On January 2, 1935, Roland T. Owen checked into room 1046 in the Hotel President in Kansas City, Missouri. Randolph Propst, a bellboy at the time, helped him up to his room, where Owen promptly took a brush, a comb, and a tube of toothpaste- seemingly the only belongings he had packed for his stay. Many other strange behaviors were noticed by hotel workers of the time; for example, a maid called Mary Soptic cleaned his room while he was present, noting that his only request was to leave the door unlocked behind him as he was soon expecting a visitor. She also commented that Owen kept the shades tightly drawn with the lights off, having the room illuminated simply by a lamp. In her statement to the police, Soptic also mentioned that he seemed as if he were worried or afraid about something, and that “he always wanted to kinda keep in the dark.” A few hours later, she returned with towels for the room, finding the man lying on his bed, fully dressed in the dark with his door unlocked; on the desk, she found a note that read “Don, I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait.”
The next day, Soptic returned to clean the room, only to find the door locked from the outside. She rightfully believed that he had locked it as he stepped outside, though she would soon discover this was not the case. When she let herself in with the staff key, she found Owen sitting on the bed, still fully clothed. As she cleaned the room, Owen answered a phone call. He said, “No, Don, I don’t want to eat. I am not hungry. I just had breakfast.” The maid returned once again a few hours later to deliver fresh towels when she heard two male voices originating from the room. When she announced that she was bringing towels, a rough voice (apparently not that of Roland Owen) proclaimed that they didn’t need towels, which Soptic knew to be untrue, as she had removed all the towels from the suite earlier that day. That night, a woman staying in the nearby room 1048 reported hearing loud voices coming from that room, though she claimed they were both male and female. However, these claims are not seen as very concrete evidence for this case, as a party was being hosted in room 1055.
On January 4, the hotel phone operator noticed that the phone in room 1046 was off the hook without being in use. When the bellboy that had originally brought Owen’s luggage to him knocked on the door, he heard a voice say, “Come in. Turn on the lights.” However, the door was locked and Propst did not have the key on him, so he simply told him to put the phone back on the hook, assuming that the occupant was too intoxicated to unlock the door for him. An hour and a half later, the phone remained off the hook, and another bellboy, Harold Pike, was sent to investigate. Though the door remained locked, he let himself into the room with the passkey, where he found Owen lying naked on the bed, with darkened sheets around him. Pike believed, as Propst had before, that Owen was intoxicated, and simply replaced the phone onto the receiver (which had been kicked over) and returned to the front desk. At around 10:30 am, the phone was once again off the receiver, and Propst went up to resolve the issue once and for all.
According to the official police statement given by Propst, “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. 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.” When later investigated, Owen had extensive injuries. His neck, wrists and ankles were tied, seemingly for torture; this torture is believed to be so extreme that there were blood splatters on the walls and the ceiling above the bed. His skull was fractured to do multiple beatings to the head; he had been stabbed in the chest several times, resulting in a punctured lung. Despite this, Owen was still alive and conscious when he was found. When asked if anybody else had been in the room, he insisted that he was the only one there, and that his injuries were a result of slipping and hitting his head on the bathtub. According to a doctor, the injuries found on his person had occurred 6-7 hours before he died, meaning that he had already been hurt when the bellboys came to check on him. There was no weapon found in the room, and none of Owen’s belongings were found either. Four fingerprints were found on the phone, probably including female ones.
Owen finally died on January 5, 1935 at the hospital. However, when they searched for family or friends to identify him for proper burial, no records of a Roland T. Owen were found. He was displayed at the local funeral home in an open casket, hoping to find anyone who knew him, and drawings were even posted on the local newspapers for identification, but to no avail. A few weeks later, an anonymous caller claimed to know who he was, and said that they would send money for a proper funeral on his family’s behalf, which arrived to the funeral home on March 23, bundled up in a newspaper. Flowers were arranged for the funeral, also anonymously, though they came with a note that read “Love Forever, Louise”. A year later, Ruby Ogletree came forward, claiming that Roland T. Owen was actually her son, Artemus Ogletree, who had been traveling since 1934. She had been receiving letters from Owen, which is why she hadn’t reported him missing before then; however, these were sent after Ogletree’s death. These letters raise suspicion as they were typed instead of handwritten, indicating that they were possibly written by whoever murdered him; in addition, Artemus didn’t know how to type.
The mystery of the occurrences in Room 1046 still raise many questions: who was Don, and what was his role in Ogletree’s murder? Who arranged the cadaver’s proper burial? After nearly 80 years, this case remains open.
