Ricky Frailey:
Everybody who's traveled a fair amount will be familiar with the woes of staying in hotels and sleeping in uncomfortable beds far from home. You'll know about what the check in process is like, and the relief or frustration of finding out if you'll hear your neighbor all night. If you know what I mean. Maybe you've had your own bad experience in your very own dumpster fire of an excuse for a hotel room.
Hopefully it wasn't as bad as the experiences we'll be talking about today. I'm Ricky Frailey, and I'm joined by-
DiDi:
DiDi from The Land, Ohio
Ricky Frailey:
On the Dark Deeds Diary podcast. Today we're talking about the strange case of Roland T Owen
[Intro]
Ricky Frailey:
If you like the work that we do here and want to support the show, you can head to patreon.com/RickyFrailey. If you join the book club, you'll have access to the research and timelines I've constructed for each of the cases that we talked about. It's totally optional though, and we're grateful just for your listenership.
Ricky Frailey:
All right so let's talk about Roland T. Owen. The year is 1935.
DiDi:
1935?
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. This case happened a while ago, almost 100 years ago now.
DiDi:
Oh, okay.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, like 91 years ago
DiDi:
Oh so this was a real crappy hotel room.
Ricky Frailey:
It was a hotel in Kansas City, Kansas, called the Hotel President. Real fancy name. So, you know, it must have just been amazing on the inside, right? Keep in mind that this is 1935. The Great Depression is in full effect.
DiDi:
Yeah
Ricky Frailey:
Basically everybody's suffering at this point in time, right? So against the backdrop of the Great Depression, a tall young man walks into the Hotel President, like I said. It's around 1:20 p.m. and he approaches the front desk complaining about the prices being too high at a competitor hotel in the area.
DiDi:
Okay
Ricky Frailey:
This young man claims to be from Los Angeles, and he says that his name is Roland T Owen. He requests a room high up in the building and facing the interior courtyard.
So, the Hotel President was a tall building, but it was a square. And in that square, in the center, it had a courtyard on the inside. So the rooms that were not facing the street still had a window it just opened to the courtyard on the interior of the building.
DiDi:
Okay
Ricky Frailey:
He requested a room that faced the courtyard high up in the building, so he was assigned a room on the 10th floor. This was room 1046.
DiDi:
So he'd been there before. If he knew that that courtyard was in the inside of it.
Ricky Frailey:
I don't believe that he had been there
DiDi:
Okay, thats not a factor
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, I don't believe that he had been there before. He just wanted, I suppose, to not be facing towards the street. That's the best theory that I can come up with as to why.
He was escorted to his room by the bellboy that was on duty, a man by the name of Randolph Probst, even though Roland wasn't carrying any luggage. He just walked in with the clothes on his back and asked for a room.
DiDi:
Mmm
Ricky Frailey:
Once they got up there, Owen emptied his pockets in the bathroom. He was carrying a comb, a brush, and a tube of toothpaste. Nothing else.
DiDi:
What?
Ricky Frailey:
Not even a toothbrush.
DiDi:
So he just had the money to get the room? That's it?
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah.
DiDi:
Okay, so Randolph didn’t get no tip
Ricky Frailey:
No, not that I could find. Randolph was just observing this man who didn't have any luggage or anything. So after he saw that he had nothing on him, he left him in his room. That happened, like I said, around 1:20.
DiDi:
Okay
Ricky Frailey:
At 4 p.m. on that same day. This is January 2nd, by the way
DiDi:
Oh okay
Ricky Frailey:
So the start of the year
DiDi:
Wow
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. At 4 p.m. on that same day a maid by the name of Mary Soptic, arrived at the room in order to clean it, which I don't know... That sounded kind of weird to me when I was researching it. Like, they just
DiDi:
He just checked in
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, he just checked in at one, like the room should have been cleaned already by that point
DiDi:
Right, that's weird.
Ricky Frailey:
But she gets there 4:00pm in order to clean this room right? She let herself in and found Owen lying-
Yeah, she let herself in. I guess she probably just didn't know that it had been assigned
DiDi:
Oh yeah they probably had a poor, like, messaging thing. Cause if she out on the floor she didn't have no computer to tell her be like, okay, this room right here been occupied
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, plus 1:20 p.m. is not a standard check in time
DiDi:
But I mean, he already is in that room, so she should know that room was clean, stop playing with me. No, that don't check out. Like that just doesn't check out with me because how did he just check in and you already there to clean it up when they shouldn’t have put me in a room that was dirty.
So you already cleaned this room. You should know you cleaned this room already.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, but like I said, this happened a long time ago. The communication might not have been there. I'm not exactly sure why but at four she did show up to that room to clean it. By this point Owen was already, you know, renting the room. And when she let herself in she found him lying in bed, fully clothed in the dark
DiDi:
Okay.
Ricky Frailey:
The view that he had requested of the courtyard had been fully blocked off by the window shades. So yeah, it was just completely dark in there
DiDi:
Oh okay
Ricky Frailey:
And he's just laying in bed, all of his clothes on, not doing anything.
DiDi:
He wanted rest
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, that is an assumption. Yeah
Partway through her time in the room, Owen would end up putting a note on the writing table that was in there. She was able to see this note, and she read, “Don, I will be back in 15 minutes. Wait.” Owen then asked her to leave the door unlocked when she left because he was waiting on a friend. I mean, all standard fare. Even left her behind alone in the room.
DiDi:
Mhm
Ricky Frailey:
She finished cleaning and left without anybody else coming into the room. According to reports at the time, she said that she felt like Owen was either worried about something or scared of something. The next day, around 10:30 a.m., Mary returns to room 1046 in order to clean it again.
DiDi:
Mary? Well d*mn, Mary don’t even let you wake up
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. So next day, next morning, she shows back up. The door was locked from the outside. It was locked in the way that you would if you were locking it behind you on the way out. Right.
DiDi:
Okay.
Ricky Frailey:
Strangely, when she let herself in, Owen was lying on the bed the same way that he was the day before. Fully clothed, fully in the dark. Only this time, like I said, he had been fully locked into the room by somebody. While Mary was in the room Owen received a phone call and he answered it. He was heard by Mary on the phone saying, “No Don, I don't want to eat. I’m not hungry. I just had breakfast.”
DiDi:
Mary nosy as hell.
Ricky Frailey:
She is
DiDi:
Come on now how she know the whole st- Nah, either Mary nosy or she lying. She done made up a whole story.
Ricky Frailey:
I feel like she's probably just nosy, to be honest
DiDi:
Oh my goodness!
Ricky Frailey:
If I was a maid in a hotel or somebody who worked in hospitality, specifically in a hotel, I'd be nosy as hell too.
DiDi:
Presidential treatment is not being bothered and pestered all day...oh my goodness. Is this a bed and breakfast? Is this like, Mary's home? Because if this is Mary's home then I can see, like you want to know the type of people traveling through here. Like some Forrest Gump type stuff?
Ricky Frailey:
No
DiDi:
Cause thats why she had a little boy sitting in that man room.
Ricky Frailey:
No
DiDi:
Yeah, she was being nosy.
Ricky Frailey:
No, this is a commercial hotel. They're on the 10th floor.
DiDi:
Oh, my gosh, this was... Why is Mary there so much?
Ricky Frailey:
Hey, she's just trying to provide good service, I guess.
DiDi:
Well, they got a bell boy there, Randolph. They got Mary. Goodness gracious.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. So she heard him talking to a man by the name of Don on the phone, telling him that he wasn't hungry. After Owen hung up the phone, he asked her a few questions about her job and her life and the hotel itself. He wanted to know if it was a residential hotel. You know, the kind where people live in there full time. Think like, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody.
DiDi:
Yeah, it seemed like she lived there
Ricky Frailey:
I mean, she honestly, she probably did.
DiDi:
That's about right. Sounds about right
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah.
DiDi:
She had nothing else to do.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. Once she was finished, she gathered all the towels in the room. She did this in order to wash them and return them later in the afternoon.
DiDi:
He didn't even have time to use them. She just put them there
Ricky Frailey:
Well, she took them all back out.
At about 4 p.m., Mary returned to room 1046 with the towels, but this time, as she approached the door, she heard two men talking inside the room. She knocked and a gruff voice, so not the voice of Owen, but the other man presumably.
His voice asked, “Who is it?”
When she answered that she was there to bring the towels back for the room the same unfamiliar voice grunted, “We don’t need any.”
This is despite Mary knowing that there were no towels in the room. She had taken them all that morning. This struck her as odd but she left with the towels still in hand.
DiDi:
Well he said they ain’t staying there, they there for a good time not a long time. Damn, Mary.
Ricky Frailey:
Hey, Mary's just trying to do her job, alright?
DiDi:
Goodness, she doing too much
Ricky Frailey:
Later that night, around midnight actually, the guest one room over in room 1048, reported hearing a loud argument between a man and a woman on the same floor as them. There also was reportedly a party going on that night in room 1055, but 1055 is further down the hall, and also it's an odd numbered room so it would be on the opposite side of the wall. Of the hall, sorry
DiDi:
Mhm, yeah
Ricky Frailey:
It's much more likely, at least in my opinion, that she was hearing something going on in one of the adjacent rooms to 1048. Which is where she was.
DiDi:
Makes sense
Ricky Frailey:
Which would be 1046 or 1050. Our man, Roland Owen, is in 1046. And as you're about to find out, some things are happening in that room.
What we do know is that elevator operator Charles Parker, claimed that shortly after his shift began that night at midnight, what he described as a, “commercial woman” approached him asking to be taken to the 10th floor. Once they got up there, she asked him which way it was to room 1026.
DiDi:
Oh, so she was dressed to the nines
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, she was a commercial woman. She was at work.
DiDi:
Yeah.
Ricky Frailey:
Almost immediately after he pointed her in the direction of 1026 and left, he was paged back up to the 10th floor. The woman said that nobody answered the door when she knocked and was wondering if she had the wrong room. She ended up staying on the 10th floor, waiting for about another half hour. After that, she called for the elevator again and left. Left the hotel.
DiDi:
Oh yeah, cause they had an elevator man and everything.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, the elevator operator
DiDi:
Yeah
Ricky Frailey:
About an hour later, so this would be about 1:30 in the morning. She would return to the hotel, but she wasn't alone. She was with an unidentified man, and they asked to be taken to the ninth floor.
DiDi:
What?
Ricky Frailey:
Once they got up to the ninth floor, the two of them disappeared into a room. At around 4:15 a.m., the woman left the hotel once again. This time she was alone. 15 minutes after she left, so around 4:30, the man that she arrived with paged for the elevator and explained that he couldn't sleep so he was going to go for a walk.
So, that was the entire day of January 3rd. So, he gets there and checks in on January 2nd, goes up to his room. Mary comes in for the first time sees him laying in the dark, cleans, leaves. Next day she comes back in the morning cleans, takes the towels, leaves, comes back at 4 p.m., hears the conversation between the two men, and then leaves. Then overnight all of that happens, and now we are on the fourth.
DiDi:
Here come Mary. Bright and early
Ricky Frailey:
Actually, it's not Mary this time because we didn't make it to 10:30
DiDi:
Oh goodness.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. So at 7 a.m. on the 4th of January 1935, the hotel's phone operator notices that the phone in room 1046 is off the hook and not in use. She then calls Randolph Probst, the bellboy from the beginning, and sends him up there to investigate. When he gets to room 1046, there is a Do Not Disturb sign on the door. He didn’t have his keys so he couldn’t let himself in, so he knocked on the door.
DiDi:
Oh, he about to discover something nasty.
Ricky Frailey:
Not quite yet. The only response that he got from knocking on the door was a low voice saying, “Come in. Turn on the lights.”
DiDi:
Ooh
Ricky Frailey:
Like I said, Randolph didn't have the key with him and the door was locked, so he just shouted through the door for the man to put the phone back on the hook and left. He just assumed that, you know, the man was drunk and didn’t realize that the phone was off the hook
DiDi:
Wow
Ricky Frailey:
An hour and a half later, at 8:30 a.m., the phone operator noticed that the phone was still off the hook, so she sent another bellboy. This time a man by the name of Harold Pike up there to investigate.
This time he did have a key with him. He let himself into the room, but he didn't turn the lights on because he could see that Owen was lying in bed. He seemed in the darkness to be naked and he was surrounded by what looked like a large puddle of liquid.
DiDi:
Oh
Ricky Frailey:
Pike assumed the man to be passed out drunk in a puddle of his own pee so he quietly put the phone back on the hook, and left without disturbing him.
DiDi:
Oh my goodness.
Ricky Frailey:
That's a reasonable assumption to make, right? Later that morning, between 10:30 and 10:45 a.m., the phone was observed to be off the hook, once again. Randolph Probst was once again sent up to investigate, this time he had his own key. He unlocked the door to room 1046 and was met with a true nightmare.
DiDi:
Oh my goodness. I'm like...what did he see?
