Pakistani national charged with alleged plot to assassinate Donald Trump, other public officials: DOJ

(ST. LOUIS) — A county prosecutor in St. Louis, Missouri, presented DNA evidence Wednesday alleging that a death row inmate convicted of first-degree murder is innocent in a case that has drawn opposition from the state attorney general.

Marcellus Williams, 55, who has maintained his innocence, is scheduled to be executed on Sept. 24 for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, according to court documents. He was charged in 1999 and found guilty in 2001.

The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, headed by Wesley Bell, told ABC News in a statement Wednesday that the lead prosecutor and investigator who initially tried the case two decades ago handled the knife used to kill Gayle without gloves and their DNA was found on the evidence.

“DNA from two members of the trial team were found on the murder weapon in testing we did for this hearing,” Bell’s office told ABC News in a statement Wednesday. “In open court today, a DNA expert testified that their improper handling of the weapon could have eliminated other DNA evidence. Williams’ DNA was never recovered from the knife.”

Bell’s office did not address whether they are asking the judge to invalidate the knife as evidence because of improper handling.

Williams was set to enter an Alford plea after a circuit court judge, and Bell agreed to it last week. An Alford plea would allow him to accept the consequences of a guilty plea but would not require him to admit specific wrongdoing to get his sentence reduced to life in prison without parole, according to the county prosecutor’s office.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey argued that the move to vacate Williams’ death sentence should not have been allowed, saying in a statement that the “defense created a false narrative of innocence in order to get a convicted murderer off of death row and fulfill their political ends.”

Wednesday’s hearing came after the Missouri State Supreme Court ruled last Thursday in favor of a request from Bailey for the circuit court to first hold an evidentiary proceeding before considering vacating the death sentence.

“It is in the interest of every Missourian that the rule of law is fought for and upheld – every time, without fail,” according to a statement from Bailey last Thursday. “I am glad the Missouri Supreme Court recognized that. We look forward to putting on evidence in a hearing like we were prepared to do yesterday [when the circuit judge agreed to vacate Williams’ death sentence].”

The State Attorney General’s Office did not respond to ABC News’ request for further comments after the evidentiary hearing.

The county prosecutor’s office submitted the 63-page motion on Jan. 26 to vacate Williams’ conviction.

“Despite the fact that no reliable evidence has ever connected Mr. Williams to the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle,” The Innocence Project, who is representing Williams, told ABC News in a statement Wednesday. “Attorney General Andrew Bailey has vigorously fought to prevent the court from vacating Mr. Williams’ conviction and to execute him on September 24.”

In the summer of 2024, Bailey has litigated against three wrongful-conviction claims opposing local prosecutors and judges, according to The New York Times, including the Christopher Dunn case, in which the state attorney general did not accept the recanting of testimonies of two witnesses who previously tied Dunn to the murder of a teenager in 1990. Dunn was released from prison after Bailey appealed the ruling of a circuit court judge who vacated Dunn’s conviction.

Williams was convicted on June 15, 2001, of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary, armed criminal action and robbery connected to events at Gayle’s home in suburban St. Louis, according to court documents.

Gayle was found murdered with more than 43 stab wounds in her home on Aug. 11, 1998, according to the county prosecutor’s motion. The kitchen knife used in the killing was left lodged in Gayle’s body, according to court documents. Blood, hair, fingerprints and shoe prints believed to belong to the perpetrator were found around the home. Gayle’s purse and her husband’s laptop were declared missing after the attack, according to county prosecutor’s motion.

“None of this physical evidence tied Mr. Williams to Ms. Gayle’s murder,” according to the motion filed by Bell’s office. “Mr. Williams was excluded as the source of the footprints, Mr. Williams was excluded by microscopy as the source of the hairs found near Ms. Gayle’s body … and Mr. Williams was not found to be the source of the fingerprints.”

About a year after Gayle’s death, Henry Cole, a man who had been recently released from jail, told authorities that he had been Williams’ cellmate and heard him admit to the murder, according to court documents.

