An Old Timey Podcast - 36: The Murder in Room 1046

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

When a dark haired man showed up at the Hotel President one January afternoon in 1935, the hotel staff couldn’t help but take note. He showed up without luggage. He seemed nervous. He said his name was Roland T. Owen and that he was from Los Angeles, but he spoke with a southern accent. At one point, the hotel maid overheard him speak on the phone with a man named Don. She spotted a note he’d written to a man named Don. Several times, she walked into his room, only to discover him sitting alone in the dark. Once, she discovered that he’d been locked in his room – from the outside. On the second day of his stay, hotel staff found him alone in his room, badly beaten. He’d been stabbed multiple times. Clothesline had been wrapped around his wrists, ankles and neck. As he clung to life, he refused to name his attackers. After he died, investigators discovered that Roland T. Owen had been an alias. They couldn’t immediately identify the man, but someone seemed to care for him. Someone called the local funeral home, anonymously, to pay for his funeral and burial. A similar call came in to a local florist. The person requested 13 American roses to be sent to Roland T. Owen’s funeral. The card attached read, “Love forever, Louise.” Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Kristin pulled from: “The Mystery of Room 1046” John Arthur Horner for KChistory.org “The Owen Case,” by Martin Cizmar for Kansas City Magazine “The bizarre murder of Roland T. Owen in the Kansas City Hotel” for historicmysteries.com “The mystery of what was in the box: Alabama man found dead 83 years ago,” by Leada Gore for Alabama.com “Birmingham boy victim in ‘rose murder’,” The Birmingham Post, Nov. 2, 1936 “Mystery murder in room 1046,” The Newcastle Sun, May 22, 1943 “Youth killed in hotel here from Birmingham, Ala.,” The Kansas City Times, Nov. 2, 1936 “Owen’ slaying up again,” The Kansas City Star, Aug. 23, 1937 “Room 1046” episode of the Unresolved podcast “The bizarre murder of Roland T. Owen in the Kansas City Hotel” for historicmysteries.com “The story of Tom Pendergast,” kcyesterday.com Are you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts! Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you’ll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90’s style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes from Kristin’s previous podcast, Let’s Go To Court.

Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Kristen Caruso. And I've written a new theme song for our show. It's Normie C. You have? Oh, and on this episode, I'll be talking about a murder at the President Hotel. Are you referring to the President Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri? Bitch, you know I am. Oh, man. Sorry for calling you bitch. Yeah, that was a little long call for.

I apologize. I'm just really excited. I do love this story. I am familiar with it. Man, everyone prepare to be intrigued and frustrated and angry and then back to intrigued again. We're going to go on a full circle journey. Speaking of intrigued, are you interested in my new theme song that I've written for the show? I am. Okay.

Well, you know, it's 2025, Kristen. Uh-huh. New year, new me, new podcast. Oh, new podcast. Shit, okay. So. I've already done that recently, please. It's time to spruce things up.

We don't have a theme song. Okay. So I wrote one. Okay. You ready? Yeah. And a one, and a two, and a three. And a gave me that old timey podcast.

That old timey podcast. Give me that old timey podcast. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm still workshopping the final lyric. I loved it. I've got no notes. I like the words you did. Yeah, very, uh, really makes you think.

Really makes you think about the name of this podcast and nothing else. That's what I was going for for the theme song. Uh-huh. Anyway, folks, if you're new here, welcome. We are a small, independent, sexy podcast telling you fascinating stories from history while cracking each other up. Don't know if you're cracking up. But if you are listening while driving, please be careful. You might piss yourself, cause a 20-car pilot.

Oh, shit. Oh, my God. I know. Norman. to give that warning. We do. We're required by law. Yeah.

Disclaimer. Old-timey disclaimer, right? Uh-huh. And if you aren't new to the show, welcome back. Thanks for sticking with us into 2025. If you love what we're doing, please consider supporting us on Patreon. As a non-threatening fan at the $5 level, you get monthly bonus episodes of an old-timey podcast with full video and access to our Discord server, where you can chitty chat the day away. At the $7 level, you'll become a history ho.

Which is what we call our loyal listeners, where you'll also get a signed thank you card with our John Hancock's on it, stickers, and access to our monthly trivia party, where history hosts from around the world compete for fabulous prizes. But the real value is at that $10 pig butter investor level, folks. You'll get all of what I just told you, plus early ad-free episodes of an old-timey podcast with full video and 10% off all merch. Oh my goodness. And we have something new, which I worked on over the holiday season. Kristen, for a long time, your old decrepit rotting podcast. Let's go to court. The first 131 episodes were not available ad free on the Patreon.

Well, I went back and I re-uploaded all of them. So now the entire Let's Go To Court Library is available on our Patreon. Add free at the $10 level. Folks, can you believe that he did? did that all for two frozen pizzas. What a chump. That does sound like something I would do. Norm, you are a hero. Thank you for all that hard work. You're welcome. It's just something people have been asking for a long time. And there was just never a great solution to the problem. And I finally figured out a solution. So there you go.

There we go. There we go. So head on over to patreon.com slash old-timey podcast to sign up. If you're signing up for the first time at the $10 level, it's 10% off. right now. My God. Dear God. The savings. What are you going to do with that extra dollar? It is only a dollar, isn't it? It does sound, it seemed kind of sad, actually.

Now we're talking people out of it. What are we doing? Get over there. My God. Our lives depend on you signing up. Okay. So I almost said fucking, but then I thought, no, I better be classy. But still, I'm so effing excited. Now, you covered this on your old decrepit. rotting podcast. How dare you? This was on let's go to court, right? So I covered this as a bonus

episode for my old podcast. I love this story. I have always been intrigued by it. It's a local Kansas City mystery, but it's such a weird story that I would argue it has gone, definitely national. I'd argue it's gone international. Mr. Worldwide. It's exactly. Thank you, Pitbull. Yeah. And the reason I'm so excited to tell this story now. is that in the years since I covered this story, a journalist for Kansas City Magazine has actually gone through, done the Lord's work, gotten the police file and gone through all the files.

Ooh. And they put out some information that I personally think is a game changer. So I love when people do this. Yes. This is good stuff. This is the deep dive in the records hall. This is where you get the good. good info. So shout out to that person. Oh, I'm about to actually, let me go ahead and do some shoutouts

now that you mentioned that. Yeah. Okay, so this case was covered a ton when it happened in the 30s. So obviously there are a lot of newspaper articles, but I think the article that really got people talking about it again was the 2012 article by John Arthur Horner for Kansas City History.org titled The Mystery of Room 1046. He did a fantastic job. When you hear people retell this story, they're usually taking a ton from his great articles on this. Okay. The newer article that I think is so fantastic is titled The Owen Case, and it's by Martin Sismar for Kansas City Magazine.

Okay. Norm, I'm freaking out. Why? We got to solve this case. We're not solving this case. Everybody, last night, it was like 10.30 at night, right? And you were like, oh, good, you're coming to bed. And I turned and I had a full glass of whiskey like a 1930s detective. I was like, nope, I'm going back to my computer. Yeah, and she had a fedora on. She really was transported back in time. When I first moved to Kansas City, I was looking at like fun stuff around town and like cool stories from Kansas City. And this one popped up. As a fun story?

Just like cool history, you know. Okay. And I was like, wow, that's really interesting. I wonder if you can stay in that room in the hotel present because it's still around today, right? Yeah, the president hotel is still around. But it's a Hilton now. Well, it still exists. All right, you ready?

I'm ready. Here we go. 1935, Kansas City, Missouri. The city was in its wild era. It had a reputation for being. wide open. Kansas City was a place where you could do anything. Drink, gamble, do drugs, hire a sex worker. Nothing was off limits. Jaywalking? That was the worst of it. People were jaywalking all over the place. There's no rules. Complete chaos in this town. And that was thanks to a very

corrupt political system, a thriving Kansas City mafia, and a police force that was very open to bribes. Yeah, very interesting time in this city. I mean, kind of how this city, like, got really big. Yes, I agree. And it's weird because it was built on the back of some really awful stuff. Yeah. But boy, did we get some cool buildings out of it, huh?

Yeah. beautiful city. So Kansas City was fun. But if you got on the wrong side of the people in power, it was a really dangerous, rough place to be. And that's the environment that a young out of towner found himself in on the afternoon of January 2nd, 1935. That afternoon, he walked into the president hotel,

which is still around today, and is located at 1329 Baltimore Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri. Norm, are you looking this place up as if you don't know exactly what it looks like? I am. I just want to look at it again, because it is a beautiful building. I mean, it's a beautiful hotel. It's a historic hotel. It was built in the 20s, and you can completely tell. It's got that kind of 1920s art deco look to it. It does. And very smart to call it the president hotel instead of naming. it after a specific president.

That's genius marketing right there. Who would be the worst president to name it after, you think? Oh, Andrew Johnson. The Andrew Johnson Hotel? If you called it the Johnson Hotel, no one would assume it was about President Johnson. Isn't there a Johnson hotel chain? Howard Johnson. Yeah.

The Andrew Johnson. So you said that he showed up January 2nd, 1935. Yeah. So we just had the 90-year anniversary of him showing up to this hotel. Oh, wow, we did. I'm terrible at math. Because day's January 3rd. Yeah.

Yeah. Crazy. Very timely story, Kristen. Yes. Time to solve it. Okay. Yeah, we're not going to solve it even though I would love to. He entered the hotel alone.

He had no luggage. He approached the front desk and requested an interior. room facing the hotel's courtyard. He asked that his room be several stories up. In the hotel's register, he listed his name as Roland T. Owen. He listed his home address as Los Angeles. Later, witnesses would be asked to describe the man who'd entered the hotel that day. There were a few things that most everyone could agree on. He was a good-looking guy. He had an athletic build. Oh. Calm down, Norm.

He had a, he had dark hair. Oh. And piercing blue eyes. I'm about to bust. He was 5'11, adjusted for inflation. We're going to call that 6-2 in 2025 heights. I'd say 7 foot 4. Probably.

It's just a monster of a man. It was funny that all of the articles referred to him as so tall. And then I saw part of the autopsy report and it said 511. And I was like, huh, okay. Yeah, tall for that time, sure. And he had a cauliflower ear, which is not as delicious as it sounds. No, something a lot of fighters get. Okay, that's a very good point.

