Artemus Ogletree

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Kansas City Police Department (MO)

Offense Location:

Kansas City, Missouri

Summary:

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. Artemus Ogletree, a 24-year-old man, was discovered fatally wounded in room 1046 of the Hotel President, and the mystery of Ogletree's murder remains unsolved. No clear motive or suspect has been identified.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Offense:

Early on the afternoon of January 2, 1935, Ogletree walked into the Hotel President, in what is now the Power & Light District of Kansas City, Missouri, and asked for an interior room several floors up, giving his name as Roland T. Owen of Los Angeles. He was neatly dressed in a black overcoat and traveling light with only a black hair brush, comb and a tube of toothpaste. Then, Artemus left the hotel. It was 11:03 on the morning of Friday, January 4th, 1935. The switchboard operator at the Hotel President in Kansas City noticed that the phone in room 1046 was once again off the hook. Propst found Ogletree naked, slumped forward on the edge of the bathtub, covered in blood. Ogletree had been stabbed multiple times in the chest, stomach, and legs, with his wrists slashed and the back of his head bludgeoned. A rope was tied around his neck, indicating an attempted strangulation. Ogletree denied his fatal injuries were from a suicide attempt, but also stated no one else was responsible, in one of his final conversations with a doctor and detective. Ogletree later died at the hospital.

Additional Details:

When no next of kin could be located, leading to suspicions that his name was an alias, his body was stored in a local funeral parlor for almost two months. A planned burial in the city's potter's field was averted when an anonymous donor provided funds for a funeral and a floral arrangement signed by the name "Louise." The man's true identity remained unknown for a year and a half until Ruby Ogletree, an Alabama woman who had seen a photo of a distinctive scar on his head in the news, identified him as her son Artemus. She said he had left Birmingham in 1934 at the age of 17 to hitchhike to California. According to his mother, Ruby, in January, just weeks after his death, she got a typewritten letter from her son saying that he was going to New York City. The text of the letter struck her as odd, as did the fact that it wasn't handwritten, given her son didn't know how to type. In April, another typed letter arrived, this one saying Ogletree was sailing for France. On August 12, 1935, eight months after her son's murder, she got a long-distance call from Memphis, Tennesee, from a male caller purporting to be a good friend of her son. The caller identified himself as Godfrey Jordan and said that he'd met Artemus Ogletree in Cairo, Egypt, where Ogletree had saved him from a "band of thugs." Records kept by shipping companies found no records that Ogletree had gone to Egypt. At several stops, police later learned Ogletree was in the company of a man who signed the hotel registry as "Don Kelso." The FBI, which reviewed the case in 1950, concluded that the signature of 'Donald Kelso' on the hotel registration card was not written by Joseph Ogden. The letters later were used to link the killing to a 1937 murder in New York, but no charges were filed against the man arrested in that case, one of whose aliases had been "Donald Kelso." The FBI later investigated but was unable to produce any new leads.

Case Last Updated:

Aug 29, 2026