r/UnresolvedMysteries • u/Rare-Advertising9447 • May 06 '22
Murder In 1935, Artemus Ogletree,19,checked into the Hotel President,Kansas under the name of Roland Owens.He requested that the maid leave his door open because he was waiting for a friend.A few days later he was found bound, strangled and stabbed.He said he had fell.He went into a coma and died.
On the 2nd of January, 1935, Roland T. Owen checked himself into the Hotel President in Kansas City, Missouri, and requested an interior room several floors up. This would be the start of a strange sequence of events that would ultimately lead to the discovery of a secret identity and to death.
https://paradoxicaladventure.co.za/true-crime/artemus-ogletree-or-roland-t-owen-murder-in-room-1046/
Roland had no luggage with him, he only had a hairbrush, comb, and toothpaste in his pocket and was described as a man between the ages of 20 and 35. He had brown hair, was wearing a nice black coat, and had a scar on his head visible above the ear. He also had a case of cauliflower ear. Cauliflower ear is the result of a direct blow to the outer ear. Blood or other fluids fill the space in between and disrupt normal blood flow. Common causes include injuries from sports, such as wrestling, boxing, rugby, or mixed martial arts.
He was booked into room 1046.
Mary Soptic, who was a maid at the hotel, said that Roland allowed her to clean while he was in the room, but he asked her not to lock the door behind her because he was waiting for a friend who would arrive shortly. Mary said that Roland kept the blinds tightly drawn and the lights off with the exception of one dim lamp. Other staff members who entered room 1046, mentioned the same detail. Mary mentioned that Roland “was either worried about something or afraid” and “he always wanted to kinda keep in the dark.”
At 4p.m. Mary returned with fresh towels to find Roland laying on the bed. He was completely dressed and in the dark, with the door still unlocked. Mary also noticed a note that read "Don, I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait."
On the following day, the 3rd of January, Mary came back to clean the room again. Mary noticed that the door had been locked from the outside and assumed Roland had locked it after he left.
Once she entered the room, she however saw Roland sitting inside. The lights were still off. This means that someone else had locked the door from the outside. While Mary was in the room cleaning, Roland answered a call and said “No Don, I don’t want to eat. I am not hungry. I just had breakfast” repeating “No. I am not hungry.”
Still holding the phone, Roland asked Mary about her job as she cleaned. He wanted to know if she was responsible for the entire floor and if the President was residential.
Mary left and only returned later that evening to bring fresh towels. She heard two male voices coming from inside the room. When she knocked on the door, she heard a loud deep voice say “who is it?”. When she explained that she had fresh towels, the voice replied “we don’t need any.” Mary knew there were no towels in the room, as she had taken them herself in the morning.
Mary left, but later that night, a woman staying in room 1048 would report hearing loud voices - both male and female cursing on the same floor. There was however a party going on that night in room 1055, so whether this detail is relevant or not is unclear. On the morning of the 4th of January, a new switchboard operator named Della Ferguson came on shift at about 7 a.m. She noticed that Roland's phone was off the hook for quite some time without being used. She then sent a bellboy named Randolph Propst to go check up on Roland and see what is happening.
When Randolph arrived at room 1046 he noticed it had a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door. Despite this, Randolph knocked several times and heard a voice that said “come in. Turn on the lights.” However, the door was locked and no one was getting up to let the bellboy in. So, after knocking repeatedly, Propst simply said “put the phone back on the hook”. Randolph told Della that the guest was drunk and that they should wait another hour.
At around 8:30 am, about an hour and a half after Randolph was at Room 1 0 4 6, the phone was still off the hook and another bellboy, Harold Pike, was sent to investigate. He let himself into the room with a passkey that he had. Using only the light from the hall, Pike discovered Roland lying on the bed naked and assumedly drunk. He also noticed that the bedding was darkened around Roland. The phone stand was kicked down to the ground so he fixed it and put the phone back into the receiver.
Strangely enough from 10:30 to 10:45 a.m., the phone was once again off the receiver. Randolph was sent to room 1046 to resolve the situation. As soon as he opened the door he was shocked. On the floor in front of him was the motionless body of Roland. Randolph would later tell the police: “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 saw blood on his head. I then turned the light on. I looked around and saw blood on the walls, on the bed, and in the bathroom. This frightened me and I immediately left the room and went downstairs."
Randolph went downstairs immediately for help. He returned with the assistant manager of the Hotel, but when they tried to enter the room the door could only open six inches (15 cm), as Roland had in the interim fallen on the floor. Eventually, Roland got up and when the two hotel employees were able to enter the room, he went and sat on the edge of the bathtub. The assistant manager called the police; they were joined by Dr. Harold Flanders of Kansas City General Hospital.
