Lawrence man arrested after calling 911, confessing grandmother's killing

Lawrence police arrested Marcus Cassella, 25, early Saturday after dispatchers relayed a 911 call in which he said he had killed his grandmother. Officers were sent shortly before 2 a.m. to a home just southwest of Clinton Parkway and Crestline Drive, in a part of Lawrence west of the University of Kansas and south of downtown that neighbors know well.

When officers arrived, they knocked on the door and eventually made contact with Cassella, who was taken into custody without incident. Inside the home, police found a 70-year-old woman unresponsive in bed. Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical declared her dead at the scene. Police said the woman had not yet been publicly identified.

Cassella was interviewed at police headquarters and then booked into the Douglas County Jail on suspicion of first-degree murder. He is accused of strangling his grandmother, according to police. The jail is at 3601 E. 25th Street in Lawrence.

A 24-year-old brother of Cassella was also in the residence when officers entered. Police said he was unharmed and that his bedroom door was shut. The younger brother is working to notify extended family, according to the report, as the case moves into the early stages of the county’s homicide investigation.

Kansas first-degree murder is defined as an intentional, premeditated killing or a killing committed during certain inherently dangerous felonies. It is an off-grid person felony, the state’s most serious homicide charge. The case now moves into that framework as investigators and prosecutors review what happened inside the home and the circumstances around Cassella’s call to 911.

The arrest stands out because the homicide suspect was not being hunted down when police arrived. Instead, the response began with a live confession by phone, a sequence that immediately turned a private domestic killing into a public-safety callout for one of Lawrence’s most visible neighborhoods. Douglas County has already seen multiple homicides in recent years, including six in 2024, and another Lawrence killing later in 2025 was described as the second homicide in the city that year. This latest case adds another stark entry to that toll.