Rufus Rowe was 32 years old when he was killed in St. Louis on Monday, March 29, 2010. 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 Rufus Rowe 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, or whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital.
It does not say whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Rufus Rowe'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, years after the killing, the case was still counted among those for which no one had been arrested.
He was 32 and died on a Monday at the end of March. Searches for his name are dominated by an unrelated subject: a popular children's novel, The Journal of Rufus Rowe, about a teenager at the Civil War battle of Fredericksburg, along with older genealogy records for men of the same name. That crowding of the results may help explain why his story has been so hard to follow.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in north St. Louis, west of Kingshighway Boulevard, in a residential area of older homes near the city's northwestern edge. People who lived or worked in that area in March 2010 may remember the police activity that followed his death.
St. Louis recorded 144 homicides in 2010 and 113 in 2011, and for years its per capita homicide rate was among the highest of any large city in the United States. Most of the killings took place in a handful of neighborhoods on the city's north and south sides, and many of them were never solved. A case with little public information, like this one, rarely stays in the news for long.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Rufus Rowe could be found in news archives or public records. More than 16 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Rufus Rowe and saw him in the days before he died, or who heard talk afterward of what happened, 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).
