Keith Wells was executed by the State of Idaho for two murders
According to court documents Keith Wells would go into a bar and would badly beat 23-year-old John Justad and 20-year-old Brandi Rains. The two victims would die shortly afterwards in the hospital. Wells would admit later that he picked the two victims at randon
Keith Wells would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Keith Wells would be executed by lethal injection on January 6 1994
Keith Wells Photos
Keith Wells FAQ
When was Keith Wells executed
Keith Wells was executed on January 6 1994
How was Keith Wells executed
Keith Wells was executed by lethal injection
Keith Wells Case
Keith Eugene Wells’ family says the convicted double murderer has been on his path toward Idaho’s execution chamber for most of his 31 years, and the state has done little to intervene.
Wells was first sent to prison at the age of 17. He was released from prison three times, but he never stayed out for long.
The final time he was released, his rage led to the Dec. 20, 1990 beating deaths of John Justad, 23, and Brandi Rains, 20, in a robbery at the Rose Pub in Boise. Now he is on Death Rowand scheduled to be executed on Thursday at 12:01 a.m.
He has asked to be executed, saying it’s better than prison.
Family members now wonder whether early intervention and treatment for the drug and alcohol problems they say made him ”a monster” would have saved him, and his victims.
”Keith feels responsible for what he’s done. But I think there’s a question, with the family at least: ‘What if?,’ ” his wife Cindy, 35, said. ”The system didn’t murder those people. But I don’t want to let the system off the hook, either, because they have some problems.”
Family members say they have asked themselves many times what went wrong.
”We need to let people know that our son needed help for a long time and didn’t get it,” said his mother Loral Wells, 59. ”We tried to get help. We talked to the police…. They all said, ‘No, he’s growing up; he’ll be fine.’ I couldn’t get any help.”
They hope someone pays attention.
But Wells, in a recent interview with the Idaho Statesman from the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, said he was not certain anyone could h
ave reclaimed him. And as his execution time nears, Wells has broken his long silence and confessed to the killings.
”I may have been beyond their help. I wasn’t willing to listen to anyone. I’d basically turned against people,” he said. ”I think I knew someone was going to end up dying.”
Keith said he toyed with alcohol and cigarettes, starting at age 4 and smoking pot at the age of 10 or 11.
Court reports cite fighting and truancy back to his grade school years.
He also was stealing money and household items from family and friends.
”Basically, I was so hateful that I had turned myself over to Satan, sort of, ‘Satan,
me what you will,”’ Keith Wells said. ”Talk like that gets you put in a nut house. But I come from a religious family, and we believe in both God and Satan.”
Keith had a drug habit that, by the ninth grade, cost him $200 a month, mostly for marijuana and amphetamines. By age 13 or 14, he was stealing regularly to pay for drugs. He said he was involved in 30 thefts and assaults and was in trouble with the law or arrested 30 times from 1975 to 1978.
The system ”should have tried,” Cindy Wells said. ”I don’t know what the answers are. But they should have tried. That’s the weird thing about them. They tell them (as inmates) they’re state property…. They have the ownership, but they don’t take any responsibility.”