It's a deformity of the ear, and you usually get it from being hit on the side of the head a whole lot. The man also had a scar on the right side of his head. It was pretty big in the shape of a hexagon. But that scar might not have been noticeable to just a casual observer because he styled his hair so that it kind of hid the scar. Okay. Another thing that witnesses generally agreed on was that he seemed kind of nervous. And also he spoke with a southern accent. You know, having you describe what witnesses notice about somebody, I actually recently talked about this on the Chaluminaati podcast.

I was on recently with my buddies, Alex, Jesse, and Mathis, and we did an episode on D.B. Cooper. Yeah. And one of the things Alex talked about was it was hard to get witness statements because it was something that happened that, you know, it didn't seem significant at the time. Wait, what didn't? I mean, you're not talking about the people in the plane. The people in the plane knew, right? No. People in the plane did not know until they got off the plane. Oh.

And then they were asked, describe the man, what did he look like? And people were like, I don't remember. That is a really good point because, yeah, if nothing happens. Right. And so you talking about, you know, how did witnesses describe this guy? I think that'd be really hard to do because if you asked me to describe somebody I saw at Home Depot the other day, I don't know if I could do it. Yeah. I do think that it helps that he had a cauliflower ear.

I mean, that does stand out. And I think that it helps that he was hot. So being hot and sexy. I think people notice. It's actually really bad if you're trying to get away with something. Oh, an excellent point, Norm. Something that witnesses couldn't agree on was his age. Some said he looked to be about 20, maybe 25, or maybe 30.

Actually, 35. It totally depended on who you asked. I think he was 60. He was in a wheelchair. He had a bunch of Wurther's originals in his pocket, so that's what we're pushed the age up. Did they even have those back in the day? Wothers?

Yeah, they seem like they've been around since the 1600s, but surely that's not right. Well, we can find out right now. Wothers came out in 1909. Hell yeah. So he definitely had some Wothers in his pocket. Once the man, Roland, finished filling out the hotel registry, he was assigned to room 1046. Bellboy Randolph Props was tasked with showing the man to his room.

Randolph noticed that the man was dressed nicely. He wore a black overcoat. The two got into the elevator, and as they rode up to the 10th floor, Roland complained to the bellboy about his recent stay at a neighboring hotel. Ooh. He said he'd stayed at the Mulebach Hotel the night before, but checked out because it was too expensive. The Mulebock, so that's a famous Kansas City name. Yeah, it still exists to this day, the hotel. But yeah, you're talking about the last name.

The mulebox. The mulebox, yeah. Wumber barons or something? Lumber or beer? Maybe both. Maybe they made the barrels that they put the beer into and they just had it both ways. I feel like it was beer. I think we're going to get a lot of Kansas City history nerds who are going to um-actually us.

Bring it on, please. Welcome, local hose. Please shame us. We love being shamed. We haven't done a mistakes of shame episode segment in a while. I feel it coming, baby. Yeah. Well, we've just been perfect, you know.

That's true. He said that they'd charged him first. $5 a night, Norm. Oh, my God. Can you imagine if hotels were $5 a night still? I would never stay there. I'd be like, this has to be like the nastiest place in town. There's something up with this place, yeah.

Adjusted for inflation, that's only $115. That still seems cheap today. It seems super cheap. Maybe Roland was on a tight budget. Okay. I guess I already mentioned this, but the Mulebach, just like the president hotel, still exists. It's very historic and cool. Has housed a ton

of famous people, including Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Helen Keller, Frank Sinatra, and fun fact, Harry Truman stayed there so often that they nicknamed it White House West. Well, that should be the President Hotel.

You would think, right? But, you know, presidents also stayed at the President Hotel, but you know. Yeah, like who? Still. I'm supposed to name them. Warren G. Hardy. I don't remember. member. The worst president state there. They held the 1928 Republican convention there.

How about that? That's a fact that stuck in my head. Okay. So after some brief chit-chat about the outrageous prices at the Mulebach Hotel, the bellboy took Roland to room 1046. The room was pretty standard. There was a bathroom on one side, a closet on the other, had a telephone, a bed, a desk, a dresser, a weird little chair off to the side of the bed.

That's what we call the cuck chair, Kristen. I only recently heard that term for that weird little chair in every hotel room, and now I can't unhear it. Well, man, it describes it perfectly. Well, I've always wondered, why do you need that weird random chair? And it's always just one chair. So, yeah, it is the cuck chair. And it always faces the beds. Yes. It's the cuck chair.

As the bellboy turned on the lights, he watched Roland take just three items out of his coat pocket. They were a brush. Okay. A comb. A brush and a comb. And toothpaste. Some sources say a toothbrush, a comb, and toothpaste, which I think makes way more sense. It does.

But the more reputable sources say this, I think. So we're going with it. All right. I mean. Yeah, you only brought three things with you, and two of them are basically duplicates. Two of them basically do the same thing, yeah. And then toothpaste with no toothbrush. Well, maybe it's in his luggage.

He has no luggage. Oh, shit, you're right. Pay attention. No luggage. He's just a hot guy in an overcoat. He has clothes on, too. Rollin place the items in the bathroom, and then he and the bellboy left the room together. But as soon as they got kind of close to the elevator, the bellboy was like,

Hey, do you mind if I run back and lock the door to your room? And Roland said, sure. He handed over the key. And the bellboy ran back and turned off the lights and locked the room and hurried back to return the key to Roland. Wait, why did he want to do that? I think he just didn't want a hotel room unlocked, you know, for safety reasons. Huh. Interesting.

What? I'm suspecting the bellboy now. No, you're not. And also, like, you know, you want to keep costs down, turn off. lights. I don't know. Maybe he's the first guy to think about the environment. You ever think about that? I did not think about that. Thank you for bringing it up, Justin. Maybe the bellboy wanted to steal his comb or his brush because he's like, this guy can't too. I mean, and I could use one. From that point, the men went their separate ways. Roland left the hotel for a while. Where he went is

unclear. But he couldn't have been gone for too long, because later that afternoon, a maid came to room 1046. Her name was Mary Soptic, and she said that she entered the room to clean it and found Roland inside. Oh. Right away she got a real weird feeling. Roland was essentially sitting alone in the dark. The curtains were closed. He had just one lamp on, but it was like a really weak lamp, so it was just odd. Was anyone in the cuck chair? I believe Roland might have been in the cut chair. When he spoke, he seemed anxious. He told her to come on in and clean the room,

but asked her to leave the door unlocked when she was finished. He said he was expecting a friend. Okay, I find this weird and maybe just things have changed, but like he just checked in. Why does his room need to be cleaned the same day? Shouldn't it already be clean when he's checked in? I'm not familiar with old-timey hotel scheduling norm. Hmm.

I feel like that's something you should have learned in your research, question. Wow, wow. Look, all I know is she showed up to give the room a, well, you know, that is kind of gross. Yeah, why wasn't it already cleaned? I don't know. This is why people go to the mulebock. You know what? This is the mystery right here.

I think we can end the story right now. So Mary cleaned the room, and as she worked, Roland got up to leave. As he was leaving the room, he reiterated, Hey, don't lock this door. My friend is coming in a few minutes. She was like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. She's like, okay, yeah, I got it.

I'll leave the door unlocked. Later that afternoon, at around 4 p.m., Mary came back with clean towels. The door was unlocked, so she let herself in, and this time she found the room completely dark. But the light streaming in from the hallway allowed her to see that Roland was lying in bed, alone, fully clothed. What the fuck?

This is just, I feel like he's like possessed by a demon or something. Okay, you've kicked this up several notches. Possessed by a demon? Just the way he's acting is really strange. Okay, that's the most boring demon I've ever heard. I'm the demon who just makes you lie in bed and, you know, look like you're napping maybe. Well, he's waiting until a certain time at night. Okay, maybe like 2 a.m.

And then the demon will burst out. Oh, shit. Yeah. Okay, this is really strange, but continue. So she sees that he's lying in bed in total darkness at 4 p.m. Yeah, maybe he just has melancholy. Yeah. Maybe he's just a depressed guy, and he doesn't have any TV shows to binge because it's too old-timing.

Well, and there's no radio in the room, right? Yeah, I don't think so. And he's not going to write it. anything down at the desk. Actually, I'm glad you mentioned that. Oh. So she did notice, thanks to some of the light coming in from the hallway, that there was a note on the desk, and it read, Don. I will be back in 15 minutes.

Wait. How is Don spelled? D-O-N. Okay. That's a good question. Mm-hmm. That evening, nothing seemed to happen. That night, nothing seemed to happen.

then came the morning of January 3, 1935. Officially 90 years ago. At about 10.30 that morning, Mary the maid found herself outside of room 1046. The room had been locked from the outside, which is wild to me that you could even do that, but okay. So she used her key to get in. Given the fact that the room had been locked from the outside, Mary expected to find it empty. Obviously. Instead, she found Roland alone in the dark sitting in a chair. The cuck chair?

Yes, Norman. Okay. Then the phone rang, and he answered it. And her timing is impeccable. It really is. Now I'm suspecting the maid. Oh, my God. Mary overheard him say, no, Don, I don't want to eat. I'm not hungry. I just had breakfast. No, I'm not hungry.

and he hung up. Okay. Mary kept cleaning the room, and as she worked, Roland made conversation. He complained again about the prices at the Mulebock Hotel. I guess he really couldn't get over it. He asked Mary questions about her job. Like, you know, was she in charge of cleaning all the rooms on the 10th floor? And he asked her if the president hotel was also a residential hotel.

These sort of questions my dad would ask people. You are exactly right. My dad's very chitty-chety with employees. And, man, if you work somewhere and you have a name tag, oh, you're getting called by your name. It drives my sister bonkers. She gets so embarrassed. Well, Mary. But my dad is just very polite and he just loves talking to staff.

Mary answered his questions, and when she finished cleaning, she left the room. It occurred to her later how weird it was. that he had been locked in the room. Someone had to have locked him in there. Well, this is, this is, again, I'm very confused. There's a lock on the inside. Sure. So what do you mean by a lock on the outside?

I don't know what to tell you. It was locked from the outside. But how did she know that? Is there like a latch on the door on the outside? Is there a dead bolt? I've not seen the door myself. I'm just telling you that she noticed it was locked from the outside when she came up, kind of thought nothing of it because, you know, that's common for it to have been locked from the outside.

