Arthur Lewis Kee, a convicted rapist whose crimes while on a weekend furlough from a Delaware prison fueled controversy over the state’s prisoner-release policies, died November 3, 2026, at the age of 82.
The case dates back to July 1978, when Kee was permitted to leave the Plummer House work-release center in Wilmington for a weekend visit to Laurel. At the time, he was serving a five-year prison sentence imposed in July 1975 for crimes involving two young women from Delmar, Maryland, who had been raped at knifepoint.
During the authorized furlough, Kee kidnapped and raped a 20-year-old Virginia woman. The woman testified that she accepted a ride from Kee before he restrained her, threatened her with a knife and sexually assaulted her. Kee was subsequently arrested in Laurel.
His arrest became part of a broader controversy surrounding Delaware’s prison furlough program. Contemporary newspaper reporting identified another inmate accused of committing serious violent crimes while temporarily released from prison that same weekend.
On July 19, 1978, The Leader, a Sussex County newspaper, published an editorial titled “New Prison Needed Fast,” questioning the state’s handling of prisoner furloughs and calling for greater scrutiny of inmates permitted to leave correctional facilities.
What makes Kee’s case particularly notable is the timing of a new Delaware law intended to restrict those privileges.
On June 27, 1978, just weeks before Kee’s crimes, Governor Pierre S. du Pont approved legislation that prohibited prisoners serving sentences for Class A felonies from participating in furlough programs and restricted their eligibility for work release until they were within six months of their scheduled release.
Kee was subsequently convicted of rape and kidnapping in Sussex County Superior Court. According to an April 11, 1979 report in The Leader, Judge Claude L. Tease imposed two life sentences.
Kee remained incarcerated for the next 47 years, dying in state custody nearly half a century after the crimes that brought renewed public attention to Delaware’s furlough program.
He in the infirmary at James T. Vaughn Correctional Center, where he had been receiving hospice care. According to the Delaware Department of Correction,