As per reports, however, Purkey neglected to secure any sort of promise over what sort of sentence the prosecution would pursue for his having kidnapped, raped and murdered the teenage Long.

Ultimately he was found guilty of the crime and sentenced to the death penalty.

Purkey was executed in 2020, by way of being given a lethal injection of pentobarbital.

His autopsy revealed that he suffered from ‘severe bilateral acute pulmonary oedema’ and ‘frothy pulmonary oedema in the trachea and main stem bronchi’, meaning that fluid entered his lungs and trachea quickly.