JPA thinks I'm deleting a detached object

I suspect that you are running your code outside a transaction so your find and delete operations occur in a separate persistence context and the find actually returns a detached instance (so JPA is right and you ARE deleting a detached object).

Wrap your find / delete sequence inside a transaction.

Update: Below an excerpt of the chapter 7.3.1. Transaction Persistence Context:

If you use an EntityManager with a transaction persistence context model outside of an active transaction, each method invocation creates a new persistence context, performs the method action, and ends the persistence context. For example, consider using the EntityManager.find method outside of a transaction. The EntityManager will create a temporary persistence context, perform the find operation, end the persistence context, and return the detached result object to you. A second call with the same id will return a second detached object.

public void remove(Object obj){
    em.remove(em.merge(obj));
}

The above code is similar to that proposed by zawhtut

+1 to Pascal Thivent's post and just a followup.

    @Transactional
    public void remove(long purchaseId){
        Purchase attached = jpaTemplate.find(Purchase.class,purchaseId);
        jpaTemplate.remove(attached);
    }