Family of Missouri woman murdered in home 'exasperated' as execution approaches

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

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

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

That night, in a killing that court documents say "stunned the community," Gayle was found brutally murdered in her home.

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

USA TODAY is looking Gayle's life and death as the execution fast approaches to remember who she was and what her loved ones lost.

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What happened to Lisha Gayle?

Gayle was in the shower the morning the killer broke into the couple's University City home using the front door, court document show.

Wearing her long purple T-shirt, Gayle left second floor bathroom and was walking downstairs when she encountered her killer on the stairway 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 night and called 911. He declined to be interviewed for this story.

Not long after the killing, Gayle's family announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer. A jailhouse inmate named Henry Lee Cole and Williams' girlfriend, Lara Asaro, soon said Williams was the culprit.

Cole, who court records say was addicted to drugs, said Williams confessed to him when they were imprisoned together (Williams was in for an unrelated 1998 doughnut shop robbery). Asaro, who was known as a sex worker also addicted to drugs, testified that Williams admitted he killed Gayle.

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

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

The kind of person 'you believe you cannot do without'

Born to G.W. and Veronica Gayle in February 1956, Gayle began her early years 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 calm, curious, observant, and fun-loving."

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

"Anything else she became involved with always stood her head and shoulders above the crowd," Kerch wrote in an Aug. 21, 2021 piece in the Chicago Tribune. "Of all her gifts, it was Lisha’s ability to act as a conduit for friendship that most impressed me. She was like a central switching system on the telephone company of life, providing the long-distance connections for old pals needing information and updates."

In short, she was "the kind of person you believe you cannot do without, even if you hadn’t spoken in several years," Kerch wrote.

Lisha Gayle 'saw the good in people'

Gayle got a journalism degree at University of Illinois, married Picus and started work as a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1981, where she stayed for more than a decade.

"She loved writing," Watson, now 68, recalled. "She loved her job writing articles on the police beat for the St. Louis Post Dispatch. She loved her husband, Dan, and his work. She loved her family back 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 penned to another reporter before her death, the outlet reported, she once wrote: "Evil likes to sniff out a person's weakness, and attack there."

An active mentor and tutor for disabled children, she enjoyed studying history and genealogy, and eventually left the newspaper to start a career in social work. She was survived by seven brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews and a family that she adored, according to her obituary.

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

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

'A grieving family still waits'

Surviving loved ones say they yearn for closure in the 26-year-old murder case.

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

In the opinion piece, Friedman wrote that Gayle's family was “exasperated and exhausted” by the ongoing court fight.

Friedman said the case has gone on so long, "forcing the family to relive the worst days of their lives and denying them the closure they deserve.”

"For us it is deeply and painfully personal," Friedman closed the piece. "Now, more than a quarter of a century later ... a grieving family still waits."

Marcellus Williams set to be executed

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

If the execution moves forward, Williams would become the third inmate executed in Missouri this year and the 15th or 16th in the nation, depending on whether he's declared dead before or after Travis James Mullis, another inmate set for execution in Texas on the same day. 

Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on X @nataliealund.