But almost always, that means that no one is in there. Okay. So someone had to have locked him in there. Locked from the outside. I, something's not adding up. What do you mean? Obviously, this. I just locked for him.

from the outside. I just need more information. What kind of lock? How do you know it's locked from the outside? What's going on here? The brand was Werther's original on the lock. Okay. That's a candy. I don't know these things. Is it like a master lock? Anyway. I'm asking that's the most inconsequential questions, am I? Did the demon do it? We don't know. Not yet.

A few hours later, at around 4 p.m., Mary came back with fresh towels. But as she approached room 1046, she heard male voices coming from inside the room. So she knocked on the door, and a rough voice said, Who is it? Mary answered and clarified that she was just bringing up some clean towels. And that same rough voice responded, Towels aren't needed. That was a little weird Because when Mary had cleaned the room earlier that day

She'd taken all the towels with her So she knew they needed towels But clearly now Zero towels in there Zero towels So she knew they needed them But clearly, you know, now was not the time All right

The next morning at around 7 a.m. The hotel's telephone operator A woman named Della Ferguson arrived for work And noticed that the phone in Roland's room Was off the hook So she tried talking to him, good morning, hello, hello, but got no answer. It wasn't a big deal or anything, but, you know, several minutes later, when it was still off the hook,

Della asked the bellboy, Randolph propped, to go up to room 1046 and ask the man to put his phone back on the hook. Do you remember those old telephone switchboards? I think they are the coolest looking things. And I think it must have been so awesome to be a little lady with that job. It would feel so powerful. That you're connecting people with the little plugs and the wires. Yeah. And when people are like, hello operator, and you're like, yes.

Yes, that is me. I am the operator. So this lady, that was her whole job, is the telephones. Yeah. That's cool as shit. Isn't it wild? That's a cool old-timey job. To think that used to be such a vital job everywhere.

And now it's just gone. And now it's been phased out. And now all we have. our pyramid schemes, like pig butter investor on our Patreon. I don't know what you're talking about pyramid schemes. It's a legit business. Oh, right. Yeah.

And anyone who says otherwise is a hater, and we shan't listen to them. Yeah, and you know, we're trying to be a success, but we can't unless you tell five of your friends to sign up. And that's just good business practice. Uh-huh. Yeah. You know. Anyway, you were saying. Sorry.

She asked the bell boy, tell him to hang up his damn phone. Yeah. Randolph did as he was told, because she's the operator. She's the most important person in the whole world. The coolest job in the hotel, right. So he went up to room 1046. There was a do not disturb sign on the door, but Randolph knocked anyway because he was a badass. That is bold.

And a man in the room said, come in. But the door was locked. So Randolph knocked again. And the man said, turn on the lights. Randolph knocked again and nothing But finally, Randolph had kind of had enough So he just yelled through the door

Hey, put the phone back on the hook And, you know, some sources say he got some kind of response Others say he got no response But you know, either way, he went back downstairs And was like, hey, Della, I think the dude in 1046 is drunk I'm going to give that guy an hour to pull it together Then we'll send someone else up Yeah

830 rolled around The phone in room 1046 was still off the hook. Son of a bitch. So Della sent Bellboy Harold Pike to go up and fix it. Harold knocked on the door, didn't get a response. So he used his key to get into the room. But Harold wasn't quite prepared for what he saw in that hotel room. Roland was lying completely naked on the hotel bed.

Oh. There was dark, shadow. stuff all over the bedding. Harold thought he was looking at a guy who'd passed out drunk, maybe pissed himself. So he didn't think too much of it. Instead, he went over to the phone, which had been knocked over onto the floor, and Harold put the phone back on the hook and got the hell out of there. So all the lights were out?

Yes. That's just creepy. The guy didn't move an inch on the bed? No. Do you think he was dead? I know he wasn't. Oh, okay. But I also, it's interesting, when you're telling yourself,

this is just a drunk guy who's maybe made a mess, you're not going to look. Right. Maybe he's drunk passed out, making on the bed. Yeah. Yeah. Glad I'm not the maid, you know? Okay.

When Harold got back down to the lobby, he told his boss that the dude in 1046 had been lying in bed drunk. Two hours went by. What? You look like you're, you've got thoughts. Oh, I just want to know why you snitching on him for being drunk. Well, I, see, I don't think he was snitching. I think it was more like an explanation as to why the phone had been off the hook.

Oh, yeah, that's a good, good reason. Or maybe there wasn't much to talk about that day. Who knows? Yeah. So two hours went by, and all of a sudden, the phone in room 1046 was off the hook again. God damn it. This time Bellboy Randolph Props was like, okay, I got this.

He went upstairs, knocked, nothing. He used his key to open the door. And there, about two feet from the door, was Roland. He was crouched down on the floor, naked, holding his head in his hands. Blood spilled from his head. Oh.

It was horrific. What the other Bellboy had mistaken for dark shadows had been pools of blood. There was blood all over room 1046 on the walls, on the bed, in the bathroom, on the ceiling. On the ceiling? Yeah. That happens with a beating, you know, the... Well, yeah, blood splatters everywhere, yeah.

And I know this because I beat up people so often. Randolph rushed downstairs for help. He got two other employees and the three of them raced back up to room 1040s. But this time, when they got there, they could only open the door a few inches. It seemed that Roland had kept crawling toward the door and passed out against it. The hotel staff called police, and soon four detectives and a doctor were there on the scene. They got into Roland's hotel room, and they saw that what happened to him had been so much worse than what anyone could have imagined. There was clothesline wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, and his neck.

He had been stabbed multiple times in the chest. He'd been hit in the head. An autopsy would later reveal that his skull had been fractured by, at minimum, three strikes to the head. His lung had been punctured and subsequently collapsed. He had been tortured and left for dead. But somehow he was still alive. So they cut the cords off of him, and one of the detectives asked Roland who had been in the room with him. And Roland said, nobody.

Detective, okay, how'd you get hurt, Roland? I fell against the bathtub. That doesn't explain the clothes line. Detective, did you try to commit suicide? Roland, no. That was the last thing he said. He lost consciousness, and they took him to the hospital, where he slipped into a hospital. where he slipped into a coma.

In the meantime, the doctor who'd arrived at the hotel examined the room, specifically looking at the blood. And he said that given how much the blood had dried and solidified, Roland had to have been attacked six or seven hours earlier. So Roland had never been drunk on the bed. Yeah. He'd been near death for hours. She's just been laying in bed dying.

Yes. Bleeding out. And, I mean, I think the logic. explanation for the phone being off the hook was he was trying to get help but was too weak to yeah yeah right away detectives began searching the room for clues but wow the room was suspiciously empty the items that roland had brought with him to the hotel the comb the brush the toothpaste they were gone all of his clothing was gone even the free stuff provided by the hotel towered shampoo, soap, gone.

Man. The only things that the detectives found in that room were, the label of a necktie, a broken safety pin, a hairpin, an unopened bottle of sulfuric acid, an unlit cigarette, and two water glasses, one of which lay broken in the bathroom sink. They did find some fingerprints in the room, which they said belong to a woman, which I don't think you could really tell that from fingerprints,

but okay. From what I've read, it looks like the fingerprints were kind of small, therefore definitely a woman. Please don't question this at all. Yeah, small, dainty fingerprints has to be a woman. What do you think of all that? It's very mysterious.

Safety pin. What is a safety pin? That's the one like on old-timey diapers, you know, you got one on each side. And what else did you say? A hairpin? A hairpin, yep. Two glasses of water, but one was broken in the sink. So it's two water glasses.

The theory on that that I've read and I think sounds right is that maybe one was broken because Roland at some point was able to get to the bathroom and, you know, he's just out of it in a stupor. he knocked one down and that's why it was broken. But again, we don't know. Yeah. And then there's the tag to the necktie. So by tag, is it just like the name of the company that made the necktie or like a business that sells the necktie? What's the...

It's like a tag that has been ripped off of a necktie. What did the tag say? I can't remember. Well, I'm getting ahead of the script, but I can, that's no big deal. I'm a pro. Okay. So there was some hope that may be. that tag would break the case wide open or something. And obviously, if it had been to some

very unique specialty store, maybe it could have, it turned out it was a New Jersey company that made these neckties. The neckties were super cheap and they were sold everywhere. So it didn't really narrow anything down. But I've always kind of wondered like, well, why was that there. I saw someone online because, you know, people are obsessed with this case. And somebody mentioned, well, if he was being strangled with the necktie, which maybe he was, but they had clothesline too. But let's say he was being strangled by the necktie and he was fighting back. Yeah. Maybe the tag got torn off that way. And the killer or killers didn't notice that it had been left behind. Yeah, but the police were hoping if we can find the make

of this tie, it will lead to the killer. His name, Montgomery Ward. Arrest that man. Arrest Mr. Montgomery Ward. Well, no, I think about another old-timey crime, Leopold and Loeb. They thought they'd pulled off the perfect murder. And they were caught because one of them left behind their very unique specialty glasses. Yeah, that was incredible.

Yeah. Not so perfect crime. Mm-hmm. And then if you listen to our bonus episode on testicles, they were sued for stealing testicles. They were accused of stealing that poor man's testicles. Okay, I'm realizing now it makes it sound like you told a bonus episode on the history of testicles. Folks, it wasn't quite that weird. It basically was the history of testicles.

Yeah, sign up for our Patreon. Why are you downplaying all my hard work? Okay, so back to, I'm sorry to take this away from testicles. Yeah, sorry. Okay. I've been thinking about this maybe a little too much. I know you have. A hairpin, obviously to me that makes me think woman.

Yep. But also, I lose hair pins, bobby pins, everywhere I go. So there could be an argument like, who's to say that this wasn't the previous occupants' hairpin? Yeah, exactly. But also a closed pin kind of makes me think a woman too. Maybe it shouldn't, but I just think of men in that time period. If their pants got too loose, they wore belts or suspenders. But a woman, you know, I just feel like a woman would be more likely to maybe pin back an item of her clothing.

And then maybe that gets ripped open during a scuffle. So you think a woman was involved? Let's continue, shall we? Okay. You heard the very scientific evidence about the woman fingerprint. That's right. Well, and I know that you are solving this case. Yeah, yeah, don't worry, folks. I'm looking forward to hearing what you found.

What happened to Roland had been brutal, and in his dying breaths, he had protected the person or people who'd done this to him. He died later that night at the hospital. Yeah, he definitely wasn't snitching. I mean, just the whole idea of, like, I fell and hit the bathtub, and it's like, dude, you have stab wounds in your chest. Sure. Yeah, I think that that's pretty significant that he's not talking about who did this to him. What do you think that means? Maybe he's trying to protect somebody?

