Rachel Lippmann
Rachel Lippmann is the justice reporter at St. Louis Public Radio.
Stories
5 takeaways from our series on St. Louis homicide investigations
The police department has struggled to solve homicides, partly due to shoddy detective work, staffing shortages and eroding community trust.
St. Louis homicide cases often go unsolved. Victims’ families want justice.
These St. Louis families have waited years for answers. They say police seem to have forgotten their loved ones.
As murders increased, St. Louis police struggled for resources to solve cases
The city’s homicide unit has dealt with short staffing, long hours and a ballooning DNA backlog.
Some St. Louis detectives may have botched homicide investigations
Several officers in the homicide unit faced internal complaints that they slept on the job, failed to get key evidence and lied to superiors.
In St. Louis, a racial disparity in whose killings get solved
In the past decade, police solved fewer than half of the homicide cases with Black victims and two-thirds of the cases with white ones.
How we reported on homicide investigations in St. Louis
Getting and interpreting homicide clearance data involved litigation, complex analysis and patience.
St. Louis police data: Nearly 60% of homicides committed since 2017 are unsolved
Newly released data reveals no resolution for the families of hundreds of homicide victims. Police refused to release homicide clearance data, so we sued to find out.
St. Louis cops are hiding key details about homicide cases from the public
Despite killings on the rise and the highest homicide rate among big cities, St. Louis police say they don’t have to tell the public which cases have been solved. APM Reports has filed a lawsuit for the information.