Hello, my gracious followers!! It has been very long since my last post and I sincerely apologize for this delay. However, as you have understood by the title, its going to be a murder mystery this time. We all have heard true stories of mysterious serial killers like Jack the Ripper, Zodiac and other. Although, this incident is not a serial killing case, but the conspiracies around it have made it mysterious.
The Plot:
Year 1935. On the afternoon of January 2nd, a well suited gentleman checked into the Hotel President in Kansas City. He asked specifically for an interior room several stories above and identified himself as Roland T. Owen and provided a Los Angeles address. He was well dressed, had no luggage. He was only distinguishable by a scar on his temple and had a cauliflower ear and seemed to be probably in his 20’s.
Roland booked a room for one night. He was assisted by Randolph Propst, a bellhop at the President who took him to the 10th floor of the building and as per Roland’s request, opened the door to Room 1046. As Propst’s statement, Roland only had a hairbrush, a comb and a toothpaste with him which he took out from his overcoat pocket as he entered the room. He repeatedly complained about the nearby Muehlebach Hotel which was charging a $5 nightly rate.
Upon unpacking his things, he and Randolph left the room and the bellboy locked the room and provided Roland with the key. Thereafter, Roland was seeing leaving the hotel. Shortly after, one of the maid Mary Soptic, went to room 1046 for cleaning purposes and was shocked to see Roland there as she was expecting a woman who was living in the room the previous night. Roland asked her to clean the room. As she did her job, she saw Roland had drawn all the curtains and only lit a dim light in the room. As per her statement to the police, “He was either worried about something or afraid.”
As she took some time to clean the room, Owen put on his overcoat and combed his hair. Before leaving, he told Mary to keep the door unlocked as he was expecting few friends to visit. Soptic did as he had asked. At 4 P.M, Soptic came to the room with freshly laundered towels and found Roland was lying in his bed, fully dressed. In the visible light from the bedside table, Soptic saw a note which read, “Don: I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait”.
The Next Day:
Soptic returned to Room 1046 on the next day (January 3) at around 10.30 A.M. She found the door to be locked from the outside which led her to assume that Roland was out, since the door could only be locked from the outside. But when she entered, she found the same dark room and Roland was sitting in the same place as the previous afternoon. The telephone rang and she just heard him saying, “No, Don, I don’t want to eat. I am not hungry. I just had breakfast … No, I am not hungry”.
Again at 4 PM when Soptic returned with the fresh towels, she heard two men talking inside Room 1046. She knocked on the door and a deep voice (probably not Roland’s, as per Soptic) asked who it was. When Mary told she had brought fresh towels for the room, the voice answered, “We don’t need any.” Although, Mary knew there were no towels in the room as she had taken them out herself in the morning.
Later that night, the 10th floor of the President noticed some unusual activity. Jean Owen, who was at Room 1048 told the police she heard men and women talking loudly and secular way all over the floor. The same was also confirmed by elevator operator Charles Blocher who had started his shift at midnight and was busy till 1.30 AM. After that, the hotel quieted down except for a loud party at Room 1055.
Blocher recalled one woman who was visiting several mail guests in their rooms and thus concluded her to be a prostitute. She had asked Blocher to take her to Room 1046. Five minutes later, the woman summoned the elevator again and she looked puzzled and told that her client was not in Room 1046, since she had been called previously as well and he was present there.
Half an hour later, the woman had summoned the elevator again and this time Charles took her to the lobby. An hour later, the woman and another man was taken by Charles to the 9th floor. At 4.15 AM, the woman left the hotel for the night. 15 minutes later, the elevator was called again and this time, the man left the hotel telling Charles that he could not sleep, so was going for a walk.
The Day of the Murder:
January 4, 7 A.M. – A new switchboard operator, Della Fergusson was on shift. She was preparing to make a requested wakeup call to Room 1046, when she noticed a light indicating the phone in Room 1046 was off the hook.