Yeah, to me it means he's trying to protect somebody. It could also mean he's trying to protect himself. Sure. Because maybe the person who did this or the organization who did this is so powerful that at this point, all he wants to do is try to live. especially if it was Montgomery Ward. Yeah, you don't want to fight Montgomery Ward. Unless, of course, you're J.C. Penny. Then we've got a battle on our hands.

No, no. J.C. Penny is bigger than Montgomery Ward. Oh. How dare you disrespect J.C. Penny like that? I'm very sorry. Anyway, continue. So they had this very strange murder to solve. They started by talking to the people in the hotel. Initially, they were pretty interested in the fact that the woman in the room right next door,

room 1048, shared the same last name as the victim. That just turned out to be a weird coincidence, though. Yeah, and I'm guessing he gave a fake name. Oh, very good, Norm. Gene Owen was the woman in the room next door, and she explained to detectives that she lived in Lee Summit, Missouri, which, for people who aren't familiar, that's like half an hour away. Right.

And she said she'd been in town visiting her boyfriend for the day when she, oh, felt a little ill and decided to get a room at the hotel president. Oh, I don't feel well. I'll stay at this beautiful hotel. I mean, to me, that's like, I want to hook up with my boyfriend, but now I'm being questioned by the police, and this is going to be in every newspaper everywhere for the next 90 years. So I'm just going to say I got a little head cold or something, and I just had to go lie down. Oh, I don't feel so good. We love you, Jean. That night, at around 9.30 p.m., her boyfriend came and hung out for a couple hours with her.

Oh, we know what that means. Sexy time. No, she was feeling ill, Norm. But Jean spent the vast majority of the night alone in her hotel room, which meant that she did hear things that night. Oh, excellent. What did she hear? She told investigators that she overheard arguing and cursing coming from the room next door. She'd heard male and female voices.

She'd heard a scuffle. She heard what she at the time thought was snoring. But it could have been groaning of him in pain. Yeah. Yeah. I know this is horrible timing, but I hate when I'm in a hotel room and I can hear the people in the next room. You heard some things, snoring? I can just imagine I would hear somebody getting beat up or something in the room next door.

And I'd be like, hey, can you keep it down in there? No, I'm trying to watch the Golden Girls on Lifetime. Remember that time when I was alone in a hotel room in Chicago? I was away from home. I was feeling a little sad, lonely. And then I heard like an adorable baby in the next door crying. And I actually turned the TV down because it was like, oh. And then I realized like way, like I'm telling you a solid 90 seconds easily that I was listening to a nasally Chicago woman getting pounded.

What? Yes. You remember the story right? She was like, ah, ah, ah. Oh, oh yeah, that's right. And I was horrified. I was like, it was a cute baby. I was like, that was back when our niece was really young.

I was like, oh, I miss home. And then this Chicago woman, you know what, you know what broke me out of the trance? All of a sudden the baby said, oh yeah. That's right. Oh, yeah. So anyway. But this is not what she heard. No, no.

No one was making love in the room next door. Absolutely. not. She did say at one point she thought about calling the front desk, but then, you know, decided not to. Yeah. It's a hotel. You got to mind your own business sometimes, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And obviously, she didn't, she didn't know what she was hearing. Gene wasn't the only one who witnessed things that had, you know, initially seemed like nothing. The hotel's elevator operator was a man named Charles Blocker. His shift had started around midnight. And investigators asked, him what he'd seen that night. That's another old-timey job, elevator operator. Yes. Because I had that crank.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Choose the floor, yeah. Okay, I was about to say, what did people think could go wrong? But yeah, I guess you got to operate that crank. Yeah, elevator's this dangerous, dangerous device right there. Okay. He said that there'd been, you know, a pretty wild party in room 1055. But the only other thing that really stood out to him was a lady who'd come and gone that

night. Charles very charmingly referred to her as a commercial woman, which is the most adorable name for a sex worker I've ever heard, and I suggest it to any sex workers who are listening. A lady of the night. A commercial woman. A commercial woman. Yes. He'd seen her several times before. You know, she'd come to the hotel pretty often, always with a different man. She was about five foot six, Slim build, black hair. She wore a black Hudson seal coat. Ooh. Could have been fake fur.

Charles wasn't really sure. So this commercial woman entered the hotel sometime between midnight and 3 a.m. He kind of wasn't sure. He just remembered it was early on in his shift and asked Charles to take her to the 10th floor. She said she was going to room 1026. Ooh, almost 1046. Yes. Yeah.

So he took her up there, you know, then he went back down. But a few minutes later, she rang for him again. So he went back up to the 10th floor and he found her there and she was kind of disappointed. The man she was supposed to meet wasn't in room 1026. And she was like, that's so weird. It's not like him to be late to an appointment. Uh-huh. She wondered if maybe she had the wrong room.

You know, maybe she was supposed to go to 1024. and I guess she saw a little light coming from that room and figured maybe that's where she was supposed to go. So Charles left her there to figure it out. And about 40 minutes later, he got the signal to come back to the 10th floor again. It was the commercial woman again. She was ready to leave. So Charles took her down to the lobby and he watched her exit the hotel. But about an hour later, at around 4 in the morning, the commercial woman came back.

This time she had a man with her. The man was about the same height and weight as the woman, five, six, slender build, and he was dressed entirely in brown. Like a suit, brown suit, brown coat, monochromatic moment. Okay. They asked to be taken to the ninth floor. So Charles took them up. And a while later, at around maybe 4.15, Charles got a signal to come down to the ninth floor. It was the commercial woman again.

She wanted to go back down to the lobby. She was done with him. So he took her down there and watched her once again exit the hotel. And then at around 4.30 a.m., Charles got the signal to come back to the ninth floor. It was the man who'd been with the commercial woman, the man dressed all in Brown. Yeah. He told Charles that he couldn't sleep. So he was just going to go out.

So Charles took the man down to the lobby and the man exited the hotel. And that was kind of it. That's what the detectives got from those interviews. And there's only one elevator in this hotel? Yes. Okay. So do you think they got on the ninth floor and then just took the stairs to the 10th floor? To like cover their tracks?

It's interesting to me because... Or is this commercial woman completely unrelated to... That's what I wonder. Yeah. That's what I want. You know, sometimes it's... It's like we've only got this information, but we don't know that it's all relevant. Yeah.

Yeah. And I do wonder how closely were the stairs monitored. Yeah. It's either one of two things. It has nothing to do with Roland. Or they were sneaky boys and they got on the ninth floor and went up to the 10th floor. Yeah. And what time was Roland found dead?

So, gosh, I believe he was found dead around 11-ish. A.m? 10-ish. Yeah. Okay. But this, the time of death kind of checks out for like 4 a.m., 3 a.m. Yeah. You know, around there.

Mm-hmm. But again, the other thing that I think makes this complicated is, and you'll see this, a lot of the science that is used, isn't really so much science. Right. Old-timey science. Fingerprints that are definitely a woman's, that's not really a thing. Yeah. Well, and maybe the killer didn't use the elevator.

Maybe they just took the stairs all the way to the 10th floor. That certainly seems like the intelligent move to me. Yeah. Unless you're not planning to kill someone. You know, to me that depends on like if you're going there with a plan to do something awful. Yeah. Then you're going to be more sneaky. Of course.

Parachute on the roof and then go down to the 10th floor. That's right. You wear a parachute everywhere under every day. You're not going to suspect anything, a guy parachuting under the roof. of the president hotel. Quick. Did anyone purchase a brown parachute in January of 1935 in Kansas City? Because you know he had to have it matching.

And he got it? At Montgomery Ward. I think we've solved it. It's Montgomery Ward that killed this guy. So, you know, that's kind of it. You know, a witness heard fighting in room 1046. She'd heard male and female voices. To me, that's something.

The elevator operator had noticed a man and a woman come and go at odd hours. That's something, you know, or nothing. In the meantime, investigators started looking into the victim. It really didn't take too long to determine that Roland T. Owens was an alias and that he wasn't from Los Angeles. They talked to LAPD. They had no records of this man. Yeah. So this murder victim was an unknown person.

Imagine if he gave some super famous name. I'm just imagining if I went to a hotel and they're like, what's your name? And I was like, Dwayne the Rock Johnson. You know, that is kind of interesting to think about like, especially if you call something in, if you call in a reservation to a restaurant and you use like not a super famous person's name, but like semi-famous, enough that it's believable that they're using that name. Okay. I wonder if that would get you right past the line at Olive Garden.

What do you think, huh? Okay, so if I called the Olive Garden for reservation, because you definitely need a reservation to get an olive line, and I was like, oh, my name? Yes. Jason Alexander. It depends on the age of the person answering the phone. Okay. If I were doing it, I would find a local sports dude and use his name. Patrick Mahomes. No, you can't do that.

He definitely can't do that. He has a very unique voice. Yeah, I'd get my Kermit the Frog voice on, and I'd call him up, and boy, that Olive Garden would be thrilled. Never ending pasta for everyone. Definitely would think it was Patrick. So, Roland T. Owen is an alias. Yeah. And now they've got to figure out what's this man's true identity.

Yeah, who the hell is this guy? So they ran photos in the newspaper under the heading, Do you recognize this man? Now, the picture was of his dead face? Yeah. I mean, they didn't have anything else that they could do. Yeah. They even shaved back part of his hair that he'd grown to cover up the scar on the side of his head.

They hoped that a barber might recognize the scar and be able to identify him. Family, close friends, you know, someone would know that. scar. Yeah. They took his photo to people in the boxing and wrestling worlds operating under the assumption that, you know, since he had an athletic build and a cauliflower ear, he might have been a boxer. He might have been in those circles. Yep, good thinking. Investigators even arranged for the public to come look at his body in the hopes that someone might recognize him. This is some wild old timey shit, but his body was held for a viewing at Melody McGilley Funeral Home. This was still standing up until like a year ago.

Yeah, they just tore it down. Yeah. It was 20 West Linwood Boulevard, Kansas City, Missouri, if anyone wants to kind of follow along. It's near the Costco. A lot of people came to look at the body of this young dead man. Sources have it different ways. Some say hundreds, some say thousands. But one of the people who came to look was a guy named Robert Lane.

