Larry Payne

Larry Payne, 16, was fatally shot with a shotgun by a Memphis police officer on the afternoon of March 28, 1968, during widespread unrest connected to the city's sanitation workers' strike — the same strike that had brought Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis, where he was assassinated exactly one week later. Payne had been seen removing televisions from a Sears store amid the disorder; an officer pursued him on foot to a housing complex, where Payne entered a basement boiler room. The officer said that when Payne partially opened the door, he raised one hand but kept a knife in his lowered other hand, and that he fired in self-defense, striking Payne once in the abdomen. Hours earlier, Payne had been photographed elsewhere in the city watching an officer strike his friend with a baton. A large, hostile crowd gathered at the scene of the shooting. No one was ever charged.

Memphis, TN · Shelby County

• 1968: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• Victim identity and the March 28, 1968 date and circumstances, per the DOJ's public case file.
• No criminal charges were ever filed against the officer involved, per the same file.

• Whether Payne actually held a knife in a threatening manner, as the officer claimed, was never independently tested at trial.
• The full sequence of events inside the boiler room, witnessed only by Payne and the officer, was never independently corroborated.

• U.S. Department of Justice — Notice to Close File
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs