Joseph Lawrence was 27 years old when he was killed in St. Louis, Missouri, on Friday, May 23, 2008. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department investigated his death, and the Washington Post's homicide database, which tracked killings in St. Louis from 2007 through 2017, lists it as a homicide that remained open with no arrest.
Beyond his name, his age and the date of his death, almost nothing about Joseph Lawrence has been made public.
No news story about the killing, obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account. He surely had family, friends and neighbors who remember who he was, but none of that has entered the public record.
Because so little has been released, even the basic circumstances remain unknown to the public. The record does not say how he was killed, whether he was attacked indoors or on the street, whether he knew his attacker, what time of day it happened, whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital, or whether anyone else was hurt. It does not say whether investigators ever identified a suspect, and no reward offer could be found.
He died on a Friday, the start of the Memorial Day weekend in 2008, a time when many families gather and people are out late on porches and sidewalks. At 27, he was a young man whose friends, relatives and co-workers would have been preparing for the holiday when they learned what had happened.
Joseph Lawrence is a common name, and in St. Louis it carries extra noise: a 19th-century St. Louis doctor named Joseph Lawrence created Listerine, and searches for the name are filled with that history and with obituaries of many other men named Joseph Lawrence who died of natural causes in 2008. None of those records is about the 27-year-old who was killed in May 2008.
The location recorded in the database places his death on the north side of St. Louis, west of Fairground Park, in the neighborhoods near North Kingshighway and Natural Bridge Avenue. These are busy residential streets lined with homes, churches and small businesses, and people who were on those blocks in late May 2008 may remember the police activity that followed his death.
St. Louis had one of the highest homicide rates of any large American city in those years. The city, home to roughly 350,000 people at the time, recorded 167 homicides in 2008 and 143 in 2009, and the Washington Post's analysis found that roughly half of the city's killings between 2007 and 2017 never led to an arrest. Cases with few public details often faded from view quickly.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Joseph Lawrence could be found in news archives or public records. More than 18 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Joseph Lawrence and saw him in the days before he died, or who heard talk afterward of what happened to him, may be able to help. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a car seen leaving the area or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Division at 314-444-5371, or leave an anonymous tip with CrimeStoppers at 866-371-TIPS (866-371-8477).
