0:00 The man in room 1046 told police he fell in the tub.0:05 This was a lie.0:06 A terrible, obvious lie.0:08 But it was the last thing he would ever say to them.0:14 It was January fourth, 1935.0:16 The Hotel President in Kansas City was a grand old place, but what happened that morning was ugly.0:26 A bellboy named Randolph Propst was sent to room 1046.0:31 The phone was off the hook.0:34 He knocked.0:35 A low voice mumbled something like “come in.” He knocked again.0:41 The voice repeated, “come in, turn on the lights.” But the door was locked.0:49 From the outside.0:50 Randolph announced he had a master key.0:54 He opened the door and stepped into darkness.0:59 The only light came from a small table lamp, turned low.1:04 And in its dim glow, he saw the man.1:08 He was on the bed, naked, surrounded by dark, soaked sheets.1:13 The bellboy saw the man’s head.1:17 He saw the blood.1:18 He put the phone back on its cradle, turned to leave, and locked the door behind him.1:27 He had to get his boss.1:29 When the police arrived, the scene was a violation.1:34 The man—who had checked in two days earlier as Roland T.1:39 Owen—was barely conscious.1:42 His wrists and ankles had deep ligature marks.1:46 Rope burns.1:48 His neck was bruised.1:50 His skull was fractured.1:52 One of his lungs was punctured by a broken rib.1:57 And yet, when Detective Ira Johnson asked him what happened, he whispered that he’d quarreled with no one.2:07 He said he fell.2:09 He hit his head on the bathtub.2:12 That was all.2:13 He passed out soon after.2:15 He was taken to the hospital, where he slipped into a coma and died just after midnight.2:24 The investigation began, but it was like trying to assemble a puzzle with half the pieces missing, and the other half belonging to a different box entirely.2:39 The man had no luggage.2:42 Just a comb, a brush, and a tube of toothpaste.2:46 In the room, police found four small fingerprints on the telephone stand—too small to be the victim’s.2:56 They found an unsmoked cigarette, a hairpin, and a safety pin.3:02 The man had given his address as Los Angeles, but the L.A.3:08 police had no record of a Roland T.3:12 Owen.3:12 His fingerprints matched no one in any national database.3:18 The case was a void.3:20 Then, the stories started to surface.3:23 The hotel staff began to piece together a timeline.3:28 A maid, Mary Soptic, had cleaned his room the day before.3:34 He’d seemed nervous.3:36 He asked her to leave the door unlocked because he was expecting a friend.3:43 Later that afternoon, she returned with fresh towels and found him lying on the bed, in the dark.3:53 A note on the table read, “Don, I will be back in fifteen minutes.3:59 Wait.” The next morning—the morning he was found—she heard two voices in the room.4:07 A man said, “No, Don, I don’t want to eat.4:11 I’m not hungry.” The identity of this “Don” was a complete mystery.4:18 He was a ghost, a voice in a dark room who was never seen.4:24 Who was he?4:25 Was he the killer?4:26 Or was there someone else?4:29 Because another guest reported hearing a loud argument from 1046 that night.4:37 A man and a woman.4:38 For more than a year, the man in room 1046 remained a ghost.4:44 He was buried in a potter’s field, an unidentified man with a violent secret.4:52 The police file grew thicker with dead ends.4:56 Kansas City Police Chief Otto Higgins, a man who had been a detective for a quarter-century, told reporters the case came “nearer to being the perfect crime than any other murder Kansas City has seen.” The trail was cold.5:18 The story was over.5:20 Except it wasn't.5:21 In the spring of 1936, a woman in Alabama named Ruby Ogletree was reading a magazine.5:30 She saw a story about an unsolved murder in Kansas City.5:35 The description of the man… the scar on his head, the cauliflower ear… it sounded familiar.5:44 It sounded like her son, Artemus, who had left home in 1934 to travel the country.5:52 She contacted the authorities.5:55 They sent her a photograph of the man from room 1046.6:00 It was him.6:02 The ghost finally had a name: Artemus Ogletree.6:06 He was just a boy, really.6:09 Seventeen years old.6:11 But this revelation didn't solve the mystery.6:15 It deepened it.6:17 Because Ruby Ogletree told the police something impossible.6:22 She said that after Artemus was killed in January of 1935, she had received three letters from him.6:32 All typewritten.6:34 One, sent from Chicago just weeks after his death, claimed he was about to sail for Europe.6:43 Another mentioned he was in Cairo, Egypt.6:47 Someone had murdered her son… and then launched a bizarre, elaborate campaign to convince his family he was still alive.6:58 Why?6:59 What was the point of this cruel theater?7:03 The new information gave the police a name, but it pulled the motive even further out of reach.7:12 Robbery seemed unlikely; nothing of value was taken.7:17 Revenge?7:18 For what?7:19 A teenage boy hitchhiking across America doesn't usually make enemies powerful enough to orchestrate something like this.7:31 The police chased down every lead.7:34 They investigated a report of a man named "Don" who had been seen in a fight with another man over a woman.7:45 They looked into a mysterious phone call made from a nearby town by a man asking if "Roland Owen" was okay.7:55 Nothing.7:56 Every path led back to the same dark, locked room.8:01 And then there was the final, chilling detail.8:06 After Artemus was identified, his mother arranged to have his body moved to a cemetery in Birmingham.8:15 Sometime after the funeral, a woman called the funeral home.8:21 She also called a local florist, demanding to know the location of his grave.8:29 She seemed angry, telling the florist that the hotel and the police were to blame for his death.8:38 A few days later, thirteen American Beauty roses appeared at Artemus’s grave.8:46 Attached was a small card.8:49 It had just four words, and a name.8:52 “Love for ever — Louise.” The florist told police the woman had paid in cash, and insisted her identity be kept secret.9:04 No one ever found out who Louise was.9:07 Or Don.9:08 The file on Artemus Ogletree remains open.9:12 But as one modern Kansas City sergeant said, looking at the faded, typewritten pages from 1935… “There’s really nothing here that I would compare to a modern incident report.” It’s not a report.9:31 It’s a story with the last chapter torn out.9:36 A question mark carved onto a tombstone.
