#room 1046

[thelilkiwibird]

Buzzfeed Unsolved: True Crime Season 2 Part 2-2

[bergaramadejs]

insp.

[profoundlystickywolf]

1046

The case of the man in room 1046 is beyond bizarre, a bloody tale riddled with false clues and loose threads. For every detail that seems to offer an answer, there is another that only raises more questions.

On January 2, 1935, a man checked into room 1046 of the Hotel President in Kansas City, Missouri. He signed the register as Roland T. Owen. He carried no luggage, and when the bellboy let him into room 1046, the only items he removed from his pockets were a comb, a brush, and some toothpaste.

The man would not live to check out of the hotel.

When a maid came to clean the room on the day Owen checked in, she found him sitting with the shades drawn tight, and only one small lamp switched on for illumination. He told her to leave the door unlocked because he was expecting a friend, but left the room before the woman finished cleaning. She later said that he seemed nervous and frightened.

The maid returned again a few hours later to replace the towels, and found Owen back in the room, lying on the bed fully dressed. She noticed a note had been left on the table. It read, “Don, I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait.”

At 10:30 A.M. on January 3, the same maid returned to clean the room. She found the door locked from the outside, and opened it with her passkey, assuming that Owen had gone out. Instead, she found him sitting alone in the dark. Shortly after she entered, the telephone rang, and Owen answered it, saying, “No, Don, I don’t want to eat. I am not hungry. I just had breakfast.”

Later, she returned to room 1046 to change out the towels. Upon her arrival, she heard two male voices talking inside the room. She knocked, but was turned away after being informed by a “rough” voice that the room didn’t need any towels. Little is known about Owen’s activities for the rest of the afternoon.

Later that night though, a motorist named Robert Lane picked up a stranger several blocks from the Hotel President. Though it was a cold evening, the man was dressed only in pants and an undershirt, and had a deep scratch in his left arm. The man flagged down Lane, and asked to be taken someplace to catch a cab. When Lane told his passenger that he looked as if he was having a bad night, the man replied, “I’ll kill that [expletive deleted by the newspapers of the time] tomorrow.” Lane would later identity the hitchhiker as none other than Roland T. Owen.

The next major event occurred at 7:00 A.M. on January 4, when the operator at the Hotel President noticed that the phone in room 1046 was off the hook. As fate would have it, Randolph Propst, the same bellboy who had checked Owen into the hotel, was sent up to tell the occupant of room 1046 to hang up the phone. When he got there, he found the door locked, with a “Don’t Disturb” sign hanging from the knob. He knocked and was told to “Come in,” however, the door was locked. He knocked again and was once more beckoned inside, this time being asked to “turn on the lights.” Assuming that the occupant of the room was drunk, Propst knocked a few more times, then shouted through the door for the occupant to hang up the phone. But the phone remained off the hook.

A different bellboy went up later that afternoon. He let himself into the room with a passkey, and found Owen lying on the bed in the dark, naked and seemingly inebriated. He also found that the phone stand had been knocked over. Without turning on any lights or conversing with Owen, the bellboy righted the phone stand, replaced the receiver in its cradle, and then exited the room.

Later, the operator noticed that the phone was off the hook once more. This time, she sent Propst back up to check it out. He opened the door with his passkey. There on the floor was a brutalized Roland T. Owen, naked and covered in blood. After turning on the lights, he found blood splattered across the bed, on the walls, and in the bathroom. Moments later, police arrived.

They discovered that Owen had been tied up and tortured for several hours. He had been stabbed multiple times, and his skull was fractured from repeated blows to the head. Somehow, Owen had survived the assault. When police tried to questioned him, all he would say was that he had fallen against the bathtub. Unfortunately though, he slipped into a coma and died that night.

Authorities scoured room 1046 for clues; what had happened? They found the label from a necktie, an unsmoked cigarette, a woman’s hairpin, a safety pin, and a small bottle of sulfuric acid. There were also two water glasses, one of which yielded four fingerprints that may have been female. But the most baffling development was yet to come. When police tried to confirm the victim’s identity, they could not find any record of a Roland T. Owen that matched the victim’s description. The man had checked in under a false name. Roland T. Owen was now a John Doe.

The body was brought to a local funeral home and publicly displayed, in the hope that someone could identify it. Several people believed that they did recognize the individual, but claimed to have encountered him under alternate names in different locations throughout the city. Unable to identify their victim, let alone his killer(s), the police were prepared to bury the man as a John Doe in the local potter’s field. Then, the funeral home received an anonymous call, asking that the internment be delayed until money could be sent to cover a proper funeral.

The money arrived anonymously, by special delivery, and the body was laid to rest in Memorial Park Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas, under the name Roland T. Owen, which the caller insisted was real. An equally mysterious delivery of money went to a local florist to buy a bouquet of roses to lay on the grave, with a card.

A year later, in 1936, a woman from Birmingham, Alabama, read an account of the murder in the magazine American Weekly. She believed the dead man might be her friend’s missing son, Artemus, who had left home in April of 1934. Artemus Ogletree’s mother went on to positively confirm the body of Roland T. Owen as that of her son. Authorities assented to Eleanor’s claim: the victim had finally been identified. Of course, the mystery was far from over.

In the early 2000s, around 70 years after the murder, Dr. John Horner, a librarian at the Kansas City Public Library, received an anonymous out-of-state call. The caller said that he had been itemizing the belongings of an elderly person who had recently died. Among the deceased’s belongings was a box of newspaper clippings about the Artemus Ogletree/Roland T. Owen murder. In addition to the clippings, the caller claimed the box contained an object that had been mentioned in one of the articles. Alas, the caller refused to give Horner his name, or tell him precisely what it was that he found.

Who killed Artemus Ogletree?

Why was he murdered, and why did he assume the name Roland T. Owen?

At this point, the truth of what happened in room 1046 will likely remain a mystery.

Love forever

                                                             - Lousie

[planetbass]

[findingsarchive]

“A deep dive into one of America's most infamous unsolved crimes. This is the tale of Room 1046.” — Spektator

[shvoowsh]

i think roland t owens was hooking up with a man and got murdered

[moonenjoyer]

im so jealous of this bad bitch. not only does he look like hes facetuned before facetune existed he died in incredibly mysterious and intriguing circumstances that are still not understood to this day

hot bitch.

[probablyhauntedshit-blog]

the murder in room 1046

           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.