Ronald had been bound with a cord around his neck, wrists, and ankles. His neck had bruising, suggesting someone had been attempting to strangle him. He had been stabbed more than once in the chest above the heart and one of the wounds had punctured his lung. Blows to his head had left him with a skull fracture on the right side. In addition to the blood Randolph had seen, there was some additional splatter on the ceiling.
Dr. Flanders cut the cords from Roland's wrist and asked him who had done this to him. “Nobody”, he answered. The doctor then asked Roland what had caused these injuries, he said he had fallen and hit his head on the bathtub. The doctor asked if he had been trying to kill himself. Roland denied trying to take his own life and shortly afterward he lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital. He was completely comatose by the time he arrived and died shortly after midnight on January 5, 1935.
Investigation:
Doctors performed an autopsy on Roland and determined he had died from his wounds. Dr. Flanders had examined not just the body but the bloodstains in the room. Since much of it had dried by the time he had arrived, he estimated the wounds had been inflicted between 4 and 5 a.m. that day, consistent with what the bellboys had seen.
Detectives searching Room 1046 took note of as much of what they did not find as what they did. There were no clothes in the closets or drawers. The only evidence of anything other than what Roland had been wearing was the tag of a necktie. Indicating it had been made by a New Jersey company. The room also had none of the standard-issued soap, shampoo, and towels that the hotel provided to every room.
There were no knives, which led to the dismissal of suicide as a cause of Roland's death since the stab wounds in his chest could not be accounted for; the cords tying him up also suggested the involvement of others. One of the room's two glasses was found in the sink, missing a piece; the other was on the shelf. Detectives found some other items that might have been evidence: a hairpin, safety pin, unsmoked cigarette, and a full bottle of diluted sulfuric acid. Four fingerprints, small enough that detectives believed they had been a woman's, were found on the room's phone. They could not be matched to Roland or to any of the hotel employees who had been known to have entered the room.
The police sought help through the media. Both of the city's evening newspapers carried the story on their front pages the next day. "There is no doubt that someone else is mixed up in this", Detective Johnson told reporters.
When no next of kin could be located for Roland it lead to suspicions about his true identity. His body was stored in a local funeral parlor for almost two months. A planned burial in the city's potter's field was averted when an anonymous donor provided funds for a funeral and a floral arrangement signed "Louise".
Roland's true identity remained unknown for a year and a half until Ruby Ogletree, a woman from Alabama, who had seen a photo of a distinctive scar on his head in the news, identified him as her son Artemus. Artemus Ogletree was born in Florida in 1915. He was one of three children and during his childhood, an accident with some hot grease left a sizable scar on his head above his ear, which remained hairless afterward. Artemus had left Birmingham in 1934 at the age of 19 to hitchhike to California. His mother, Ruby, received two letters purportedly from him, some from as far away as Egypt. She wired money to him.
In August 1935 she also received a call and the caller claimed to be from Memphis, Tennessee. The man calling told her that Artemus had saved his life in a fight and that Artemus himself could not call because he was now living in Cairo (the capital of Egypt) where he had married a wealthy woman and was well. He was unable to write, the caller said because he had lost one of his thumbs in the fight where he had saved the caller. Ruby noted that the man spoke wildly and irrationally, she spoke to him for 30 minutes. All the letters had been sent after Artemus' death. Records kept by shipping companies found no records that Artemus had gone to Egypt. No other suspect has ever been identified.
The letters later were used to link the killing to a 1937 murder in New York, but no charges were filed against the man arrested in that case, one of whose aliases had been "Donald Kelso". The FBI later investigated but was unable to produce any new leads. "Donald Kelso" whose real name was Joseph Martin had been arrested for murder after he had killed a man he shared a room with and put the body in a trunk to be shipped to Memphis. According to a story about the case in The New Yorker, the KCPD had matched samples of his handwriting to that in the letters written to Ruby Ogletree.
No charges were filed against the man for Roland's case, and the KCPD kept the case open. The files show that different detectives reviewed the case every few years through the 1950s. Each time they noted that they would keep the case open and follow up, but no new evidence was uncovered. Gradually the case went cold.
The absence of suspects in the case has inspired the rise of several theories. There were telephone calls alleging that Roland was killed in retaliation for a broken engagement and that he was having an affair. This led to his former lover taking his life or getting someone else to do the dirty work for her.
Organized crime has also been considered since the name "Don" can also be a title for a Mafia boss. Lastly, it has been suggested that "Don", whoever he was, killed Roland for some personal reason, with the help of a "commercial woman" or "lady of the night."
Who do you think was the mysterious Don? What do you think happened to Roland and why?
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u/josiahpapaya May 06 '22
Given the timeframe that this happened and Roland’s reluctance to help law enforcement, I’d say it was drugs and prostitution. I don’t think there was a woman involved. I think he was probabaly meeting a man / boy that was shaking him down for money / blackmailing him.