Joseph Pendergrass was 57 years old when he was killed in Atlanta on Sunday, July 11, 2010. The Atlanta Police Department investigated his death, 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.
Beyond his name, his age and the date of his death, almost nothing about Joseph Pendergrass has been made public.
No news story about his 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, exactly where it happened, whether he knew the person responsible, or whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital. It does not say whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Joseph Pendergrass'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 the case was still counted, years later, among those for which no one had been arrested.
His age stands out. At 57, he was far older than most homicide victims in Atlanta in those years, who were mostly young men. He was killed on a Sunday in the middle of July, in the heat of summer.
Searches for his name are dominated by an unrelated story. Earlier in 2010, Atlanta news outlets reported that a man named Joseph Pendergrass, then 57, had been arrested on a warrant connected to a 2006 house fire on the city's west side. Public records that could be found do not establish whether that man and the victim in the Post's database are the same person, and nothing found links that case to this killing. The overlap does make it harder to find any trace of the man who died in July 2010.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in the west side of Atlanta, a short distance west of downtown. People who lived or worked in that area in July 2010 may remember Joseph Pendergrass, 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 those years never led to an arrest, and the Washington 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 Joseph Pendergrass could be found in news archives or public records. More than 16 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Joseph Pendergrass, who saw him in early July 2010, 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 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.