Robert laid eyes on the body and he was like, oh, I recognize this guy. Oh, okay. So we have a lead? He told investigators that at 11 p.m. on Thursday, January 3rd, he'd been driving near 13th in Lydia Avenue in Kansas City. And he'd been kind of stunned to see a guy walking down the street wearing just pants, shoes, and an undershirt. It's January in Kansas City. It wasn't super cold that day, but it was cold enough that the guy was like, what is he doing without a code on? 13th and Lydia.

Okay. So it's like west of downtown. Okay. The guy flagged Robert down. And then he was like, oh, sorry, I thought you were a taxi. But, you know, Robert felt so bad for the guy that he agreed to take him to the nearest taxi stand. So the guy got in Robert's car. A taxi stand?

Yes. Another old-timey thing. That's not a thing. anymore, right? Taxi stands? Yeah, I don't think it is. I don't know. In big cities, it just seems like the taxis are just driving all over the place. Now we all have our phones and you just call what they call it an Uber. Oh, thank you, Norm. Sometimes they call it a Lyft. And it's all in this app on your phone and you just... Sometimes I call you a condescending douche. Oh, I wasn't trying to be condescending. I was just making a joke because I'm hilarious. Oh.

You know, it's 2025. New norm. Oh. New norm, huh? Yeah. So this guy gets in the car with Robert. And Robert immediately noticed that the guy had a really bad scratch on his arm, maybe even more than a scratch, but it looked pretty bad.

And just from the man's body language, it seemed like he was kind of cupping another injury. Mm-hmm. So Robert said, you look as if you've been in it bad. And the man responded. I'll kill that bleep tomorrow. The old time he news. I'll kill that what? Bleep.

The old timey newspapers thought we were all too delicate to know what he'd actually said. I think bastard, don't you? I'll kill that bastard tomorrow. I'll kill that son of a gun. Sure. Oh, yeah, that, yeah. But they'd print that. I'll kill that Tammany Hall Huckster.

Pretty soon, Robert pulled up to the taxi stand, let the guy out. So Robert Lane didn't have a name for this man, but if his story was accurate, it would mean that Roland had somehow left the president hotel the night of his murder without any of the staff noticing him coming or going. Well, again, if he took the stairwell, I mean, you can leave the hotel without going through the lobby, I'm assuming. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, most large buildings and hotels have exits where you don't have to go through. through the lobby.

So he was up to no good in 13th in Lydia then, huh? If he's got a big scratch on his arm, so he was up to something. Yeah, or got into something. Who knows? No shirt on? Just an undershirt? Just an undershirt. And again, this might not be him, but I am inclined to believe this story.

I don't. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. To me, it's, you know, it's obviously interesting because he's saying, I'm going to kill that guy tomorrow. And then he, of course, gets murdered himself later that, well, in the early hours of that morning. But it's also interesting to me because it shows, again, if this is true, that the hotel staff had no idea who was coming or going.

Again, it's those, it seems like an insignificant event. Somebody's leaving the hotel. And it's like, how do you even remember everyone who's coming and going? And, I mean, to take this to a more sinister place. It's Kansas City in the 1930s. A lot of corruption. Kansas City Mafia was in full swing. That's the nerdiest way of saying it.

In full swing. They were out there just guns blaze it. But is it really smart for a business to be like, yep, here's who we had come in that day. And here's when they left. They've got the commercial women working there. Yeah. I think there's also a possibility that, you know, maybe the hotel staff did see some people come and go, but it's not worth the risk to name names. So you're saying maybe they lied and said, oh, I didn't notice?

Sure. I guess that's a possibility, sure. What do you mean? I guess that's a possibility. It's about as likely as him being possessed by a demon. No, it's not. It's way more likely. You heard what I said about the Kansas City Mafia.

It was in full swing, baby. You're right. You're right. You really nailed it home with that description. It's in full swing. So that was it with Robert Lane. He dropped him off and that was it. Okay. Detectives went to the Mulebach Hotel, which I hear is so expensive. That's where all the presidents are hanging out. Yeah. It was where Roland had stayed the night before he'd stayed at the hotel president, at least according to what he told everybody. Oh, so that's a good idea. Yeah, get the logbook, see what room he was in. Okay, okay. But here's the thing. They didn't have a record of a Roland T. Owen staying at their hotel.

He gave another alias. Hotel staff looked at a picture of Roland and they were like, oh, oh, yeah, he did stay here. He said he was from L.A. He said his name was Eugene K. Scott. Very generic names he's given. Yeah. Not Tim Allen or Dwayne the Rock Johnson or. I would argue that Tim Allen is a pretty generic sounding name.

Yeah, you're right, Tim Allen. But at the time, I guess, I mean, if he went by Groucho Marx or something. Yeah. Lucille Ball. Now that would be eye-catching. That would be. So the detectives called up the LAPD. And again, it was the same story.

LAPD had no records for a Eugene K. Scott. Meanwhile, thanks to all the media attention, a lot of people were certain that they knew the identity of Roland T. Owen. For example, a man named Ernest Johnson came forward and was like, oh, I can identify the body. It's my cousin, Harvey Johnson. But then his sister came forward and was like, our cousin Harvey died like five years ago. And Ernest was like, well, yeah, but he looked just like him. Oh, yeah, thanks. Thanks. This would be so frustrating. Yeah, for the police for sure, yeah. A wrestling promoter came forward and was like, I know that guy.

I can ID him. His name is Cecil Werner. He used to wrestle for a guy named Charles Locke. But they took the picture to Charles and Charles was like, yeah, I don't recognize this guy at all. No, I actually said, let me tell you something, brother. I don't know who this man is, but if I did, I would whoop his ass. Wow. And they were like, we got to stay for the show. Yeah.

After a while, it seemed that no one was going to be able to ID this man. At this point, the funeral home had held his body for 11 weeks. Oh, my God. So they got to keep him on ice? Well, I would sure hope so. Ooh, it's getting kind of warm in this room. Yeah. So they had to do something.

So an announcement ran in all the local newspapers that this murdered man would now be buried in the Popper's Field. Where is that? That's just a term for, you know. Oh, Popper, so like a commoner. Yes. Okay. For Poppersfield, I was like, is that somebody's last name? Is that?

Sometimes they call it a Potter's Field. Okay. I don't know if that helps. No. But yeah, it's just unclaimed. Okay, got it. So it was when that announcement ran that this story got even weirder. How so?

I was planning to not tell you. Damn. On the next episode of an old-timey podcast. No, go on. Just before they were going to bury the body, a woman, called one of the local newspapers. She wouldn't give her name. She would only give a correction.

She said, You have a story in your paper that's wrong. Roland Owen will not be buried in a pauper's grave. Arrangements have been made for his funeral. Whoa, what a twist. The editor asked, Who are you? Who's calling?

And the woman said, Never mind, I know what I'm talking about. The editor asked, What happened to Owen at the hotel? and the woman said he got into a jam and hung up. Was it the commercial woman? I don't know. I wish I knew.

One thing that I think should be mentioned is that this particular aspect of the story was not mentioned in the police file. Okay. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, but newspapers are the rough drafts of history. Maybe this is inaccurate. Maybe the police looked into it and they're like, yeah, that's unsubstantiated. If they looked into it, it would be in the file, I would think. Yeah, that's true. But let me tell you something that's more concrete.

The funeral home received an anonymous phone call. It was from a man claiming that he was Roland T. Owen's potential brother-in-law. Potential. So he might be getting married to his sister? Yeah, I think this guy was using the wrong words. Okay. Because, yeah, the potential is gone now. and he said that Roland T. Owen had been the man's real name.

The caller refused to identify himself, but he made the funeral home an offer. He told them that if they could hang on to the body for a while longer, he would send them the money for a proper funeral. He asked that they bury the body in Memorial Park Cemetery. When questioned, the man said, Owen hadn't played the game fair, and cheaters usually get what's coming to them. Was this in the police report?

Yeah. Yeah. This is substantiated. What the fuck? Who are these people calling? Roland T.O. And is definitely not his name. So is this some guy who is part of the crime that happened and he's trying to...

I think so. Yeah, definitely. Or definitely someone with knowledge of the crime. Mm-hmm. And maybe it's one of those things where you're really mad at someone. Maybe you pay to have them beat up. It goes too far. You feel terrible, but not terrible enough to come forward, so you're going to pay for a nice funeral.

It's the right thing to do. The funeral home agreed to do as the man asked. And sure enough, two days later, on March 23rd, 1935, the funeral home received a special delivery envelope. It contained $25 in cash. Adjusted for inflation, that's almost $600. Okay. Around that same time, a local flower company received a similar phone call. An anonymous caller, a man, ordered 13 American roses sent to Roland Owen's funeral.

He asked that the note attached to the bouquet read, Love Forever, Louise. He told the florist, I'm doing this for my sister. I'll send you a $5 bill, special delivery. And he did. In fact, he sent it twice. which seems odd. Hmm.

So there's some guilty, yeah, conscious people given this guy a funeral. Yeah. He was caught in a jam, huh? Mm-hmm. This is all very mysterious. So Roland T. Owen, whoever he was,

had a nice funeral and burial, though the funeral was only attended by detectives. Oh. They did the thing where they had some officers dressed up pretending to be grave diggers, hoping that they'd spot, you know, someone lurking, which I don't think that's a bad idea at all. If someone's paying for the funeral and paying for flowers, I think it's reasonable to expect that they might try to, you know, be in the vicinity. Yeah. So you got to get the police undercover as grave diggers. But they didn't spot anybody. Okay. Months past. It seemed like

every family who had a missing son or brother or father was convinced that maybe their loved one was Roland T. Owen, but it was never a match. Did they keep printing his picture in the paper? I don't know how often they did it, but this was a story that really captured people's imaginations just because it was so strange. Yeah, definitely. One thing I do want to make clear, I believe, if I'm remembering the stat correctly, there were 75 murders that year in Kansas City.

So it's not like there was a shortage of murder. Yeah. But this was a weird one. It stuck out. Very strange. The case kind of stalled out. As I said, Kansas City was a pretty rough place. There were other murders to solve.

But it still didn't leave people's imagination. Journalists still wrote about it from time to time. And thank God they did, because in November of 1936, nearly two years after this murder, a woman in Birmingham, Alabama, read about the murder in an issue of the American Weekly. The article included a photo of Roland, and she recognized him. The dead man was her friend's son.

