Phillip Knott was a 20-year-old Black man from Detroit, Michigan, whose life was cut short on August 19, 2012.
The year before his own death, Knott was connected to another homicide investigation following the 2011 murder of his friend, a Wayne State University football player named Smith. As a potential witness in that case, Knott reportedly told police that he had not seen anything and was reluctant to get involved.
Despite his reluctance, an investigator requested his detention, and a judge ordered Knott to be held in the Wayne County Jail until he testified. Allegations later surfaced, based on police files, that investigators may have threatened or coerced him to secure testimony favorable to the prosecution.
While some details of Knott’s experiences as a witness are known, very little public information has ever been released about the circumstances of his own homicide. The specific location in Detroit where he was killed and the manner of his death have not been disclosed. The case has yielded no arrests or publicly identified suspects. As of September 2026, the murder of Phillip Knott remains unsolved.
