364: Murder In Room 1046

WEBVTT

00:00.031 --> 00:01.539
[SPEAKER_00]: Do not disturb.

00:01.600 --> 00:02.987
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Jason Horton.

00:03.269 --> 00:05.923
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Rebecca Leib, and this is Ghost Town.

00:21.952 --> 00:34.536
[SPEAKER_00]: On January 4th, 1935, a bellboy named Randolph-Propst went to the 10th floor of the hotel president, an upscale hotel in downtown Kansas City, Missouri, to check in on room 1046.

00:35.919 --> 00:44.415
[SPEAKER_00]: All Propst knew as that the room was rented by a guest named Roland T. Owen, and that the calls placed to the room were going unanswered.

00:44.395 --> 00:51.383
[SPEAKER_00]: Checking on what was going on, the Bellboy arrived at the front door, noticing a do not disturb sign on the handle.

00:52.284 --> 00:57.549
[SPEAKER_00]: After knocking and hearing no response, probes took it upon himself to enter the room.

00:58.190 --> 01:12.546
[SPEAKER_00]: The gruesome scene inside and the details surrounding the hotels, morbid context, would begin one of the most enduring and puzzling unsolved mysteries in Missouri, Kansas City,

01:12.526 --> 01:15.954
[SPEAKER_00]: Today on Ghost Town, murder in room 1046.

01:16.114 --> 01:29.303
[SPEAKER_00]: On January 3, one day before probes discovered the scene in room 1046, a man named Robert Lane was driving on 13th Street in Kansas City around 11pm.

01:29.688 --> 01:41.351
[SPEAKER_00]: Lane would later say that as he drove, he noticed something strange, in the dead of a Midwest winter, a man wearing just pants, shoes, and an undershirt, running across the street.

01:42.052 --> 01:44.517
[SPEAKER_00]: The man waved at him and shouted for Lane to stop.

01:45.118 --> 01:49.587
[SPEAKER_00]: Lane slowed, puzzled, and wondering what was going on.

01:49.567 --> 01:55.553
[SPEAKER_00]: The man apologised to him saying, I'm sorry, I thought you were a taxi, while looking desperately up and down the street.

01:56.354 --> 01:59.958
[SPEAKER_00]: The man continued, quote, Well, you take me to where I can get a cab.

02:00.979 --> 02:10.049
[SPEAKER_00]: Lane reluctantly agreed noticing a deep scratch on the man's arm, and overhearing the man under his breath saying, quote, I'll kill that something.

02:10.690 --> 02:19.219
[SPEAKER_00]: Here, a newspaper printed a long dash to indicate a deleted expletive, and then he ended

02:20.279 --> 02:24.243
[SPEAKER_00]: Blocks later, Elaine took the man to a cluster of vacant taxis in a parking lot.

02:24.804 --> 02:31.211
[SPEAKER_00]: The man thanked Elaine and jumped out, then ran to the driver's side of a parked taxi, and honked the horn.

02:32.333 --> 02:40.722
[SPEAKER_00]: Very quickly the cabby could be seen hurring out from the restaurant where he was eating the adjacent restaurant, and after this, Elaine never saw the man again.

02:41.723 --> 02:47.670
[SPEAKER_00]: With that whole context, let's go back one day, two Wednesday, January 2nd.

02:47.650 --> 02:57.622
[SPEAKER_00]: It was on the second day of 1935 around 120 in the afternoon that a different man, carrying no luggage, entered the hotel president.

02:58.383 --> 03:02.468
[SPEAKER_00]: The man went to the front desk and asked for an interior room several floors up.

03:03.309 --> 03:08.656
[SPEAKER_00]: He signed the register as Roland T. Owen and gave Los Angeles as his home address.

03:09.357 --> 03:11.920
[SPEAKER_00]: He paid for a hotel room for just one night.

03:13.199 --> 03:27.380
[SPEAKER_00]: Goes to work to the hotel said the man, Owen, looked in his 20s or early 30s, neatly dressed, wearing black overcoat with dark brown hair, and that they all noticed one distinct feature on the man, a cauliflower left ear.

