Bill Bryan, renowned police reporter in St. Louis for years, dies at 76

His illness was diagnosed last July.

Bryan covered crime news from a bureau in the old St. Louis Police Department headquarters downtown, first for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat and then for the Post-Dispatch, until he retired in 2007.

Over the years, Bryan cultivated a legendary stable of sources in the city and throughout the area, from the St. Louis County Police to federal agencies and tiny municipal police departments.

Bryan broke stories about such high-profile crimes as the mob wars of the early 1980s, the robbery-massacre of five supermarket workers in St. Louis in 1987 and the murders of two sisters who were thrown from the old Chain of Rocks Bridge in 1991.

In between, he wrote about hundreds of incidents, churning out daily stories in his clean, just-the-facts style.

One of his biggest news breaks came on Jan. 12, 2007, when he got a tip on the arrest of Michael Devlin, who had abducted two boys, including one who was missing for four years. Both boys, Shawn Hornbeck of Washington County and Ben Ownby of Franklin County, were found in Devlin’s Kirkwood apartment in what became known as the “Missouri Miracle.”

Bryan was off work that day and called in the tip to his editor, Pat Gauen, who had known Bryan from their days at the Globe-Democrat.

“Bill said he had good information that Ownby was alright,” said Gauen. “Then he said they also had Hornbeck. I was stunned. My brain thought, is this a sick joke? But Bill didn’t do that sort of thing. Bill was a very well-respected reporter. If something was going on, he knew about it. ”

Gauen recalled a city police chief once telling him that “Bill Bryan knows more of my officers than I do.”

Another chief once threatened to kick Bryan out of the building if he wrote a story. “That would make a great story too,” he told the chief.

Bryan wrote the offending piece and stayed at headquarters.

Bill grew up in Louisville, Ky., the oldest of five children, and finished high school at the former Augustinian Academy in St. Louis after his family moved here. He graduated from St. Louis University and worked at the Globe-Democrat while a student.

The Globe assigned him to police headquarters in the mid-1970s, and he stayed there until his retirement from the Post-Dispatch in 2007. His move to the Post in 1984 was as simple as carrying his jumbled notes and files from one desk to the other in the same room.

He had the run of police headquarters, checking daily with the homicide, sex crimes and other detective bureaus. He also was the last reporter to work inside the building.

A serious sports fan, Bryan sometimes covered Cardinals and St. Louis Billikens evening games for The Associated Press. His favorite retirement job was playground monitor for St. Peter Catholic School, which his children had attended.

Among his survivors are his wife, Post-Dispatch reporter Kim Bell; three daughters; one son; six grandchildren; two sisters; and a brother. Arrangements are pending through Bopp Chapel in Kirkwood.