Convicted drug offender Matthew Wilburn was drinking coffee in his room at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman when he alleges he witnessed another prisoner walk up and strike fellow inmate Richard Weems with a deadly blow on Sept. 26, 2022.
After describing the alleged murder days later to Ignite Justice Mississippi Chapter President Mitzi Magleby, the prisoner advocacy organization’s leader, the 45-year-old Wilburn divulged something more personal to her. He was dying of esophageal cancer.
“He had witnessed a murder in Parchman, and he was giving me his account of the murder, and then he mentioned to me that he was terminally ill,” Magleby told the Mississippi Free Press. “The doctor said he would be lucky to live till March (2023).”
Wilburn’s Journey to Mississippi
Before he later ended up in Parchman, Matthew Wilburn worked in Ashville, Ohio, where he was a welder with the New York-based RailWorks, a company that provides and services railroad infrastructure products.
The Mississippi Free Press confirmed Wilburn’s background details by examining documents from the Panola County Circuit Clerk’s office and through interviews with RailWorks, Magleby, and Wilburn’s brother, Hank Wilburn. Hank Wilburn is an official with the Ohio Adult Parole Authority.
Matthew Wilburn told Mitzi Magleby (pictured) that he was terminally ill in September 2022. She filed for his compassionate release soon after on Sept. 29, 2022, but he remained in prison until March 2023. Photo courtesy Mitzi Magleby
In 2018, Matthew Wilburn was on a work trip in Batesville, Miss., where he shared a hotel room with a colleague. On Oct. 19, 2018, police found drugs in the room: less than 30 grams of heroin and below 2 grams of cocaine.
“And the person he was training got caught with drugs and got him entangled in it because they were in the same hotel room. So he shouldn’t even be in prison,” Magleby told the Mississippi Free Press.
Nevertheless, a Panola County jury indicted Wilburn on three felony counts of conspiracy, heroin possession and cocaine possession with intent to distribute in March 2019.
Matthew Wilburn stayed at a hotel in Batesville, Miss,
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