She took the article to her friend, a woman named Ruby Ogletree. Ruby Ogletree and her husband Leon had three children. Their son, Artemis, had been the youngest. As a family, they'd moved around a lot. They'd lived in Florida, New Orleans, Georgia. But by the time Artemis had been a teenager, they'd put down roots. Birmingham. And you said he had a Southern accent, right? Yeah. Okay. He'd left Birmingham in April of 34. He'd been 17 when he left home. He'd been bright and adventurous. He'd been an avid reader.

He told his family he wanted to see the world. His dad was a little hesitant about letting him leave. I mean, he was just going to hitchhike to California. Oh my gosh. But his mom really supported his dream. He told his family that he was taking off traveling with a group of other guys, but later reports revealed that perhaps he'd only left Birmingham with one friend, a guy named Joe Simpson. Artemis's family didn't know much about Joe Simpson. They thought that he'd been an unemployed cook, but they weren't really sure. In the early days of his travels, Artemis wrote to his family pretty often. His letters were warm, handwritten, but not super detailed. They sent him money when they could. He seemed pretty happy. They received letters from California and later from Kansas City.

So he did go to California. Yeah. Eventually, okay. So he was like 18 when he was murdered? 19. 19. Okay. And then about a year into his travels, those handwritten letters stopped coming. And after Roland T. Owen was murdered, the Ogletree family began receiving strange letters. The letters claimed to have been from Artemis, but they didn't feel like they were from Artemis. Oh, boy.

Now, where is Joe Simpson? What do you mean? Well, he left town with Joe Simpson. Have they found Joe Simpson and said, hey, what's the deal? would have you been up to Mr. Simpson? Hang tight. Okay.

The three letters they received were all typed. Artemis didn't know how to type. Typed? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, and like, yeah, using a typewriter back then. It sounded like everyone's got a typewriter. Yeah, I don't know how common that would have been.

Yeah. I feel like it wouldn't have been too hard to get a hold of, but at the same time... If you're handwriting all the previous notes, it'd be weird to switch to a typewriter. and not even mention. Absolutely. Unless the first sentence was like, hey, got a new typewriter. Which, if you're traveling constantly and you're having to ask your family to send money, I don't think you'd be investing in a typewriter, especially when you didn't even know how to type.

What if you're really bad with money? Okay, that's fair. So they received these typed letters, but they knew Artemis didn't know how to type. And on top of that, the letters were full of typos. That wasn't like Artemis. He was, he'd always been a very good student. The letters also contained slang that he didn't use. One source I read said that the slang was more common

with people who'd lived up north, like New York in Chicago. The writing style was different too. He was suddenly so detailed about his travels. Ruby found the letters disturbing. They didn't sound like they'd been written by her son. The first letter had come from Chicago. It arrived in early 1935. The second came in May of that year, from New York.

In that letter, Artemis told his family that he was sailing to Europe. No. A third and final letter came the very next day. It arrived special delivery. It said that he was sailing to Europe that very day. Oh, so I'm leaving the country. Uh-huh. You'll probably never see me again.

Oh no, you'll see me, but you know, I'm going to be gone for a while. Don't worry about me. Actually, don't even think about me anymore. Where's this Joe Simpson fella? Come on, Kristen. Calm down. Then, on August 12, 1935, Ruby Ogletree received a long-distance phone call from Memphis, Tennessee. It was from a man who said his name was Godfrey Jordan.

The man spoke at an unsettling clip. And he told a wild story. He told Ruby that her son was a good friend of his. And really a hero. In fact, Artemis had saved his life in Cairo. That's right. Egypt? Yeah.

You never mentioned that in the letters. Well, no, but here he's talking about it. He explained that he'd been in Cairo, Egypt, and he was about to get beaten up by a band of thugs. And Artemis stopped them. Wow. The caller went on to say that Ruby didn't need to worry about Artemis. He was doing great in Egypt.

In fact, he'd just gotten married to a very wealthy woman. Wait, so he was basically Brendan Frazier in The Mummy. I never saw that movie. What now? What? No, I didn't see it. Are you kidding me? I would never joke about something as serious as the mummy.

Or Brendan Fraser. Right. Your mom, Sherey, Ray. I know. As the Hots for Brendan McFrager. She had a big crush on him. And who could blame her? Not I.

Okay. So that's a weird phone call. Yep. What did? Oh, I'm not done. Okay. I'm not done. Oh, more.

Okay. Uh-huh. It gets weirder. And then he fought an undead army of mummies, led by Emitap and was, whatever. That's stupid joke. We're keeping it in, baby. Now, on that note, because you took us down that road, I want to hear from you. Okay, this dude is about to tell Ruby the reason her son hasn't written.

I want you to give me the weirdest, dumbest reason that someone couldn't write someone a letter. Let's go. Let's hear it. He lost his hands in a boating accident. Oh, shit, Norm, that's pretty good. That's pretty close, actually. Really? He told this woman that her son hadn't written to her.

her because he'd lost his thumb in a bar room brawl. Oh, I was close. This is infuriating to me to mess with this woman like this. Yeah, well, yeah, so clearly this guy's involved with whatever happened to him. Of course. And they're just, they're fucking with people, yeah. Here's the thing. Either I can see it a couple ways.

One is, I feel really guilty. and I don't want to confess, but I want to give somebody hope or I want to delay reality. And I'm just an idiot. And this is how I'm doing it with this ridiculous story. Or, yeah, I'm 100% evil. And I'm fucking with the mother of this man who I either killed or I know was killed. Here's the thing, though, Ruby was not a stupid woman. She found the phone call deeply disturbing.

She kept this guy on the phone as long as she could. Some sources say half an hour, some say 45 minutes. She didn't trust what he was telling her, but she got enough information out of him to ascertain that he had known her son. Yeah. She tried everything she could think of to get to the truth. She contacted the State Department to figure out whether her son had been issued a passport. She contacted customs to see if he'd ever boarded it.

a ship. She reached out to J. Edgar Hoover, corresponded with him. She wrote to President Roosevelt. I think in one of the letters, it said that he was going to France. So she tried talking to ambassadors for any country that was mentioned. I mean, she's just trying to find her son. Yes. Yeah. And trying to track down, is there any possibility that any of this could possibly be true? Right. But when her friend came over with a copy of the American Weekly, which had that article about the mysterious murder at the President Hotel and included a picture of the young man with the scar on his head. Ruby recognized her son. He'd been dead since January of 1935. He hadn't been 20 or 25 or 30 or 35. He'd been 19 when he was tortured and killed. The person who sent her those letters pretending to be her

son, the person who'd called her and said that he'd seen him in Cairo and had been one of the few people, and possibly the only person who knew that Roland T. Owen's real identity was Artemis Ogletree. She sent photos to the Kansas City police, and it was eventually confirmed that the man who had claimed to be Roland T. Owen was really Artemis Ogletree. So I know who he is now. Yeah. Yeah. She explained that the mysterious scar on his head had been a burn that he'd gotten when he was just 11 months old. It'd been hot grease.

Until this point, Kansas City police had been referring to this as the perfect crime. But now that they knew who the victim was, the case seemed solvable, maybe. With the help of his family, investigators were able to track Artemis' whereabouts in the months before his murder. They now knew that he'd been in Kansas City for several months since at least August of 1934. They already knew that he'd stayed at the hotel president. They already knew that he'd stayed at the Mulebach Hotel. But now they knew that before all of that, he'd stayed at the St. Regis Hotel, located at Linwood Boulevard and the Paseo.

It's now apartment buildings. Oh, there are some cool buildings on that road. From there, they learned that Artemis hadn't been alone. He'd been traveling with another man. Joe Simpson? A man who, like Artemis, traveled under an alias. the man's alias, Don Kelso. But was it Joe Simpson?

I don't know. We don't know? No. I thought you were going to tell me. Who was Don Kelso? Ruby Ogletree had a hunch, but investigators weren't super interested in hearing about her mother's intuition. Instead, they focused on what they were certain had been the key aspect to this crime. Sexual deviancy.

aka gay shit. Oh, that's what they thought? Yeah. And I... Based on what? I am not really sure. I would love to know more. You know, there's part of me that just thinks, well, is this just some old-timey bullshit?

You know, sometimes, and even this will happen today, like, there's rope involved in a crime and somebody's naked, so there's this idea that, oh, well, it's rough. Sex gone bad, you know. And that's not necessarily what it means. Right. It might be. Apparently the police are hoping it is. They were always leaning towards it. They talked to a ton of men.

They got handwriting samples. Do a little handwriting analysis with the hotel registry, which, you know, is just an example of rock solid science that we still employ today, hasn't aged a bit. Yep. They hooked some of the dudes up to lie detectors. Oh, those work. Again, rock solid science, totally admissible in court, but none of that really went anywhere. This was also a time when, you know, being gay was seen as like this, as a, well, not seen as. It was considered a psychiatric disorder.

I can't remember when that changed. I feel like that changed in the 70s maybe. So like you could be cured of being gay. Well, what I'm saying more is like, if anyone was gay, then, well, what's to stop them from also being a murderer? Ah, yeah. Lumping gay people in with murderers. But then investigators got a big break in the case. Sort of. Apparently, and I'd love to know whether this was actually true or just something that appeared in a newspaper article, they'd had their eye on a guy named Joseph Ogden for quite a while. They believed that he had been Artemis Ogletree's travel companion and eventual murderer.

Joe Simpson? No. Are we ever bringing up Joe Simpson again? I promise you I will. I wouldn't leave that just hanging out there. I feel like you're fucking with me right now. So again, it would be very interesting to me to know for certain that they had their eye on this guy. If they did, that's very significant.

If they didn't, maybe they just heard this next story and they were like, oh, maybe that's our guy. Okay. So here's what happened. Joseph Ogden was residing in New York. He, you know, traveled around a lot. Okay. And oh shit, he had just murdered a man named Oliver George Cynical. The two men had been roommates.

And for some reason, or maybe no reason, Joseph shot Oliver. Then he cut Oliver's tattoo off with a blade. He removed all of Oliver's clothing and put his body in a steamer trunk and sent it to Memphis, Tennessee. What the fuck? But Joseph evidently didn't pack the body very well. Okay. Because blood seeped out of the steamer trunk before it even got shipped off. So the trunk didn't even make it out of Penn Station.

So this is one of those rare examples where investigators were able to solve the murder in no time, less than eight hours. Was his name on the return label, the package? I don't think it was quite that easy. I read there was a New Yorker article written about this way back in the day. And it was kind of fascinating, but now I'm fuzzy on the details. But I believe Joseph went down to a guy, gave him the trunk, was like, oh, it's full of books. Be careful with it or some lie. And of course, when the guy saw liquid coming out of it, he was like, oh, uh-uh, what's in this thing?