03:28.121 --> 03:39.477
[SPEAKER_00]: As you may know, this is a hematoma caused by blunt trauma, which makes the blood vessels tear in one's own ear, blood to pull, and creates a kind of lumpy cauliflower effect.

03:39.457 --> 03:47.712
[SPEAKER_00]: Also known as Ressler's ear, it's what happens when a wrestler takes too many blows to his ears inside over the course of a long period of time.

03:47.752 --> 03:57.870
[SPEAKER_00]: The man also had a more subtle scar in his hairline, another indicator to the employees at the hotel president, that the man might, or used to be, a fighter of some sort.

03:59.352 --> 04:07.803
[SPEAKER_00]: The desk clerk gave Mr. Owen the key to room 1046, and sent Bel Boy Randolph probes with him to the elevator to show Owen to his room.

04:08.645 --> 04:19.960
[SPEAKER_00]: On the way up to the room, probes to Owen chatted, Owen telling the Bel Boy that he had been at Mulbach Hotel the night before, but that they had charged him the outrageous price of $5 for his room.

04:19.940 --> 04:29.555
[SPEAKER_00]: When they arrived at his room, 1046, Probst watched as Owen took a black hairbrush out of his overcoat pocket along with a black comb and toothpaste.

04:30.277 --> 04:31.198
[SPEAKER_00]: That was it.

04:32.420 --> 04:36.747
[SPEAKER_00]: Owen placed the three items above the sink and the two men then exited the room together.

04:37.408 --> 04:44.800
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice that Owen did not lock his own room, Probst asked if it was okay if he did, and Owen gave him the key to do so.

04:44.780 --> 04:50.827
[SPEAKER_00]: After locking the room and heading back to the lobby, probes went back to his duties and Owen left the hotel entirely.

04:50.847 --> 04:58.416
[SPEAKER_00]: Later that day, Mary Sopdick, a maid at the hotel president, went to clean the room and found the door locked.

04:59.217 --> 05:05.925
[SPEAKER_00]: After knocking, Owen let her in, but told her specifically not to lock the door that he was expecting a friend in a few minutes.

05:06.586 --> 05:14.635
[SPEAKER_00]: Sopdick noticed two things, that the room was dark except for a dim lamp in the corner,

05:14.615 --> 05:15.276
[SPEAKER_00]: nervous.

05:16.579 --> 05:27.901
[SPEAKER_00]: Around 4pm, Sopdick returned to ring fresh towels to room 1046, upon entering the room which was still unlocked, she encountered Owen Lang fully clothed on the bed in the dark, completely awake.

05:29.063 --> 05:33.191
[SPEAKER_00]: On the table was a note that red quote, Don, I'll be back in 15 minutes.

05:33.852 --> 05:34.193
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait.

05:35.287 --> 05:41.835
[SPEAKER_00]: The next morning, Thursday, January 3, at 10.30 a.m., Soptic headed back to room 1046 to clean it.

05:42.476 --> 05:51.488
[SPEAKER_00]: Assuming that Owen was out, she unlocked the door with her pesky, which she could only do if it had been locked from the outside, not the inside, and entered.

05:51.548 --> 05:54.932
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, Owen was sitting in the dark.

05:54.912 --> 06:15.435
[SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't a strange to soft dick, at least, anymore after her first encounter, but then the maid realized that she was able to unlock the locked door only because it had been locked from the outside, to the maid this was of course odd because Owen was inside of course, but before she could think too much about it, the phone in the room rang.

06:15.415 --> 06:18.618
[SPEAKER_00]: Owen answered and after a moment said, quote, no, don't.

06:18.778 --> 06:19.399
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to eat.

06:19.919 --> 06:20.620
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not hungry.

06:20.640 --> 06:22.021
[SPEAKER_00]: I just had breakfast.

06:23.062 --> 06:26.525
[SPEAKER_00]: After a moment he repeated, quote, no, I am not hungry.