Propst, who had taken Roland two days before to his room was sent to check. He found the door was locked with a ‘Do Not Disturb’ tag hanging from the doorknob. After several knocks, a voice told him to enter and turn on the lights. Propst couldn’t enter since the door was locked so he just asked the phone to be placed back to the hook.
Propst assumed the guest in Room 1046 was probably drunk and informed the same to Ferguson and asked her to try after an hour. At 8.30 A.M. the phone was still off the hook, so another bellboy Harold Pike was sent to check the matter. The door was still locked, but Harold had a key and he opened it. He found Roland was lying on his bed, naked, possibly drunk and several dark spots on the bed. Pike didn’t turn on the light, but instead went to the telephone stand, found the receiver was knocked to the floor. He placed it back on the hook and left the room.
Shortly after 10.30 A.M. another operator informed the phone was again placed off the receiver. Propst again went on to check the matter. As before, the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign remained and the door was locked. Propst opened the door with his key since repeated knocks were not answered. As per his statement:
“When I entered the room this man was within two feet of the door on his knees and elbows – holding his head in his hands – I noticed blood on his head – I then turned the light on – placed the telephone receiver on the hook – I looked around and saw blood on the walls on the bed and in the bath room – this frightened me and I immediately left the room and went downstairs…”
Propst returned with the assistant manager M.S. Weaver along with Percy Tyrell but they could not enter as Roland was lying injured on the other side of the door. When they finally entered, Roland had moved to the edge of the bathtub. The assistant manager informed the KCPD. Detectives Ira Johnson and William Eldredge, and Detective Sgt. Frank Howland came to investigate the scene; they were later joined by Harold Flanders of Kansas City General Hospital.
Dark Day at the President:
Roland was tied with cord around his neck, ankle and wrists. His neck had further bruising which clearly indicated that someone had tried to strangle him. He had been stabbed more than once in the chest above his heart which punctured his lung. A blow on the head showed a skull fracture on the right side of the head. Moreover, there were more blood on the ceiling which was later discovered.
A detective asked Owen who had been in the room with him. Though drifting into unconsciousness, Owen had a chance to finger his assailants, to earn a measure of justice for himself. Nevertheless, he answered: “Nobody.”
How did you get hurt?, the detective asked.
“I fell against the bathtub.”
Did you try to commit suicide?, the detective asked.
“No.”
Owen lost consciousness thereafter. He went to coma until he died shortly after midnight on January 5.
Doctors performed an autopsy and concluded Roland had died of his wounds. The room was checked again and the dried blood samples concluded whatever had happened, it was between 4 and 5 A.M. Detectives took note of what they had found which could have been important evidences: a hairpin, safety pin, unsmoked cigarette, and a full bottle of diluted sulfuric acid. Four fingerprints that detectives believed to be a woman’s were found on the receiver, which was not matched with any other staffs or employees.
Do You Recognize This Man???
As twisted as the incident sounds, one primary question among many comes up, “Who was Roland T. Owen?” Soon after the incident, the KCPD contacted the Los Angeles Police Department to notify about the incident, but there was no record of any such person who was living in California at the time. Hence, the dead man’s fingerprint was sent to the then FBI, to check for any possible match in their collection.
It soon became evident that the name ‘Roland T. Owen’ was an alias as there was no similarity between the appearance of the person and the name except the reception record at President Hotel. On January 6, the Sunday newspapers reported that the man in Room 1046 had died under an assumed name, and tips began coming in. Wire services began picking up the story, newspapers started covering the story and asked to provide photographs to the KCPD. Needless to say, the KCPD had to spend a considerable amount of time with police all over the country to follow up on the leads. Eventually, many were eliminated.
KCPD recalled Propst’s account stating after checking into the President, the person had told Propst that he had left the nearby Muehlebach Hotel after one night due to their high rates. Officers checked in at Muehlebach, but no such name was recorded in the list. Hotel staffs recalled a person of Roland’s appearance had checked in under the name of Eugene K. Scott also giving Los Angeles as his address and asking for a room at the interior of the building. After investigating, LAPD confirmed there was no one by that name in their city.
Stop the Funeral!!!