So he opened it up and found a body. And so he knew exactly who to tell the police to go to. Okay. So they showed up at Joseph's apartment. The New Yorker article is a trip, and it's ridiculous. They said that the police got there and the landlady had been the fattest lady in the circus, and she was married to the skinniest lady in the circus. I find this really far-fetched.

But anyway, she let them into this guy's apartment, and they arrested Joseph and learned that he liked to go by different aliases. One of them being Donald Kelso. Hmm, interesting. And we all know, Don is short for Donald. We do. Apparently, it's also a name used for mafia bosses. So people sometimes make something out of that. The Don, yeah.

I clearly don't know a ton about the mafia because I said they were in full swing. So the lead investigator of the Artemis Ogletree murder case was more than satisfied. You know, this was their guy. They'd found him. Joseph's description matched the description, the hotel employee. had given for Artemis Ogletree's travel companion. Bada Bada Bum. What more do we need?

Is there an alibi? Is there like, well, Joseph Ogden couldn't have done that because he was hanging out with me, you know, on Broadway or something? I don't know. So why was it not Joseph Ogden? This is infuriating to me. The FBI wasn't convinced. They reviewed the evidence and decided that Joseph Ogden's hand-werecton's hand-werecting

handwriting didn't match the handwriting of the person who'd written Donald Kelso on the hotel registry back in Kansas City. So based purely on handwriting? I hope to God there was more thought put into it than that. But at the same time, I also know that, okay, so this guy, you know, he confessed to the murder. He got 20 years in prison. He spent the rest of his life, you know, either in prison or in insane as, And I do know that, you know, when that happens, sometimes there's this thought of, okay, well, there are all these other murder investigations we've got going on. If we feel confident that that guy's the one who did this murder here and we know he's in prison, let's go after something else.

So you feel like there was some other evidence? No, I don't know that. I'm just saying I hope to God there was because handwriting analysis is bullshit. Yeah, well, there's got to be because it would be, it would seem too easy to just be like, oh, yeah, it was definitely him. Wait, what are you saying? You're saying, I hope you, what are you saying? I'm saying if they've got this Joseph Ogden guy locked up, threw away the key, and then they have this other murder in Kansas City with Artemis, it is easy to just say, oh, yeah, it was him. Sure, sure.

But they're saying it's not him. Based on handwriting analysis. Yeah. Now, of course, the Kansas City handwriting expert said, yes, it's a match. The FBI said, no, it's not a match. Which just goes to show how rock-solid handwriting evidences. Again. What do you think?

I would have to know more. I don't know. It's tough. If it can be proven that Joseph Ogden really was Artemis Oakley's Travel Companion. in Kansas City. And not too long after this happens, he murders a guy. Yeah.

Then I'm thinking, okay, I'm feeling pretty good about this. Obviously, it needs to be investigated further. And went by the alias, Don Kelso. Yes. Then I'm kind of like, all right. But if it's just a guy who we can't prove was Artemis's travel companion

and just matches a general description of Artemis's travel companion and then he murders a guy and stuffs his body in a trunk. I'm sorry, but one of the gross fun facts I learned from doing my old decrepit true crime podcast

was that a lot of bodies get put in trunks. Yeah. It's not that there's some, there's just one serial killer who's, you know, kink is stuffing bodies into trunks, you know? The body trunk's stuffing bandit,

strikes again. He's done it hundreds of times. around this country. And I'm guessing this was a white guy. Yeah. Yeah. So as a white guy myself. I was going to say, where is this going?

If it was a white guy with brown hair, like myself. Okay, thank you. Yes. It could be anybody. There's millions of us. That's what I mean by general description. Yeah. It's like, okay, say they say the guy's five, six, he's got brown hair.

That could be a whole lot of people. Could be. You almost picked up a complete stranger at the airport when you thought it was me. I mean, you've got a real... You could have a whole new life right now. You could have picked up a brand new husband at the airport. Norm, you got a real basic look? I know. Basic non-threatening, that's me. White guy brown hair glasses.

Yeah. There are dozens of you. I am six foot, though. So if the guy was five, six, definitely wouldn't be me. Oh, sure. So they decided this wasn't their guy, even though wasn't it a pretty big coincidence that he went by that alias? And wasn't it an interesting coincidence that two of the letters that Ruby Ogletree received after her son's murder came from New York? And wasn't it an interesting coincidence that he was sending the steamer trunk to Memphis, Tennessee, which was the same city that the guy who had called Ruby from, claiming that he'd hung out with Artemis in Cairo.

Wait, did he go to Memphis too? Who? The Ogden. I don't know. You're asking me impossible questions right now. Well, I'm just saying it. When you're saying it's a coincidence he was sending it to Memphis and she got that call for Memphis, but he's just sending the trunk. It's not like he's going to Memphis too, right?

Right. Yeah. Memphis is a pretty big city. It is. Again, you're right. This could be nothing. These could be all little coincidences that have nothing to do with one another, but it's piling up for me. Yeah, absolutely. No, this is the best lead they have so far.

Let me tell you about another. Okay, because they crossed off Montgomery Ward pretty quickly. It was like they didn't even consider him. So maybe Joseph Ogden wasn't involved in this murder. He was never charged with it. But even though a lot of people thought that Joseph Ogden did this, Ruby Ongdon. Ogletree always suspected someone else. She suspected Joe Simpson. Finally. The guy she barely knew, but who left Birmingham with her son back in 1934. Police never seriously

questioned Joe Simpson. He answered some questions for them via letters, I believe, and I guess they were satisfied with his responses. He always claimed that, yeah, he and Artemis had left Birmingham him together and gone to California together, but that's where they had parted ways. Joe claimed that he hadn't gone to Kansas City with Artemis. Okay. But Ruby didn't buy it. So she did some digging of her own. She looked into Joe's background.

She tried to meet with him. I love her. I love her. I think she should have been a detective. So she tried to meet with him several times. And he was always like, oh, yeah, sure, I'll meet you. and she'd go to the designated place at the designated time and he'd never be there. But finally, finally, in 1939, Joe met with her.

Afterward, Ruby wrote about their conversation in a letter to the Kansas City Police. She wrote, he did say he did believe the case would never break, as there were no clues and left nothing for the G-Men to work on. I said Kansas City can well boast of it being the perfect crime. He laughed and said, it is. They'll never get the ones who killed him. He laughed. Ruby talked to him and talked to him.

She asked questions. At one point, he claimed that Artemis had actually typed a letter to him one time, I think trying to bolster the authenticity of these letters. Oh. And Ruby said, I'd like to see that. And he promised that he'd show it to her sometime. Yeah, sure. You know, because this is definitely real.

Yeah. Of course, some time never came, but Ruby probably knew it never would. She was certain that she was talking to the man who'd killed her son, or one of them at least. Certainly someone who knew something. At one point in that conversation, she looked Joe in the eyes and told him, I would know the voice that talked to me from Memphis. And Joe turned red, dropped his eyes, and got nervous. Ruby thought that was significant, but there's not much evidence that the police agreed.

Or maybe they were just distracted. That same year, 1939, political boss Tom Pendergast, who'd ruled Kansas City for so long. Mm-hmm. Future topic? Oh, hell yeah. He lost power when he went to prison for tax evasion. That's how they get you. That's how they get you.

That's how they get those crime bosses. At the same time, Kansas City lost control of its police force. The Missouri governor decided that Kansas City Police needed to be under state control. Not city control. We'd shut the bed and we needed someone to clean it up. And it's still under state control to this day. That year, the new police chief was tasked with weeding out corruption. Fix it up!

And he fired half of the city's police force. Kansas City wasn't quite so wide open anymore. And although this case is one of the city's many unsolved murders, it hasn't been forgotten. It's too weird, too brutal. And there's always hope that this case can be solved. So I want to wrap up here with a little fact and then some theories. Okay.

So John Arthur Horner, I already mentioned him. He's the author of that series on Casey History. Yeah. And he wrote that while he was either working on this story or maybe it was before he started working on it, at any rate, he got a phone call from an out-of-state area code. And it was from someone who said that they'd been going through the belongings of an elderly person who'd recently passed away. And that person had a box with a bunch of newspaper articles about this case. But they said they had something else in the box, something that was significant. to the case, but the caller refused to tell John what it was.

Oh, so they're just fucking with them. Why would you not tell? I don't know. Yeah, they're just fucking with them. That could be. Yeah. But if they're not, do you have thoughts on what the significant thing might be? Maybe the necktie.

Okay, I have two guesses. The necktie with the missing label. Right. Or the room key to room 1046. Was the key missing? I never saw that in any article, but, well, oh, yes, of course it was. Everything was gone. Right, right.

What am I saying? Yeah, everything was gone. So, yes, it was missing. Maybe a towel from the hotel president. It was just a random ass dirty towel. They're like, I think this means something because it said they took all the towels. Oh, shit, I've got a bunch of towels in my house. Did I do this?

My great-grandma Betty used to steal towels from hotels. What the hell was that about? I don't know. She was a very interesting woman. Was she the one who also stole sugar packets, or was that another relative of yours? Sugar packets? Yeah, from restaurants. Your mom has talked about some relative who...

Oh, that's my grandma. My grandma would take sugar packets. Like all of them? Clean them out? Not all of them, but she would take stuff, yeah. My great-grandma would take hotel towels. though. My mom said she would open up her linen closet. It would say, you know, like Hilton, you know, or the Capitol Hotel, New York City, like these very nice hotels. Very fancy towels, yeah. It's amazing that you're as honest as you are when you clearly come from a long line of criminals.

I think I do come from a line of criminals. I'm still looking into the family history, but I think I think my ancestors, We're up to no good. We're up to no good and causing trouble in the neighborhood in Russia and Hungary, possibly. Got in one little fight and then they got over to America. Yeah, and that's just my mom's side, my dad's side from Italy. I think they were up to no good too. So you might be on to something, yeah. So I've already mentioned this case is something that's been talked about a lot.

And there are a few theories about what happened to Artemis. And so I want to go over a few. There aren't many. Yeah. One theory is that Artemis had been unfaithful to a woman. He got involved with her, made all kinds of promises about love and commitment, maybe. Then he cheats on her. So maybe she and an accomplice came to his room that night, tortured him.

