Shawn Boggan was 38 years old when he was killed in Atlanta on Thursday, October 2, 2008. The Atlanta Police Department Homicide Unit investigated, and the Washington Post's homicide database, which tracked killings in Atlanta from 2007 through 2017, lists it as a homicide that remained open with no arrest. A cold-case listing gives the same date as the day his body was found.
Little about his life has been made public.
A notice published in early October 2008 shows that Grissom-Clark Funeral Home on East Lake Drive in Atlanta handled his arrangements. No news story about the killing, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account. He surely had family, friends and neighbors who remember who he was, but little 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 the person who killed him, what time of day it happened, or whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital. It does not say whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Shawn Boggan's name also appears in a 2018 Washington Post investigation that listed thousands of homicide victims across major American cities whose killings had not led to an arrest. Being on that list means that, a decade after the killing, the case was still counted among those no one had been arrested for. An online cold-case site lists his death as an active murder case in Atlanta, and his name and age appear in cold-case listings for the Atlanta Police Department on a public crime-mapping website.
Searches for his name also turn up a living man of the same name from the Stone Mountain area, along with social media comments by other people who share it. None of those records is about the 38-year-old who died in Atlanta in October 2008.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death south of downtown Atlanta, in the older neighborhoods below the city's center. People who lived in that area in early October 2008 may remember Shawn, and may remember the police activity that followed his death.
Atlanta, the capital of Georgia and the center of a metro area of more than 5 million people, recorded roughly 75 to 130 homicides a year between 2007 and 2017. Most victims in those years were young men, and most were killed with guns. Many killings from that period never led to an arrest, and the Post's 2018 investigation counted Atlanta among the cities with large numbers of unsolved homicides. Cases with few public details, like his, often faded from view quickly.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Shawn Boggan 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 Shawn Boggan, saw him in the days before he died, or 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 Atlanta Police Department Homicide Unit at 404-546-4235, or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers Greater Atlanta at 404-577-TIPS (404-577-8477), which may pay a cash reward for information that leads to an arrest.
