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The Murder In Room 1046 · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: All right, get ready for a deep dive, everybody, because
• 0:02
  today we're taking a trip back in time to nineteen
• 0:05
  thirty's Kansas City for a true crime story that feels
• 0:08
  like it's straight out of a classic film noir.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those cases. It grabs you
• 0:12
  from the start and just doesn't let go.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: It really is. We're talking about the mysterious death of
• 0:17
  Artemis Ogletree. And to unpack this one, we've got a
• 0:20
  whole stack of newspaper clipping, some historical accounts.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: You know the works, and believe me, you'll need them.
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  This case is packed with dead ends, false leads, enough
• 0:30
  to make your head spin.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Oh I bet. But before we get lost in the weeds,
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  let's set the stage, shall we imagine? If you will?
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  A cold January morning in nineteen thirty five, we're at
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  the Hotel President.
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  Speaker 2: A grand old place back in its day, right.
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  Speaker 1: And a maid is making her rounds. She gets to
• 0:45
  room ten forty six and that's where things take a turn.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: She finds a man badly injured, beaten, stabbed, even a
• 0:53
  fractured skull. You name it. Grim scene to say the least.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: Oh that's awful, but it gets even more complicated. So well,
• 1:01
  this man Artemis Ogletree, he didn't check in under his
• 1:04
  real name.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Ah, so there's mortium than meets the eye. What name
• 1:08
  did he use?
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Roland t Owen? Why the fake name? What was he
• 1:12
  running from?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: And the injuries? Did he say? What happened?
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: He claims he simply fell fell.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: With those injuries. Come on, that's hard to believe exactly.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: The police thought so too, especially when you consider the
• 1:23
  state of the room, blood everywhere, chords used to tie
• 1:26
  him up.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: It was a mess, definitely not your average hotel room mishab.
• 1:30
  It sounds like someone wanted him silenced.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: That's the million dollar question, isn't it. Who was Artemis
• 1:35
  Ogletree and what was he caught up in? Now? On
• 1:38
  top of the assumed name and the suspicious injuries, there
• 1:41
  are a couple of other things that make this case
• 1:43
  really strange, like what well for starters, there's the mysterious
• 1:48
  Dawn that Ogletree kept mentioning. Then there's the fact that
• 1:51
  his belongings vanished, poof gone.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: It's like he was trying to disappear, erase his past.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, so let's rewind a bit before we get to
• 1:58
  Dawn and the vanishing belongings. We need to go back
• 2:01
  to the beginning to Ogletree's arrival at the hotel President,
• 2:05
  because right from the get go he was acting pretty strange.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Really how so.
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  Speaker 1: Well, according to the hotel staff, he was incredibly secretive,
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  like he was terrified of being seen, hiding in plain
• 2:15
  sight exactly. He insisted on a dark room, barely came out,
• 2:20
  and when he did, it was only to make these hushed,
• 2:23
  secretive phone calls.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: And I'm guessing these calls were to the mysterious Don.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: You got it. Multiple staff members overheard him talking about
• 2:31
  Don anxiously waiting for him to arrive.
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: Interesting. What else?
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  Speaker 1: Well, then there's the note. The police found it in
• 2:37
  the room.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: What did it say?
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  Speaker 1: Don, I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait? Just
• 2:43
  like that, It was like every step of the way,
• 2:46
  Ogletree was leaving these little breadcrumbs, these clues. But to
• 2:50
  what end?
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  Speaker 2: Maybe he wanted to be found, or maybe he wanted
• 2:54
  someone to know exactly what happened to him.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: It's chilling to think about. And the story gets even
• 2:58
  stranger when you factor in the other odd occurrences that
• 3:01
  went down on the tenth floor during Ogletree's stay.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Oh what happened?
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Well, staff reported hearing hushed conversations outside his room, seeing
• 3:10
  shadowy figures going in and out at all hours, almost
• 3:13
  like something was going down. And then there's the woman. Yeah,
• 3:16
  apparently there was a woman, someone involved in some illegal
• 3:19
  activities who was asking specifically for Roland. Remember that was
• 3:24
  Ogletree's fake name.
