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Murders of John Justad & Brandi Rains

On December 19, 1990, 28-year-old Keith Eugene Wells left his home with a chilling thought that he might kill someone that night.

Armed with a baseball bat, he headed to the Rose Pub, not looking for any particular victim.

Wells spent over two hours at the tavern, casually drinking beer while his weapon waited outside at the back of the bar.

At some point during those hours, he made his deadly decision, and as 23-year-old John Justad emerged from the bathroom, Wells retrieved his bat and bludgeoned him without provocation. Hearing the commotion, 20-year-old bartender Brandi Rains came to investigate, and Wells turned on her next, beating her as well. Wells fled with money from the register and later burned the baseball bat in a fireplace to destroy the evidence.

Soon after the attack, a customer walked into the bar and found Justad and Rains. Both were taken to the hospital and later died.

The case remained unsolved for four months until April 23, 1991, when Wells was arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Initially, he spun elaborate lies about the killings, claiming the victims owed him $3,000 for cocaine. Soon, he changed his story, blaming mysterious accomplices who supposedly handed him the bat after killing Justad themselves.

Legal Proceedings

During the week of June 10, 1991, Wells pleaded innocent, and the trial began on October 15. On October 24, the jury found him guilty on both counts of first-degree murder.

On April 7, 1992, he was sentenced to death, but Wells had grown tired of living. In February 1993, he asked to drop all appeals and allow his execution to proceed, stating he didn’t want to spend his remaining life in a cell.

He had already tried to delete himself following his conviction and believed delaying execution would only cause more pain for both families involved.

From death row, Wells finally admitted in a phone interview that he was driven by frustration and anger while on parole for armed robbery. He had selected his victims randomly as they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Execution of Keith Eugene Wells

His death date arrived on January 6, 1994. He devoured a lobster, prime rib, fried potatoes, salad, ice cream, milk, soda, and apple fritters as his last meal.

About ninety minutes before his death, he apologized to the victims’ families for the first time.

The execution started at 12:40 am. Wells was given the chance to speak, but he made no final statement. He was injected with a lethal cocktail of chemicals and pronounced dead at 12:50 am, becoming Idaho’s first execution since 1957 and the state’s first by lethal injection.