(Updated to show who appoints the current Prisoner Review Board)
They’re three people who you probably haven’t heard of – until now.
They’re the members of the state’s Prisoner Review Board who drew rebukes from law enforcement when news of its decision to parole the murderer of a Highway Patrol trooper emerged Thursday.
“To the Prisoner Review Board, Mark Keating, Jeannie Wark, and CJ Perez: Please understand we will never forget your disgraceful and disgusting actions,” the Kansas State Troopers Association said in condemning the board’s decision.
“We hope you feel profound shame from this day forward whenever you see a young Kansas State Trooper on the side of the road protecting our community.
“Despite what your self-aggrandizing online profiles say, public servants you are not,” the troopers association said.
Keating, Wark and Perez – three veteran corrections officials who make up the Prisoner Review Board – came under fire this week after news surfaced that they paroled Jimmie Nelms, who was convicted of murdering a Highway Patrol trooper in 1978.
The three members have more than 80 years of corrections experience in Kansas and nationally combined. Two of them have been on the board for at least nine years.
Highway Patrol Superintendent Erik Smith called the news of Nelms getting paroled a “gut punch,” saying there was “no conceivable world in which the release of a convicted cop killer – an executioner – is acceptable.”
On May 24, 1978, Nelms fatally shot Trooper Conroy O’Brien during a traffic stop on the Kansas Turnpike near Matfield Green.
Nelms was convicted and sentenced to two life terms for first-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping, and six to 20 years for unlawful possession of a firearm.
“Unfathomably, the Kansas Prisoner Review Board just betrayed Conroy’s family and friends, his community, and anyone who ever has or ever will wear the badge of a Kansas State Trooper,” the troopers association said.
The Kansas Prisoner Review Board made the decision to parole to Nelms several weeks after his March 6 hearing. A release date has not been determined.
The Corrections Department’s website shows that Nelms, 78, is now jailed at the Winfield Correction Facility and is currently working in a job.
An agency spokesperson said Nelms is housed within a medium-security geriatric unit that is fenced with razor wire on the compounds of Winfield Correctional Facility.
He works as a porter in laundry.
“The Kansas Prisoner Review Board believes that Mr. Nelms is able and willing to fulfill the obligations of a law-abiding citizen and is of the opinion that there is reasonable probability that Mr. Nelms can be released without detriment to the community or to himself.”
Nelms was last disciplined for disobeying orders in 2017 at the El Dorado Correctional Facility, and he was disciplined for using stimulants in 2001 at the Hutchinson Correctional Facility, according to the Corrections Department’s website.
Nevertheless, the decision was criticized early Friday by Senate President Ty Masterson, who joined law enforcement in condemning the decision.
“Granting parole to a cop killer who received multiple life sentences for the brutal murder of a law enforcement officer is unconscionable and wrong,” Masterson said Friday.
House Speaker Dan Hawkins was similarly outraged.
“I’m shocked and cannot more strongly condemn the parole of this cold-blooded cop killer,” Hawkins said in a statement.
“Upon hearing the gut-wrenching details of the murder, I’m disgusted by the Parole Board’s
blatant disrespect not only to the rule of law and those who sacrifice to uphold it, but also
to the memory of fallen officer Conroy O’Brien and his loved ones.’
The board was created in 2011 when former Gov. Sam Brownback issued an executive reorganization order that abolished the Kansas Parole Board.
The Senate came up a vote short in 2011 of rejecting the governor’s reorganization order.
The governor does not have the power to reverse the board’s action. The board is appointed by the corrections secretary and serves at the secretary’s pleasure.
The old parole board was appointed by the governor, with the advice and consent of the Kansas Senate.
The board is chaired by Mark Keating, who was appointed to serve as chair in September 2024. He has 32 years’ experience in the field of corrections and criminal justice.
Keating was appointed as a member of the Prisoner Review Board in January 2016 by
then-Corrections Secretary Ray Roberts and has served in that role until his current
appointment.
Keating began his career in corrections in March 1992 as a parole officer for the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice in Dallas, specializing in sex offender supervision and
the revocation process.
In 1997, he was promoted to hearing officer for the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, serving as administrative law judge in conducting administrative release preliminary and revocation hearings.
In Kansas, he worked as a parole officer in the Kansas City Parole Office. He worked at all levels of parole before accepting the position as director of sex offender management in the Corrections Department’s central office in 2005.
He earned a bachelor’s in sociology from Baylor University and a master’s in
criminology from Indiana State University.
Another member is Jeannie Wark, who has served in the criminal justice system for 34 years. She began her career with the state Corrections Department in 1991 at Ellsworth
Correctional Facility as a corrections counselor.
In 1993, she transferred to the agency’s Community and Field Services Division to work as a parole officer in the Kansas City and Lawrence parole offices.
Wark was promoted to parole supervisor in the Topeka Parole Office in 2005. In 2012, she was promoted to parole services specialist in the KDOC’s Central Office. Wark joined the
Kansas Prisoner Review Board in January 2015.
She earned bachelor’s in sociology and gerontology from Kansas State University.
A third members of the board, CJ Perez, has been employed by the Kansas Department of
Corrections since 2000 and has more than 24 years of experience in the corrections and criminal justice field.
She started her career in May of 2000 at the Larned State Correctional Facility as a corrections officer.
She has held several positions within the agency, including work as corrections counselor where she worked with a specialized resident population focusing on goal setting to attain a successful reintegration back into a general population setting.
In 2013, Perez transferred to the Corrections Department’s central office as a prison rape elimination act (program consultant, followed by work as the statewide contract jail manager, staff development trainer and most recently as the Prisoner Review Board administrator for the past six years.
Perez earned a bachelor’s in criminal justice studies and political science from Fort Hays State University.
