MO MO - Artemus Ogletree, 19, Murdered 5 January 1935, Kansas City

[Richard]

Artemus Ogletree, 19, murdered January 1935

On January 5, 1935, a man who had given his name as Roland T. Owen, later identified as Artemus Ogletree, died at a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri from beating and stabbing injuries.

His death was preceded by a two-day stay in Room 1046 at the Hotel President where the attack took place.

The man's true identity remained unknown for a year and a half until Ruby Ogletree, a Birmingham Alabama woman who had seen a photo of a distinctive scar on his head in the newspaper composite drawing, identified him as her son Artemus. She said he had left Birmingham in 1934 at the age of 17 to travel to California. She later received two letters purportedly from him, one from Egypt.

The FBI investigated the murder and came up with a possible suspect who went by an alias of "Donald (Don) Kelso", but he was never located and the murder remains unsolved.

LINKS:

Murder of Artemus Ogletree - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Inside the "Owen Case" file - The murder of Artemus Ogletree

The gruesome torture-murder of Artemus Ogletree in a Kansas City hotel has a mythical status among true crime geeks. We obtained access to the complete police case file for the first time.

kansascitymag.com

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/172315577/artemus_william-ogletree

https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/unsolved-mystery-the-haunting-case-of-room-1046/

 

[nhmemorymaker]

Artemus Ogletree, 19, murdered January 1935

On January 5, 1935, a man who had given his name as Roland T. Owen, later identified as Artemus Ogletree, died at a hospital in Kansas City, Missouri from beating and stabbing injuries.

His death was preceded by a two-day stay in Room 1046 at the Hotel President where the attack took place.

The man's true identity remained unknown for a year and a half until Ruby Ogletree, a Birmingham Alabama woman who had seen a photo of a distinctive scar on his head in the newspaper composite drawing, identified him as her son Artemus. She said he had left Birmingham in 1934 at the age of 17 to travel to California. She later received two letters purportedly from him, one from Egypt.

The FBI investigated the murder and came up with a possible suspect who went by an alias of "Donald (Don) Kelso", but he was never located and the murder remains unsolved.

LINKS:

Murder of Artemus Ogletree - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Inside the "Owen Case" file - The murder of Artemus Ogletree

The gruesome torture-murder of Artemus Ogletree in a Kansas City hotel has a mythical status among true crime geeks. We obtained access to the complete police case file for the first time.

kansascitymag.com

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/172315577/artemus_william-ogletree

https://fox2now.com/news/missouri/unsolved-mystery-the-haunting-case-of-room-1046/

well.... just readingn the wikipedia article!!! what an interesting distraction,
and very interesting and haunting read!!

 

[Witch Doctor]

I looked at the circumstances described in the article and I think it was suicide. I think he was robbed by a girl who had been staying with him in the room under the assumed name.

She got him heavily intoxicated, waited until he passed out and took literally everything he had right down to the soap, leaving the note that said "be right back" as maybe plausible deniability if she got stopped on her way out "I was just taking everything to be washed! Yeah! See? I left a note!" or maybe as a delaying tactic to keep him from stumbling after her naked "Oh, there's a note... I guess I'll pass back out for a little while".

Then at some point, still very intoxicated, he realizes that she's not coming back. He feels like he has literally nothing and no one so he clumsily tries to slash his wrists, accidentally or recklessly cutting himself up in the process then just as clumsily tries to hang himself. He dangles briefly before the curtain rope or whatever improvised noose he used breaks or gives way. Intoxicated, throttled and semi conscious he crashes to the floor fracturing his skull and making enough noise that the hotel sends someone to check on him. In the minute or two it takes the bellboy to get there and open the door he stumbled to the bathroom and sits on the edge of the tub with the foggy intent to clean himself up.

This is all just my visualization of course. I can't even imagine how one would begin actually sleuthing a case this old, cold and covered in mold but the bit about him *denying* his injuries were self inflicted mostly, to me, says that circumstances led the first responders to *suspect* that they were - and him being found on the edge of the tub goes along with him denying it if he had, in all the drama, sobered up enough to decide to try to pull himself together. He may have even felt like the fall had "knocked some sense into him" but it actually had fractured his skull and though the cuts and strangulation might have been half hearted, the intracranial bleeding was not and that's what ended up killing him.

The letters his mom got claiming to have been him were probably just fraudulent attempts to get her to wire money in the hope her son was still alive because her contact information went out over the wire due to the unusual, interstate nature of the case - the same reason we're aware of it now.