Prosecutor seeks gag order in Lawless murder case, citing risk to witness safety; defense claims hypocrisy

Special prosecutor Allen Moss has filed a motion to prevent defense attorneys from sharing information with the public and media regarding the prosecution of Leon Lamb for the 1992 murder of Mischelle Lawless of Benton.

Moss filed a request for a protective order Wednesday, Feb. 5. It asks the judge to prevent defense attorneys from sharing information about evidence because it would “significantly” lessen the chance of being able to find a jury pool who could be impartial and fair.”

The 32-year-old case has become one of the most followed unsolved murder cases in Missouri, having been the subject of several national television shows and podcasts, as well as local newspaper reports and TV news reports across three decades.

Moss also wants the names of witnesses kept secret, claiming public knowledge of their identities “would place the witnesses at an increased risk of harm because of some members of the public’s extreme interest in the case. Further, there would be an increased risk of witness tampering or negative influence on the witnesses.”

Lamb’s lead defense attorney, Russ Oliver, opposed Moss’s request with a filing submitted on Friday, saying that the mere filing of criminal charges does not create good cause for a discovery protective order. In his opposition, Oliver cited the vast media coverage of the case, which Oliver pointed out included interviews given by James and Moss on KFVS in which crime scene photos were shown to the public.

“They describe themselves as the ‘last best chance to do something in this case’ while they stand with the investigative file on display for the cameras.”

The opposition also pointed out that Moss and James asked for the public’s help via a Facebook Page.

“On November 15, 2023, the page described locations of interest in Sikeston that are a part of the investigative file,” Oliver wrote in his opposition. “On November 27, 2023 it asked questions of the public about Rick’s Deli, a place of interest in the investigative file. On December 23, 2023, the page described a wedding that the victim went to and a Halloween party at ‘Ms. Worley’s house’ and asked the public for details. Then when Leon Lamb was arrested, numerous posts were made publicizing the arrest and showing his mugshot. …

“They now claim that justice demands that no one else do what they have been doing for 32 years, including the Special Prosecutor and his investigator for the past 18 months.”

Oliver continued, that their case “will be greatly hampered if during our investigation we are unable to ask witnesses about the evidence in the investigative file, ask the public to help us find information related to items in the investigative file and counteract 32 years of the state’s publicity parade. Further, it would be wholly inequitable, a violation of the defendant’s due process rights and a violation of the defendant’s right to a public trial to allow the state to publicly request assistance to find information related to specific items of evidence for 32 years and then declare that the defense is wholly precluded from doing the very same thing.”

Lamb was indicted by a grand jury and taken into custody on Dec. 20, 2024. Lamb is the ex-boyfriend of Lawless, a 19-year-old college nursing student who was found in her car shot three times. A blood trail was found 100 feet down the steep embankment of the Interstate-55 exit ramp at Benton.

Lamb was arrested at his home in Conway, Arkansas, and held in Faulkner County, Arkansas until Friday, when he was extradited to Missouri.

In 1994, the case resulted in the conviction of Josh Kezer, who earned an actual innocence ruling as part of his exoneration in 2009. Kezer has continued to advocate for justice in the case, having donated thousands of dollars for DNA testing. He has fought to keep the case in the spotlight to find Lawless’s killer or killers. Kezer’s lead exoneration attorney, Charles Weiss, has joined Lamb’s legal defense team. In his previous work, Weiss deposed several witnesses, including other suspects in the case.

After Kezer was convicted in 1994, people began to claim that other men had committed the crime. Months after the murder, a witness said he met Mark Abbottt in a fishing cabin, where the witness asked him about the case and told him, “I took care of the bitch.” The witness has made this statement many times, including under oath.

Abbott, an identical twin, is the man who claims he found Lawless the night of the murder, reached in to grab her from a slumped position, and dropped her after seeing her condition. He then went to a nearby gas station pay phone, where he would eventually claim he saw Kezer in a white car, even though just a few days after the murder, Abbott told a Scott City police officer he saw Ray Ring inside the white car. Abbott told several versions of a story in the days following the murder. In a subsequent investigation following Kezer’s exoneration, former Sheriff Rick Walter said that DNA testing revealed that Abbott’s DNA was found in a place on Lawless’s body that can’t be accounted for in Abbott’s version of what happened.

In 1997, while in custody waiting for sentencing, Abbott told a narcotics officer that he saw his drug-dealing associate Kevin Williams shoot Lawless. In that version of the story, Abbott said Williams shot her over an accusation that Lawless was pregnant by him.

