Willie Williams was 43 years old when he was killed in St. Louis on Thursday, May 17, 2007. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department investigated his death, and the Washington Post's homicide database, which tracked killings in St. Louis 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 Willie Williams has been made public. No news story about the 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, whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital, or whether anyone else was hurt. It does not say whether investigators ever identified a suspect or a motive.
Willie Williams'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 that, a decade after his death, the case was still counted among those for which no one had been arrested.
He was 43 and died on a Thursday in mid-May 2007, older than most of the city's homicide victims in those years.
Willie Williams is one of the most common names in the country. Searches turn up a former St. Louis alderman, athletes, a man exonerated by DNA evidence, men charged in other states and dozens of unrelated obituaries. None of them is the Willie Williams who died in St. Louis in May 2007, and none of those arrests concern his death.
The location recorded in the database places his death in north St. Louis near Grand Boulevard, in the area of the JeffVanderLou neighborhood. People who lived there in May 2007 may remember the police activity that followed.
St. Louis was, and remains, one of the most violent large cities in the United States. Police counted 138 homicides in the city in 2007 and 167 in 2008, in a city of roughly 350,000 people, and many of those cases were never solved. With so many killings each year, the ones that received no news coverage could slip out of public view within weeks.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Willie Williams could be found in news archives or public records. More than 19 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Willie Williams, saw him in the days before he died, or 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 St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department Homicide Division at 314-444-5371, or leave an anonymous tip with CrimeStoppers at 866-371-TIPS (866-371-8477).
