Joshua Kezer

The Crime

At about 1 a.m. on Nov. 8, 1992, Mark Abbott was on his way home from a night of drinking when he stopped to inspect a car parked with its lights on and the engine running at the top of exit ramp 77 of Interstate 55 near Benton, Missouri. Mr. Abbott later told police he reached into the car, felt blood, and heard a woman sitting behind the wheel gurgling in distress. He left to call for help.

Mr. Abbott drove to a nearby convenience store, but the store was closed. The pay phone was out of service. As he walked back to his truck, a white hatchback zipped through the lot. Mr. Abbott said he saw the driver’s face briefly and that the driver had a dark complexion — that he was possibly Latino.

 Mr. Abbott then drove to the Scott County sheriff’s department in Benton.

Reserve deputy Rick Walter was assigned to check out the car. He found a 1986 Buick Somerset at about 1:30 a.m. Inside was the body of Angela Mischelle Lawless, a 19-year-old nursing student. She had been beaten and shot three times in the back of the head. 

The Investigation

Police collected physical and forensic evidence, including finger and palm prints, hair, and blood. They also found three .380-caliber shell casings.

Ms. Lawless was wearing a turquoise sweatshirt, unbuttoned jeans and blue socks. Her clothing was covered with blades of grass. She had been struck on the top of the head twice. A blood trail leading away from the car went to a guardrail and continued on about 100 feet down an embankment. 

Police believed Mr. Lawless tried to escape whoever killed her, judging from the grass on her socks and the blood outside. She also clawed her attacker. Tissue and blood were found under her fingernails. The police believed that after she was beaten, she was put back into the vehicle and then shot.

Police determined that earlier that night, Ms. Lawless had been in Sikeston, Missouri, a small town about 20 miles south of Benton where she visited a boyfriend. Because she had a 1 a.m. curfew, she left and headed for home. 

Four months later, in February 1993, three incarcerated people at Cape Girardeau County Jail told authorities that Joshua Kezer, a 17-year-old high school dropout from Kankakee, Illinois, had admitted to them that during a night of drinking that he killed Lawless.

About a week later, police interviewed Mr. Abbott for the fifth time. He no longer said the driver of the white hatchback might have been a Latino. He viewed a photographic lineup and identified Mr. Kezer, who was Caucasian, as the driver. On Feb. 27, 1983, Mr. Kezer, who lived nearly 400 miles away in Kankakee, Illinois and claimed he was there at the time of the crime, was arrested.  

On April 8, 1993, Mr. Kezer was indicted by a Scott County Grand jury on charges of first-degree murder and armed criminal action.

Prior to trial, two of the jailhouse informants recanted to Mr. Kezer’s attorney, although they later recanted their recantations.  However, the evidence of their recantations was never presented because his lawyer would have to step down in order to testify. 

In May 1994, at a preliminary hearing, Mr. Abbott again identified Mr. Kezer. Mr. Abbott testified that Mr. Kezer pulled into the parking lot and said that he was going to have to go with Mr. Abbott because he was out of gas. Mr. Abbott said he refused, got into his truck, and drove to the Sheriff’s department.

The trial was moved to St. Genevieve County and began on June 13, 1994. None of the physical evidence was linked to Mr. Kezer. Prosecutors did present small flecks of what could have been blood on Mr. Kezer’s jacket as evidence, though tests could not prove that it was blood. 

The case was built on the testimony of the jailhouse snitches and Mr. Abbott’s identification. At the end of the prosecution’s case in chief, Chantelle Crider, a friend of Ms. Lawless, who had been attending the trial, told prosecutors that she recognized Mr. Kezer. She said she had attended a Halloween party 10 days prior to the murder and that Mr. Kezer was there. Ms. Crider said Mr. Kezer asked Ms. Lawless to go on a date. When she refused, he had called her a derogatory name, Ms. Crider testified. 

Witnesses testified on behalf of Mr. Kezer that he was hundreds of miles away in his hometown of Kankakee. One witness said that shortly before midnight on the night of November 7 and less than two hours before Ms. Lawless was found, Mr. Kezer visited her to check on his cousin, who had been injured in a car accident.

On June 17, 1994, Mr. Kezer was convicted by a jury in Cape Girardeau County Circuit Court of second-degree murder. 

The following Monday morning, after news of the verdict along with Mr. Kezer’s photograph appeared in a local newspaper, the host of the Halloween party contacted the police to say that Mr. Kezer had not been at the party, that Ms. Crider had been mistaken, and that Ms. Lawless had argued with a man named Todd Mayberry. Although another person at the party corroborated that account, the police discounted the information.

In August 1994, Mr. Kezer was sentenced to 60 years in prison.

The Exoneration

The case fell apart, but gradually.

A written recantation of one of the jailhouse informants that had been withheld from the defense was found. Another prisoner who shared a cell with the informants said that Mr. Kezer had never confessed. Notes that prosecutors said had been destroyed emerged and revealed that Mr. Abbott, the eyewitness, actually had been a suspect in the murder. 

Ms. Lawless’ journal and other friends pointed to another man who had argued with her.  A report that was withheld by the prosecution said that Mr. Abbott had initially given the name of a Black man as the attacker. In addition, DNA testing of blood recovered from under the fingernails of Mr. Lawless excluded Mr. Kezer.  

In 2004, Rick Walter, the first police officer to arrive at Ms. Lawless’ car, was elected sheriff of Scott County. At the time of the crime, he had suspected that Ms. Lawless had been beaten some distance from the car, then was carried back and put inside where she was shot. He had long harbored a suspicion that two people were involved in the crime.

In 2006, he took an unusual step of ordering a re-investigation of the case. 

At about the same time, faculty and students at the University of Missouri School of Journalism began re-investigating the case. The results of the investigation were published in November 2007 in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper. The article revealed the police re-investigation had turned up a statement Mr. Abbott gave in 1997, five years after the murder, in an attempt to get leniency for a narcotics conviction. Mr. Abbott said a married friend of his was having an affair with Ms. Lawless. They had quarreled and she had driven away. Mr. Abbott said that he and his friend followed and caught up to her at the exit ramp where Mr. Abbott’s friend ran to her car. Mr. Abbott said he heard gunshots. Mr. Abbott said his friend ran away. He went to the car, saw Mr. Lawless was bleeding and then left to report the shooting to police.

Meanwhile, Ms. Crider had recanted her account of the party. And DNA testing showed the substance on the jacket was tomato juice, not blood.

In April 2008, Mr. Kezer’s legal team filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in Cole County Circuit Court. The petition asserted that the trial prosecutor, Kenny Hulshof, had withheld exculpatory evidence, including a report of an interview with Mr. Abbott 10 days after the murder during which Abbott identified the driver of the hatchback as a Black man from Sikeston, Missouri. The petition noted that at trial, Mr. Hulshof had elicited false testimony from a sheriff’s deputy that Mr. Abbott was never a suspect “at any time.”

On Feb. 17, 2009, following a two-day hearing, Cole County Circuit Court Judge Richard B. Callahan vacated the conviction. 

On Feb. 18, the charges were dismissed, and Mr.  Kezer was released.

 Mr. Kezer filed a wrongful conviction lawsuit that was settled in August 2010 for $4 million.