On December 31, 2012, Frederick Shearer was found dead in Phoenix, Arizona, in what online case records describe as an unsolved “death by force,” meaning his death has been classified as a homicide caused by violent means rather than natural causes, accident, or self-harm. Publicly available data for the case list his full name and the fact that the incident occurred and was reported on that same date, but they do not provide narrative details such as the setting, what led up to the killing, or how quickly emergency services or police responded. The case entry notes that he was from Phoenix, that both “date found” and “date of death” are recorded as December 31, 2012, and that the case remains open years later. Victim Frederick Shearer, whose exact age and ethnicity have not been publicly reported, is listed in the available records as male, with his race recorded as unknown.
The online homicide listing that documents this case is extremely bare-bones: it confirms that he is a victim in an unsolved murder in Phoenix, Arizona, but provides no description of the location within the city, no information about his work or family life, and no account of the circumstances under which his body was discovered. There is no publicly accessible medical examiner summary or police incident report attached, and the site shows no links to additional outside sources, which reinforces how little has been released to the public. The data fields presented—name, city, state, gender, race and the single date that serves as both discovery and death date—are essentially the full extent of what is known from open sources about the event itself.
The broader context in Arizona underlines how cases like this can remain unresolved. Crime data compiled for the state show that in 2022 there were 431 violent crime incidents per 100,000 residents, slightly higher than in 2012, and that approximately 63 percent of violent crimes reported in Arizona that year were not cleared, a higher unsolved rate than a decade earlier. Phoenix, as the state capital and largest city, accounts for a substantial share of those incidents, and statewide unsolved-crime statistics illustrate how a single homicide can effectively disappear into a large backlog of open violent-crime investigations. While these numbers do not speak to the specifics of Shearer’s killing, they help explain how a homicide recorded at the end of 2012 could still have no public resolution despite the passage of more than a decade.
As for investigative progress, the public record indicates that the case is still unsolved and that no suspect or suspects have been publicly identified. The case entry explicitly categorizes the incident as an unsolved murder and, as of its most recent update in late November 2025, it still appears in an online database of open Arizona homicides without any notation of an arrest, indictment, or closure. There are no news reports, press releases, or court records in open sources that link any named individual to this homicide as a suspect, person of interest, or defendant, and no documentation of charges filed in connection with his death could be found. Based on what is available online, Frederick Shearer’s killing in Phoenix remains an open, officially unsolved homicide with no publicly reported arrests or identified suspects.
