In the quiet neighborhood of Meacham Park in Kirkwood, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, 64-year-old Karen Arnold, a Caucasian female, was found dead in her apartment on December 5, 2018. Another source reports her age as 62. A friend discovered her body in the front room of her Stonecrest apartment after finding the back door had been kicked in. The cause of death was a fatal shooting.
Arnold's family believes her murder was connected to her own relentless pursuit of justice for her
grandson, Shelbyon Polk, who was killed a year prior. She had been actively using social media to seek leads and information regarding his unsolved murder. This tragic event was the latest in a string of violent deaths that had plagued her family for years, including the unsolved murders of her grandson's father and grandfather.
The investigation into Karen Arnold's death eventually led to arrests. More than two years after her murder, James M. Cohen, then 34, was charged with first-degree murder and armed criminal action in her shooting death. Another man, Wayne H. Rogers, then 25, was also arrested and faced a felony charge for allegedly hindering the prosecution by helping Cohen and two other men flee from Arnold's apartment after the killing.
Despite the arrests, a motive for the killing was not immediately clear from court documents. Arnold, a mother of five and grandmother of fifteen, was remembered by her family as a caring and determined woman who would not give up on finding a measure of peace for her slain grandson. Her son, Umar Lee, expressed the family's gratitude that law enforcement continued to work on the case, leading to the eventual arrests in a region where many homicides go unsolved.