Ricky Frailey:
He stumbled onto a grisly crime scene. There was Owen, now within two feet of the door, on the ground, naked and covered in blood.
DiDi:
What?
Ricky Frailey:
He was on his elbows and knees and he was holding his head in his hands.
DiDi:
Oh, wow.
Ricky Frailey:
Probst wasted no time in running to go get help. When he and the assistant manager and a bystander by the name of Percy returned to the room and tried to enter, the door was blocked from the inside.
DiDi:
What??
Ricky Frailey:
Owen had collapsed, and his body was blocking the door, but he wasn't dead yet. After a few minutes, he was able to gather enough strength to drag himself out of the doors path, and let them into the room. Only then were they able to see the true magnitude of what was going on. There was blood spattered on the walls and the ceiling, all over the bed and in the bathroom.
DiDi:
How did they miss that the first time?
Ricky Frailey:
It was dark.
The men dragged Owen into the bathroom and called for the authorities. Owen was in really, really bad shape. He had multiple blunt force injuries to the head. They were so bad that he had a fractured skull.
DiDi:
Oh my goodness
Ricky Frailey:
His wrists and ankles were also bound with cables. And there were ligature marks around his neck, indicating that he had been at least partially strangled. There were also several stab wounds to his chest. One even puncturing one of his lungs.
The police and a doctor by the name of Harold Flanders arrived a few minutes later to see what was going on. Once his restraints were cut, Owen reached the end. Turn the faucet on in order to start running a bath.
DiDi:
What?
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah
DiDi:
Why’d they do him like that? Why? Oh, goodness.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah
DiDi:
Why are they doing crazy things to help?
Ricky Frailey:
To help?
DiDi:
Well, how he's trying to help himself, like crazy like that
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. I don't get it, but I don't... It's hard to imagine the mind state of a man who's just been through this. You've been beaten savagely, been calling for help, knocking the phone over hoping that somebody would come and find you and help you. It's been hours. You're probably dazed and confused. His skull is cracked.
DiDi:
Yeah
Ricky Frailey:
Like he's probably not thinking very rationally at this point.
DiDi:
And the first time he said turn on the light?
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah he said, come in and turn on the lights, but Probst didn't have his key so he didn't do that.
DiDi:
Oh my goodness, that's so heartbreaking.
Ricky Frailey:
It is. And it's only going to get worse and more confusing.
DiDi:
It's already got my stomach in a knot. Ruined my day.
Ricky Frailey:
Dr. Flanders turned the water back off and started questioning him as he checked out his injuries. All that Owen said when he was asked who did this to him, was that he fell against the bathtub. Yeah
DiDi:
You ain’t fall that d*mn hard Owen
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, he said he fell against the bath tub. He was obviously protecting whoever brutally assaulted him, and nobody could figure out why.
DiDi:
Unless he ran full speed at the bathtub and then fell
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, but he also had been stabbed.
DiDi:
He was stabbed and everything else too. Lord
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, and there was blood all over the room. It wasn't just in the bathroom.
DiDi:
And he said he just fell, maybe he didn’t remember
Ricky Frailey:
That, I mean...
DiDi:
That's possible. That's possible that you do not remember who did that. You done blocked it out, like something traumatic like that after you fell, you know what I’m saying?
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, you're right. That definitely is possible, yeah
DiDi:
Like you just remember getting up. Like I remember getting up, like.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah
DiDi:
I don’t remember nothing that happened before that.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, especially with that kind of traumatic head injury.
DiDi:
Yeah.
Ricky Frailey:
It's odd though.
DiDi:
Yeah, head injury is odd though.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah
Like I said, there was blood all over the room, all over the walls, the ceilings. It looked like this man had been tortured for hours.
DiDi:
Sheesh
Ricky Frailey:
The only other thing that was in there was one of the... each room had glass, they had drinking glasses. One of the rooms drinking glasses had been smashed in the sink, and there was a large shard of it missing.
DiDi:
Oh, wow. So. ugh...
Ricky Frailey:
Mhm
DiDi:
Oh my gosh.
Ricky Frailey:
Unfortunately, shortly after Owen told the detective that he fell against the bathtub, he lost consciousness and he was rushed to the hospital where he slipped into a coma.
DiDi:
Mm Mm Mm
Ricky Frailey:
While he was being treated for his injuries in hospital, the police's job began. They wanted to start with the information that he had given the hotel when he checked in. From them, they got that his name was Roland T. Owen and that he came from Los Angeles. So what the detectives did was called the LAPD, Los Angeles Police Department, and asked if they had any records of a man by the name of Roland T. Owen anywhere in their city. The LAPD told them that they did not.
DiDi:
Juicy.
Ricky Frailey:
Yup
DiDi:
Just got juicier
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. They didn't have any records of a man named Roland T. Owen living in the city at that time.
DiDi:
He made that up
Ricky Frailey:
Yep.
DiDi:
It was so easy back then.
Ricky Frailey:
I mean, yeah, it was. It really was.
They were told by the staff that Roland had been complaining about the prices of a competitor hotel. Remember, from earlier?
DiDi:
Oh yeah. So what name did they give him?
Ricky Frailey:
They went to check out that other hotel and they didn't have any records of a man by that name. There had no records of a man by the name of Roland T. Owen. They did, however, have records of a man that matched his description and was also supposedly from Los Angeles.
DiDi:
Hmm, okay
Ricky Frailey:
This man went by the name, Eugene K Scott.
DiDi:
Sounds like something you make up.
Ricky Frailey:
When the Kansas City police called the LAPD back, they didn't have any record of that name either.
Roland, or the man calling himself Roland, would go on to die of his injuries in hospital that night shortly after midnight.
DiDi:
Oh, man. So he went from his coms to just, death.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, he never woke up.
DiDi:
Wow
Ricky Frailey:
His autopsy didn't end up turning up anything useful. His body was then shipped to the funeral home for public viewings in the hopes that somebody would recognize this man. According to some reports at the time, hundreds of people traveled to the funeral home to see the body on January 6th. But nobody knew who he was.
DiDi:
Oh, wow. That's pretty deep
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah
DiDi:
They wanted to see who he was
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, absolutely nobody knew who he was.
The months started to roll by, and with no leads, the case grew cold. On March 3rd, a newspaper named the Journal Post published a story on the man, stating that he was set to be buried in a potter's field because nobody had come to claim him. You know what that is like?
DiDi:
The special spot for DOA’s?
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, well for John Doe's. Jane Doe's. Yeah
DiDi:
Yeah
Ricky Frailey:
Later that same day, the funeral home that was hosting his body received a phone call. An unidentified man demanded that the funeral be delayed and told them that he would be sending a package with enough money for a proper funeral.
DiDi:
Okay.
Ricky Frailey:
He also said to bury him at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas, so that he would be near his sister's grave.
DiDi:
Oh
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah
DiDi:
Okay, this sounds personal
Ricky Frailey:
So he knows who he is. He also said that he wanted a headstone that read Roland T. Owen even though it was obviously an alias. And everybody knew that by this point. The caller also gave a possible motive for Roland's death. He said that Roland was engaged, but was having an affair with another woman. The two women found out and they, along with the mystery caller himself, arranged a meeting with Roland at the Hotel President in order to confront him about it.
DiDi:
Ohh
Ricky Frailey:
The funeral director asked the man to identify himself again, and the response that he got was that Roland didn't play the game fair. And that, “The cheaters usually get what's coming to them” before the line went dead.
DiDi:
Ooo. Case solved.
Ricky Frailey:
Not exactly, not yet
DiDi:
Hmm
Ricky Frailey:
It hasn't stopped getting weary yet. The funeral home complied with these requests.
DiDi:
Right. We got the money, do what he said
Ricky Frailey:
Well, they hadn't gotten it yet. They did comply with the request and pushed the funeral off. And on the 23rd of March, they received the package. Inside was a rolled up newspaper with $25 in it. In 1935 that was enough to cover the cost of a funeral.
DiDi:
What?
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah.
DiDi:
Oh, I thought it was a joke.
Ricky Frailey:
Oh, no.... nah back in 1935, $25 was enough to cover a full funeral. I wish it cost that much today.
On that same day, a local florist by the name of Rock Flower Company received two letters. Each of them included $5. There were instructions for them to deliver roses to the gravesite, along with a handwritten card that read, “Love Forever - Louise”
DiDi:
Mmm
Ricky Frailey:
Owen’s funeral took place shortly after these packages were received
DiDi:
Wow, that is crazy.
Ricky Frailey:
The only people in attendance were the officiating minister and police.
DiDi:
Sheesh.
Ricky Frailey:
Even after the funeral, detectives disguised as cemetery workers hung around to see if anybody would come and visit the gravesite.