Abbott has denied making statements to the narcotics officer and to the former Scott City police officer.

Williams’s alibi for the night of the murder has been refuted by at least two first-hand witnesses, and three if Abbott’s 1997 statement is counted.

A few years later, another witness, unaware of these other statements, came forward to tell former Sheriff Bill Ferrell that Williams told her and others at her house that Mark Abbott was responsible for the murder. She has testified to this information under oath, though she has said she does not believe Abbott killed Lawless. She said Williams admitted to her he was at the crime scene the night of the murder. Williams was friends with the witness’s then-husband, who was involved in the drug ring.

Two other witnesses, a husband and wife, also testified that Williams told them Mark Abbott was involved. They said while driving with Williams in his vehicle, he pointed to a trailer outside of the Ferrell Mobile Home sales lot adjacent to the crime scene and told them, “That’s where it all started.” Though Williams didn’t tell them details, the witnesses said they understood what Williams meant.

As for Lamb, his DNA was found under Lawless’s fingernails. Lamb is the last person known to have seen Lawless alive. He claims Lawless left his house around 1 a.m. after she had arrived around midnight and after they’d had sex. He has claimed the DNA found under her nails is attributed to their sexual encounter.

Lamb passed a polygraph test following the murder, and no report has described having seen any visible defensive wounds on his body. The investigators in the hours after the murder, former Sheriff Bill Ferrell and Brenda Schiwitz, did not ask Lamb or any other witness to take a gunshot residue test.

Lawless had dated or was dating several men in the weeks before the murder. Lamb and Lawless had been in a monogamous relationship for more than 2 years when they broke up in the summer before the murder, but they occasionally reconnected. It is not known what new evidence the prosecution has uncovered against Lamb.

Lawless was also seeing a man named Lyle Day, with whom she had a public fight a few days before the murder. Day has claimed the argument was over his suggestion for her to have an abortion when she told him she might have been pregnant (an autopsy showed she was not). Day was ruled out after several of his friends supported his statement that he was at a party in Matthews, Missouri, the night of the murder. Among the friends he claims to have been with is Ray Ring.

Ring is the man Mark Abbott claimed he saw in a white car at the gas station pay phone immediately after the murder. That report was withheld from Kezer’s defense team, which was one of many pillars that proved Kezer’s rights were violated. The state had an obligation to hand over all exculpatory evidence, but the report, as well as Schiwitz’s investigative notebook, were found after Walter reopened the investigation. In Schiwitz’s notes was a list of early suspects, which included Abbott’s name. Schiwitz testified that she had destroyed the notes and that Abbott was not a suspect, “at any time.”

Mark Abbott’s identification of Kezer, and not Ring, at the payphone was the state’s only evidence that Kezer was even in Missouri the night of the murder. Kezer was actually in Kankakee, Illinois, as explained by several family members and friends.

A friend of Ring and Day owned a white Ford Escort, which fits the description by witnesses as being at the crime scene before the murder.

Ring and Day were also said to have been with a man named Gene Haynes the night of the murder. Ring and Haynes were among scores of people mentioned in investigative reports associated with a methamphetamine conspiracy investigation that was kicked off a few months after Kezer was convicted. That federal investigation, described as the largest in the history of the region at the time, was kicked off when Williams was arrested on drug and weapons charges in Cape Girardeau in October of 1994.

Another key witness against Kezer was Chantelle Crider, a friend of Lawless, who stepped forward on the fourth day of trial and said she recognized Kezer being at a Halloween party the week before the murder, where she testified that Lawless fought with him over unwanted advances. Crider, who testified at the original trial that she had never seen Kezer's photo in the media, later recanted her testimony, saying she had mistaken Kezer for another man named Todd Mayberry.

Kezer bears no resemblance to either Ring or Mayberry.

Crider was also named in the meth case investigative files and ran in the same circles with Ring, though it’s not clear if they were friends at the time of the murder.

As part of the exoneration trial, several people gave depositions. Among them was Bobby Wooten, the Scott City police officer who took Abbott’s report on Ray Ring. When it was discovered, Wooten had questioned whether the signature at the bottom of the document was his, but he eventually confirmed he remembered the interaction with Abbott. The document was confirmed to be legitimate.

Wooten was represented in that deposition by Allen Moss, the current special prosecutor. Wooten has since died.