Family of murdered Missouri woman ‘desperate’ over impending execution

On weekdays, former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter Lisha Gayle usually went for a morning 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 routine, wearing her usual running clothes, 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; according to court documents, the killing “shocked the community.”

A man named Marcellus Williams was later charged and convicted of Gayle's murder. Now Williams, 55, is scheduled to be executed in Missouri on Tuesday, while Gayle's “grieving family still waits” for the 26-year-old murder case to end and former schoolmates and colleagues remember her as a “one-time friend.”

As her execution fast approaches, USA TODAY looks at Gayle's life and death to remember who she was and what her loved ones lost.

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What happened to Lisha Gayle?

According to court documents, Gayle was in the shower the morning the killer broke into the couple's University City home through the front door.

Wearing her long purple t-shirt, Gayle left the second floor bathroom and walked down the stairs 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 foyer later that evening and called 911. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

Shortly after the murder, Gayle's family offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. A prison inmate named Henry Lee Cole and Williams' girlfriend Lara Asaro soon declared that Williams was the killer.

Cole, who court records say was a drug addict, said Williams confessed to him while they were in prison together (Williams was in prison for another doughnut shop robbery in 1998). Asaro, who was known to be a sex worker and also a drug addict, 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 has called for the execution to be thrown out, and there is no DNA evidence linking Williams to the crime scene.

Cole and Asaro have both since died. Defense attorneys argued that both informants benefited from their cooperation with prosecutors and that their statements sometimes changed or contradicted other details of the murder.

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

Gayle was born in February 1956 to GW and Veronica Gayle. She spent her childhood in Rockford, a city about 300 miles northeast in Illinois.

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

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

“In everything else she did, she was always head and shoulders above the crowd,” Kerch wrote in an August 21, 2021, article in the Chicago Tribune. “Of all her gifts, I was most impressed by Lisha's ability to act as a broker of friendships. She was like a central switchboard for the telephone company of life, providing long-distance connections for old friends who needed information and news.”

In short, she was “the kind of person you feel you can't get along without, even if you haven't spoken to her in several years,” Kerch wrote.

Lisha Gayle “saw the good in people”

Gayle graduated from the University of Illinois with a degree in journalism, married Picus, and began working as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1981, where she remained for more than a decade.

“She loved writing,” recalls Watson, now 68. “She loved her job writing police stories 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 remarkably sensitive to others and often saw the good in people.”

In a letter she wrote to another reporter before her death, the newspaper reported, she once wrote: “Evil likes to seek out a person's weaknesses and attack there.”

She was an active mentor and tutor of handicapped children, enjoyed studying history and genealogy, and eventually left the newspaper to pursue a career in social work. According to her obituary, she left behind seven brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews, and a family that adored her.

More than 700 people attended her memorial service at Rockford College, friends report.

“We were close until she died,” Watson said. “I still mourn her to this day.”

“A grieving family is still waiting”

Survivors 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. It is not his fault,” wrote Laura Friedman of Clayton in an Aug. 14 letter published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Friedman is now married to Picus.

In the commentary, Friedman wrote that Gayle's family was “desperate and exhausted” by the ongoing legal battle.

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

“For us, it is a deeply personal and painful matter,” Friedman concluded his article. “Now, more than a quarter century later… a grieving family is still waiting.”

Marcellus Williams to be executed

Williams is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection on Tuesday at Bonne Terre State Prison, about 60 miles southwest of St. Louis.

If the execution goes ahead, Williams would be 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, who is scheduled to be executed the same day in Texas.

Family of murdered Missouri woman ‘desperate’ over impending execution

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