In November 1999, Laura Asaro, Williams’ girlfriend at the time, told police that Williams confessed to her that he killed Gayle, according to Bell’s motion. The prosecution’s case was largely dependent on these two witness accounts, the motion said.

In court documents, Bell’s office claimed there were significant issues with the credibility of Cole and Asaro’s accounts, which they said were inconsistent over time and contained testimony that didn’t line up with physical evidence. Bell’s office also alleged that both witnesses had incentives to testify, including a possible cash reward to find Gayle’s killer and, in Asaro’s case, an offer of help from police with her outstanding warrants.

Williams pawned the laptop stolen from Gayle’s home, but the motion alleges the buyer of the computer told investigators that Williams explained to him that Asaro had given him the laptop to sell for her. The jury who convicted Williams was not allowed to hear testimony that Williams said he received the laptop from Asaro because the testimony would have been hearsay. Williams was convicted in June 2001 and sentenced to death.

In 2017, when Williams was hours away from execution, then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens granted him a reprieve so a panel could evaluate his conviction.

Last year, Gov. Mike Parson disbanded the panel, according to court documents. A day after the governor dissolved the panel, Bailey asked the State Supreme Court to schedule an execution date. Parson said that he is open to discussing clemency for Williams, according to a statement on Monday obtained by ABC News.

“One of the defense’s own experts previously testified he could not rule out the possibility that Williams’ DNA was also on the knife. He could only testify to the fact that enough actors had handled the knife throughout the legal process that others’ DNA was present,” read a statement from Bailey last week.

The county prosecuting attorney’s office said the state’s claim that one of their expert witnesses could not rule out Williams’s DNA on the weapon was insignificant.

“The AG (attorney general) is arguing about a motion that was not taken up by the court today and has no bearing on the matter,” read the statement from Bell’s office.

The circuit court has until Sept. 13 to make a ruling on Williams’ case after the evidentiary hearing, according to court documents.

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(NEW YORK) — Joseph Emerson, a former Alaska Airlines pilot, calls it the biggest mistake of his life.

Emerson was inside an Alaska Airlines cockpit last October when he raised his arms and pulled two large red levers that could have shut down both engines, at 30,000 feet. He calls the incident the worst 30 seconds of his life.

Ten months later, he is now grateful for those moments: They’ve saved his marriage, allowed him more time with his kids, and thrust him into a life of therapy, recovery, and the launch of a new non-profit designed to help other pilots struggling with mental illness.

Now Emerson and his wife, Sarah, are describing that incident, and the anxious, challenging months that followed, in an interview with ABC News.

“I made a big mistake.”

Emerson sent his wife Sarah a text message on Oct. 22, 2023, moments after he was removed from that cockpit and just before he asked a flight attendant to handcuff him.

“I made a big mistake,” the message read.

Sarah Emerson replied: “What’s up? Are you ok?”

“I’m not,” Joe Emerson replied.

That was the last time Sarah Emerson heard from her husband for days. She immediately tracked his flight and learned it had diverted and made an emergency landing in Portland.

Sarah knew little of what happened for 24 hours. It wasn’t until a jail receptionist told her that she learned her husband had been charged with 83 counts of attempted murder – one count for every soul on the aircraft.

“I walk up to the window and say I’m looking for my husband and he kind of just looked on the computer and typed some things in and then nonchalantly tells me the charges, and I lost it,” Sarah Emerson told ABC News. “I screamed and I keeled over, and I almost fell. They grabbed me and pulled me over because I know what that means. I was in a complete shock.”

What happened

Joe Emerson had been struggling over the death of his best friend, Scott, a pilot who died while on a run six years earlier. Emerson had been away for the weekend with friends, celebrating and remembering Scott.

On Friday night, the group took psychedelic mushrooms – a drug that can make you hallucinate and typically has effects that last a few hours. Emerson said that for him, the physical side effects lasted days, and the consequences a lifetime.
Joe and Sarah Emerson speak with ABC News.

Something wasn’t right

As a friend drove him to the airport, Emerson said all he could think about was being home with his family, but a deepening fear that he would never make it began to overtake him. It intensified as he took his jump seat inside the confined cockpit of the Alaska Airlines jet.