Maybe they felt guilty afterward. And then they paid for his funeral and sent flowers. Yeah. And the lady next door did hear a woman. woman's voice. Mm-hmm. Okay. Plausable, sure.

Another theory is that Artemis was, you know, in Kansas City in the 1930s. He might have gotten on the bad side of the mafia or, you know. The pendergast crime syndicate. Yeah, who knows? The goats and the rabbits. Those were the two warring sides in Kansas City. So maybe he was a goat and some rabbit attacked him. But again, I mean, there's, it, the,

theories don't really go much further than there. One thing I thought was interesting was that, I mean, you know, that I've spent way too much time looking into this case this week, thinking somehow that I'm going to crack it wide open after a million people have already looked at it. I mean, yeah, you were smoking cigarettes last night in your office. False. I was not. I have asthma. But this is just something I saw that I thought was interesting. So I'm going to share it. That same year that Artemis was murdered, a gangster. named Vivian Chase was also murdered. Her body was found outside St. Luke's Hospital. So evidently, you know, someone had dropped her off at the hospital while she was still living. Okay. And her funeral

was paid for by someone who called up the funeral home anonymously and sent them money. So that got me wondering, is this a common thing and I need to just not make anything of it? Or was this a more common thing in certain circles in Kansas City at this time? Where if you're responsible for someone's murder, the least you can do is pay for the funeral? I don't know. I just... Or it could just be, you know, they were going to bury her in that popper field or whatever. And someone was like, oh, I know that poor woman, like, I'll pay for her funeral. The person actually sent money for the funeral and sent a dress and some undergarments for her to wear. And they were hers.

So it had to have been someone close to her. Right. But again, that might not mean anything at all. Yeah. Do you have theories? No, I think I kind of just whatever's already been said. I don't really have anything new to add to that. I know that's bad podcasting, but.

No, that's okay. I think Joe Simpson was involved somehow. You think from the mom's conversation that... I think everything about that is weird, including him telling her, oh, yeah, that's not going to get solved. That's strange, the, you know, looking away when she mentions the voice, the mention of the typed letters, I think is very strange, too. Like, oh, he wrote me a typed letter too. Because I'm sure the mom brought up he wrote me a typed letter. Oh, yeah, that was widely known.

Yeah. That was widely known. Okay. I really wish he had been looked into more. Yeah. Because, honestly, a person who types up those letters who makes that long phone call, that is not an intelligent person. Yeah. Not intelligent at all.

If they had found that person, I think he would have cracked. And again, I don't even, you know, he might not have been the murderer. He might not have been in the room, but he knew something. What if it's possible to do DNA today? I wonder too. Because if you could find a descendant, Joe Simpson, and then get DNA. I don't know if they even have that or could get DNA off of Rollins. body like blood splatters you'd have to get well the blood was probably all his yeah and even then

like who knows what they kept they might not have kept anything because you know it was you don't know yeah sure i wonder about both of the joes and maybe some woman who knows i know have we looked into our editor joe that's right joe how old are you are you are you yeah, we're going to need you to be about 115. And then we're going to need you to come in for questioning. So that is the story of the murder of Artemis Ogletree. Man, that story is just so bizarre. It is.

It just intrigues me. And I'm, man, I'm also like, that could be like a movie or. Absolutely. Yeah. Super fascinating. Fun fact history host, while Kristen was writing this script, she pitched an idea, what if we recorded this episode in the president hotel? Yeah. And so I wondered, can you even get room 1046?

I would be too embarrassed to ask because I do think that's weird. That would be super weird. And I feel. I bet they don't let you. Yeah. I would also, you know. It would feel wrong too. I agree.

I think sometimes true crime can get a little weird. And I say that, and we've, of course, laughed during this episode, and I've made jokes and stuff, but... But just about Montgomery Ward. Right. But we all know deserves to be joked about because he was a known murder. And making a reservation at Olive Garden under the name Tim Allen. And then being devastated. V Tim Allen?

Yes. Oh, who? Bo. Is that pretty good? Yeah, that was actually really good. And sadly, all of our young hot listeners won't get the reference, but we'll just have to move forward bravely. Kiddos, there's a show in the 90s called Home Improvement. I don't know.

I do think we should go to the hotel president, but... We did discuss recording the video version of this podcast in the president hotel. Yeah. But decided against it. You thought it would be way too spooky and you'd be creeped out. I would have been super creeped out. Yeah. That's fine.

That'd be very spooky. It could have made for some good podcasting, though. Anyway, fantastic job, Kristen. Thank you. You uncovered a lot of new stuff. Well, I didn't uncover it. Well, you dug up some new information. I'm so good at reading.

Well, hey, while you were writing this, you told me, you're like, oh, man, there's so much stuff I need to add to this. Yeah. And I just said, well, your research is just getting better. And that's why. You know, it's funny, though, I look back on that time with my old show, and we were doing a weekly story, and then we added in a monthly story for the bonus episodes. And at that same time, I believe I was still doing all of our audio editing. Yes. So, yeah, this version was a bit better.

You were working your little jiggly butt off, as they say. That's true. That's what they say. Folks, I'm super excited that we're recording episodes in January. You know, originally the plan was we were going to take all of January off, but we just felt like, no, sorry, now it's not the time. I'm really glad we are, too. Honestly, I was so excited to go back to this case. Thrilled to see that there's been more information dug up on it, and I can't wait to do some more.

Oh, Kristen is doing four old. Let's go to court cases. Yeah. RRRR remix. I hope everyone had a great holiday. Happy New Year. It's 2025, bitches. Oh, we're hardcore this year.

Yeah! That's the 2025 theme. Oh, God, okay. It's going to be a rough year. That's fine. I want everyone to know on our Discord. Oh, okay. I posted a picture of a giant box under the tree, and I was like, what did Kristen get me for Christmas?

Well, I found out it was a new office chair. Hooray! Hooray! Thank you. Yeah, that was one of the things I got, and it was massive. That box was ridiculous. Yeah, I really needed a new one, though. My old one was looking pretty rough.

A lot of farts in that chair. Okay. Do we have a picture of that nasty? Joe, on the video version, show the picture of the chair. It was rough. But Kristen would always come into my office and be like, get rid of that damn chair. You need a new chair. I was like, that's fine.

It still works. Technically it did work, but it was rough looking. But like it had fake leather and it was like peeling off and Kiki was playing with all the fake leather on the floor. It was, I found fake leather all over the house. For those who don't have the video version, let me just tell you, I had been trying to get Norm to by a new office chair for like a couple years because this poor office chair, it had done its job. It had served its purpose. And it had had all the cushioning and all of the material on the butt part of it blasted off by farts, rubbed away by too many hours. A lot of hours put

in that chair for sure. Poor thing had to go. Glad to have a new one. Yes. Thank you very much. It's very, very comfortable. And thank you for my gifts as well. Oh, you're welcome. What was your favorite gift this year? Oh, gosh. Okay. I didn't get Kristen iced coffee this year.

No, no jug of iced coffee that made me cry that one year. It's okay. I'm a fully grown adult woman. You got me a very beautiful bracelet that I was going to wear on this episode, but then it clinked and clanked on the desk. It was making too much noise. I'm too much of a podcasting pro for that. Professional. Yeah.

We appreciate your sacrifice, Kristen. Thank you. Do you have any New Year's resolutions for 2025? Yes, but I don't want to say them out loud in case I don't do them. That's very wise, actually. I used to do that on my YouTube channel on Game and a Story. Oh, I remember you would say all of your resolutions. Here's what I want to accomplish this year.

And I would always do like one out of three. And I just felt like a huge failure by the end of the year. Great. It's funny. I was texting my buddy Sean. about New Year's resolutions. Oh my God, this is my favorite. And I was like, hey, do you have any New Year's resolutions this year?

And he just wrote back, no, I'm perfect. I love it. I guess the one resolution I'm okay with sharing is, I want to watch more movies this year. I know that's a stupid resolution, but I love movies. That's not stupid, no. It's about, here's this thing I love that I don't do often enough, so I'm going to make time to do it. I'm going to watch the mummy every day for a year. I do want to watch the mummy with you now.

It's a great movie. Okay. We actually, Chris and I just finished watching an incredible show. Oh, my God. Called The Terror. It's on Netflix right now. So good. It is based on the Franklin Lost Expedition in the 1840s.

These two ships went to find the Northwest Passage in the Arctic. They got stuck in the ice and no one knows what happened to them. Everybody died. But the show is based on a book. And it's just, it's fantastic. It's one of the best shows I've ever seen. Honestly. Historical fiction.

So good. Love it. Honestly. And I say this as someone who's too wimpy to watch many horror films. But I think all horror films should be in ships, in the 1800s, in the Arctic. That is the scariest shit on earth to me. Yeah. Fantastic setting.

And just disclaimer, watch it with subtitles. Very thick English accents. We watched the first five minutes, and I was like, do you understand what anybody's saying? And you were like, I thought you understood, so I didn't want to say anything. Honestly, full disclosure, I'd had half an edible. And I was like, oh, this edible must be hitting me so hard that I can't understand English words. And I was so relieved when you couldn't understand it either. So, yeah, subtitles.

We recommend it. Yeah, we turn the subtitles on, and all of a sudden I understood what everybody was saying. Very helpful. Anyway, that's what we're up to this year. We can't wait to record more episodes in January. Hope you all had a fantastic holiday. Happy New Year. Let's make 2025 amazing.

Yeah. Well, should we wrap things up? Yes. Kristen, you know what they say about history hoes. We always cite our sources. That's right. For this episode, I got my information from the article, The Mystery of Room 1046, by John Arthur Horner for Casey History.

The article The Owen case by Martin Sismar for Kansas City magazine. The article The Bizarre Murder of Roland T. Owen in the Kansas City Hotel for Historic Mysteries.com. The article The Mystery of What Was in the Box, Alabama Man Found 83 Years ago by Lita Gore for Alabama.com, as well as a ton of old-timey newsclippings from newspapers.com. That's all for this episode. Thank you for listening to an old-timey podcast. Please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're at it, subscribe.

Support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash old-timey podcast. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok at Old Timey Podcast. Join the Reddit community, R slash Old Timey Podcast. And follow us individually on Instagram. I'm at Kristen Pitts-Keruso. I just posted really cute photos from our Christmas with the dogs and Dottie trying to eat a tenderloin when She thought no one was looking.

Anyway, and Norman is at Gaming Historian. Yeah. And until next time, Tooteloo, Tata, and Cheerio. Bye. Bye.