The Michael Peterson Story

 

Michael Iver Peterson (born October 23, 1943) is an American novelist who was convicted in 2003 of murdering his second wife, Kathleen Peterson, on December 9, 2001. After eight years, Peterson was granted a new trial after the judge ruled a critical prosecution witness gave misleading testimony. In 2017, Peterson submitted an Alford plea to the reduced charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to time already served and freed.

Peterson's case is the subject of the documentary miniseries The Staircase, which started filming soon after his arrest in 2001 and followed events until his eventual Alford plea in 2017. In 2019, he released his own account of his life since his wife's death in an independently published memoir, Behind the Staircase.

Personal and professional life

Michael Iver Peterson was born near Nashville, Tennessee, the son of Eugen Iver Peterson and Eleanor Peterson (née Bartolino). He graduated from Duke University with a bachelor's degree in political science. While there, Peterson was president of Sigma Nu fraternity and was editor of The Chronicle, the daily student newspaper, from 1964–1965. He attended classes at the law school of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

After graduating, Peterson took a civilian job with the U.S. Department of Defense, where he was assigned to research arguments supporting increased military involvement in Vietnam. That year he also married Patricia Sue, who taught at an elementary school on the Rhein-Main Air Base in Gräfenhausen, West Germany. They had two children, Clayton and Todd. In 1968, Peterson enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in the Vietnam War.[citation needed] In 1971, he received an honorable discharge with the rank of captain after a car accident left him with a permanent disability.

Years later, during a mayoral campaign, Peterson claimed he had won a Silver Star, a Bronze Star with Valor, and two Purple Hearts. He had all the medals, but said he did not have the documentation for them. Peterson claimed he had received one Purple Heart after being hit by shrapnel when another soldier stepped on a land mine, and the other when he was shot. He later admitted his war injury was not the result of the shrapnel wound in Vietnam, but was the result of a car accident in Japan, where he was stationed after the war as a military policeman. The Raleigh, North Carolina News & Observer said records did not contain any mention of the two Purple Hearts that Peterson said he had received. However, military files verified that he received a Silver Star and the Bronze Star Medal with Valor.

Peterson and his first wife Patricia lived in Germany for some time. There they befriended Elizabeth and George Ratliff and their two children, Margaret and Martha. After George's death, the Peterson and Ratliff families became very close. When Elizabeth Ratliff died in 1985, Michael became the guardian of her two children. After Michael and Patricia divorced in 1987, Clayton and Todd lived with Patricia, and Margaret and Martha stayed with Michael, who then moved to Durham, North Carolina. Clayton and Todd later also joined their father.

Peterson wrote three novels based "around his experiences during the Vietnamese conflict"—The Immortal Dragon, A Time of War, and A Bitter Peace. He co-wrote the biographical Charlie Two Shoes and the Marines of Love Company with journalist David Perlmutt, and co-wrote Operation Broken Reed with Lt. Col. Arthur L. Boyd. Peterson also worked as a newspaper columnist for the Durham Herald-Sun, where his columns became known for their criticism of police and of Durham County District Attorney James Hardin Jr. Hardin was the prosecutor of Peterson for the murder of his second wife, Kathleen.

In 1989, Michael moved in with Kathleen Atwater, a successful Nortel business executive. They married in 1997, and Kathleen's daughter Caitlin joined the extended family that now consisted of Clayton, Todd, Martha, and Margaret.

Murder trial

Kathleen's death

On December 9, 2001, Peterson called an emergency line to report that he had just found Kathleen unconscious in their Forest Hills mansion and suspected she had fallen down "fifteen, twenty, I don't know" stairs. He later claimed that he had been outside by the pool and had come in at 2:40 am to find Kathleen at the foot of the stairs. Peterson said she must have fallen down the stairs after consuming alcohol and Valium.