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  Speaker 2: So not your average hotel guest.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Not at all. And the plot thickens even further when
• 3:30
  you consider the account of Robert Lane, who is that.
• 3:33
  Robert Lane was a taxi driver who claimed he'd given
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  Ogletree a lift the night before he was found at
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  the hotel.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Interesting and well.
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  Speaker 1: According to Lane, Ogletree was a mess, distressed, probably injured,
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  and he kept muttering about killing someone like he was
• 3:48
  on edge, ready to snap.
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  Speaker 2: So we've got a man living a double life, shrouded
• 3:53
  in secrecy, and he might have been involved in something dangerous.
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  This is already a wild ride, and we're just getting started.
• 4:00
  You know. From the get go, the police were facing
• 4:02
  an uphill battle with this one.
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  Speaker 1: I bet, where do you even begin with a.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Case like this, Well, they started with the obvious, trying
• 4:08
  to figure out who Artemis Ogletree really was.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Which, as we know, was no easy feed exactly.
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  Speaker 2: It's like he was a ghost. They chased down every lead,
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  every rumor, but it's all dead ends.
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  Speaker 1: So frustrating. It's like trying to solve a puzzle with
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  half the pieces missing.
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  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. One minute, they're
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  looking into a tip that Ogletree was actually a wrestler
• 4:29
  named Cecil Verner. The next they're tracking down some long
• 4:33
  last relative, only to discover he died years earlier.
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  Speaker 1: It's like every time they thought they were getting closed,
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  the trail would just disappear precisely.
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  Speaker 2: And as if things weren't strange enough.
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  Speaker 1: Remember those letters, Oh, you mean the ones sent to
• 4:45
  Ogletree's mother. Yeah, those were creepy, to.
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  Speaker 2: Say the least. It's almost like someone wanted to keep
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  the mystery alive even after his death.
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  Speaker 1: It's giving major gothic novel vibes. But these weren't just
• 4:57
  your average cryptic messages, right.
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  Speaker 2: Them included details about Ogletree's life, stuff only someone close
• 5:03
  to him would know.
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  Speaker 1: It's like the writer was taunting the family, playing these
• 5:08
  mind games.
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  Speaker 2: It's a chilling thought. And then there was that phone.
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  Speaker 1: Call wait, which one? The one where the guy claimed
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  Ogletree was living it up in Cairo with a rich wife.
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  Speaker 2: That's the one. Can you imagine? Talk about adding insult
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  to injury.
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  Speaker 1: It's almost too bizarre to be true. Did they ever
• 5:24
  figure out who made that call?
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  Speaker 2: Nope, it's another dead end, I'm afraid. But it does
• 5:29
  make you wonder. What if there's more to that Cairo
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  connection than meets the eye. Maybe Ogletree's life was even
• 5:35
  more complicated than we realize.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, but what about Don? Did those letters shed any
• 5:39
  light on who he was?
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  Speaker 2: Well, that's where things get really interesting. Remember the name
• 5:44
  Donald Kelso?
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Refresh my memory.
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  Speaker 2: He was a man implicated in another murder case, this
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  one in New York City. Okay, and his handwriting was
• 5:52
  a match to the letter sent to Ogletree's.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: Mother Get out of here? Are you serious? So was
• 5:58
  Kelso don all along? What was the connection?
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  Speaker 2: It seems like the most logical conclusion, right, But here's
• 6:04
  the kicker. Despite that pretty damning evidence, no charges were
• 6:09
  ever filed against Kelso in relation to Ogletree's death.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: You've got to be kidding me? Are you telling me
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  that despite all the twists and turns all the strange occurrences,
• 6:18
  the case just.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Went cold pretty much. It's like the trail just goes
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  ice cold. No answers, no justice, just a whole lot
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  of unanswered questions. I don't know.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: Fascinating is the right word for it, because it's also
• 6:29
  incredibly frustrating, like we're right on the edge of something big,
• 6:32
  but we just can't quite grasp it.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: I know what you mean. But that's the thing about
• 6:36
  cold cases like this. They get into your skin. Oh
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  they make you question everything.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And just when you think you've considered all the angles,
• 6:43
  something else pops up, Like that item found with the
• 6:46
  newspaper clippings years later.
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  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's a weird one.