DiDi:
Yeah
Ricky Frailey:
But nobody ever came
DiDi:
Right. Oh my goodness. Well, of course they not coming. They was smart! These people was...
Ricky Frailey:
Killers a lot of the time will hang around.
DiDi:
But this was, this was right here. I got cousins. And I got a lot of boy cousins, and you know, if I go to them and tell them something. Ooh child. Somebody might be on a tree. Tied to a tree with honey on his body in the middle of the forest.
Ricky Frailey:
Oh my God
DiDi:
And with a sign, do not take this n**** down. Hey, for real for real. My family don't play that
Ricky Frailey:
Yikes. I'll keep that in mind
About a week after the funeral, a woman called that same newspaper, that original newspaper, The Journal Post, to inform them that their article saying that Roland Owen would be buried in a potter's field was incorrect, and that they should retract it immediately. When they asked who she was and presumably who the hell she thought she was the only response that she gave was, “Never mind, I know what I’m talking about.” She then told them that he, “got in a jam” before ending the call. The case remained unsolved.
However, later that year, in May, two magazines decided to run articles on the case. These two magazines were American Weekly and Official Detective Stories. These articles obviously kicked off a wave of new tips for the case, but unfortunately none of them were of any use in figuring out who the man was, much less who killed him.
DiDi:
Oh that's heavy.
Ricky Frailey:
It ain’t over yet though
Sometime in 1936, a woman by the name of Ruby Ogletree is handed a copy of American Weekly magazine. Her friend who's handing her this copy of this magazine is pointing to the story of room 1046, the unsolved homicide from the Hotel President in Kansas City, Kansas. She's pointing more specifically at the picture of the victim.
Ruby recognized the scar on the side of the man's face as the same one that her son had gotten as a child. Roland T. Owen was Ruby Ogletree’s missing son, Artemus Ogletree.
DiDi: Wow
Ricky Frailey:
The last time that Ruby Ogletree saw her son alive was in 1934.
DiDi:
Oh that's pretty dope that she was able to recognize her son
Ricky Frailey:
Mhm
DiDi:
Like, maybe she just was out of the loop at that moment, you know.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah.
Artemus Ogletree was born sometime in 1915 to parents Leon and Ruby Ogletree. He was 5’11” tall and 180 pounds. He was 19 at the time of his death. He did have very distinctive features. Like I said, he had a large scar that his mom was able to recognize instantly because he had gotten it from a cooking accident when he was a child.
DiDi:
Okay
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, so it was a pretty recognizable scar on the side of his face.
DiDi:
Yeah
Ricky Frailey:
In addition, he had a condition called cauliflower ear. This is where the ear swells up and stays that way. It's most common in people that fight a lot or box or wrestle. If you’ve ever seen any Greco-Roman wrestlers or boxers that have their ears look all puffy and messed up?
DiDi:
Uh huh
Ricky Frailey:
That's cauliflower ear, and it's caused by being hit on your ears a bunch of times. They just swell up
DiDi:
Yeah, side jabs
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, and then just never go back down.
So, she knew for sure that it was her son. Her son, Artemus Ogletree, left their home in Birmingham, Alabama, in order to hitchhike to California in 1934. He wrote to his mother often, and she would send him money through Western Union to help him along his journey. Ruby continued getting letters from Artemus throughout the spring of 1935, which you may have noticed, that this case happened in January of 1935.
DiDi:
Uh huh
Ricky Frailey:
However, Ruby continues getting letters from Artemus even after that point but the tone of these letters has changed. They aren't written the same way that her son writes.
DiDi:
Aww man
Ricky Frailey:
The letters claimed that he was headed to New York, and then the last letter claimed to have been written right before he boarded a ship going to France. These letters, these last two letters, were postmarked from Chicago and then New York City.
DiDi:
That's pretty wild that somebody would take his identity and still write to his mother.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. They wanted to throw off-
DiDi:
Yeah
Ricky Frailey:
When this was happening. Or disguise when it was happening
DiDi:
They didn't want nobody to be looking for him.
Ricky Frailey:
So like I said she continued to receive letters from her “son” throughout the spring of 1935. Then sometime in May, the same time that those two magazines were publishing the articles, Ruby Ogletree received three typed letters from her son. To the best of Ruby's knowledge, Artemus didn't know how to type. All of the letters beforehand had been handwritten, now she was getting typed letters.