06:26.565 --> 06:33.992
[SPEAKER_00]: As Soptic tidied up, Owen asked her about her job, and if she cleaned the entire floor, conversational things.

06:34.792 --> 06:39.897
[SPEAKER_00]: He also told her, like he did with probest, the bellboy, that the Malbach hotel had overcharged him.

06:40.638 --> 06:45.422
[SPEAKER_00]: Soptic finished cleaning, said some pleasantries,

06:46.820 --> 06:50.506
[SPEAKER_00]: Around 4 o'clock that same day, Saptic took towels to Owens' room.

06:51.006 --> 06:54.452
[SPEAKER_00]: As she approached 1046, she heard two men talking inside.

06:55.093 --> 06:59.479
[SPEAKER_00]: Gently knocking, one man asked to it was, and Saptic said she was the maid with the towels.

07:00.281 --> 07:08.413
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, we don't need any replied one voice, which was peculiar, since Saptic knew that there were no towels in the room, having removed them while cleaning in the morning.

07:09.294 --> 07:15.544
[SPEAKER_00]: That same afternoon, a 30-year-old woman named Jean Owens, no relation to Roland T. Owens, I should also add.

07:15.524 --> 07:22.839
[SPEAKER_00]: drove from Lee's summit Missouri into Kansas City to meet with her long-distance boyfriend Joe Reinhardt, who worked at a local flower shop.

07:23.741 --> 07:36.047
[SPEAKER_00]: After a few hours shopping, she started to feel sick, so she went to the flower shop and told Reinhardt that she didn't feel up to going out that night, and that she would get a room at the hotel president so she could get better and head home the next day.

07:36.027 --> 07:42.377
[SPEAKER_00]: Adding that she let her boyfriend know the room, she arrived at the hotel around six and registered an hour later.

07:42.437 --> 07:50.109
[SPEAKER_00]: After registering, she told RineHeart that she was staying in room 1048, two doors down from 1046.

07:52.132 --> 07:59.503
[SPEAKER_00]: According to hotel records, RineHeart got off his shift at the flower shop, came to the hotel, the couple visited for about two hours and RineHeart left.

08:00.783 --> 08:11.056
[SPEAKER_00]: In Owen's statement to the police, she said that during the night she, quote, her lot of noise which sounded like it was on the same floor and consisted largely of men and women talking loudly and cursing.

08:11.637 --> 08:15.201
[SPEAKER_00]: When the noise continued, I was about to call the desk clerk but decided not to.

08:16.383 --> 08:26.976
[SPEAKER_00]: Charles Blocker, the elevator operator, echoed Jean Owen's statement, saying that there was a rowdy party on the 10th floor in room 1055 that tapered off around 1 a.m.

08:26.956 --> 08:34.758
[SPEAKER_00]: He would tell the police, quote, I took a woman that I recognized as being a woman who frequents the hotel with different men in different rooms.

08:35.380 --> 08:38.669
[SPEAKER_00]: It is my impression from this woman's actions that she is a commercial woman.

08:39.531 --> 08:41.657
[SPEAKER_00]: Commercial woman being a sex worker.

08:42.768 --> 08:46.035
[SPEAKER_00]: I took her to the 10th floor and she made inquiries for room 1026.

08:47.057 --> 08:50.464
[SPEAKER_00]: About five minutes after this, I received a signal to come back to the 10th floor.

08:51.045 --> 09:00.625
[SPEAKER_00]: Upon arriving there, I met the same woman as she wondered why he wasn't the man she was calling for in his room because he had called her and had always been very prompt in his appointments.

09:00.605 --> 09:06.454
[SPEAKER_00]: And she wondered if he might be in 1024 because the light was on in there and the transom was opened.

09:06.974 --> 09:11.641
[SPEAKER_00]: She remained about 30 or 40 minutes, then I received a signal to go back up to the tenth floor.

09:12.302 --> 09:18.732
[SPEAKER_00]: I went back on the same woman appeared there and came down on the elevator with me and left the elevator at the lobby.

09:18.712 --> 09:23.299
[SPEAKER_00]: About an hour later, she returned in the company with a man and took them to the ninth floor.

