This Man Confessed To His Brutal Crimes … And They Still Call Him ‘Innocent’

On August 11, 1998, a lifelong criminal named Marcellus Williams was looking for a house to rob in a gated community in University City, Missouri.

By that point, Williams already had several prior criminal convictions, including for robbery and burglary. He shouldn’t have been on the streets at all, but apparently a judge let him out of jail so that he could commit more crimes and victimize more people. And that’s exactly why he was in University City on August 11.

When Marcellus Williams knocked on the door of a home owned by a 42-year-old journalist named Felicia Gayle, no one answered. So Williams broke a window and let himself in. After he noticed that someone on the second floor was taking a shower, Williams went downstairs to the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, and waited. When Gayle emerged from the shower, Marcellus Williams stabbed her 43 times, including seven separate fatal wounds. He then stole Gayle’s purse and her husband’s laptop before leaving the house to pick up his girlfriend.

Immediately, his girlfriend noticed something was wrong. Williams’ shirt was bloody. His neck was scratched. Inexplicably, there was also a new laptop in his car. The next day, Williams’ girlfriend noticed a purse in the trunk that contained Felicia Gayle’s identification card. When she confronted Williams about this, he admitted that he had just murdered a woman. He threatened to kill his girlfriend if she went to the police.

Then, a few months later, Williams was incarcerated for an unrelated crime. (This is the theme in his life, after all; he’s constantly in prison because he’s constantly committing serious crimes). In this particular instance, when Williams was in jail, promptly bragged to another inmate that he had murdered Felicia Gayle, and provided non-public information about the killing. When that inmate got out of jail, he went to the police department and told them what he had heard. During their investigation, detectives spoke to Williams’ girlfriend, who confirmed that he had confessed to the murder. The police also found several items belonging to the victim in the Buick that Williams was driving, as well as the stolen laptop belonging to the victim’s husband.

On these facts, Williams was convicted by a jury and sentenced to death. On appeal, Williams’ attorneys raised several objections, most of which were technical in nature. But there were a couple of claims that related to his guilt or innocence. Specifically, Williams said that the jury should have been given the opportunity to determine that he was a mere accomplice to the murders, as opposed to the actual killer. That’s because, according to the defense, “several unidentified hairs and shoe prints were found at the murder scene.” Additionally, Williams’ girlfriend was supposedly “seen with a laptop computer” after Williams was incarcerated.

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But these arguments weren’t convincing to the Supreme Court of Missouri. For one thing, there was evidence showing that “several workmen” and “hundreds of guests” had been inside the home in the months prior to the murder, so you’d expect to have some unidentified shoe prints and hairs lying around. Additionally, Williams told both his girlfriend and the inmate that he was alone when he committed the murders. And finally, there was no evidence that Williams’ girlfriend possessed the same laptop computer that was stolen from the murder scene. She just had a laptop — any laptop.

If you tune into any mainstream media coverage of the Williams case, you won’t hear any of the details I just outlined — all of which are undisputed, and come directly from the Supreme Court of Missouri. You won’t hear news anchors recount all of the ways in which it’s clear that Marcellus Williams is extremely guilty of murder. Instead, you’ll find emotional segments like this one, which just aired on CNN:

Putting aside the melodrama for a moment — If we’re being honest, that segment is a little surprising. It’s your last meal, and you can request anything you want — and you choose tater tots instead of curly fries? Unfortunately, the rest of the CNN segment doesn’t explain this questionable decision, as confusing as it obviously is. Instead, the anchor focuses on reinforcing the current BLM narrative that Marcellus Williams’ execution was unjust. To that end, she talks about how “prosecutors” and “the victim’s family” didn’t want to see Williams killed. She implies he might even be innocent. And she barely even mentions the woman who was brutally stabbed 43 times in her own kitchen, or the mountain of damning evidence in the case.

Let’s take both of those claims in turn. First of all, the “prosecutor” that the CNN anchor is referring to is a “restorative justice” activist named Wesley Bell. Bell was not the original prosecutor on the case, which was tried more than 20 years ago. He parachuted in at the last moment, in defiance of the state’s attorney general, to try to delay Williams’ execution. Earlier this year, Bell claimed in court filings that DNA evidence might exonerate Williams.

Specifically, there was supposedly unknown DNA on the murder weapon. 

But that claim fell apart in recent weeks. According to the Missouri judicial branch, attorneys, “received a report indicating the DNA on the murder weapon belonged to an assistant prosecuting attorney and an investigator who had handled the murder weapon without gloves prior to trial.” So there was no unknown DNA on the murder weapon after all.

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This month, a court in Missouri looked into what exactly happened with the handling of this murder weapon. They determined that, back in 2001, it was normal practice for detectives in St. Louis to handle evidence, without wearing gloves, after the crime lab had processed the item and determined there was no useful DNA or fingerprint evidence on it. And in this case, because the killer wore gloves, there was no usable evidence on the knife. So the detective and the prosecutor repeatedly handled the knife, as part of trial preparation. Nothing about that, in any way, suggests that the knife was “tampered with,” or that there might have been another killer. So the court upheld the conviction.

As the state attorney general put it:

One of the defense’s own experts previously testified he could not rule out the possibility that Williams’s DNA was also on the knife. He could only testify to the fact that enough actors had handled the knife throughout the legal process that others’ DNA was present.

That attorney general emphasized that the other available evidence was very clear:

The victim’s personal items were found in Williams’s car after the murder. A witness testified that Williams had sold the victim’s laptop to him. Williams confessed to his girlfriend and an inmate in the St. Louis City Jail, and William’s girlfriend saw him dispose of the bloody clothes worn during the murder.