DiDi:
Hmm
Ricky Frailey:
In August of that year, August 8th, to be specific, 1935, Ruby received a phone call from Memphis, Tennessee. The caller introduced himself as Godfrey Jordan and told her that Artemus, her son, had saved his life in Cairo, Egypt. He told her that Artemus had lost his thumbs in the incident, and therefore couldn't write her anymore. Because he was in Africa, he also couldn't call her either. He assured her, though, that he was okay and that he was happily married. They talked on the phone for a little bit under an hour.
Ruby knew that this man was lying, but still followed up to the police about it and even called the FBI, The State Department, U.S. Customs Authority, and even the U.S. Consulate in Cairo.
DiDi:
She smart.
Ricky Frailey:
She wanted her son back. She is smart.
By January of 1936, Ruby Ogletree had taken to writing letters to then president FDR and the director of the FBI.
DiDi:
She going far
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah
DiDi:
I’m going to the top with it. I know thats right
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. I wasn't able to find any evidence that FDR had ever responded to her. But I do know that the director of the FBI did respond to her at least once.
DiDi:
Oh, that's good
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah.
So this, like I said, is in January of 1936. Later that year is when Ruby was handed the American Weekly magazine article and correctly identified Roland T. Owen as her son, Artemus.
DiDi:
Mhm
Ricky Frailey:
As of today, the case is still unsolved. No clear motive or suspect have ever been identified, at least publicly. There are many theories. Many of them are just as insane as the story itself. What do you think happened to Artemus Ogletree in room 1046, and why?
DiDi:
I feel like it was a relationship gone bad, like maybe he was two timing somebody. Or maybe he was dealing with a lady of the night, a commercial worker. And you know maybe things just went bad and she set him up to get her revenge. Cause it sounds like that man, whoever he was, he knew his name, he knew the whole situation.
She was living with him. He was shacking with this woman because he knew all about his momma’s letters and all that. She had his stuff. He didn’t even have any belongings so somebody had his stuff
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah, he was traveling light.
DiDi:
Yeah, so they had his stuff. They had his suitcase. He was trying to get his suitcase back and they set him up.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. No, it's definitely one of the stranger cases I've seen. It's like a whodunit mystery, you know?
DiDi:
Yeah. But it's really messed up that this person, really tried to cover they tracks and really, like, taunted their mother. That's just horrible.
I don't like cases like that where the victims, people that they left behind, are contacted by these monstrous people and they try to manipulate them or manipulate their minds into thinking something else happened.
You remember last year when the young lady went out of town and her friends came back and told the parents this whole story about how she died, and they knew that they beat her to death?
Ricky Frailey:
Oh, yeah
DiDi:
Yeah, it was just like, you know, is just really wrong when people confront and play with the minds of the family. Because if you know you did a horrible act, leave me alone. You know what I'm saying?
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah
DiDi:
Like, you know, keep on running because I'm trying to get you caught. So keep on running how you want to run, how you move, but don’t contact me. If you want to get caught, if you want to throw off the story, contact the police or something. Like leave people alone. That’s wrong.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah.
Unfortunately, like I said earlier with killers tendencies to hang around the investigation and turn up at the funerals and stuff like that.
DiDi:
Yeah
Ricky Frailey:
A lot of the times they get gratification from that kind of thing
DiDi:
They do. They get instant gratification from that. That's like a person who sets a fire.
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah. Just to watch it burn.
DiDi:
Yeah.
Ricky Frailey:
It's sick. But yeah, that that's the case of Roland T. Owen. The mystery of room 1046.
DiDi:
You really ruined my day. I gotta go do hair and think about this, like...
Ricky Frailey:
Think about this mystery?
DiDi:
Yeah, I really do, because this was just... Oof, it turned my stomach
Ricky Frailey:
Yeah.
Well, thank you for letting me ruin your day. Thank you DiDi and everyone out there listening. You know, knowing is half the battle and now we know a little bit more. There's crazy people everywhere. There really are.
DiDi:
Sure is
Ricky Frailey:
On that note, I would like all of you to stay safe, stay alive, and stay listening to The Dark Deeds Diary podcast
Thank you
DiDi:
Catch you later
Ricky Frailey:
We love you all. Bye
DiDi:
Love you
Ricky Frailey:
The Dark Deeds Diary Podcast is produced by Aezhana Media Group, LLC. A black veteran owned company. Thank you for listening.
Comments