Creepy Murder in Room 1046 On January 22, 1935, a man using the name Roland T. Owen checked into the Hotel President in Kansas City, Missouri. He arrived without any luggage and appeared to be between 20 to 35 years old, with brown hair, a visible scar on his scalp above his ear, and a condition known as cauliflower ear. He was dressed neatly in a black coat and was assigned room 1046. The maid, Mary Soptic, mentioned that Owen allowed her to clean the room but asked her not to lock the door because his friend was coming to visit soon.
Soptic noticed that he kept the blinds closed tightly and preferred to keep the room dark, with only a dim lamp on. Other hotel staff who entered the room also observed this behavior. Soptic recalled that Owen seemed either worried or afraid during his stay.
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On January 3, at 4 p.m., Mary Soptic returned to Roland T. Owen’s room at the Hotel President. She found him lying fully dressed on the bed in the dark, with the door unlocked. There was a note that said, “Don, I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait.” The next morning, January 4, Soptic returned to clean the room. She discovered that the door had been locked from the outside, which she assumed Owen did when he left. However, Owen was inside sitting in the dark, indicating someone else had locked the door from outside. While cleaning, Owen answered a phone call and said, “No Don, I don’t want to eat. I am not hungry.
I just had breakfast,” repeating “No. I am not hungry.” Later that evening, Soptic returned with fresh towels and heard two male voices inside the room. When she knocked, a rough voice asked, “Who is it?” She explained she had towels, and the voice replied, “We don’t need any.”
During the night of January 3-4, a woman in room 1048 heard loud voices, including cursing, coming from the same floor where a party was happening in room 1055. The next morning, around 7 a.m., the hotel switchboard operator noticed that Roland T. Owen’s phone had been off the hook for a while, so she sent the bellboy, Randolph Propst, to check on him. Despite a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, Propst knocked several times and heard a voice inviting him to come in and turn on the lights. However, the door was locked, and no one opened it. After knocking repeatedly, Propst told Owen to put the phone back on the hook, assuming he might be drunk.
Around 8:30 a.m., the phone was still off the hook, so another bellboy, Harold Pike, used a passkey to enter the room. With only the hallway light, Pike found Owen lying naked on the bed, apparently drunk. He also noticed darkened bedding around Owen and the phone stand knocked over. Pike set the phone back in its place and returned it to the receiver.
From 10:30 to 10:45 a.m., the hotel staff noticed the phone was off the receiver again. They sent Randolph Propst to check on the situation. When Propst opened the door to room 1046, he was met with a horrifying scene. Propst recounted to the police, “When I entered the room, this man was within two feet of the door on his knees and elbows, holding his head in his hands. I saw blood on his head. I then turned the light on. I looked around and saw blood on the walls, on the bed, and in the bathroom. This frightened me, and I immediately left the room and went downstairs.
Owen had ropes tied around his neck, wrists, and ankles. There were marks on his neck that showed someone tried to choke him. He had been stabbed in his chest near his heart, and one stab hurt his lung. He was hit on the head hard enough to break his skull on the right side. Besides the blood on the floor, there was also some blood on the ceiling.
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Dr. Flanders cut the ropes from Owen’s wrists and asked who hurt him. Owen said, “Nobody.” When asked how he got hurt, Owen said he fell and hit his head on the bathtub. The doctor asked if he was trying to kill himself. Owen said no, then passed out and was taken to the hospital. He was in a deep coma when he got there and died just after midnight on January 5.
A year and a half later, they found out Owen’s real name was Artemus Ogletree, but they never found out who did it. The Kansas City police are still trying to solve the case.