“There was a feeling of being trapped, like, ‘Am I trapped in this airplane and now I’ll never go home?'” Emerson told ABC News, in an interview near his home in California.

Emerson said the feeling increased – and with it, a belief that ” this isn’t real, I’m not actually going home … until I became completely convinced that none of this was real,” Emerson said.

As the Alaska Airlines plane headed toward San Francisco, Emerson said his conditioned worsened. He reached out to a friend who texted Emerson to do breathing exercises. Instead of helping, Emerson said, the moment when his phone read the text in his ear ultimately pushed him over the edge.

“That’s kind of where I flung off my headset, and I was fully convinced this isn’t real and I’m not going home,” Emerson recalled. “And then, as the pilots didn’t react to my completely abnormal behavior in a way that I thought would be consistent with reality, that is when I was like, this isn’t real. I need to wake up.”

The next 30 seconds would put 83 other lives in danger, end Joe’s career, and potentially send him to prison for the rest of his life.

“It’s 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t.”

“There are two red handles in front of my face,” Emerson recalled. “And thinking that I was going to wake up, thinking this is my way to get out of this non-real reality, I reached up and I grabbed them, and I pulled the levers.”

Those levers were the engine shut-off controls.

“What I thought is, ‘This is going to wake me up,'” Emerson said. “I know what those levers do in a real airplane and I need to wake up from this. You know, it’s 30 seconds of my life that I wish I could change, and I can’t.”

How did the pilots respond?

Emerson said as soon as he grabbed the engine shut-off levers, the pilots pulled his hands away. He remembers the pilots’ immediate confusion, trying to comprehend what just happened. Emerson also recalled what made him quickly realize his situation was very much real.

“It was really the pilot’s physical touch on my hand,” Emerson said. “Both pilots grabbed my hands where I kind of stopped and I had that moment, which I’ll just say I view this moment as a gift.”

Two gifts, Emerson said. The second was that the engines did not shut down but continued to operate normally.

“I observe the pilots react to the difficult situation that I just handed them and watch them react in a very professional manner,” Emerson said of the pilots. “I heard them converse about me and I said, ‘You guys want me out of the flight deck?'”

The pilots unlocked the cabin door for him, and he “opened the door to a very confused flight attendant,” Emerson recalled.

Emerson said he walked into the cabin, drank directly from a coffee pot and took a seat in the flight attendants’ jump seat. None of the passengers knew that the man in a pilot’s uniform had only moments earlier tried to turn off their plane’s engines.
An Alaska Airlines takes off from Anchorage Ted Stevens International Airport in Anchorage, Alaska, July 2, 2024.

Emerson’s episode wasn’t over

Emerson’s feeling of unreality persisted, he said, and he again felt the need to wake up.

“At some point I thought maybe this isn’t real, and maybe I can wake myself up by just jumping out, like that freefall feeling that you have,” he said.

So Emerson grabbed another lever – this one operating the cabin door.

“I put my hand on the lever, I didn’t operate the lever,” he recalled, at which point a flight attendant stopped him.

“She put … her hand on mine again and with that human touch, I released. I think around that period is when I said, ‘I don’t understand what’s real, I don’t I don’t understand what’s real.'”

At that point, Emerson said he asked the flight attendant to handcuff him, and she immediately did so.

“I essentially asked to be restrained myself because I knew if this is real, I’ve already done enough damage,” Emerson said. “I thought, ‘Let’s restrain me till I can get the help I need.’ That’s really kind of what I was hoping coming off this airplane that I would get, get the help I needed.”

Emerson was taken into custody when the plane landed in Portland. Sarah Emerson wouldn’t learn what happened on board until late the next day. She wondered whether her husband had experienced a medical emergency and was in a hospital. She tracked his phone and saw it pinged from the airport.

“I could see that his phone was at the airport. We knew the plane was diverted and so I was wondering, ‘Okay, is he hurt? Is he sick? What happened?'” Sarah Emerson said.

It was several hours before Emerson’s union representative informed Sarah Emerson that her husband was being detained.

