A trans-identified male serving a 22-year sentence for the violent murder of his own mother was quietly transferred into a minimum-security Illinois women’s prison with a mother-baby unit. John Wesley Finnegan began calling himself “Hannah Dagny” in 2014, approximately five years into his prison term, and was transferred to Decatur Correctional Center within the past five years.
Finnegan pleaded guilty but mentally ill to strangling his mother in 2008. After entering his plea to first-degree murder, the then 20-year-old Finnegan was sentenced to 22 years in prison.
Prosecutors said 43-year-old Mary Finnegan was found dead at her home on Friday, July 24, 2008. Her other son, David, found her body, which had been stripped naked and wrapped in bed sheets. The murder had occurred sometime the day before when John Finnegan entered his mother’s room, found her sleeping, and “swiftly killed her emotionlessly,” according to Peoria County State’s Attorney Kevin Lyons. Lyons told the court he was quoting from a statement Finnegan gave to law enforcement.
Lyons noted that Finnegan claimed to have been in a “peculiar” incestuous sexual relationship with his mother that had been ongoing for about four years, and that Finnegan told investigators he had had intercourse with his mother the day before he killed her.
When confessing to the murder, Finnegan reportedly told police that he sexually abused his mother’s corpse before attempting to kill himself. After a failed suicide attempt, Finnegan left the house in his mother’s car and was arrested in Stark County on Sunday morning.
In 2020, Finnegan, then using the name Hannah Dagny, filed a legal complaint against the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) Director John Baldwin, along with several other prison wardens and officials and nearly a dozen anonymous “John Does.”
Finnegan accused prison officials of “systemic discrimination” by housing him in a men’s correctional center, a circumstance he described as placing him “in harm’s way.”
According to the complaint, Finnegan has been “on hormone therapy” since 2014. He describes himself as “fully developed” and having “noticeable breasts,” while claiming to have also been born with a male disorder of sexual development (DSD) which resulted in a “feminine bone structure and voice.”
The bulk of Finnegan’s complaint revolved around various instances of alleged abuse incurred as a result of being a “trans woman in a male facility.” Finnegan alleged that “being forced to grow a beard” caused him to have “intense thoughts of autocastration and suicide.” He also asserted that he had a “need to be transferred to a women’s prison, a need to have [his] feminine name used by the IDOC, and gender-affirming surgery and facial hair removal.”
Finnegan also revealed that he had been transferred to another prison, Lawrence Correctional Center (Law CC) as a result of “sexual misconduct” with another male inmate.
“Plaintiff [Finnegan] wears bras at all times and was wearing a bra upon arrival at Law CC,” reads the complaint. “Due to a disciplinary transfer for sexual misconduct with another inmate that was initially suspected of her being abused by that inmate, Plaintiff was immediately taken from the transfer bus to the segregation unit.”
Finnegan also has alleged that court records place him at “increased risk of sexual victimization,” by using his birth name and recording his sex as male. He also requested single-cell accommodations, and complained of feeling unsafe at being locked in a cell with “all male inmates she [sic] doesn’t pick as inmates.”
The convicted killer stated that he was raped anally by a male cellmate named Justin Colapietro while housed at Law CC. He repeatedly refers to Colapietro in the court document as “the Rapist” while referring to himself using feminine pronouns.
“Plaintiff is documented by IDOC records as highly likely to be victimized, designated vulnerable, feminine in appearance, classified as transgender, etc, and should not be double-celled with any inmate, let alone an inmate twice her [sic] size who is a sex offender convicted of predatory assault,” Finnegan wrote.
Last year, attorneys for Chicago-based lawfirm Hughes Socol Piers Resnick & Dym, Ltd. (HSPRD), launched an online petition demanding clemency for Finnegan on the basis of his self-declared transgender status.
“Like so many women in Illinois prisons, Hannah is a criminalized survivor of sexual abuse,” reads the petition to Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. “In 2008, when Hannah was 20 years old and suffering from trauma-related mental illness, Hannah killed her mother. This terrible act occurred only because Hannah’s mother, who also suffered from mental illness, had sexually abused Hannah throughout her youth… Tragically, the system designed to protect Hannah could not keep her safe.”
Finnegan was first transferred to the women’s prison Logan Correctional Center (LCC) in 2021, according to the HSPRD website, but he is now located at Decatur, a women’s facility that currently houses female inmates with their babies. The Mom and Babies Pilot was launched at the institution in 2008 as a way for qualified mothers to keep their newborn babies with them for a specific amount of time to ensure proper bonding. It has continued due to the successes of the program.
While it is unclear when Finnegan was transferred to women’s facility Decatur, the move may have occurred at any time between 2021 and 2025. It was during this time that the IDOC was inundated with legal claims filed by American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois on behalf of several violent male convicts.
As previously reported by Reduxx, one of the first known male inmates to be transferred to a women’s prison in the state of Illinois is a convicted murderer who has been accused of raping a female inmate. Andre Cashmere Patterson, also known as Janiah Monroe, was first transferred from a men’s detention center to the Logan Correctional Center for women in April of 2019 as a result of litigation backed by the ACLU.
Patterson was transferred to a women’s correctional center two years before an official directive, Administrative Directive 04.03.104, which governs the management and placement of transgender offenders, became effective on April 1, 2021. This was made possible by a preliminary injunction filed by the ACLU, and granted by Chief Judge Nancy Rosenstengel in December 2019.
This administrative directive, which required the IDOC to make individualized housing decisions for self-described transgender inmates, was adopted in compliance with the preliminary injunction order issued as part of the ACLU-backed class-action lawsuit Monroe v. Meeks.
In June of 2019, just two months after being transferred into Logan, a woman who was made to share a housing unit with Monroe filed a Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) report alleging that he had raped her. Under the protection of anonymity, “Jane Doe” also accused prison officials of attempting to coerce her to lie about her ordeal, which she would later reveal the details of in a February 2020 lawsuit.
“The transfer of transgender inmates from male to female prisons has been a contentious policy within IDOC,” stated attorneys for the alleged victim. “In an attempt to justify the transfers … IDOC employees covered up the sexual assault of Plaintiff and tried to falsely classify it as consensual, to keep it from being considered a PREA violation.”
The lawsuit filed by the anonymous female inmate accused Monroe, who “identifies as female, but still has male genitalia” was moved into the plaintiff’s housing unit on June 18, 2019, and immediately began “express(ing) an interest” in Doe.
“Plaintiff was terrified of this inmate as the inmate was much bigger and stronger than Plaintiff,” the lawsuit stated. “Plaintiff had also heard that this inmate had assaulted prior cellmates and had been convicted of murder.”
🚨EXCLUSIVE🚨
— REDUXX (@reduxx) July 22, 2025
A violent transgender inmate is being housed at a women's correctional facility in Illinois despite still legally being male.
Kmuel Kevin King is serving an 80-year sentence for the brutal murder of his own mother.https://t.co/YN8Y7NG2zL
As a result of the IDOC’s implementation of “gender identity” policies, another man convicted of the brutal murder of his mother was transferred into a women’s prison in Illinois. Kmuel Kevin King is currently incarcerated at Logan Correctional Center (LCC), a facility for female inmates, despite being described as “male” within the state’s Department of Corrections records. King is serving an 80-year prison sentence for the cold-blooded murder of his mother.
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