Do you know who murdered Ray Charles? Ray Charles, a male resident of Washington, D.C., began his final Saturday as the city was just waking up on June 26, 2004. A little after 8:30 that morning, he was discovered inside the apartment building at 1936 3rd Street, NE, fatally wounded by gunfire. The call brought Metropolitan Police officers to the three-story brick building, where the quiet of the hallway contrasted sharply with the violence that had taken place inside.
Officials later fixed the approximate time he was found at 8:30 a.m., marking the moment when an ordinary summer morning became the start of a homicide investigation.
The Metropolitan Police Department quickly classified the case as a homicide and turned it over to detectives in the Violent Crimes Branch. From the beginning, investigators made it clear that they needed help from the public: department notices and a printed reward flyer repeated the basic facts of the case, asking anyone who had been in or around 1936 3rd Street NE that morning to come forward with what they had seen or heard. The flyer promised that information leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever killed Ray could earn a reward of up to $25,000, a standard but very visible sign of how seriously the department was treating his death.
Over time, Ray's name settled into the grim roll call of unsolved cases. The department's own list of major unsolved homicides for 2004 still records his killing, with the same date and address, a permanent reminder that no one has yet been brought to court for what happened inside that building. Outside agencies and case-tracking sites later picked up his story, repeating the core details: a Washington resident, shot to death in his apartment building on a June morning, discovered around 8:30 a.m., with detectives still appealing for witnesses years later. Those summaries note that despite “ongoing efforts” by the Violent Crimes Branch, the case remains unsolved and the offer of a reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction still stands, underscoring that no suspect has been publicly identified and no arrest announced in connection with Ray Charles's death.