“I said, ‘What does that mean?’ It’s just so not the world that I live in, you know. I just didn’t even understand what that meant,” Sarah Emerson recalled.

Jail, and a way forward

Emerson spent the next 45 days in jail before he was granted bond. It wasn’t until Tuesday evening, four days after taking the mushrooms, that Emerson said he regained full clarity.

His jail physician would later tell him that he suffered from a condition called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), which can cause someone who uses psychedelic mushrooms for the first time to suffer from persistent visual hallucinations or perception issues for several days afterward.

Emerson also now believes that he’s an alcoholic, although he said alcohol didn’t play a role in October’s incident.

“My substance that I used was primarily alcohol, which is a depressant, to treat a depressive state,” Emerson said, adding that he’s now in treatment and prioritizing his mental health. He also said he accepts full responsibility for his actions – actions that he said have actually changed his life for the better.

Joe and Sarah Emerson are now dedicating much of their life to building their new nonprofit: Clear Skies Ahead. Their goal is to raise funds for and awareness of pilot mental health, and to emphasize the importance of not being afraid to seek help.

Because pilots who don’t meet strict medical requirements can have their license to fly revoked, Emerson said, it’s not unheard of for pilots to refuse to admit or seek help for mental health issues.

“Right now, if you raise your hand, not in every case, but there’s a perception out there that if you raise your hand and say something’s not right, there’s a very real possibility that you don’t fly again,” Emerson said.

Following Emerson’s incident, pilot mental health is receiving renewed attention.

“Who would you rather fly with: a pilot who is depressed, or a pilot who is depressed on medication?” said Dr. Brent Blue, an Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) senior aviation medical examiner, at a National Transportation Safety Board mental health summit in December.

“And that’s what it comes down to. We need to work together to help modernize the system and help the FAA modernize our pilot mental health evaluation program,” Blue added.

In May, the FAA the expanded the number of drugs approved for use by pilots, including several antidepressants. The agency also says it is hiring more mental health professionals.

“The FAA encourages pilots to seek help if they have a mental-health condition since most, if treated, do not disqualify someone from flying,” the FAA said in a statement to ABC News, in part. “In fact, only about 0.1% of medical certificate applicants who disclose health issues are denied. Treating these conditions early is important, and that is why the FAA has approved more antidepressants for use by pilots and air traffic controllers.”

Joe Emerson’s future

Emerson remains in legal limbo. Though he’s no longer facing attempted murder charges, he is still facing more than 80 state and federal charges, including 83 counts of reckless endangerment after prosecutors reduced the charges in December. It’s possible prosecutors could offer a plea deal or decide to go to trial later this fall.

“At the end of the day, I accept responsibility for the choices that I made. They’re my choices,” Emerson told ABC News. “What I hope through the judicial processes is that the entirety of not just 30 seconds of the event, but the entirety of my experience is accounted for as society judges me on what happened. And I will accept what the debt that society says I owe.”

What would he tell the passengers and crew?

What would Emerson tell the 83 passengers and crew onboard that Alaska Airlines flight?

“First and foremost, thank you,” Emerson said. “I appreciate that they saw someone in crisis in the back of that plane and that they paid attention to what the flight crew was telling them to do, and they remained calm until we got on the ground.”

It’s to the crew, however, that Emerson said he owes the biggest debt of gratitude.

“What I did was, something we don’t train for, and they handled it fantastic. It’s really a result of their professionalism and the way they handled that situation that I’m alive today,” Emerson said.

As for whether he’ll ever fly again, Emerson said that remains up in the air – and out of his hands.

“Of course I want to fly again. I’d be totally disingenuous if I said no,” he said. “I don’t know in what capacity I’m going to fly again and I don’t know if that’s an opportunity that’s going to be afforded to me. It’s not up to me to engineer that. What is up to me is to do what’s in front of me, put myself in a position where that’s a possibility, that it can happen.”

“But at the end of the day,” Emerson conceded, “if I’m not meant to fly again, I’m not going to fly again.”

ABC News’ John Capell and Miles Cohen contributed to this report.

