August execution date set for Missouri inmate

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Supreme Court has set an execution date for this summer for a man sentenced to death for the 1998 fatal stabbing of a former newspaper reporter during a burglary.

The state’s high court Wednesday scheduled Marcellus Williams to be executed Aug. 22 by injection for the slaying of Lisha Gayle.

Williams was burglarizing Gayle’s University City home when he discovered Gayle was in the shower. He took a knife from the kitchen and attacked her when she came downstairs, stabbing her more than 20 times before stealing a laptop computer and other items.

Gayle was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 11 years before leaving the paper in 1992.