09:23.879 --> 09:30.889
[SPEAKER_00]: I later received a signal to go to the ninth floor about 4.15am, and this same woman came down from the ninth floor and left the hotel.

09:30.929 --> 09:39.802
[SPEAKER_00]: In a period of about 15 minutes later, this man came down the elevator from the ninth floor, complaining that he couldn't sleep and was going out for a while.

09:40.643 --> 09:46.812
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you still following all of the coming and goings of this woman from the ninth

09:47.264 --> 09:58.921
[SPEAKER_00]: So, a witness in 1048 talked of a rowdy party in 1046, and then a woman, a sex worker who was very familiar with the hotel, was searching for 1026 rather than 1046.

09:59.101 --> 10:02.866
[SPEAKER_00]: It's both confusing and raises some questions.

10:03.427 --> 10:08.514
[SPEAKER_00]: Was the woman there to see Owen and got the number wrong or did Owen or somebody give her the wrong number?

10:09.275 --> 10:15.364
[SPEAKER_00]: Was she confused in an hour self or was she just trying to find some good business for the night?

10:15.547 --> 10:19.472
[SPEAKER_00]: Or did Owen maybe move to a different room altogether, temporarily?

10:19.513 --> 10:20.454
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe 10.55?

10:21.215 --> 10:29.166
[SPEAKER_00]: The next known encounter between Owen and the hotel staff took place on Friday, January 4th, just a little after 7 p.m.

10:29.627 --> 10:34.213
[SPEAKER_00]: When Delah Ferguson, the telephone operator took over the hotel's phone switchboard.

10:34.193 --> 10:39.423
[SPEAKER_00]: She noticed that the board indicated that the phone for 1046 was off the hook.

10:40.305 --> 10:51.527
[SPEAKER_00]: At 10 after when the phone was still off the hook, with no one using it, she requested that the bell service send a bell boy up to the room to tell the occupant to please hang up the phone.

10:51.507 --> 11:03.500
[SPEAKER_00]: The Belboy was Randolph-Propes, who had taken Owen up to the room in the first place and had been checking in on him all this time, and that's where we're back to Propes about to discover something gruesome in room 1046.

11:03.560 --> 11:07.164
[SPEAKER_00]: Something will discuss after this break.

11:08.345 --> 11:20.839
[SPEAKER_00]: When Randolph-Propes, the Belboy at the Hotel President in Kansas City, got to room 1046, the door was locked, and a don't disturb sign was hanging from the door knob.

11:21.258 --> 11:25.263
[SPEAKER_00]: But finally, he heard a voice say come in, but he couldn't as the door was locked.

11:25.924 --> 11:28.607
[SPEAKER_00]: He knocked again and heard the voice say turn on the lights.

11:29.648 --> 11:49.392
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally after knocking, even more, probes teiled through the door, quote, put the phone back on the hook, and returned to the lobby exasperated where he told Delefergasin, the switch board operator, that the guy in room 1046 was probably drunk, and that she should wait about an hour and send somebody else up to make sure the phone was back on the receiver.

11:49.372 --> 11:59.990
[SPEAKER_00]: About half past 8pm, Della Ferguson, again noted that the phone for 1046 was still off the hook, and sent a different bellboy named Harold Pike up to remedy the situation.

12:00.050 --> 12:09.827
[SPEAKER_00]: When Pike got up to the room, the door was locked, again indicating the door had been locked from the outside, but Pike had a pass key and let himself in.

12:09.807 --> 12:14.132
[SPEAKER_00]: Inside he found a man lying on the bed it completely naked and apparently drunk.

12:14.893 --> 12:19.339
[SPEAKER_00]: He also saw that the telephone stand had been knocked over and that the phone was on the floor.

12:20.140 --> 12:24.745
[SPEAKER_00]: Pike straightened the stand and put the phone and receiver on it and got the hell out of there.

12:25.827 --> 12:34.077
[SPEAKER_00]: Around 10.30 a.m. the next morning, January 5th, another operator reported that the phone for 10.46 was again off the hook.

