyandotte County District Attorney in August 2016 and was re-elected in 2020.

However, Kelley’s family believes Billy Dupree’s uncle was a serious reason he was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter.

“They ripped off the scabs for nothing,” said her mother, Kellie Blewett. Kansas City Star“The system failed.”

Not only was there DNA and cellphone evidence linking Dupree to the murder, but his neighbor testified during a September 2023 hearing that Dupree knocked on his door on the morning of December 18, 2014, asking for help getting rid of the girl’s body.

“He said he had an underage girl there and that he had to kill her, strangle her,” the neighbor testified, according to the Kansas City Star.

The neighbor further testified that Dupree told him he “didn’t want to go back to jail if anyone found out he had sex” with one other underage girl.

The neighbor said he looked into Dupree’s apartment and saw a pair of feet protruding of his bedroom.

“I got out of there as fast as I could,” the neighbor said.

Kelley’s body was discovered in an abandoned garage in Kansas City, Missouri, on December 21, 2014, wrapped in a blanket. She was wearing only her underwear.

Investigation

It took several weeks for investigators to discover Kelley’s body, prompting them to search her cellphone call records, which showed she had made several calls to Dupree before her death.

Her last call was to 911, however it was never answered. Her cellphone records also showed she was inside 0.1 miles of Dupree’s residence.

At some point through the investigation, DNA from Dupree’s semen was found on Kelley’s body, further linking him to the murder.

He was summoned for questioning on January 28, 2015, six weeks after her murder – but was not arrested until eight years later, on January 4, 2023.

It then became clear to Kelley’s family that something was fallacious.

“Everything was known from day one — nothing happened,” Kelley’s uncle, Vinson Smith, told Fox 4 on the time.

“I’m sure we’re not the first family this has happened to, but that’s the most important thing. OK, I think we’re finally being heard, or something is being heard.”

But nine months later, prosecutors offered Dupree a plea deal that reduced the first-degree murder charge to manslaughter. They told the family the case was “old, so there’s no guarantee” of a conviction.

Dupree, 39, had been incarcerated since November 2020 for robbery, drug possession and deprivation of liberty, according to the Kansas City Star. He was previously imprisoned for child sex crimes, aggravated assault and criminal damage to property committed between 2003 and 2006.

The plea deal means Dupree could receive a 15-year sentence as an alternative of life. The Kansas City Star also reports that the brand new sentence will run concurrently with the one he’s currently serving, meaning he’ll only serve an extra 4 to five years. Sentencing will happen on November 22.

“I saw a bunch of bleach bottles in his trash,” his neighbor testified in September 2023, after telling jurors that Dupree asked him to help move the body. “I knew he was trying to clean up that shit.”