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(LONDON, Ky.) — An AR-15 rifle investigators believe was used in a Kentucky freeway shooting Saturday evening that left seven people injured and nine vehicles with bullet holes was found Sunday afternoon near the crime scene as a search for a person of interest continued, authorities said.

The person of interest wanted for questioning was identified as 32-year-old Joseph A. Couch, who the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said is “considered armed and dangerous and should not be approached.”

The sheriff’s office released a photo of Couch, who allegedly fled the freeway shooting near London, Kentucky, and is believed to still be in the area, Laurel County Sheriff’s Deputy Gilbert Acciardo said during a news conference Sunday morning.

“We’re not listing him as a suspect at this point, but he probably will more than likely be a suspect before day’s end,” Acciardo said.

On Sunday afternoon, Acciardo said Couch’s vehicle was located in the area of the shootings Saturday night. He also said officers searching the area found an AR-15 rifle in the woods near the interstate.

The weapon, which investigators believe was used in the freeway shooting, was discovered in an area where a shooter could have “shot down upon the interstate from that wooded location,” Acciardo said.

“It’s a random act,” Acciardo said when asked about a possible motive for the shooting.

Police have received more than 100 calls from people reporting they may have spotted Couch, Acciardo said. He said authorities believe Couch is hiding in the woods near the interstate.

Acciardo described the shooting as “sniper-like” and said it was not the result of road rage. He said investigators do not believe the shooter knew any of the victims or had contact with them before the shooting.

Acciardo said that up to 60 members of law enforcement searched the area of the shooting until 3 a.m. Sunday before halting the search out of safety concerns, saying it was pitch black on the highway and describing the terrain where the search was being conducted as very rugged.

The search for Couch resumed at 9 a.m. local time Sunday, Acciardo said.

The FBI, the U.S. Marshal’s Service and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are assisting local authorities in the investigation, officials said.

The shooting unfolded about 5:30 p.m. local time on Interstate 75, near exit 49 about eight miles north of London, officials said.

Arriving deputies found nine vehicles had been shot in both the north and southbound lanes of I-75, Laurel County Sheriff John Root said at a news conference late Saturday night.

Root said deputies found five people with serious gunshot wounds, including one who was shot in the face. He said one vehicle contained two people who were shot.

Acciardo said Sunday that none of the victims suffered life-threatening injuries and were all in stable condition.

“A couple of our deputies, because of the severity of the injuries, loaded the people up, the injured persons, and transported them to London Hospital,” Root said.

Two additional people were injured in a car crash that occurred during the shooting, authorities said.

Root said I-75 was immediately shut down in both directions, saying that at the time, deputies didn’t know where the bullets came from.

“We couldn’t risk somebody else being shot,” Root said.

The sheriff declined to say why Couch is a person of interest in the shooting but did say it is “based on our investigation at the scene.”

He said initial reports that the shooting stemmed from a road rage incident were not accurate.

Root said Couch has an address in Woodbine, Kentucky, and the sheriff’s office described him as about 5-foot-10-inches tall and 154 pounds.

Interstate 75 was closed for more than three hours after the shooting as law enforcement officers worked to secure the scene and collect evidence.

Root did not immediately disclose the type of weapon investigators believe was used in the crime.

A motive for the shooting remained under investigation.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said in a statement on X that he is monitoring the situation.

In an interview Sunday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Christina Dinoto said she was driving with a friend southbound on I-75, heading to Tennessee, when the shooting erupted.

“All of a sudden we just heard this loud, deafening sound,” Dinoto said. “And my ear, my right ear, started ringing, and we didn’t know what the sound was, but we both looked at each other and said, was that a gunshot?”

Dinoto said that when she pulled off the interstate in Knoxville, she discovered damage to her vehicle that she suspects was caused by a bullet that may have ricocheted off another car.

The Kentucky shooting came less than a week after six people were injured in six shootings that occurred on Sept. 2 on Interstate 5 in the state of Washington between 8:26 p.m. and 11:01 p.m. local time, officials said. A suspect whose vehicle was sought in connection with several of the shootings was arrested in the Tacoma area on Sept. 3, police said.

ABC News’ Alex Presha contributed to this report.

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