The case came back to the headlines again on March 3, 1935 when the funeral home, Mellody-McGilley where the man’s body was kept declared his burial at the city’s potter field the next day. That day, an anonymous person called the funeral home director and asked to delay the burial so that they could send the funeral home money for a grave and service at Memorial Park cemetery, Kansas. The caller said, he would be buried near his sister. When the funeral director told that he would have to inform the police about the call, the caller responded saying he knew about it; that he was not bothered.
When asked about why the unidentified man was killed, the caller was forthcoming and told that he had an affair with one woman while being engaged to another. The caller and the two women had arranged the murder at the President to seek revenge. The caller hung up after saying, “Cheaters usually get what’s coming to them!”
As per the caller’s request, the funeral was postponed. On March 23, the funeral home received an envelope, with the address properly written having $25 wrapped in newspaper. The amount was enough to cover the expenses. The sender remained unknown.
Two additional envelopes having $5 each were sent to Rock Flower Company, for arrangement of 13 American beauty roses to go with the grave after similar calls were made. The calls had been made through pay phones. Included with this payment was a card with a disguised handwriting saying “Love Forever – Louise”. The funeral took place shortly afterwards. Attendees of the funeral were the officiating minister and local detectives, some of whom served as pallbearers. Other detectives, posing as gravediggers kept an eye on the grave for the next few days, but no one visited the grave.
Several days later, an anonymous woman called the Kansas City Journal Post’s newsroom to inform that the dead man from Room 1046 was buried in the city’s pauper grave was incorrect, that he was given a proper funeral. The caller asked to confirm the information from the funeral home and the florist. Asked to identify herself, she said “Never mind, I know what I’m talking about”, Pressed for what that was, she responded, “He got into a jam”, and ended the conversation.
Revelation of Artemus:
Images of the unidentified man continued to circulate afterwards for several months until a friend of Ruby Ogletree, a woman from Birmingham, Alabama show her an article in the American Weekly about the murder of the unidentified man. The man looked a lot like her son Artemus Ogletree who had left Birmingham in 1934 at the age of 17 to hitchhike to California.
Ruby contacted the KCPD and provided the information about Artemus. All details matched with the body. Ruby also confirmed that during his childhood an accident with some hot grease left a sizable scar on his head above his ear, which remained hairless afterward. In November, another issue of the story came out which confirmed the identity of the man as Artemus Ogletree.
While Ruby’s statement stopped the identification process, it also raised much questions. This is because, she had received two letters from Artemus after he had been killed. The first, early in 1935, postmarked in Chicago, aroused Ruby’s suspicion as the letter was typewritten whereas according to her, her son never knew how to type. The body of the letter was inconsistent as it was filled with rough languages.
In August 1935, a caller from Memphis, Tennessee had called Ruby and claimed that he had seen Artemus in Cairo. He said Artemus had saved him from a fight. He told that Artemus had lost his thumb in the fight for which he could no longer write.
If Artemus had indeed went to Egypt before his death, he did not go under his names as records kept by shipping companies were scanned for Ogletree’s name but there was no record of him moving to Egypt. The consular section at U.S.Embassy, Cairo was also unable to find any evidence that he was there.
Unanswered Questions:
Needless to say, the case remained to be one of the unsolved murder mysteries to this day. But there are many questions that there has been no answer:
- Who killed Artemus Ogletree?
- Why was he killed? Was the information about his affair indeed true?
- What happened exactly in Room 1046 that night?
- Why Artemus refused to reveal his killer? Why he had been defendant even when he was about to die?
- Who was Don? Was it the rough voiced man?
- Who was Louise? Was it the woman whose voice was heard from Room 1046?
So, why this case is so special? Because, a 2012 blog by historian John Horner at the Kansas City Public Library website revealed that back in 2003, he had received a call from a person who claimed that he was itemizing the belonging of an elderly person with another person and that he has retrieved several newspaper clippings related to the Ogletree murder case. Besides the clippings, there was also something mentioned in the newspaper stories in the box.
The caller never revealed what was there inside the box!!
Histories + Mysteries 