Pursuit of Proof: Evidence mounts in Lawless case

On the night Mischelle Lawless was killed in 1992 along Interstate 55 near Benton, a man named Dallas Butler said he arrived at the murder scene, before police arrived.

He was riding his motorcycle, he said, toward his mother's house in Mississippi County, crossing over on Highway 77 when he saw a car pulled over on the northbound exit ramp near the overpass. He turned his motorcycle toward the car, illuminating the car with his headlight.

Butler, who now works at the state prison in Charleston, Missouri, saw a woman slumped over behind the wheel. "There was no movement at all," he told the Southeast Missourian recently.

Butler said a man wearing a red cap was standing outside the vehicle and reaching into the car where the woman was situated. "When I approached, he stood up. He said everything is fine," recalled Butler, who said he didn't know the man.

According to Butler, the woman appeared unconscious. He said he didn't see any sign at that time she had been shot.

Butler, who described himself as a baldheaded biker, said he was "worried" and felt uncomfortable when he stopped at the scene.

In the ensuing hours, Butler saw on the news a homicide had been reported at the exit. He went to the justice center in Benton, Missouri, and told a woman there what he had seen.

"I never heard another word until 2009," Butler recalled.

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Picked out of a lineup

In 2015, Butler picked Kevin Williams out of a lineup -- on two separate occasions -- as the man he saw at Lawless' car that night. This is one of two major developments in the case that implicate Williams. However, eyewitness identification is one of the most common reasons for wrongful convictions, and a jury would be justified in being skeptical of such an identification after such a long period of time. By the time he identified Williams, more than 20 years had passed since Lawless was murdered.

In fact, when reached by the Southeast Missourian in 2009, Butler was asked whether he thought he could identify the man. "If I had to rate myself on a scale of one to 10, I'd give myself a stout seven," Butler said at the time.

Six years after that interview, he did just that, and identified Williams as the man he saw at the exit ramp that night. He told the Southeast Missourian he is "99 percent" sure Williams is the man he saw that night.

Walter described a careful process by which he conducted the lineup.

Butler picked Williams out of two different photo lineups as the man he saw years earlier at the crime scene, Walter said.

Walter's team conducted one of the photo lineup exercises, and the other was conducted by an outside agency. Walter said Butler was shown several sheets with various photos, and several of those sheets did not contain Williams' photograph. Walter said he brought in another agency to independently verify the identification process. By comparison, when Mark Abbott -- now considered the second suspect -- initially picked Josh Kezer out of a lineup in 1992, an investigator with the Missouri State Highway Patrol had informed Abbott that their suspect in the murder was in the lineup, according to previous reporting. Kezer's photo was the only one emblazoned with the words "police department." Mark Abbott's identification provided the only evidence that Kezer was in Missouri when Lawless was killed. Kezer was exonerated in 2009 after imprisoned informants recanted their testimonies, and after investigators and attorneys discovered that the prosecution did not turn over evidence about a different suspect that would have been beneficial to Kezer's defense. The judge also determined that many statements made by the special prosecutor Kenny Hulshof were false or misleading.

Butler said Williams' identity was not disclosed to him, but he said he later learned the man was Williams from Gayla Mooney, Williams' ex-girlfriend. Mooney confirmed this interaction with the Southeast Missourian.

Butler said he was called to testify before a grand jury in 2017. Butler said he was on the stand for less than 30 minutes.

It is not known why none of the original investigators in the case from the sheriff's department contacted Butler.

Until 2015, Kevin Williams had an alibi.

It's unclear exactly when Williams became a suspect in the case. Former sheriff Bill Ferrell said in an interview recently that Williams and Abbott were among individuals looked at in the initial investigation. "I know that their names were brought up and they were checked out," Ferrell said.

In the mid-1990s, Williams, Mark Abbott and and twin brother Matt Abbott were known methamphetamine distributors in Southeast Missouri and were convicted of federal crimes in 1997, according to public records. The Southeast Missourian could not find any state records where Williams or Mark Abbott were arrested for drug charges at the time by local law enforcement. Walter said he knows that Williams at one point was working with the SEMO Drug Task Force as an informant. The federal indictments involving Williams and the Abbotts are sealed records.

Williams served five years in federal prison for his role in distributing meth from California, Walter said. The SEMO Drug Task Force often works with the federal Drug Enforcement Administration.

But despite being heavily involved with the Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force, Ferrell told the Southeast Missourian recently that at the time of the murder he was not aware Williams and Mark Abbott knew each other or were involved in drug trafficking. "I don't remember any connection that the two of them had at that time."