Toxicology results showed that Kathleen's blood alcohol content was 0.07 percent (70 mg/100mL). The autopsy report concluded that the 48-year-old woman sustained a matrix of severe injuries, including a fracture of the thyroid neck cartilage and seven lacerations to the top and back of her head, consistent with blows from a blunt object, and had died from blood loss ninety minutes to two hours after sustaining the injuries. Kathleen's daughter, Caitlin, and Kathleen's sister, Candace Zamperini, both initially proclaimed Michael's innocence and publicly supported him alongside his children, but Zamperini reconsidered after learning of Peterson's bisexuality, as did Caitlin after reading her mother's autopsy report. Both subsequently broke off from the rest of the family.

Although forensic expert Henry Lee, hired by Peterson's defense, testified that the blood-spatter evidence was consistent with an accidental fall down the stairs, police investigators concluded that the injuries were inconsistent with such an accident. As Peterson was the only person at the residence at the time of Kathleen's death, he was the prime suspect and was soon charged with her murder. He pleaded not guilty.

The medical examiner, Deborah Radisch, concluded that Kathleen had died from lacerations of the scalp caused by a homicidal assault. According to Radisch, the total of seven lacerations to the top and back of Kathleen's head were the result of repeated blows with a light, yet rigid, weapon. The defense disputed this theory. According to their analysis, Kathleen's skull had not been fractured by the blows, nor was she brain damaged, which was inconsistent with injuries sustained in a beating death.

The trial drew increasing media attention as details of Peterson's private life emerged. Hardin and his prosecution team (among them Mike Nifong) attacked Peterson's credibility, focusing on his alleged misreporting of his military service and what they described as a "gay life" he led and kept secret. The prosecution contended that the Petersons' marriage was far from happy, suggesting that Kathleen had discovered Michael's alleged secret "gay life" and wanted to end their marriage. It was the main motive that the prosecution offered at trial for Kathleen's alleged murder (the other being a $1.5 million life insurance policy). According to Assistant District Attorney Freda Black, Kathleen would have been infuriated by learning that her husband, who she truly loved, was bi-sexual and having an extramarital relationship—not with another woman—but a man, which would have been humiliating and embarrassing to her. We believe that once she learned this information that an argument ensued and a homicide occurred.

The defense argued that Kathleen accepted Michael's bisexuality and that the marriage was very happy, a position supported by Michael and Kathleen's children and other friends and associates.

The prosecution said that Kathleen's murder was most likely committed with a custom-made fireplace poker called a blow poke. It had been a gift to the Petersons from Kathleen's sister but was missing from the house at the time of the investigation. Late in the trial the defense team produced the missing blow poke, which they said had been overlooked in the garage by police investigators. Forensic tests revealed that it had been untouched and unmoved for too long to have been used in the murder.[citation needed] A juror contacted after the trial noted that the jury dismissed the idea of the blow poke as the murder weapon.

Suspicion surrounding Elizabeth Ratliff's death

Elizabeth Ratliff, the friend of the Petersons who died in Germany in 1985, had also been found dead at the foot of her staircase with injuries to the head. Her death had been investigated by both the German police and U.S. military police. An autopsy at the time of her death concluded Ratliff died from an intra-cerebral hemorrhage secondary to the blood coagulation disorder Von Willebrand's disease, based on blood in her cerebrospinal fluid and reports that she had been suffering severe, persistent headaches in the weeks leading up to her death. The coroner determined that the hemorrhage resulted in immediate death followed by Ratliff falling down the stairs after collapsing. The Petersons had dinner with Ratliff and her daughters, and Peterson had stayed and helped Ratliff put the children to bed before going home. The children's nanny, Barbara, discovered the body when she arrived the next morning. Peterson was the last known person to see her alive.

Before Peterson's trial, the Durham court ordered the exhumation of Ratliff's embalmed body, buried in Texas, for a second autopsy in April 2003. Arrangements were made for the Durham medical examiner, who had initially performed Kathleen's autopsy, to perform this reevaluation, over the objections of defense counsel who argued that the autopsy should be performed by Texas medical examiners. The body was then transported from Texas to Durham. The Durham M.E. found sufficient evidence drawn from the results of the second autopsy, along with new witness statements describing the scene, to overturn the earlier findings and list Ratliff's cause of death as "homicide".