12:34.883 --> 12:46.237
[SPEAKER_00]: around 11 o'clock, Randolph-Propst, him again, headed back up to the room, finding the don't disturb signs still on the locked door, and he let himself in with a pesky and entered the room.

12:47.438 --> 12:50.682
[SPEAKER_00]: What he observed, he told law enforcement, was gruesome.

12:51.303 --> 12:57.330
[SPEAKER_00]: Quote, this man was within two feet of the door on his knees and elbows, holding his head to his hands.

12:57.310 --> 13:02.978
[SPEAKER_00]: I noticed blood in his head, I then turned the light on, placed the telephone receiver on the hook.

13:03.619 --> 13:07.604
[SPEAKER_00]: I looked around and saw blood on the walls and the bed, and the bathroom.

13:08.705 --> 13:14.653
[SPEAKER_00]: Terrified at the now illuminated room, probes ran out, describing the horrific scene to the assistant manager of the hotel.

13:15.234 --> 13:22.644
[SPEAKER_00]: The two men then rushed back upstairs together and tried to get back into the room, but the body of Roland T. Owen was now blocking the door.

13:22.684 --> 13:25.528
[SPEAKER_00]: It was then that they called the police.

13:25.508 --> 13:35.287
[SPEAKER_00]: Upon arrival the police processed the scene, Roland T. Owen was not dead at that point and was actually conscious, but he had suffered immense trauma.

13:36.029 --> 13:39.575
[SPEAKER_00]: Completely naked his hands and feet were bound by a cotton rope.

13:39.595 --> 13:46.048
[SPEAKER_00]: There was another rope around his neck and ligature marks around his neck suggested attempted strangulation.

13:46.028 --> 13:54.758
[SPEAKER_00]: Owen showed numerous signs of torture as well, including extensive bruising over his body, a skull fracture, and several deep stab wounds in his upper chest.

13:55.559 --> 14:01.186
[SPEAKER_00]: There was, like the bell boy said, blood everywhere, including the ceiling.

14:02.487 --> 14:07.193
[SPEAKER_00]: No belongings were found in the room, safe for one hairpin, and an unlit cigarette.

14:08.573 --> 14:15.381
[SPEAKER_00]: Surprisingly, after Owen's bindings were cut, he got up and wandered into the bathroom trying to wash his hands.

14:16.082 --> 14:23.351
[SPEAKER_00]: When asked what had happened to him, who had beaten him, he claimed that no one had, that he had slipped and fell on the side of the bathtub.

14:23.992 --> 14:28.137
[SPEAKER_00]: Owen emphasized that it was a complete accident and not a suicide attempt.

14:29.279 --> 14:38.310
[SPEAKER_00]: Owen was then rushed to the hospital just before midnight, fell into a coma, and soon

14:39.657 --> 14:49.355
[SPEAKER_00]: The Kansas City police found one solid leave while processing room 1046, fingerprints on the phone, a woman's fingerprints, but that lead soon became a dead end.

14:49.996 --> 15:00.034
[SPEAKER_00]: Roland T. Owens' prints were everywhere himself, of course, but when police ran them through the FBI database or the Bureau of Investigations at the time, which was the precursor to the FBI.

15:00.074 --> 15:01.817
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing came up.

15:02.995 --> 15:12.312
[SPEAKER_00]: After a public plea for tips, a few trickled in, including Robert Lane's experience of picking up a man desperate for a cab that we talked about earlier in the episode.

15:13.013 --> 15:22.270
[SPEAKER_00]: The hotel also received a phone call from a woman claiming the victim was from Clinton Missouri, 50 miles outside of Kansas City, but again it could not be substantiated.

15:22.520 --> 15:32.134
[SPEAKER_00]: Another witness saw Owen in the company of two women at a number of bars on the night of January 3rd, but no one in the bars recognized him, so that lead also went nowhere.

