Murder trial of WyCo prosecutor Mark Dupree’s nephew should not take place in his courthouse

Wyandotte County Prosecutor Mark Dupree’s 39-year-old nephew, Billy Ivan Dupree, is set to go on trial next month for the 2014 murder of 16-year-old Deleisha Kelley. She was strangled in Kansas City, Kansas, and then dumped in Kansas City, Missouri, where a homeless man looking for cans found her body covered in branches in an abandoned garage. The young woman, who was on her church dance team and had talked to her family about becoming a police officer, was thrown out with the trash.

And from now on, the trial of her alleged murderer will be held in the county where the defendant’s uncle is the most powerful police officer. It will be held in the courthouse that is the prosecutor’s stronghold.

This important case has taken a long time – far too long – to come to trial, and I hope prosecutors will reconsider their decision to try it in Wyandotte County.

Dupree’s office is not prosecuting the case, but the Kansas attorney general’s office. After I emailed Jessica Domme, the assistant attorney general in charge of prosecutions, to ask why the trial was being held in Wyandotte County, given the relationship between the defendant and the attorney general, a spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office returned my call.

The case will certainly be tried there, she said, starting September 16. And that’s not a problem, she said, because “the local prosecutor is not pursuing the case.”

It’s still a problem.

Mark and Billy Dupree are not distant relatives; Billy is the oldest son of Mark’s older sister, Ivy Dupree Bradley. Would you want to serve on a jury in a homicide case against the prosecutor’s nephew in his own home?

Would you feel comfortable as a prosecution witness? All the judges in this court have a long-standing relationship with the prosecutor, and no matter how the case is handled, why sow doubt in such a serious matter?

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

Further complicating this entirely domestic situation, Billy Dupree’s court-appointed defense attorney is Antwone Floyd, who previously worked for Mark Dupree.

Floyd was fired from the district attorney’s conviction integrity unit in 2021 after he and another attorney were caught on camera denigrating various segments of humanity, including gay people and people with disabilities, and laughing at the fact that convicts claiming innocence are already where they belong, in prison.

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

Why? According to a prosecution motion, “the state asserts that the defendant’s prior convictions for sex crimes involving minors are relevant to his motive in the murder (of Deleisha Kelley)” because “he did not want to go back to prison if anyone found out he had sex” with another minor.

A cousin of the murder victim testified at the preliminary hearing that Deleisha, nicknamed DeeDee, was staying at Billy Dupree’s house and that he “beat” her.

Why did it take 8 years to arrest Billy Dupree?

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

But the way the case was handled also raises questions: Why did eight years pass between the time Billy Dupree was first questioned on January 28, 2015, and the time he was charged in January 2023?

Why did it take years, even after a DNA test from the young woman’s sperm matched Billy Dupree’s, for him to be charged?

Why were Billy Dupree’s six search warrants spaced several years apart, with the first two executed in January and February 2015 and the last two in 2022?

The last call made from Kelley’s cell phone, at 4:33 p.m. on the day of her death, was to 911. It lasted two seconds and never actually went through. According to a prosecution motion, cell tower information “places the victim’s phone within 0.1 mile of the defendant’s residence.”

People can lie, but cell towers don’t.

Billy Dupree was already in jail in Lansing for another violent crime when he was finally indicted in January 2023.

A 2019 Kansas Court of Appeals opinion denying his appeal in that earlier case summed it up this way: “A jury convicted Billy Dupree of robbery, false imprisonment and possession of methamphetamine, all stemming from a long, erratic day involving accusations of adultery, drugging, threats and domestic disturbances, much of which Dupree filmed.”

“The facts support a connection between the crime and the defendant’s place of residence,” one of the state’s motions states. They also support the need for Mark Dupree to stay a million miles away from this case against his nephew. If he is the honest man he claims to be, then he will be among the first to say that this case should absolutely not be tried in his town.