According to a document obtained by the Southeast Missourian that summarizes a deposition, Williams was interviewed by Kezer's defense attorney in September of 1993, several months before the murder trial. In it, attorney Al Lowes wrote that Williams was a "buddy of both of the Abbott boys." Mark and his brother Matt are twins.

Terri Williams, the ex-wife of Kevin Williams, told the Southeast Missourian that Kevin Williams was dealing methamphetamine.

Terri Williams said Kevin Williams became an informant for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration at one point because he was hoping to avoid prison time. He ended up being convicted in federal court in Cape Girardeau.

He was sentenced on May 14, 1996, to 121 months in prison, but served only about half of that after his sentence was reduced, according to federal court records. On April 17, 2000, Williams was placed on five-years supervised probation. On Nov. 6, 2003, he was discharged from supervised release upon the recommendation of his probation officer, court records show.

In Kezer's appeals, it was revealed that Mark Abbott, the other suspect in the case, implicated Williams in 1997, when Abbott was in custody on federal drug charges.

Mark Abbott is the same man who picked Kezer out of a lineup.

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Abbott statement

Abbott, who had given credible information in other cases while he was incarcerated at the time according to Walter, gave up Williams as a murder suspect to narcotics officer Bill Bohnert of the Cape Girardeau Police Department.

Bohnert interviewed Abbott in the Perry County Jail, where Abbott was hoping for leniency in his federal drug case.

Bohnert said Abbott told him that he saw his friend Williams commit the murder. According to Bohnert, Abbott said Kevin Williams had been having an affair with Lawless and she claimed she was pregnant with his child. (Tests proved Lawless was not pregnant.)

According to Bohnert's testimony, Abbott said Kevin Williams wanted to talk with her that night and try to calm her down, and he and Abbott followed her in her car. Abbott said he flashed his lights from behind and Lawless pulled over. According to Abbott's statement, she and Kevin Williams argued for a short time, then Abbott said he heard gunshots, Bohnert said. Kevin Williams took off on foot toward the Ferrell Mobile Home Sales lot, according to Bohnert's statement. Abbott said he reported the homicide and later swung back round to pick up Kevin Williams, Bohnert said.

In previous interviews with the Southeast Missourian, Abbott denied telling Bohnert this information in 1997.

Bohnert testified he gave the information to Missouri State Highway Patrol investigator Don Windham, a member of the Southeast Missouri Drug Task Force, at the urging of then Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle. In a recent interview, then-sheriff Bill Ferrell said he never received word of Bohnert's report. However, Windham told the Southeast Missourian he passed along the information to Ferrell. Bohnert said he was told they already had a conviction in the case and it would not be reopened.

Multiple witnesses have previously said that either Abbott or Williams have confided information to them about the murder.

Witness Ron Burton testified in court that he was on a fishing trip with Abbott when the subject of Abbott's testimony in the Kezer case came up. "Mark snickered and said, 'Well, they got the wrong guy in prison,'" Burton testified.

When Abbott went on to say he "took care" of Lawless, Burton, a longtime friend of the Lawless family, said he was in shock.

Another witness gave a statement saying he and his wife were in the car with Kevin Williams shortly after Kezer's conviction when the subject of the Lawless murder came up, according to previous reporting. When they drove past the Ferrell Mobile Homes lot, Kevin Williams allegedly told the witness that was where the incident started. He implicated Abbott, and said that Lawless, along with the trailer owner and another man, were there, the witness said. The same witness stated that Mark and his twin brother Matt Abbott had both dated Lawless. The Abbotts have said they never dated her.

Three witnesses testified that Kevin Williams told them that Abbott committed the murder, according to court documents. Another three witnesses, not including Bohnert, testified that Abbott stated or implied to them that Williams killed Lawless.

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Losing an alibi

But Williams has claimed since at least 1993 that he was at a party at the time of the murder. This was confirmed over time by his ex-wife, Terri Williams, even through Kezer's hearings.

But Terri Williams, who divorced Kevin in 2009 after 21 years of marriage, told the Southeast Missourian recently that she can no longer vouch for his whereabouts when Lawless was killed.

She said she now realizes that he left the party early that night and that she got a ride home from the party from Kevin's mother. Walter confirmed that Terri Williams gave a similar statement to the sheriff's department on June 16, 2015, according to his records. The record of this interview was included in the case file, Walter said.

"It flooded over me. I realized he was gone the entire time," Terri Williams recently told the Southeast Missourian.

Terri Williams said the morning following the murder, Mark Abbott came by the Williams' home in Commerce. They said they were going over to the Ferrell Mobile Homes dealership (no relationship to Bill Ferrell), near the murder scene.