The prosecution declined to accuse Peterson of Ratliff's death, but introduced the death into the trial as an incident giving Peterson the idea of how to "fake" Kathleen's accident. Despite police reports that there was very little blood at the scene of Ratliff's death, the nanny, who was the first to discover Ratliff's body in 1985, took the stand at Peterson's trial and testified that there was a large amount of blood at the scene. Another witness testified to spending much of the day cleaning blood stains off the wall. The admissibility of the Ratliff evidence in court was one of the grounds for the subsequent appeal against his conviction, lodged by Peterson's lawyers in 2005.

In October 2002, acting as administrator of Kathleen's estate, Caitlin filed a wrongful death claim against Peterson. In June 2006, he voluntarily filed for bankruptcy. Two weeks later, Caitlin filed an objection to the bankruptcy. On February 1, 2007, Caitlin and Peterson settled the wrongful death claim for $25 million, pending acceptance by the courts involved; finalization of the settlement by the court was announced on February 1, 2008. In the settlement, Peterson did not admit that he murdered Kathleen.

Verdict

On October 10, 2003, after one of the longest trials in North Carolina history, a Durham County jury found Peterson guilty of the murder of Kathleen, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Denial of parole requires premeditation. Despite the jury accepting the murder was a "spur-of-the-moment" crime, they also found it was premeditated. As one juror explained it, premeditated meant not only planning hours or days ahead, but could also mean planning in the seconds before committing a spur-of-the-moment crime. Peterson was housed at the Nash Correctional Institution near Rocky Mount until he was released on December 16, 2011.

Appeal

Peterson's appeal was filed by his defense counsel, Thomas Maher, now serving as his court-appointed attorney, and was argued before the North Carolina Court of Appeals on April 18, 2006. On September 19, the Court of Appeals rejected Peterson's arguments that he did not get a fair trial because of repeated judicial mistakes. The Appeals' ruling said the evidence was fairly admitted. The judges did find defects in a search warrant, but said they had no ill effect on the defense. Because the ruling was not unanimous, under North Carolina law, Peterson had right to appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court, which accepted the case. Oral argument was heard on September 10, 2007. On November 9, the Court announced that it affirmed the decision of the Appeals. Absent a reconsideration of the ruling or the raising of a federal issue, Peterson had exhausted his appeal of the verdict.

On November 12, 2008, attorneys J. Burkhardt Beale and Jason Anthony of Richmond, Virginia, who were now representing Peterson, filed a motion for a new trial in Durham County court on three grounds: that the prosecution withheld exculpatory evidence about the blow poke, that the prosecution used an expert witness whose qualifications were disputed, and that one juror based his judgment on racial factors. On March 10, 2009, Peterson's motion was denied by the Durham County Superior Court.

Owl theory

In late 2009, a new theory of Kathleen's death was raised: that she had been attacked by an owl outside, fallen after rushing inside, and been knocked unconscious after hitting her head on the first tread of the stairs. The owl theory was raised by Durham attorney T. Lawrence Pollard, a neighbor of the Petersons who was not involved in the case but had been following the public details. He approached the police suggesting an owl might have been responsible after reading the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) evidence list and finding a "feather" listed. Peterson's attorneys had determined that the SBI crime lab report listed a microscopic owl feather and a wooden sliver from a tree limb entangled in a clump of hair that had been pulled out by the roots found clutched in Kathleen's left hand. A re-examination of the hair in September 2008 had found two more microscopic owl feathers.

According to Pollard, had a jury been presented with this evidence it would have "materially affected their deliberation and therefore would have materially affected their ultimate verdict". Prosecutors have ridiculed the claim, and Deborah Radisch, who conducted Kathleen's autopsy, says it was unlikely that an owl or any other bird could have made wounds as deep as those on her scalp. However, Radisch's opinion was challenged by other experts in three separate affidavits filed in 2010.