15:33.096 --> 15:46.215
[SPEAKER_00]: A pro wrestling promoter claimed the man looked somewhat like a kid named Cecil Warner, who'd approached him for work in December of 1934, but again once he saw photos, he wasn't sure that he was correct.

15:46.195 --> 15:56.694
[SPEAKER_00]: A big detail that Owen himself divulged the hotel staff that he had stayed in the Malback Hotel, proved correct, but Owen stayed with a different alias, Eugene K. Scott.

15:57.456 --> 16:06.432
[SPEAKER_00]: After verifying Scott and Owen were the same person with both staffs or at least very, very similar, that lead also came to a dead end.

16:06.412 --> 16:16.585
[SPEAKER_00]: At a complete loss, police took a fairly unusual and morbid course of action by inviting the public to view the deceased man, hoping that someone would recognize him.

16:17.286 --> 16:23.634
[SPEAKER_00]: As nearly 300 people went to see the man murdered in room 1046, not a single clue emerged.

16:24.375 --> 16:30.883
[SPEAKER_00]: A funeral was planned by the city for March 4th, and was not, I repeat, was not disclosed to the public.

16:32.011 --> 16:45.618
[SPEAKER_00]: Before Owens, if that is his real name's funeral, and anonymous caller contacted the funeral parlor with a strange request, he asked if the director could hold off in the funeral for a couple of days because he knew the man's sister.

16:45.679 --> 16:50.408
[SPEAKER_00]: But the caller didn't give the funeral parlor any name or information.

16:51.012 --> 16:58.120
[SPEAKER_00]: The funeral parlor warned the caller they have to report this information to the police, but the caller seemed unbothered by that.

16:58.940 --> 17:03.205
[SPEAKER_00]: The caller then shared something shocking, that he knew why the man was killed.

17:04.126 --> 17:10.052
[SPEAKER_00]: The voice in the line said that Owen had been carrying out an affair with one woman while engaged to Mary and other.

17:10.112 --> 17:18.201
[SPEAKER_00]: The two women had both discovered his dishonesty and arranged to meet him at the president, hoping to get their own personal revenge.

17:18.181 --> 17:24.996
[SPEAKER_00]: The caller stated, quote, cheaters usually get let's coming to them before hanging up on the call entirely.

17:25.036 --> 17:30.308
[SPEAKER_00]: On March 23, an envelope arrived at the funeral parlor with a letter inside.

17:30.909 --> 17:36.662
[SPEAKER_00]: The writing on the letter had been stenciled on using a ruler presumably to disguise the writer's handwriting.

17:36.642 --> 17:39.868
[SPEAKER_00]: The letter contained enough money to pay for the entire funeral.

17:40.610 --> 17:48.725
[SPEAKER_00]: Soon after a second envelope arrived, addressed to a florist, with money for 13 American beauty roses to adorn the grave.

17:49.707 --> 17:55.157
[SPEAKER_00]: A card was attached to that letter stating, quote,

17:55.137 --> 18:03.665
[SPEAKER_00]: Roland's T. Owen's funeral was attended only by police officers, so the only people who knew it was happening besides the authorities were likely his killers.

18:04.425 --> 18:14.514
[SPEAKER_00]: For several days afterwards, police officers chased out the grave, disguised as grave diggers, hoping that someone would visit, give more information, but nobody did.

18:15.355 --> 18:18.438
[SPEAKER_00]: Days after the funeral, another call came into the local newspaper.

18:18.938 --> 18:25.144
[SPEAKER_00]: The caller's voice sounded like a woman's, who said she wanted the public to know that

18:25.124 --> 18:30.153
[SPEAKER_00]: When the contact of the paper asked who she was, her reply was quote never mind.

18:30.373 --> 18:31.495
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what I'm talking about.

18:32.557 --> 18:38.448
[SPEAKER_00]: When asked by Owen was murdered, she stated plainly quote, he got into a jam and hung up.

18:39.630 --> 18:42.475
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the case went cold.

18:42.455 --> 18:47.829
[SPEAKER_00]: No more phone calls, no leads on who Louise was or done nothing.

