Nichole S. Lang was 30 years old when she was killed in St. Louis on Sunday, July 8, 2012. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department investigated her 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 her name, her age and the date of her death, almost nothing about Nichole Lang has been made public. No news story about her killing, obituary, memorial page or family fundraiser could be found for this account. She surely had family, friends and neighbors who remember who she 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 she was killed, whether she was attacked indoors or on the street, whether she knew the attacker, what time of day it happened, or whether she 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.
An online case listing on CrimeTea, a site that catalogs unsolved killings, also lists Nichole S. Lang as a murder victim and the case as active, with St. Louis Regional Crime Stoppers named as a contact. That listing adds no new details, but it shows the case was still counted among the city's open killings years later.
Her age and sex stand out. Most homicide victims in St. Louis in those years were men, and a woman of 30 would likely have had close family, friends, perhaps children or a partner, people who noticed when something was wrong and who may have heard what happened to her. Searches also turn up other women named Nichole or Nicole Lang, which makes it harder to find any trace of her.
The location recorded in the Post's database places her death in north St. Louis, several miles north of downtown, a residential part of the city with blocks of brick homes and flats, many of them vacant. A killing there on a summer weekend, when many people are outside, may well have been seen or heard by neighbors. People who lived in that area in July 2012 may remember Nichole, and may remember the police activity that followed her 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. Killings of women in the city were less common than killings of men, but many of them also went unsolved, and cases with few public details often faded from view quickly.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Nichole S. Lang could be found in news archives or public records. More than 14 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Anyone who knew Nichole Lang, who saw her in the days before July 8, 2012, or who heard talk afterward about what happened to her, 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.
