Marcellus Williams

Felicia Gayle Picus (known as Lisha) was a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who was found stabbed to death in her St. Louis, Missouri home.

Gayle, 42 years old at the time, was murdered during a burglary in her gated community home located in the University City suburb of St Louis, Missouri on August 11, 1998. She was stabbed between 10 times and 43 times with a butcher's knife.

Police arrested Marcellus Williams for the crime based on a jailhouse confession to fellow inmate Henry Cole, and testimony of his former girlfriend Lara Asaro for which $10000 was paid. No physical evidence connects Williams to the murder, although the police found some of Gayle's possessions, including her husband's laptop, in the car Williams drove that day. In December 2016 fresh doubts about the conviction were raised with the results of DNA testing. On August 15, 2017 the Supreme Court of Missouri summarily denied him a new execution stay, despite recently obtained results of that testing that support his innocence claim.

Williams was sentenced to death in 2001 by St. Louis County Circuit Judge Emmett M. O’Brien. He is held at Potosi Correctional Center and was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on 22 August 2017. A last minute stay of execution was issued by Governor Eric Greitens and a Board of Inquiry was initiated, it is not known what powers the Board will have.

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