Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 97

28 WHAT HAPPENED TO JUSTICE? SUNDAY MAGAZINE SOMBODr LOVED THE M4N WHO WAS MURDERED IN THE HOTEL. BUT WHO KILLED HIM? A True Crime Siory, by Pefer Levins 1 1 1 1 fl I i st I From a bellboy they learned that Owen had spoken of having stopped at the Hotel Muehlebach, Kansas City's most widely known hostelry, before checking in at the President, two blocks away. The sleuths hastened to the Muehlebach, only to be further mystified. They found that one "Eugene K. Scott of Los Angeles" had registered at the Muehlebach on Dec.

31 and remained until the next day. Upon leaving his hotel, he had carried a small bag. According to a handwriting expert, Owen and Scott were the same man. As related, Owen carried no baggage when he checked in at the President. The detectives also learned that besides the man and woman who left the President at about 4 a.

Jan. 4, another man left that morning carrying a Gladstone bag and a brief case. It was impossible to establish whether or not these persons were simply departing guests. Pictures of the dead man were circulated nationally by the police, who hoped that the peculiar scar on the side of his head.would attract the attention of relatives or of barbers. Ten days after the murder, Sergt.

Frank Howland, then in charge of the homicide squad, said: "We have checked and double checked everything and we just come up against a stone wall. It is one of the toughest cases to crack I ever saw. If we could definitely identify the man, the finding of the slayer or slayers might be easy." At Los Angeles there was no record of either Scott or Owen. Nor were the man's fingerprints on file in FBI headquarters in Washington. January and February passed.

Relatives and friends of missing persons in various parts of the United States made trips to Kansas City, or checked carefully with the police by mail. None pf these leads panned out. The body remained at the mortuary, unidentified other than by the names police believed fictitious. On March 3, 1935, Kansas City newspapers reported that the body would be buried in Potter's Field. On March 27 a woman telephoned the Kansas City Journal-Post to say that Owen had been buried four days before in Memorial Park Cemetery, Kansas City, Kan.

"I just wanted you know that Roland Owen was not buried in the Potter's Field," she said. "Call the undertaker and florist and you'll learn that Mr. Owen's funeral expenses were paid and that a floral tribute was placed on his grave." With that the caller hung up. It developed that on March 3, the day the papers announced that Owen would be buried in a pauper's grave, a man telephoned James P. McGilley, head of the mortuary, that he would send funds to pay the funeral expenses.

He was doing this, he said, for his sister. After several delays and other calls, the man sent the money a $20 bill and a $5 bill through the mail in an envelope on which the mortuary's address was printed in block letters. There were no fingerprints on the envelope. Also, a near-by florist received an envelope, similarly addressed in block letters, containing a $5 bill and a card bearing the notation: "Love for ever Louise." The handwriting appeared to be feminine. McGilley had informed his anonymous caller that he would notify the police about this development.

The man replied, "That's all right, Mr. McGilley. We don't want you to get in trouble just because we're going to contribute to Owen's funeral expenses." He said again that he was doing it ail for his sister, who had known Owen for some time. The only persons present at the funeral were employes of the mortuary, city detectives and a minister. When the body was lowered into a $10 grave, Detective Eldridge was lounging near by.

He was dressed in rough clothes and worked as a grave digger. One of the pallbearers was another detective. All this vigilance proved fruitless. Detective Eldridge continued to dig graves for five days, but no one came. necktie label indicated that the tie had been made by the Botany Worsted Mills Co.

of Passaic, N. J. Not only were Owen's clothes missing from the room even the hotel's towels and soap had been removed. When Owen was found, it was noticed that two water glasses, kept on the shelf under the shaving cabinet In the bathroom, had fallen into the basin and broken. It appeared that Owen had dragged himself to the bathroom in an attempt to get i drink of water.

Detective Ira Johnson managed to get a few words out of the wounded man before he was taken to the General Hospital. Asked who had been in the room with him, Owen mumbled: "Nobody." Asked how he received his wounds, he said: "Fell in the tub." Then he lapsed back into unconsciousness. Employes of the hotel could not recall seeing or hearing anything unusual. A man and a woman who occupied an adjoining room told Detective Johnson that they had heard voices after midnight. As near as they could judge, there were two men and two women in 1046.

About 2 a. m. two of the voices became abusive. At 4 o'clock, a sound like heavy, almost choked, snoring was audible. Owen had registered at the hotel without baggage.

According to the hotel people, he had been quietly dressed, and his movements had been unobstrusive. He was about 20 to 25 years old; 5 feet 10; weighed 180 pounds; had blue eyes and bushy brown hair. His hands, shapely and soft, had been bruised in such a way as to indicate that he had been in a fight. Later police discovered a large white scar on the left side of the head the hair there had been combed over to conceal it. The scar was wedge-shaped, 4Va Inches across the base above the left ear.

This ear, moreover, bore marks to indicate that Owen at one time had fought in boxing or wrestling matches. Mrs. Mary Soptic, one of the maids at the hotel, gave the following information: On the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 3, she had entered Room 1046, believing it to be occupied by a woman. (The maid had been off the previous day.) Surprised to find Owen, she started to withdraw.

But he told her to go ahead with her work. "Leave the door unlocked," he added. "I'm expecting a friend." Mrs. Soptic noticed that the window shade -was drawn, and that only a small desk lamp was burning. While she was still in the room, Owen donned a black overcoat and left, again directing her to leave the door unlocked.

That afternoon, at 4, the maid returned to the room with fresh towels. Owen was lying across the bed, fully dressed. The window shade still was tightly drawn. Owen seemed either fearful or worried. Mrs.

