Virgil Bookert, a 50-year-old Black male from Homewood, was found dead on November 26, 2013, inside his home on Stoneville Street in Pittsburgh’s Homewood neighborhood. The discovery was made by his brother, turning what should have been the privacy of a family home into the scene of a homicide investigation. Bookert had suffered gunshot wounds to the head and chest, injuries that left little doubt that his death was the result of violence.
The available reports place Bookert’s death
among a broader series of Allegheny County homicides from that period, but the details released about his final moments remain sparse. There is no public indication that police identified a motive, described a suspect, or released a sequence of events leading up to the shooting. What is known is that he was found inside the residence, not on the street or in a public place, suggesting that the person responsible either entered the home or fired in a way that reached him there.
No arrests or charges were reported in connection with Bookert’s killing. The case has remained listed among area cold cases and unsolved murders associated with the Pittsburgh Police Department, meaning investigators had not publicly closed the case with a named suspect, trial, or conviction in the available online records. As of the information available online, the person or people responsible for killing Virgil Bookert have not been publicly identified.