Despite interest in this theory among some outside advocates, no motion for a new trial was filed on this point in 2009. On March 2, 2017 (following his Alford plea), Peterson's attorney filed a motion to allow him to pay for a bird expert at the Smithsonian Institution to examine feather fragments found in Kathleen's hair to determine if she was attacked by a raptor.

Retrial hearing

In August 2010, following a series of newspaper articles critical of the SBI, North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper led an investigation which resulted in the suspension of SBI analyst Duane Deaver, one of the principal witnesses against Peterson, after the report found his work among the worst done on scores of flawed criminal cases. Pollard subsequently filed affidavits to support a motion that Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson order the state Medical Examiner's Office to turn over all documentation related to Kathleen's autopsy to Peterson's attorneys. However, Judge Hudson barred Pollard from filing further motions on behalf of Peterson because he did not represent him. A new motion was filed in August 2010 by David Rudolf, one of Peterson's original attorneys, who acted pro bono in proceedings challenging the SBI testimony.

Deaver was fired from the SBI in January 2011, after an independent audit of the agency found he had falsely represented evidence in 34 cases, including withholding negative results in the case of Greg Taylor, a North Carolina man who spent seventeen years in prison on a murder conviction based on Deaver's testimony. A bloodstain-analysis team that Deaver had trained was suspended and disbanded. In the 2003 Peterson trial, Deaver testified that he had been mentored by SBI bloodstain specialist David Spittle, had worked 500 bloodstain cases, written 200 reports, and testified in 60 cases. During the retrial hearing, SBI Assistant Director Eric Hooks testified that Deaver had written only 47 reports. Spittle testified that he could not recall mentoring Deaver who, since completing a two-day training course in the 1980s, had testified in only four cases, the Peterson case being the third. The SBI cited the bloodstain analysis given in the fourth case as the reason for firing Deaver.

On December 16, 2011, Peterson was released from the Durham County jail on $300,000 bail and placed under house arrest with a tracking anklet. His release on bond followed a judicial order for a new trial after Judge Hudson found that Deaver had given "materially misleading" and "deliberately false" testimony about bloodstain evidence, and had exaggerated his training, experience, and expertise. Former North Carolina Attorney General Rufus Edmisten said that any evidence gathered after Deaver arrived at the scene might be deemed inadmissible in a new trial. In July 2014, Peterson's bond restrictions were eased.

In October 2014, the court appointed Mike Klinkosum to represent Peterson, replacing David Rudolf, who had been working pro bono on the case since Peterson's conviction was overturned. Rudolf had stated that he could no longer afford to represent Peterson without being paid. On November 14, 2016, Peterson's request for the second trial to be dismissed was refused, and a new trial was scheduled to begin on May 8, 2017. However, a news report on February 7, 2017, indicated that a resolution had been negotiated by Rudolf (once again representing Peterson) and the Durham County District Attorney.

Alford plea

On February 24, 2017, Peterson entered an Alford plea (a guilty plea entered because sufficient evidence exists to convict him of the offense, but the defendant asserts innocence) to the voluntary manslaughter of Kathleen. The judge sentenced him to a maximum of 86 months in prison, with credit for time previously served. Because Peterson had already served more time than the sentence (98.5 months), he did not face additional prison time.

Media

Films about the case

The court case generated widespread interest in part because of a televised documentary series variously named Soupçons (Suspicions), Death on the Staircase, and The Staircase, which detailed Peterson's legal and personal troubles. Eight 45-minute episodes of the documentary were assembled from more than 600 hours of footage. It was directed by French filmmaker Jean-Xavier de Lestrade and released by Maha Productions in October 2004. The documentary offers an intimate depiction of defense preparations for the trial. It also examines the role and behavior of the press as it covered aspects of the case. The filmmakers started their project within weeks of Kathleen's death and Peterson's murder indictment; jury selection took place in May 2003 with the case itself going to trial in July 2003.

