About the project
The St. Louis region faces an epidemic of murder. The number of killings across St. Louis city and county reached record levels in 2020, after steadily rising each year since 2014.
To address this worsening crisis, the Post-Dispatch created the Homicide Tracker to memorialize victims and to collect comprehensive information about killings across the region.
In previous years, the Post-Dispatch maintained annual maps of St. Louis-area homicides, sourced from Post-Dispatch reporting. Our new Homicide Tracker expands on those earlier efforts by adding victim profiles, more granular details about each killing, and context about trends over time.
Coverage
When police count homicides, they use a specific definition, but most people have a broader understanding of the term.
This Homicide Tracker includes any intentional killing of one person by another, including those that police later classify "justifiable" — such as a person shooting an intruder in their home in self-defense.
We do not include most incidents where one person kills another accidentally or because of negligence.
We include killings from St. Louis city and 15 surrounding counties in Missouri and Illinois.
We classify all victims under the age of 18 as children.
Important notes
- Not all killings are reported quickly to the police by the public. Some are reported months or even years after they happen.
- Police may not know (or may withhold) details about a given incident. Police generally do not identify victims until next of kin are notified.
- Police departments sometimes fail to notify news outlets of homicides. If you know a homicide occurred but do not see it here, please contact us at publicsafety@post-dispatch.com.
Data sources
Each homicide victim is added to our database by a Post-Dispatch reporter or editor. Victim profiles and incident details are usually derived from Post-Dispatch stories and briefs.
The primary sources for information on homicides are police departments and medical examiners. As often as possible, reporters seek family, friends or witnesses who can add details or say more about the victims.
The Post-Dispatch tracks the following details about each homicide:
- Biographical details about the victim
- Names and ages of any charged suspects
- The date of the homicide
- The street block where the homicide occurred*
- Approximate geographic coordinates where the homicide occurred*
- The type of killing
- Whether a homicide involved abuse or neglect
- Whether police later classified the killing as "justified"
- Whether the incident involved a police use of force
* Sometimes street blocks or coordinates are estimates.
Because we may be missing gender, name or age for some victims, the victim subtotals shown for men, women, and children on the homepage and the Places page usually will not add up to match the overall victim total.
To show trends over time, we provide bar charts on the Places page with annual homicide totals for each county, as reported by police to state and federal Uniform Crime Reporting programs. We obtain this data from the Missouri Highway Patrol and the Illinois State Police.
Caution about Illinois bar charts
In 2021, the FBI changed the format it requires agencies to use for reporting crime data. Since then, many agencies in Illinois, including East St. Louis in St. Clair County, have not reported any crime data, despite state laws requiring they do so. For this reason, the totals shown in the bar charts for some local Illinois counties after 2020 are probably unreliable.
Also, homicides that occur in an Illinois city that straddles multiple counties will be included in the totals for each of its parent counties in the bar charts.
Timeliness
The Post-Dispatch aims to update the Homicide Tracker every two weeks with new data.
Because the data is recorded manually by Post-Dispatch staff, it may take additional time for an incident to appear in the Homicide Tracker. Some incidents may not be included until a suspect has been arrested or charged.
Though we strive to make the Homicide Tracker as comprehensive as possible, it may not include all incidents of homicide. Totals shown in this app should be considered undercounts.
Credits
The first edition of this app was published Jan. 9, 2022.
Newsroom developer Josh Renaud and former data reporter Janelle O'Dea programmed this app. They built on work by former developer Andrew Nguyen. Former editors Alex Valentine, Amanda St. Amand, David Warren and Cathy Hensley contributed to this project.