ST. LOUIS • A cellphone stolen eight days before Megan Boken was slain in the Central West End led to Thursday’s arrest of two suspects in the murder, according to sources close to the case.
Police Chief Dan Isom said detectives will seek charges today against the two men, 18, suspected of killing the 23-year-old graduate of St. Louis University on Saturday. She was in town from her home in Wheaton, Ill., for a job interview and reunion of her college volleyball team.
Looking for clues among other street robberies, detectives scoured records of a Sprint cellphone taken Aug. 10 during an armed robbery in the 200 block of Boyle Avenue. They tracked down a woman whose number began showing up after the holdup.
She told them her boyfriend told her he was involved in killing Boken, the sources said.
The boyfriend and the other man both confessed, the sources said. The shooter told police he wanted Boken’s cellphone and when she resisted, he shot her, the sources said. The other suspect drove the getaway car.
People are also reading…
A home in the 3300 block of Welsberg Drive in Bel-Ridge that police searched as part of the investigation was where the shooter lived, the sources said.
Isom announced during a news conference Thursday evening that the suspects were being booked and that he was “confident” they were responsible. He credited “good detective work” for breaking the case.
It was good news at a time when the Police Department is under pressure for a rising tide of gun crimes. Isom said that while crime in most categories — including homicide — is down,
aggravated assaults are up about 19 percent this year compared with the same time in 2011.
According to police, there were 2,559 such assaults through Aug. 15, in 1,769 incidents. Firearms were used in 743 of those incidents. In about 37 percent of those, victims were shot; in about 33 percent, guns were flourished; and in about 29 percent, shots were fired at victims.
One of the most recent involved seven women robbed at gunpoint near Busch Stadium on Wednesday night. They were not hurt.
Mayor Francis Slay joined Isom in lauding officers for the arrests and asked the public to support Isom as he rolls out a plan to shift resources to address the escalating violence. It’s a plan the St. Louis Police Officers’ union has already opposed, through a grievance.
Said Slay, “Let them do their job and support it, but if it doesn’t work, then let’s talk about it.”
The chief’s plan includes shifting some daytime officers to night shifts and scaling back responses to crimes involving vehicles.
“I want to express to the community that we’re working hard on aggravated assaults and we’ve had some success in some areas, and in some areas we haven’t,” Isom said. “We will continue to put the pressure on and try new strategies and try to calm it down.”
The victim of the Aug. 10 robbery along Boyle Avenue told police she was unloading her vehicle around 8:30 p.m. when she saw the robber walk past, turn around, point a pistol at her and demand her phone and money. She complied.
Police said Boken’s killer apparently was trying to rob her. Four Washington University students were held up just blocks away about 10 hours later.
About 11 p.m. Wednesday, seven women were robbed along the 500 block of South Broadway. The robber ordered five of the women to put their purses on the ground and give him their jewelry.
He pointed his weapon at all of the victims and made off with four purses, two cellphones, three wallets, credit cards and identifications belonging to the first four victims.
He left with an accomplice in a maroon SUV, possibly a Ford Explorer or Mercury Mountaineer. The vehicle description is similar to the one used in the robbery of the Washington University students.
Isom suggested that judges should set higher bail for suspects in gun crimes; he said bail amounts were higher last year. That, coupled with a shorter winter, could be factors in increasing violence because “with warmer weather, more people are on the streets,” he said.
The department has two “overlay” shifts to supplement regular patrols — one from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and the other from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. Until further notice, Isom is putting them all on nights. He estimated that 60 officers would be affected.
The Police Officers’ Association filed a grievance over the schedule change Thursday, saying the collective bargaining agreement requires at least 30 days’ notice of schedule changes, said Jeff Roorda, the business manager.
“These guys have lives,” he said. “They need secondary employment to make ends meet because this department pays so poorly.”
Roorda added that the union plans to meet with department leaders next week and is “hopeful” for a mutual agreement.
Isom vowed that the emphasis on nights will not affect response time or the quality of service during the day. He said daytime property crimes are down. And he is freeing officers from responding in person to crimes involving vehicles, with the department taking such reports by phone instead.
Those vehicle crimes include thefts or attempted thefts, larcenies or attempted larcenies or stolen license plates or tabs.
Police used to take vehicle-crime reports over the phone before 2009, when the city saw an uptick in vehicle larcenies.
Isom also said he wanted to use the public attention to the Boken case to highlight other unsolved homicides in which the police could use the public’s help.
Isom acknowledged that Boken’s slaying has received more public attention than many other homicides.
“There is certainly a difference in attention to certain crimes,” Isom said. “Last year we had a 7-year-old killed in the Clinton-Peabody area, and certainly the public put a lot more attention on that case than others.
“But all of them are important. The family members grieve the same no matter who the victim was, and we aggressively pursue all of them.”