"They were going down there to look for evidence, look for clues. What would be the point in going down there? Why? It made no sense to me whatsoever," Terri Williams said.

Walter said he had the detective meet with a psychology expert about how and why this memory of the night could change over the years, and that report was included in the file. Terri Williams told the Southeast Missourian that her ex-husband was violent, and that she feared for her safety during their relationship. Terri Williams also told the newspaper she was not called to testify before the grand jury. She did say, however, that investigators with the Scott County Sheriff's Department interviewed her for nearly five hours in 2017, several months after the grand jury, about why she changed her story.

Two months after Terri Williams initially shared this information with the sheriff's office, Butler picked Williams out of a lineup.

Kevin Williams told defense attorney Al Lowes in 1993, "He was at a party where he worked for a fellow by the name of Howell," according to the memo.

But witness Heather Pierce, according to a deposition in the case, said on the night of the murder that she met Mark Abbott at a Sikeston bar around 11 p.m. "I think he came with Kevin Williams," she said. "I don't know. They might have come separately. They were supposed to come together that night."

Heather Pierce went to the bar with her mother, Glenna Pierce, who also stated under oath that a man named Kevin was with Mark Abbott at the bar at the time he said he was at the party.

In 2008, Kevin Williams said in an interview with the Southeast Missourian he never made statements about the murder to anyone.

Mark Abbott has said neither he nor his brother Matt Abbott had ever met Lawless.

However, a close friend of Lawless told television journalist Erin Moriarity in a "48 Hours" episode that Lawless had met Mark Abbott and thought he was a "good looking guy."

The friend told Moriarity, "I told her, 'Mischelle, you know, don't mess with either one of the Abbott boys, you know better than that.'"

Walter told the Southeast Missourian that another witness has told him that Mark Abbott had dated Lawless.

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Too busy to talk

When reached recently by phone at his excavation business, Kevin Williams said he was too busy to talk to a reporter, and deferred queries to his attorney. When his wife was reached by phone earlier, she threatened to file a lawsuit if the newspaper published anything about her husband. The newspaper sent specific questions to Williams's email address, which he did not answer.

"As my client and his wife have repeatedly advised you ... they do not wish to discuss anything with you or answer any questions regarding the Lawless case," lawyer John A. Clark wrote in an emailed statement. "My client has cooperated with law enforcement at every turn through the years, giving statements, providing DNA and answering questions over and over again. When they were again contacted recently by law enforcement they advised (as I did as well) that they will not continue to answer questions or submit to further questioning. Likewise they will not answer your questions. They have no new information. They have answered all of law enforcement questions and have no new information.

"We realize that there are a lot of statements being made by many people that you ask about. My clients have no control over what rumors people want to spread or malicious lies people want to speak. They choose not to respond to them any longer.

"Please be advised that should you decide to run any articles regarding my clients that they will be scrutinized very carefully to be sure your newspaper does not make any slanderous or libelous statements regarding my clients," Clark wrote.

A reporter reached a woman at a phone number listed for Mark Abbott. The woman indicated she knew Mark Abbott and said she would pass along a message that the newspaper wanted to speak with him, but he did not return the phone call. A message was also left for him on Facebook with no response.

Editor's note: The Southeast Missourian learned after this article published that Mark Abbott is in prison for a probation violation dating back to his 1997 meth distribution case.

Coming Friday: Did former sheriff Bill Ferrell meddle in then sheriff Rick Walter's murder investigation? Was he friends with one of the suspects?

HOW IT WAS REPORTED:

The Southeast Missourian began asking questions about updates in the Lawless case in 2017, starting with the current prosecutor, Paul Boyd, who would not release information regarding probable-cause affidavits or other materials passed from former sheriff Rick Walter due to it being an "ongoing investigation." In 2017, KFVS-12 first reported that a grand jury was held, and that one of the experts had not been called to the grand jury. The Southeast Missourian reached out to Walter about updates, but he declined to comment on specifics about the grand jury. The Southeast Missourian independently interviewed witnesses in the case who were said to have had information that had not previously been reported. Those sources talked to the newspaper on the record. Walter then provided further details for context and clarity, and spoke candidly about his opinions on the case. The Southeast Missourian also reviewed court documents, including depositions from the original trial, the original trial transcript and Kezer's exoneration ruling, as well as the newspaper's previous reporting, which included statements from Kevin Williams and Mark Abbott. All told, the Southeast Missourian spoke to 14 sources for this story, not including witnesses' testimonies from court documents.

mbliss@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3641

bmiller@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3625