Soptic saw a note on the telephone stand. It read: "Don. I will back in 15 minutes. Wait." The next morning, Thursday, the maid called at Owen's room at 10:30. As the door was locked, she decided that he must have gone out, so she inserted her pass key in the lock, turned it completely around and opened the door.

Owen was sitting in the darkened room. "As soon as I saw him there," she told detectives, "I realized that the door had been locked from the outside. Because of the special construction of the locks a pass key will not turn in them unless the locks have been turned with another room key from the outside. I am positive that I turned my pass key completely around in the lock." The implication here, of course, was that the occupant of 1046 was being held a prisoner. Moreover, a prisoner powerless to appeal for help.

While Mrs. Soptic was in the room on this occasion, the telephone rang and Owen answered it. She heard him say, "No, Don, I don't want to eat. I'm not hungry. I've had my breakfast." She heard him say, also, that he did not care to go out.

He still looked worried. At 4 a. when she came with clean towels, the maid once more found the door locked. She heard two men talking in low tones. She knocked.

"What do you want?" one said in a loud, rough tone. "It's the maid, with the clean towels," she replied. "We don't need any towels we have enough," said the same rough voice. Charles Blocher, relief elevator operator and bellboy, related that he took a woman to the tenth floor some time after midnight on the morning of the fourth, and that she inquired for Room 1046. About 30 minutes later she rode down in the elevator.

An hour later she returned with a man and they rode to the ninth floor. Shortly after 4 they descended to the lobby in the elevator. Four small-sized fingerprints, possibly those of a woman, were found on the glass-topped telephone stand in 1046. Bartenders along Twelfth then Kansas City's Gay White Way, told police that they had seen Owen in their places on Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon. They said he had two women with him at the time.

Roland Owen, despite the seriousness of his wounds, did not breathe his last until early on the morning of Jan. 5, 18 hours after the attack. Death was ascribed to a fractured skull. The body was removed to a funeral home pending further developments. Detective Johnson and his partner, William Eldridge soon began to realize that their first task in this investigation was to trace the victim's identity.

Thus far all they had was a name and city on a hotel register. These might be meaningless. Top: The victim. Two years after his mysterious death he was identified as Artemus Ogletree. Below: The trunk slayer, Joseph Ogden, was suspected.

JTT HAT might be called the Mystery of Room 1046 got under way at 11:08 a. Jan. 4, 1935, when a bellboy at the Hotel President, Kansas City, found a guest unconscious and dying of several wounds. The guest, a well built young man who had registered on Jan. 1 as Roland T.

Owen of Los Angeles, was sitting, nude, on the edge of the bathtub, his head resting on the wash bowl. His wrists and ankles were loosely bound and a rope had been drawn tightly around his neck. Blood was flowing from slashed wrists and from a deep wound above his heart. Apparently he had been stabbed while lying in bed the wall and ceiling above the bed were blood-spattered, and there was a trail of blood from the bed to the bathroom. All clothing had been removed from the room.

Owen had paid a day's rent in advance on each day. On the evening of the third he had left word to be awakened at 7 a. and if the telephone failed to stir him, then a bellboy was to be dispatched to his room. At 7 a. m.

the telephone operator found that the phone in Room 1046 was off the hook. A bellboy, Randolph Probst, knocked on the door and heard a voice ask what was wanted. "Your telephone is off the hook, sir," said Probst, who then returned downstairs. At 8:30 a. m.

the operator reported that the phone was again off the hook. Another bellboy, Howard Pike, knocked on the door of 1046 but received no answer. He tried the door and discovered that it was locked, not from the Inside, but from the outside. He unlocked the door and entered. The room was dark, the window shade having been drawn full length.

Pike was able, however, to discern on the bed the nude body of a man. He was lying with his face to the wall. "Mr. Owen, sir!" Pike said. Again no answer.

The bellboy saw chat the telephone had fallen from the stand near the bed. He replaced it, then left, believing Owen to be asleep. (It developed later that Owen must have been wounded at this time, but in the darkness Pike failed to notice anything unusual.) At 11:05 the operator reported for the third time that the telephone was off the hook in 1046. Probst again went to investigate and it was he who found the dying guest. Medical examination soon established that Owen, In addition to the knife wounds, had suffered a fractured skull.

The stab wound below the heart had punctured the lung. It was established that he had received his wounds at about 4 a. m. hours before Bellboy Probst heard someone speak inside the room. Detectives combed the room but found precious little a necktie label, pieces of white wrapping cord that bound Owen, a nairpin, a safety an unsmoked cigaret and a small bottle of diluted sulphuric acid.

The OW MANY months passed Vi further progress in the strange case. On Nov. 1, 1936, nearly two years after the crime, Mrs. L. E.

Ogletree. wife of a prosperous Birmingham, salesman, saw a resume of the case and the photograph of the victim. She decided that "Roland Owen" was her son Artemus, 19 at the time he was killed. Her family physician viewed pictures of the scar on the head and said there could be no doubt about it. Mrs.

Ogletree then went to the police and told her story. She said that her son had left Birmingham nine months before his death on a pleasure trip to California with four other youths. Ee had been a sophomore at the high school before he withdrew, had been a football player and swimmer of ability. She said that he possessed a quiet disposition, none too scholarly but read habitually and was Interested in travel. The ugly scar had been Caused by hot grease which spilled on his head when he was a child.

The 'cauliflower ear was something his mother knew nothing about she said he must have acquired this in some fight or accident after he left Birmingham. Ample funds had been sent the youth while he was away, and he had written his parents from time to time. Now we come to another strange angle. Mrs. Ogletree revealed that (Concluded on next page).