The Bizarre Mystery Of Room 1046: Who Killed Roland T. Owen?
- Photo: Paul Sableman / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0
A Mystery Man Checked Into The Hotel President
When the man calling himself Roland T. Owen arrived at the Hotel President a little after 1 pm on January 2, 1935, he had some specific instructions. He provided a Los Angeles address, paid for just a single night, and requested a room facing the hotel's inner courtyard rather than the street.
Witnesses later placed the man's age anywhere from 20 to 30 years old, and described him as having a cauliflower ear - a common malady among boxers and wrestlers - and a scar on the side of his scalp, which he partly covered by combing over his hair.
On the way up to his room, he didn't mention why he was in town. He did, however, complain that he had spent the previous night at the nearby Muehlebach Hotel, and left after they tried to charge him what he felt was an unreasonable $5 per night.
He Carried Only A Brush, A Comb, And Some Toothpaste
When Roland T. Owen - or whatever his real name may have been - arrived at the Hotel President, he had no luggage. Witnesses described him as "neatly dressed," wearing a black overcoat.
The only items he brought with him were a hairbrush, a comb, and some toothpaste, all of which were in his overcoat pocket. He placed all three items above the sink when the porter let him into his room, but all three would be gone even before Owen was.
- Photo: Tom Small / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
He Kept His Room Dark And The Shades Drawn
Hotel staff later observed that the man who called himself Roland T. Owen was a strange customer from the moment he arrived. Whenever maids or porters went up to his room, they always found it dark, with the shades drawn and a single desk lamp providing the only illumination.
When Mary Soptic, a maid at the hotel, returned from a few days off, she found herself assigned to room 1046. When she arrived and found its occupant sitting in the dark, she offered to come back later, but the man told her to go ahead and clean the room.
She later told the police that Owen seemed like he was afraid or "worried about something," and that he "always wanted to kinda keep in the dark."
Another Strange Man Phoned And Visited Owen, But No One Ever Saw Him
When the maid was first cleaning Owen's room, he told her not to lock the door, as he was expecting a friend "in a few minutes." When she returned to the room later that day, she found Owen lying on his still-made bed, fully clothed, seemingly asleep. A note on the desk said, "Don, I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait."
The following morning, she overheard a brief phone conversation in which Owen said, "No, Don, I don't want to eat. I am not hungry."
Later that afternoon, when she went to drop off fresh towels, she heard two men speaking in room 1046. When she knocked, a rough voice that she didn't recognize answered from the other side of the door, telling her they didn't need towels. In fact, the maid knew the room didn't have any, as she had taken them herself earlier in the day.
- Photo: Baylor98 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
Other Guests Reported Unusual Activity
In an ironic twist, the woman in room 1048, next door to the man calling himself Roland T. Owen, was Jean Owen of Lee's Summit, MO. She was of no relation to her neighbor, and, indeed, had no idea who he was. However, she later told police she heard noises on her floor throughout the night that "consisted largely of men and women talking loudly and cursing." She considered calling the front desk, but never did.
There was apparently a rather raucous party going on in room 1055 that night, which could have been the source of the disturbances Jean Owen noticed - but that wasn't the only oddity. The elevator operator that night reported taking a woman who regularly frequented the hotel with different men up to several different floors in search of a customer who was always "very prompt." In spite of spending more than an hour looking around the place, it seems she never found him.
A Bleeding Owen Was Picked Up In The Middle Of The Street
On the night of January 3, at around 11 pm, a water department employee named Robert Lane was flagged down in the street not far from the Hotel President by a man matching the description of Roland T. Owen.
The man Lane picked up was hurt. He had a bad scrape on his arm, and Lane suspected he may have had more serious injuries. He was also just in his shirtsleeves despite it being a January night in the middle of Kansas City, and thus not exactly clement weather.
"You look as if you've been in it bad," Lane said, when the man asked him if he would take him to find a cab.
The man's reply? "I'll kill that [redacted] tomorrow." The newspapers at the time didn't print the expletive the man uttered, so we'll just have to use our imaginations - just as we can only guess who he may have been talking about.
- Photo: Roland Barrera / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
The Phone Was Mysteriously Off The Hook
On Friday morning, the day after a man matching Owen's description was picked up in the street by Robert Lane, the operator at the hotel noticed that the phone in room 1046 was off the hook. She dispatched a bellhop to see what was going on.
The bellhop arrived at the room and found the door locked with a "Do Not Disturb" sign. After knocking repeatedly, he finally heard a deep voice on the other side of the door telling him to "come in." With the door still locked, however, the bellhop knocked again. "Turn on the lights," the voice said this time.
Unable to get into the room, the bellhop simply shouted, "Put the phone back on the hook!" and returned to the lobby.
Owen Was Found Nude And Unconscious In His Room
On the morning of Friday, January 4, the phone in room 1046 was off the hook. At first, a bellhop was sent up to fix it; he never got inside the room, but simply yelled through the door an instruction to reconnect the phone.
