“Early Birds” by Ken Wilson. Oil on birch panel. 48” x 24”
It was a dark and stormy morning (hey, I’m a painter, not Raymond Chandler). Grabbing my sketchpad, an assortment of pencils, and a freshly brewed mug of joe I headed out in search of inspiration. Little did I know that I was also about to uncover a murder.
I pulled up at the corner of 14th and Baltimore. There she sat, resplendent in the glow of the streetlamps, the Hotel President. Fifteen stories of Jacobethan architecture wrapping her sleepy arms around the Drum Room, once a hopping little joint that was played by icons including Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman, Patsy Cline, and Sammy Davis, Jr. But this story isn’t about the death of live music at the Drum Room. Yes, the music is no more, but they do serve gnocchi for dinner. Try as I might, I can’t imagine Sinatra ordering gnocchi for dinner.
The nascent two-year-old hotel was the headquarters of the 1928 Republican National Convention. The delegates nominated Herbert Hoover who was elected president in November. In retrospect it shouldn’t be surprising that karma would exact revenge for that.
I pulled out my phone to read about the history of this place. What I discovered was that if these walls could talk… they might get whacked for the stories they could tell.
It was 1935. Kansas City’s political scene was controlled by Tom Pendergast. “Boss Tom” ran city hall, the police department, and the local Democratic Party with an iron fist. A fist that was mob-enforced by the likes of Joseph “Scarface” Giovianni, John Lazio, and Charles “Charlie the Wop” Carollo (ethnic slurs were quite the vogue in 1935). I don’t know why Lazio didn’t have a nickname. It wouldn’t have been that hard to come up with one. He had a face like a well-punched pizza dough and a brain to match. He was gunned down before he went to prison for not filing a tax return.
On a cold afternoon on January 2nd, Roland T. Owen of Los Angeles checked into the President—room 1046, which was on the hotel’s interior, per his request. The room overlooked the courtyard rather than the exterior street. Well-dressed, sporting a dark overcoat, Owen carried no bags. The scar on his left temple and a cauliflower ear led staff to assume he’d been a boxer or wrestler. One who got punched in the head a lot, apparently.
There are some conflicting accounts of what transpired over the next 24 to 48 hours. The 10th floor was evidently quite busy the night of January 3rd. A party, a prostitute, and loud and profane chatter in the hallway seem to have been in the mix. And a meeting with a mysterious “Don” referenced in a note was later found in the room. A man matching Owen’s description, with a lacerated arm, had a late-night encounter on the street with a man in a car who gave him a ride to a taxi stand. Owen was visibly shaken and claimed he’d seek revenge on the man who attacked him.
Hotel staff discovered Owen, stabbed and badly beaten but still alive, in his room on the morning of January 4th. His skull was fractured, his lung punctured; he had been tied with cords around the neck, wrists, and ankles. His bruised neck suggested someone had attempted to strangle him. The attending physician who arrived asked who did this to him. Owen responded, “Nobody,” and insisted he’d fallen in the tub and hit his head. He was taken to the hospital but died of the inflicted wounds in the wee morning hours of January 6th.
The Kansas City police could not confirm the existence of any Roland T. Owen. Eventually, the search for the identity of the dead man went nationwide. It was a year and a half before Owen’s real name was discovered to be Artemus Ogletree. His mother, Ruby Ogletree of Birmingham, Alabama provided Kansas City police with enough information to confirm his identity. Oddly, Ruby received a couple of letters postmarked from Chicago and New York after his death. The letter from Chicago was typewritten, and was worded in a fashion of slang unlike Artemus’s typical style of speech. Ruby thought it odd that he’d send such a letter since Artemus didn’t know how to type. A letter from New York in May 1935 told her he was going to Europe. Three months later, she received a call from a man telling her that her son had saved his life in a fight. The man told her Artemus couldn’t call because he was on a ship to Cairo where he had married a wealthy woman and was “doing well.” He also said Artemus couldn’t write because he’d lost a thumb in the fight.
To this day, the mysterious murder of Artemus Ogletree remains unsolved. Theories abound. It’s clear that Ogletree didn’t want his identity to be known, but why? Some believe that the “Don” mentioned in the bedside note may have in reference to a mob figure. The Kansas City underworld had close ties to those in Chicago and New York, so were the letters written by mob associates in an attempt to thwart suspicion that Owen and Ogletree were one and the same?
As I sat in my car, sketching the scene that would become “Early Birds,” I sipped my coffee and contemplated the plight of Artemus Ogletree. Unable to unravel the mystery, I then imagined myself sitting in the Drum Room in 1935, sipping a whiskey, and listening to a bony kid from New Jersey named Frank Sinatra croon.
I went back to my studio, tuned in the Sinatra channel on satellite radio, and did this painting hoping to capture some of the mysterious history of this spot in a contemporary setting. It is part of my “Vertical City” series of 48 x 24 inch oil paintings that earned me the Featured Artist honor for an exhibit at the Jones Gallery in June 2019.
I’ll write about other pieces in this series in future blog posts.