Michael Foster

Michael Foster, 31, a Black man, was the victim in a Buffalo homicide investigation recorded on October 23, 2012, tied to East Delavan Avenue in the 14215 area of Erie County. The surviving public record attached to his case is stark: it identifies the offense as murder, places the incident on that stretch of the city, and lists the Buffalo Police Department as the investigating agency.

In the years since, the case has remained open and unresolved. No suspect is publicly named, no arrest is listed, and the cause of death is not specified in the available case entry—an absence that reads like a silence investigators have not been able to break. The case appears in a cold-case database assembled from public records and law-enforcement submissions, with Buffalo entries gathered through a data partnership that tracked unsolved murders in major U.S. cities, leaving Foster’s death documented, but not explained.

East Delavan is part of a densely populated section of Buffalo where blocks of homes, side streets, and steady foot traffic blur together, the kind of neighborhood where people can be close enough to hear what happens, yet still far enough—by fear, by uncertainty, by time—to keep answers out of reach. If investigators believe someone saw something or knows what led to Foster’s killing, the case entry directs tips to the Buffalo Police Department at 851-4415, a number that has outlasted seasons, headlines, and the early momentum every fresh case begins with.