About an hour later, the phone was still off the hook, so a different bellhop, Harold Pike, went up to the room and knocked. Receiving no answer, he used his passkey to unlock the door - indicating that it had been locked from the outside - and saw its occupant lying in bed, naked.
Pike later told police that he noticed what appeared to be "dark shadows" in the bedclothes, but that he assumed the room's resident was simply drunk. He replaced the phone on the cradle and went back downstairs, locking the door behind him.
- Photo: Lasse Fuss / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
Several Hours Later, The Crime Was Discovered
After a long morning of dealing with room 1046's phone being off the hook and its guest, Roland T. Owen, being naked and passed out on his bed, the hotel operator was frustrated to once again find the phone off the hook a few hours later.
She sent Randolph Propst, the same bellhop who had initially taken Owen up to his room two days before, back up to sort the problem out. He knocked on the door, got no answer, and used his passkey to open it up.
On the other side, he found a badly injured Owen on his hands and knees a few feet from the door. When he turned on the lights, he saw that there was blood everywhere.
Owen Passed Away In The Hospital
When authorities arrived in room 1046, they found Owen on the brink of death. He had been tortured and stabbed, and they later determined that many of the bloodstains in the room were hours old, meaning he had already been attacked before the first bellhop found him seemingly unconscious on his bed.
Owen went into a coma shortly after reaching the hospital. While he was still conscious, the only explanation he offered for his grievous injuries were that he "fell against the tub." He died in the hospital that night.
- Photo: The Kansas City Star / Fair Use
Authorities Discovered That Owen Wasn't His Real Name
In the wake of Roland T. Owen's death, police published a sketch of him in the paper under the heading, "Do you recognize this man?" It seems that whoever he really was, the man who called himself Owen had checked into the hotel under an assumed name.
One part of his story was true, though. He had been at the Muehlebach the night before. While the staff there didn't have any guests named Roland T. Owen, they did recognize the sketch of the deceased, who had checked in there under the name Eugene K. Scott, also from Los Angeles.
Of course, the problem was that the police could find no missing people of either name from Los Angeles, nor anyone else missing from LA who matched the man's description. The real identity of Roland T. Owen was as much a mystery as what had happened to him.
The Room Had Been Emptied Of All But A Few Clues
Besides Owen himself and a distressing amount of blood, almost nothing was left in the room to show that he or anyone else had ever been there. Owen was naked, and all of his clothes were missing, along with the handful of items - brush, comb, and toothpaste - he had brought with him to the room. There was also no sign of a weapon that could have inflicted the injuries Owen had suffered.
In fact, the only items in the room were a hairpin, a safety pin, an unlit cigarette, a bottle of dilute sulfuric acid, and a tie label that said it was from Botany Worsten Mills. There were two glasses in the bathroom - one on the shelf, the other broken in the sink.
The police found four small fingerprints on the telephone stand that they thought might have belonged to a woman, but they were never identified.
- Photo: fiomaha / Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0
A Woman Known Only As Louise Paid For His Funeral
Though several people attempted to identify the body of "Roland T. Owen," no one was able to. Authorities were preparing to bury him as a John Doe when the funeral home received a call. The unidentified caller asked them to hold off, promising to send enough money to give Owen - or whoever he was - a proper funeral.
Within a month, the funeral home received an unmarked envelope containing enough cash to cover all the expenses. The unidentified man was laid to rest in Kansas City's Memorial Park Cemetery under the name Roland T. Owen, with no one in attendance but police.
However, there were 13 American Beauty roses laid on his grave. The roses were purchased by an anonymous caller, who said he was doing it for his sister. The caller promised $5 for the trouble. The roses were accompanied by a note that simply said, "Love for ever - Louise."
He Was Identified, But It Produced More Questions Than Answers
A year after the events in room 1046, a woman recognized a magazine photo of the man who had called himself Roland T. Owen. She said the man was her son, Artemus Ogletree, who had left home when he was 17. While authorities ultimately concluded she was probably right, this produced its own set of mysteries.
For one, Artemus Ogletree was much younger than anyone had believed Roland T. Owen to be. For another, Mrs. Ogletree had received several letters, ostensibly from her son, and one phone call from someone who said he was a friend of Artemus.
One of the letters and the phone call claimed her son was in Egypt, and all of them had been sent after "Roland T. Owen" was already in the ground. The identification also did nothing to shed any light on why he had been killed, nor the identities of the other players in the mystery, such as Don and Louise.
- Photo: Valerie Hinojosa / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
The Mystery Has Never Been Solved
In 2003, John Horner, a librarian at the Kansas City Public Library, received an anonymous phone call. The caller said they were going through the boxes of a deceased individual when they found newspaper clippings about the mystery in room 1046. What's more, the caller said the box also contained "something mentioned in the newspaper clippings," but never said what that something was.
To this day, the truth behind what happened in room 1046 remains unknown. The latest notes in the police department cold case files, dating back as far as the 1950s, simply say, "I will continue to pursue the investigation."
