Father doesn’t see his daughter’s killer – Kleypas – ever being executed

The highest court in the land is letting stand the death sentence for Gary Kleypas.

But Larry Williams doesn’t view it as a victory in his two-decade-old desire that Kleypas be executed.

Williams said Tuesday that he doesn’t think Kleypas will ever be put to death.

However, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said Tuesday that he is “optimistic” that “recent judicial activity means these cases are now moving” and that death sentences will eventually be carried out.

It has been almost 20 years since a jury convicted Kleypas of murdering Williams’ 20-year-old daughter, Carrie, in her apartment just up the street from the Pittsburg State University campus.

Kleypas – then a Pitt State nursing student who had been paroled from Missouri after beating a 78-year-old woman to death – lived a few doors down from Carrie Williams. She was an outgoing Pitt State student, a tennis star from Parsons, where she sold shoes at JC Penney. She was engaged to be married.

Prosecutors said evidence showed that Kleypas stalked her, barged into her triplex, beat her, sexually assaulted her and stabbed her on March 30, 1996.

The capital-murder case against Kleypas, now 61, was the first brought by the state since it reinstated the death penalty in 1994. Kleypas has been facing execution so long that Williams has seen the inmate physically transform over the years in prison mugshots: ballooning up in weight, then slimming way down, with white, thinning hair hugging his head and loose skin sagging from his jaw.

Williams, now 73, said he had forgotten that Kleypas’ appeal was pending with the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Monday, Schmidt announced that the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to review the Kleypas case, “leaving his capital murder conviction and death sentence intact,” according to a statement from Schmidt’s office.

Although the case now returns to Kansas courts “for further proceedings under the Kansas death penalty statute,” the high court’s action “marks the end of Kleypas’ direct appeals,” Schmidt’s office said.

Still, Williams doesn’t see momentum gathering for Kleypas’ death sentence.

“I just can’t imagine that that would speed things up,” he said.

“I have zero thought that he will be put to death,” Williams said. “I just don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Williams, who still operates a mobile home business in Parsons, thinks the state will never carry out the death penalty – with Kleypas or any of the others sentenced under the 1994 law.

“I think Kansas is going to back off it; it’s just a matter of when.”

Williams’ comments prompted The Eagle to ask Schmidt whether he thinks the death penalty will ever be carried out in Kansas.

Schmidt’s response, via a spokeswoman: “The pace at which death penalty cases proceed through the legal process is determined principally by the judiciary. In just the past 17 months, the Kansas Supreme Court has affirmed four capital murder convictions and death sentences – the first four affirmed since the death penalty was reenacted by the Legislature in 1994.

“I am optimistic this recent judicial activity means these cases are now moving, and if so then I expect that process will eventually result in execution of sentences of death.”

According to the Attorney General’s Office, Kleypas is one of 10 people who remain under Kansas death sentences.

His case is the second death-penalty case to get through the direct appeals process, the office said. The first was State v. John Robinson, this past October. The Kansas Supreme Court also has affirmed the death sentence of Sidney Gleason, but Gleason can ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case, the office said.

The other death penalty cases that remain pending at various stages of direct appeals before the Kansas Supreme Court, Schmidt’s office said, are: Scott Cheever (Greenwood County); Jonathan and Reginald Carr (Sedgwick County); Justin Thurber (Cowley County); Craig Kahler (Osage County); Frazier Glenn Miller (Johnson County); and Kyle Flack (Franklin County).

This story was originally published March 28, 2017 at 5:52 PM with the headline "Father doesn’t see his daughter’s killer – Kleypas – ever being executed."