18:48.551 --> 18:57.915
[SPEAKER_00]: Until a year and a half after the murder, when the paper of the American Weekly ran a piece on the case called, quote, the mystery of room number 1046.

18:58.452 --> 19:03.863
[SPEAKER_00]: This article pretty much had everything we've talked about on this episode, along with some depictions of the deceased.

19:04.665 --> 19:09.795
[SPEAKER_00]: It was then that a letter came in May of 1935, from a woman named Ruby Ogletree.

19:10.837 --> 19:13.583
[SPEAKER_00]: She said that her son was the victim in room 1046.

19:13.663 --> 19:17.811
[SPEAKER_00]: His real name, Artemis Ogletree.

19:17.791 --> 19:23.237
[SPEAKER_00]: Ruby was shown the piece in the American Weekly by a friend she explained, and she had to share the truth about her son.

19:23.838 --> 19:31.206
[SPEAKER_00]: She said Artemis told his family that he was hitchhiking to California from Alabama, and had been previously good about writing letters back to his family.

19:31.867 --> 19:35.591
[SPEAKER_00]: Over time Ruby confessed, the letters arrived less and less often.

19:35.631 --> 19:43.039
[SPEAKER_00]: Around Artemis' ogle tree slash Roland T. Owens' death, the letters kept coming, but this time they worked typed out.

19:43.019 --> 19:49.089
[SPEAKER_00]: which seemed odd to Ruby as Artemis had never learned to type, and the letters didn't sound like him at all.

19:49.129 --> 19:54.679
[SPEAKER_00]: In May 1935, a letter arrived from New York saying her son was sailing to Europe.

19:55.681 --> 20:01.671
[SPEAKER_00]: When Ruby ogled trees saw her son's face in the American Weekly article, it only confirmed which he already suspected.

20:01.691 --> 20:04.015
[SPEAKER_00]: Her son had passed away.

20:03.995 --> 20:04.656
[SPEAKER_00]: Why?

20:04.676 --> 20:07.379
[SPEAKER_00]: She wasn't sure, or she didn't share.

20:07.419 --> 20:10.142
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, the case came to a standstill.

20:10.162 --> 20:28.483
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, lots of theories of service over the years, including that Ogletree was killed in retaliation for a broken engagement, or that he was entangled in some kind of organized crime, or that there was a conspiracy among friends that somehow roped in the woman Ogletree slash Owen had been seen with in and around the hotel.

20:28.463 --> 20:40.826
[SPEAKER_00]: But not just one woman, many women, also some men, this don character that's made reference to in the note, any number of possibilities might have been the disastrous end of Roland TO and slash Artemis Ogletray.

20:41.627 --> 20:47.678
[SPEAKER_00]: While the murder in room 1046 is still unsolved, decades later another update occurred in the case.

20:48.319 --> 20:50.303
[SPEAKER_00]: One will leave you with today.

20:50.553 --> 21:00.930
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2003, a Kansas City Public Librarian historian and blogger named Dr. John Horner, who had a long-standing interest in written about the case, got an out-of-state phone call.

21:01.471 --> 21:10.165
[SPEAKER_00]: The caller declined to identify themselves, but said that they were going through storage boxes when they found a bunch of old newspaper clippings on the Ogletree murder.

21:10.533 --> 21:20.610
[SPEAKER_00]: eerily, the person reported that there was something in the box mentioned by the newspaper that tied the owner of the clippings, the owner of the unit, the storage unit, to the murder.

21:21.113 --> 21:23.315
[SPEAKER_00]: The caller wouldn't say what that's something was.

21:24.256 --> 21:29.741
[SPEAKER_00]: It was probably a very frustrating call to Horner, as it is to me, and likely you listening.

21:30.162 --> 21:36.928
[SPEAKER_00]: With the caller not identifying themselves, the clipping's owner, or the elusive item tying the whole thing together.

21:37.569 --> 21:51.002
[SPEAKER_00]: And so the mysterious circumstances surrounding the murder in room 1046 continues, begging for a tip that an eager investigator, or maybe modern forensics, can perhaps, and hopefully