Officials: Cousins killed volleyball star over phone
• CHICAGO SUN-TIMES • SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 2012
Murder charges were filed Friday against two 18-yearold St. Louis men for the slaying of Megan Boken, a 23-year-old Wheaton native who was shot in her car last Saturday while in St. Louis for a volleyball game.
Keith Esters and Johnathan Perkins, who are cousins, targeted Boken because they saw her talking on her cellphone in the city’s Central West End neighborhood, according to documents from the City of St. Louis circuit attorney’s office.
Esters shot Boken twice, in the chest and the neck, while trying to steal the phone, according to the court records. Boken was talking to her mother at the time of the shooting. Perkins allegedly drove Esters to and from the murder scene and told police that Esters told him he shot Boken.
Police tracked the pair by using records from another cellphone stolen in the same neighborhood, according to the court papers. The cellphone records led to Esters’ girlfriend, who told police that Esters told her he was involved in the fatal shooting. She also told police that Esters and Perkins had planned to commit a robbery in the neighborhood where Boken was shot, according to the court records.
Esters allegedly told police he saw Boken on her cellphone and “decided that she would be the target of a robbery.” He then shot Boken twice, according to the charges.
A witness identified Esters as the man running from the crime scene.
Esters was charged with first-degree murder, first-degree attempted robbery and two counts of armed criminal action. Perkins was charged with second-degree murder, second-degree attempted robbery and two counts of armed criminal action.
Bond for both men was denied, said a spokeswoman for Jennifer Joyce, the City of St. Louis circuit attorney.
The charges came a day after family and friends buried Boken, a Saint Louis University alumna described by her family as a “wonderful and beautiful human being loved by everyone she met.”