Missouri executes man for murdering woman in 1998, despite pleas from victim's family to spare his life

A Missouri man was executed Tuesday for breaking into a woman's home and killing her, despite demands from her family and the prosecutor who put him on death row that he spend the rest of his life in prison.

Williams convicted of murder

Williams was convicted in 1998 of stabbing Lisha Gayle to death during a break-in at her suburban St. Louis home.

Prosecutors in Williams' case said he broke into her home on August 11, 1998, heard the shower running and found a large butcher knife. Gayle was stabbed 43 times as she came down the stairs. Her purse and her husband's laptop were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to hide blood on his shirt. His girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. She said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.

Attempts to commute the sentence

Williams maintained his innocence and hoped to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. But he suffered a double setback on Monday when Republican Governor Mike Parson denied him a clemency request at almost the same time and the Missouri Supreme Court refused to grant him a stay of execution. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene on Tuesday.

In his plea for clemency, he focused on Gayle's relatives' request to commute Williams' sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

“The family defines closure as the life of Marcellus,” the petition states. “Marcellus' execution is not necessary.”

Prosecutors also relied on testimony from Henry Cole, who was in a cell with Williams in 1999 when he was incarcerated on other charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the murder and provided details about it.

Williams' lawyers responded that both the girlfriend and Cole had been convicted of serious crimes and asked for a $10,000 reward. They said fingerprints, a bloody shoe print, hair and other evidence at the crime scene did not match Williams'.

Questions about DNA evidence also prompted St. Louis District Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing to challenge Williams' guilt. But days before the August 21 hearing, New tests showed that the DNA on the knife belonged to employees of the public prosecutor's office who, according to initial examinations in the crime laboratory, had handled the knife without gloves.