This is overwhelming evidence, obviously. And if you read between the lines, even this new prosecutor concedes that. In recent court filings — and in his interview with CNN — the prosecutor didn’t even claim that Williams was necessarily innocent. Instead, he pointed to alleged defects in how the trial was conducted, including jury selection. Here’s part of the prosecutors’ interview with CNN:

It’s an incredible moment. They’re both claiming that Marcellus Williams was executed too hastily — more than 25 years after he killed a woman in her own kitchen. That’s too fast, apparently. We just need another 25 years to really investigate this case, and see if we can find some new information. Maybe some new witnesses will turn up. Maybe we’ll find new surveillance footage. Who knows? Apparently the point is, even after you’re convicted, you get 50 more years to prove you’re really innocent. At least, that’s what you get if BLM and the corporate press think they can turn you into a martyr. If you’re a white guy on death row, then no one really cares. You’ll notice that the only condemned criminals anyone ever cries over are black. Plenty of white guys get put to death, too, but they never become a trendy cause for the media and activists. I wonder why?

The other argument that they’re using is that people connected to the victim supposedly don’t want this man to be executed. Again, this isn’t a claim that’s related to whether Williams killed someone or not. It’s an argument about what the family wants. But if you look closer into this claim, it falls apart as well. Here’s part of a letter written last month by Laura Friedman, who’s now married to the victim’s former husband:

After 26 years of competing court filings, secret commissions, TV news alerts and front-page headlines, my husband’s personal pain is once again the subject of public discussion and debate. … This is now the fifth time this family tragedy has been revisited, relitigated and reappeared in the press. We are exhausted and exasperated. … Whether the death penalty is deserved in a case like this is a matter for debate. Williams’ guilt is not.

Notice what’s actually going on here. Laura Friedman emphatically says that Marcellus Williams is guilty. The media just ignores that part. She also says that she just wants this case to be over, so that the family can get some closure. They’re clearly tired of how activists have dragged this case out for more than 25 years. The media ignores that part, too. Instead, the story from the mainstream media is that the family and loved ones close to the victim supposedly don’t want the death penalty.

These are the lies that are underpinning the latest attempt by race hustlers to manufacture another George Floyd scenario.

For example, Henry Rogers, a.k.a. Ibram X. Kendi, wrote:

Tonight, Missouri lynched Marcellus Williams. DNA evidence proved he was innocent. It didn’t matter. Because the United States is a serial killer of Black people.” For her part, Cori Bush — who just lost her primary to Wesley Bell — also called Williams “innocent” and said his death was “depraved.

The NAACP had a similar message:

Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man. Governor Parson had the responsibility to save this innocent life, and he didn’t. The NAACP was founded in 1909 in response to the barbaric lynching of Black people in America — we were founded exactly because of people like Governor Parson who perpetuate violence against innocent Black people.

There are a lot more statements like this, from every BLM activist and race hustler you’d expect. Mainstream media organizations are saying much the same thing. They’re claiming that there’s no difference between executing a man convicted of a brutal homicide — and who clearly did commit that brutal homicide — and lynching a random black person who’s done nothing wrong. If these people had any degree of intelligence or integrity whatsoever, they’d recognize how degrading that is to black people who haven’t committed any crimes. They’re being equated with a career felon who killed a woman for no reason.

The only lesson we can draw from this is that the NAACP, Henry Rogers, and corporate media don’t believe that black people should get the death penalty when they murder a white person. They probably don’t think any punishment is appropriate, frankly, based on how they’re lying about the death of Felicia Gayle. We are witnessing crass race hatred spilling out into the open.

We all know that, if Marcellus Williams were white, or if his victim had been black, then there wouldn’t be any outrage whatsoever. This is the clearest imaginable example of a manufactured racial narrative, and of course it’s happening in an election year.

And it’s riling up all the lunatics you’d expect. In one post that has hundreds of thousands of views on X, an activist wrote: 

The murder of Marcellus Williams is connected to the murder of the people of Palestine and the people in Haiti and the people in Lebanon and the people in … Let your grief move you to see this as part of one state approved project.

Yes, Marcellus Williams is “connected” to the “people of Palestine” and the “people of Haiti and Lebanon.” As deranged as this post is, it does have a shred of honesty in it. The truth is that no one campaigning on behalf of Williams actually thinks he’s innocent. If a woman is brutally murdered and you confess to the crime to multiple people, giving them details that you wouldn’t have known unless you’d been there — and you are found with the victim’s property in your car — then you’re guilty. Period. It is basically impossible to even conceive of a scenario where all of that could happen and yet you’d still be innocent. That’s because Williams is guilty. He did it. He brutally butchered an innocent woman. He deserves to die for what he did. It’s that simple.

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But none of the activists really care about the facts of his case, or even about Williams himself. These, after all, are not empathetic people. These are not people who value human life. Millions of human children have been killed by abortion in this country and these people not only don’t care about that, but celebrate it. They apparently feel infinitely more sympathy for a convicted murderer who stabbed a woman 40 times than they do for 60 million dead children combined. How could anyone’s heart be that twisted? How could their sympathies be so wildly, psychotically misdirected? Well, because they actually have no sympathy at all for anyone. It’s all a show. It’s an act.

This is about a much larger effort to undermine and ultimately destroy the rule of law in the United States. And this effort is being undertaken by people who care far more about Haiti and Lebanon than they care about this country. That’s why they’re trivializing the murder of this young white journalist in Missouri. It’s why they’re mocking her family and pretending her killer is innocent. Only the most dysfunctional hellholes on the planet have explicit, distinct standards of justice depending on the skin color of the assailant and the skin color of the victim. And after this surreal and delusional effort to absolve Marcellus Williams, it’s clear that we’re much closer to becoming one of those hellholes than we might like to admit.