Stephen S. Williams was 45 years old when he was killed in St. Louis on Tuesday, May 10, 2011. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department investigated his death. 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 this Stephen Williams has been made public. No news story about his 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 the attacker, what time of day it happened, or whether he died at the scene or later at a hospital.
It does not say whether anyone else was hurt or whether investigators ever identified a suspect.
Stephen Williams is also a very common name, and even with his middle initial, searches are dominated by other men, including several named Stephen S. Williams who lived in other parts of Missouri and in other states, and whose obituaries, public records and professional listings have nothing to do with this case. That makes it much harder to find any trace of the man who died in St. Louis in 2011 and may help explain why his story has been so hard to follow.
His age stands out. At 45, he was older than most victims of the city's gun violence in those years, and a man of that age would likely have had a settled life, perhaps a job, a home and long friendships, with people who noticed when he did not come back and who may have heard what happened.
The location recorded in the Post's database places his death in south St. Louis, in the Dutchtown area, a dense neighborhood of brick homes, two-family flats and corner storefronts several miles south of downtown. People who lived or worked in that area in May 2011 may remember Stephen Williams, and may remember the police activity that followed his death.
St. Louis has long had one of the highest homicide rates of any large American city. The city recorded more than 100 homicides in every year of the early 2010s, and the yearly totals later climbed to 188 in 2015 and 205 in 2017. In many of those years, fewer than half of the city's killings ended in an arrest. Cases with few public details, like his, often faded from view quickly.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Stephen S. Williams could be found in news archives or public records. More than 15 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Stephen Williams in south St. Louis and saw him in the days before he died, or who heard talk afterward about 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 call CrimeStoppers at 866-371-TIPS (866-371-8477), where tips can be anonymous.
