Lewis appointed judge to handle Lawless murder case against Lamb

Ben Lewis, recently retired, has been assigned as the judge to oversee the Mischelle Lawless murder case against Leon Lamb.

The order came from the Missouri Supreme Court.

Lewis, 69, was a longtime judge in the 32nd Circuit Court that covers Cape Girardeau County.

Missouri law requires that all judges — other than municipal judges — retire at the age of 70, but they may continue working in a limited role as a senior judge.

Lewis graduated from Southeast Missouri State University in 1977, and earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1980. He served as judge in the 32nd Circuit Court for 20 years, retiring at the end of 2024.

Lewis presided over the Clay Waller and Timothy Krajcir murder cases, two of the most prominent criminal cases in the area. The current investigator in the Lawless case, David James, was largely involved in the Waller case when he worked for the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Office.

Lamb was indicted by a grand jury for the Lawless' murder. Lawless, a 19-year-old college nursing student, was killed Nov. 8, 1992. She was found shot three times inside her car less than a mile from her home on the Benton exit ramp on Interstate 55, though a blood trail revealed the crime began outside of the car and down an embankment.

Lamb was Lawless’ ex-boyfriend. The couple had dated for more than two years. They broke up in the summer of 1992, but continued seeing each other occasionally up until the murder. Friends of Lawless describe her as wanting to be in a monogamous relationship with Lamb, but Lamb wanted space and decided to end the relationship and see other people. Lawless, likewise, dated other people.

Lamb is the last person known to have seen Lawless alive. He has said under oath and in interviews that Lawless arrived at his house around midnight, when they had consensual sex. After that, he has said, Lawless left in a good mood after they said their good nights.

DNA was found under Lamb’s fingernails, which Lamb has explained as having occurred during sex. No investigative reports describe Lamb as having defensive wounds. No gunshot residue tests were ordered. Lamb passed a polygraph test after the murder.

It is not publicly known what new evidence the current investigation has uncovered on Lamb.

Special prosecutor Allen Moss will have to contend with considerable evidence and testimony that point toward other individuals, including a man who has confessed to several others that he committed the crime or witnessed his friend doing it. Mark Abbott, who reported that Lawless had been shot to the sheriff’s office the night of the murder, and Kevin Williams, have been the primary subjects of interest until the recent indictment on Lamb. In 1997, while waiting in jail on federal meth distribution charges, Abbott told a narcotics officer he witnessed Williams shoot Lawless, according to the officer, who testified under oath. Abbott has denied making this statement. Williams and Abbott were both involved in a methamphetamine conspiracy case.

In addition to those two potential suspects, Lawless also was seeing a man named Lyle Day for a couple of months before the murder. Day, who was on disability following a wreck that left him severely injured, told officers he volunteered at TNT Tanning salon, cleaning beds there for the owners. Four days before the murder, Lawless and Day had a public fight in which Day has said Lawless was claiming she was pregnant by him. He had claimed he wanted her to have an abortion, and she refused to do so. Lawless jumped out of Day’s truck and walked several blocks to the tanning salon where her vehicle was parked. Lawless was not pregnant at the time of her death, according to an autopsy. Day was ruled out by investigators because his friends corroborated he was at a party in Matthews around the time of the murder.

Day and Mark Abbott are connected in this case by Ray Ring, who was a minor at the time. Ring has claimed he was with Day the night of the murder.

Ring was also the man that Mark Abbott first identified as being in the car at a payphone minutes after the murder. Abbott later said the man in that car was Josh Kezer. Kezer was convicted of the crime, based largely on Abbott’s testimony and jailhouse informants who falsely accused Kezer of confessing to the crime at a party. Kezer, who never met Lawless and spent most of his time in either Cape Girardeau or the Kankakee, Illinois, area, was 350 miles away from the crime scene the night of the murder. Kezer was exonerated in 2009, and given an actual innocence ruling, after jailhouse informants recanted their statements and Abbott admitted he was not certain Kezer was in the car as he had testified at trial.

A few days after the murder, Abbott reported that he saw Ring in the car to former Scott City police officer Bobby Wooten. The report said that Abbott told Wooten he had met Ring — who was named in the subsequent methamphetamine investigation files as playing a role in the distribution — at a party in Sikeston earlier the night of the murder. Abbott now denies that he ever talked to Wooten about the Lawless murder. Abbott also told investigators at the time that Ring had called Kevin Williams’ house looking for him. Abbott has told the courts that he didn’t know Ring until years later when he got involved in the meth ring. However, Ring told investigators in 1993 that he knew Abbott and Williams, including details about their behaviors and who their friends were.

In addition to the first-degree murder charge, Lamb was also charged with armed criminal action. Lamb’s defense attorney Russ Oliver has filed a motion for dismissal on that charge, because, he wrote, ACA is an unclassified crime and no longer relevant due to the statute of limitations. Oliver has also filed motions for the state to enter unidentified DNA profiles, and bullet casings into national databases.

Lewis will also need to rule on a recent filing by Moss that asks for a gag order on Lamb’s defense.

Lamb is being held in Cape Girardeau County jail without bond.