John Thompson was 57 years old when he was killed in Atlanta on Tuesday, June 4, 2013. The Atlanta Police Department 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.
Beyond his name, his age and the date of his death, almost nothing about John Thompson 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, whether he was attacked indoors or on the street, whether he knew his attacker, 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.
John Thompson is one of the most common names in the country. Searches are dominated by other men who share it, including a famous basketball coach, a man exonerated after years on death row in Louisiana, doctors, lawyers and many people whose obituaries were published in 2013. None of them is the man who died in Atlanta that June, and the sheer number of namesakes has buried any trace of his own story.
His age stands out. Most homicide victims in Atlanta in those years were young men, and at 57 he was far older than most. A man of his age would likely have had deep roots in the city, a work history and people who noticed quickly when something was wrong.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in northwest Atlanta near the Westside, just west of downtown. That part of the city is a mix of older neighborhoods close to the downtown core, and people who lived or worked there in early June 2013 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 of those killings never led to an arrest, and the Washington Post's 2018 investigation of unsolved homicides counted Atlanta among the cities with large numbers of them. Cases with few public details, like his, often faded from view quickly.
The Post database itself was built for a 2018 investigation of unsolved killings in major American cities. Being listed there means that, years after the killing, the case was still counted among those for which no one had been arrested.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of John Thompson could be found in news archives or public records. More than 13 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew John Thompson, saw him in the days before he died, or heard talk afterward of what happened to him on the Westside 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.
