Murder of Pamela Butler
1999 murder in Missouri
Pamela Irene Butler (March 13, 1989 – October 12, 1999) was a ten-year-old American girl who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by Keith Dwayne Nelson (November 23, 1974 – August 28, 2020) in October 1999. Nelson kidnapped Butler while she was rollerblading in front of her house in Kansas City, Kansas. He then took her to a forest in Grain Valley, Missouri, where he raped her before strangling her to death with a wire. Nelson pleaded guilty to the charges pertaining to the murder of Butler and he was sentenced to death by a federal jury in November 2001. Nelson was incarcerated for nearly 21 years before he was put to death by lethal injection on August 28, 2020, becoming the fifth person to be executed by the U.S. federal government after the resumption of federal executions in July 2020.
Murder
On October 12, 1999, 24-year-old Keith Dwayne Nelson planned to kidnap, rape, and murder a young girl in the Kansas City area. That afternoon, ten-year-old Pamela Irene Butler was rollerblading in front of her house in Kansas City, Kansas, after returning home from a trip to buy cookies. Butler, then a fifth-grade student at Fiske Elementary, was kidnapped by Nelson right in front of her 11-year-old sister, Penny Butler, who screamed at the sight of her sister's kidnapping. While Nelson drove off with Pamela in his white pick-up truck, he made a rude gesture to her sister. Several other witnesses also saw the kidnapping and they managed to take down the registration number of Nelson's truck.
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