Stephon D. Johnson, a 30-year-old man from Kansas City, Missouri, vanished from the routines of his everyday life in the first days of November 2021, and the silence he left behind quickly felt wrong to the people who knew him. When family members reported they hadn’t heard from him since November 1, officers went to his Midtown apartment to check on him—and what they found turned worry into horror.
Inside the apartment, Johnson’s body was discovered hidden in a closet.
Investigators determined he had been shot in the back of the head, a single brutal detail that suggested not just violence, but intent—and the kind of close-range, controlled act that raises more questions than it answers. His death was recorded as occurring on November 2, 2021.
As detectives worked the scene, they collected what looked like the smallest scraps of ordinary life—items that didn’t belong in a murder story until they did. Among them was an empty cigarillo package, later tied to a suspect through DNA testing. At the same time, investigators began pulling on other threads: witness accounts, building information, and signs of someone moving through Johnson’s private space more than once. Security-related records later indicated the suspect had visited Johnson’s apartment multiple times before the killing.
Those threads began converging on Perez D. Reed, a man from the St. Louis area described by authorities and media reports as a suspected serial killer, recognizable by a distinctive crescent tattoo between his eyes. Witnesses told police they recognized the same tattooed man as someone who had been a guest of Johnson’s in Kansas City. When Reed was arrested on St. Louis County warrants in November 2021, investigators said they recovered a firearm believed connected to the broader string of shootings, along with keys—and one key fit the deadbolt lock to Johnson’s apartment. Authorities also reported that Reed had Johnson’s debit card at the time of the arrest.
Prosecutors in Jackson County later charged Reed with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in Johnson’s death, along with two counts of fraudulent use of a credit/debit device. The case against him, as described by the prosecutor’s office, relied on a tightening circle of forensic and practical evidence: DNA linking Reed to the cigarillo packaging from the apartment, the apartment key found in his possession, witness recognition, and ballistics—because prosecutors said the bullet recovered from Johnson’s body was fired by the same firearm Reed had when he was arrested. Prosecutors also sought to have him held on the new charges with no bond, and he was reported to be in custody in St. Louis as those Kansas City charges moved forward.
