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    • Family of murdered Missouri woman ‘outraged’ as execution nears
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    Family of murdered Missouri woman ‘outraged’ as execution nears

    Vaseline Posted on

    Lisha Gayle’s family say the case is “deeply and painfully personal” and that “a grieving family continues to wait” for justice. The man convicted of Gayle’s murder is set to be executed on Tuesday.

    On weekday mornings, former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle would usually go for a run after her husband left for work.

    When she returned to her home in a gated community in the northwest suburb of St. Louis, the 42-year-old woman showered and put on her favorite long purple T-shirt.

    Gayle was in the middle of her daily routine and wearing her usual running gear when she stopped by to share bananas and chat with her neighbors on the morning of August 11, 1998. They would never see her alive again.

    That night, Gayle was found brutally murdered in her home, a killing that “stunned the community,” according to court documents.

    A man named Marcellus Williams was later charged and convicted of Gayle’s murder. Now Williams, 55, is set to be executed in Missouri on Tuesday, while Gayle’s “grieving family continues to wait” for the 26-year-old murder case to end, and former schoolmates and colleagues remember her as a “once-in-a-lifetime friend.”

    USA TODAY is examining Gayle’s life and death as her execution approaches, as they remember who she was and what her loved ones lost.

    US to execute 5 men in 6 days: A look at the death penalty

    What happened to Lisha Gayle?

    Court documents show that Gayle was in the shower the morning the killer broke into the couple’s University City home through the front door.

    Gayle was wearing her long purple T-shirt and left the second floor bathroom. She was walking downstairs when she encountered her killer on the landing. At some point, the killer grabbed a kitchen knife, stabbed her 43 times and fled with her purse and Picus’ laptop.

    Gayle’s husband, Daniel Picus, found his wife’s body in the hallway later that night and called 911, but he declined to be interviewed for this story.

    Not long after the murder, Gayle’s family announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. An inmate named Henry Lee Cole and Williams’ girlfriend, Lara Asaro, quickly said Williams was the perpetrator.

    Cole, who was addicted to drugs, according to court documents, said Williams confessed to it to him while they were in prison together (Williams was serving time for an unrelated 1998 doughnut shop robbery). Asaro, who was a known sex worker who also had a drug addiction, testified that Williams admitted to killing Gayle.

    Williams was convicted and sentenced to death. He has always maintained his innocence, a prosecutor in the case says the execution should be stopped, and no DNA evidence links Williams to the crime scene.

    Cole and Asaro have both since died. Defense attorneys have argued that both informants benefited from their cooperation with prosecutors, and that their stories sometimes changed or conflicted with other details about the murder.

    The kind of person you think you can’t live without

    Gayle was born in February 1956 to GW and Veronica Gayle. Her childhood began in Rockford, a city about 300 miles northeast of Illinois.

    “She was a once-in-a-lifetime friend,” Nancy Watson, who grew up with Gayle after meeting her in the sixth grade, told USA TODAY. “She was calm, curious, observant and fun-loving.”

    Classmate Steve Kerch, who shared the stage with Gayle at their 1974 Guilford High School graduation ceremony, said he and Gayle were drawn to many of the same activities, including student council, theater and the National Honor Society.

    “Whatever she was involved in, she always stood head and shoulders above the rest,” Kerch wrote in an Aug. 21, 2021, article in the Chicago Tribune. “Of all her gifts, it was Lisha’s ability to serve as a conduit for friendship that impressed me most. She was like a central switching system in the telephone company of life, providing long-distance connections for old friends who needed information and updates.”

    In short, she was “the kind of person you feel you can’t miss, even if you haven’t spoken to her in years,” Kerch wrote.

    Lisha Gayle ‘saw the good in people’

    Gayle earned her journalism degree from the University of Illinois, married Picus, and began reporting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1981, where she remained for more than a decade.

    “She loved writing,” Watson, now 68, recalled. “She loved her job writing articles about police for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She loved her husband, Dan, and his work. She loved her family in Rockford, where we grew up.”

    Family members and friends, the Post-Dispatch reported in 1998, said that “as a reporter and advocate, Gayle was often strikingly sensitive to others and often saw the good in people.”

    According to the outlet, she wrote in a letter to another reporter shortly before her death: “Evil loves to find a person’s weaknesses and attack them.”

    She was an active mentor and tutor to disabled children, enjoyed studying history and genealogy, and eventually left the newspaper to pursue a career in social work. She was survived by seven siblings, nieces and nephews, and a family she adored, according to her obituary.

    According to friends, more than 700 people attended her memorial service at Rockford College.

    “We were close until she passed away,” Watson said. “I still grieve for her.”

    ‘A grieving family still waits’

    Relatives say they long for closure in the 26-year-old murder case.

    “Whether the death penalty is deserved in a case like this is a matter of debate. His guilt is not,” wrote Laura Friedman of Clayton in an Aug. 14 letter posted by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Friedman is now married to Picus.

    Friedman wrote in the op-ed that Gayle’s family was “exasperated and exhausted” by the ongoing litigation.

    Friedman said the case has gone on for so long that “the family is being forced to relive the worst days of their lives and is being denied the closure they deserve.”

    “For us, it is deeply and painfully personal,” Friedman concluded the piece. “Now, more than a quarter century later … there is still a grieving family waiting.”

    Marcellus Williams is about to be executed

    Williams is scheduled to die by lethal injection Tuesday at the state prison in Bonne Terre, about 60 miles southwest of St. Louis.

    If the execution goes ahead, Williams will become the third inmate executed in Missouri this year, and the 15th or 16th in the country, depending on whether he is declared dead before or after Travis James Mullis, another inmate scheduled to be executed in Texas on the same day.

    Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her at X @nataliealund.

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