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  Speaker 1: Talk about a curveball. What was that all about?
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  Speaker 2: Well, nobody knows for sure. The details are pretty scarce,
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  but apparently it was something mentioned in the original newspaper reports,
• 7:01
  something that seemed insignificant at the time. But after all
• 7:03
  those years, it's like a beacon, you know.
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  Speaker 1: Ough, don't you hate that? It's like the universe is
• 7:09
  toying with us, dangling the answer just out of reach.
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  Speaker 2: Tell me about it. But hey, maybe that's the point.
• 7:14
  Maybe the real mystery isn't about who killed Artemis Ogletree?
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  But why?
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  Speaker 1: And what about Dawn? Was he a figment of Ogletree's
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  imagination a real person? And if so, what was his connection.
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  Speaker 2: To all of this? Those are the million dollar questions,
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  my friend, and unfortunately we might never know the answers.
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  But hey, that doesn't mean we can't speculate, all right, So.
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  Speaker 1: If we're going to try and make sense of this
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  whole thing, we need to dive into the theories, right.
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  Speaker 2: I think so? Yeah? And there are plenty to go
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  around in this case.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Oh I bet so where do we even start?
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  Speaker 2: Well? One theory that's always seemed intriguing is the love
• 7:49
  triangle angle?
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Oh well, classic for a reason, right, Jealous lovers, secrets, revenge.
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  It's practically ripped from a movie script exactly.
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  Speaker 2: Remember those anonymous phone calls, the ones hinting at a
• 8:03
  dangerous love affair. It all just adds fuel to the fire.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: It does make you wonder. But how much of that
• 8:08
  is just speculation? You know?
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: That's the thing. It's all just whisters and rumors. We
• 8:12
  don't have any hard evidence to support any of.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: It true, true, but it's hard not to let your
• 8:18
  mind wander, especially with the case this mysterious. What about
• 8:22
  the organized crime angle that always seemed plausible to me?
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  Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely. I mean it was the nineteen thirties and
• 8:27
  we're talking about Kansas City. The city was practically run
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  by gangsters.
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  Speaker 1: Back then, right, So it wouldn't be that far fetched
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  to imagine Ogletree somehow getting mixed up with the wrong crowd.
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  Maybe he owed money, knew too much, crossed the wrong person.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, and that could explain the secrecy, the fake name,
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  the whole Dawn situation. Maybe Don wasn't the lever but
• 8:48
  a mob boss.
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  Speaker 1: Now that's a thought. And let's not forget about his
• 8:52
  missing belongings. That always seemed off to me. It's like
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  someone wanted to erase him completely.
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  Speaker 2: It does make you think, doesn't it, Like what were
• 8:58
  they hiding? Was it about detecting Ogletree or someone else? Ugh?
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: So many questions. But what if, and hear me out,
• 9:07
  what if it wasn't some big conspiracy. What if it
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  was something much more personal.
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  Speaker 2: A personal grudge.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, think about it. Don doesn't have to be a mobster.
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  He could have been a friend, a business partner, even
• 9:19
  a family member with a score to settle.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: You're right. We tend to gravitate towards the most sensational explanations,
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  but sometimes the truth is much simpler, more grounded.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly, and in the end, without concrete answers, all we
• 9:33
  can really do is speculate.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: And maybe that's okay. Maybe the real intrigue of the
• 9:38
  Artemis Ogletree case lies in the mystery itself.
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  Speaker 1: You know what, You're right, because even after all this time,
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  we're still here trying to piece together the puzzle.
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  Speaker 2: It's a story that sticks with you, makes you question everything.
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  Speaker 1: It certainly does. And on that note, I think we've
• 9:51
  just about reached the end of our deep dive for now.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: At least you got that right.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Because who knows what new clues might surface in the future.
• 9:59
  But for now, now we want to hear from you.
• 10:02
  What do you think happened to Artemis Ogletree. Was it
• 10:04
  a love affair gone wrong, a mob hit, or something
• 10:07
  else entirely? Head over to our website, share your theories,
• 10:10
  and let's keep this conversation going. And who knows, maybe
• 10:14
  together we can finally crack the case. Until then, thanks
• 10:17
  for listening.