Following the guilty verdict, de Lestrade interviewed the jurors to find out why they reached their verdict. By and large, the jurors were swayed by the amount of blood Kathleen lost and the number of lacerations, which indicated to them it could not have been an accident. Henry Lee, however, had testified at the trial that the amount of blood was irrelevant, as the blood spatter indicated most of it was coughed up rather than from the wounds themselves. He also suggested some of the blood could have been diluted with urine. Lee had also duplicated blood spatter from coughing for the jury by drinking ketchup and spitting it out.

In November 2012, de Lestrade released a sequel, The Staircase 2: The Last Chance, which premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. The film documents Peterson's family and his legal team's arguments in seeking a retrial, in which they succeed.

Television productions about the case

The Staircase, a French miniseries which got new episodes through Netflix

"A Novel Idea" Forensic Files

"Debut" Cold Case

"Written in Blood" The New Detectives

"Blood on the Staircase" American Justice

"Murder, He Wrote" Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justice

"Staircase Killer" True Crime with Aphrodite Jones

"Stairway to Hell" The Devil You Know

"Reversal of Fortune" Dateline NBC

"Death on the Staircase" Storyville

"The Staircase II: The Last Chance" Storyville

"Down the Back Staircase" Dateline NBC

Trial and Error Season One - Loosely based

Radio productions about the case

Criminal: "Animal Instincts"

The Generation Why Podcast: "The Staircase"

BBC Radio 5 Live: "Beyond Reasonable Doubt?"

My Favorite Murder "The 100th Episode"

Literary output

Novels written by Peterson

The Immortal Dragon (New American Library, 1983) – historical fiction LCCN 2009-665719

A Time of War (Pocket Books, 1990) – Vietnam War fiction LCCN 89-49197

A Bitter Peace (Pocket Books, 1995) – Vietnam War fiction LCCN 94-37559

Charlie Two Shoes and the Marines of Love Company, Peterson and David Perlmutt (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1998) – biography LCCN 98-30090

Operation Broken Reed, with Lt. Col. Arthur L. Boyd (Da Capo Press, 2007) – Korean War autobiography

Views of Civil Rights Activist Fred Phelps

 

Fred Waldron Phelps Sr. (November 13, 1929 – March 19, 2014) was an American minister and civil rights attorney who served as pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church and became known for his extreme views against homosexuality and protests near the funerals of gay people, military veterans, and disaster victims who he believed were killed as a result of God punishing the U.S. for having "bankrupt values" and tolerating homosexuality.

The Westboro Baptist Church, a Topeka, Kansas-based independent fundamentalist ministry that Phelps founded in 1955, has been called "arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America". Its signature slogan, "God Hates Fags", remains the name of the group's principal website.

In addition to funerals, Phelps and his followers—mostly his own immediate family members—picketed gay pride gatherings, high-profile political events, university commencement ceremonies, live performances of The Laramie Project, and functions sponsored by mainstream Christian groups with which he had no affiliation, arguing it was their sacred duty to warn others of God's anger. He continued doing so in the face of numerous legal challenges—some of which reached the U.S. Supreme Court—and near-universal opposition and contempt from other religious groups and the general public. Laws enacted at both the federal and state levels for the specific purpose of curtailing his disruptive activities were limited in their effectiveness due to the Constitutional protections afforded to Phelps under the First Amendment. Gay rights supporters denounced him as a producer of anti-gay propaganda and violence-inspiring hate speech, and even Christians from fundamentalist denominations distanced themselves from him.

Although Phelps died in 2014, the Westboro Baptist Church remains in operation. It continues to conduct regular demonstrations outside movie theaters, universities, government buildings, and other facilities in Topeka and elsewhere, and is still characterized as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Early life and education

Fred Waldron Phelps Sr. was born on November 13, 1929, in Meridian, Mississippi, the elder of two children of Catherine Idalette (née Johnston) and Fred Wade Phelps. His father was a railroad policeman for the Columbus and Greenville Railway and a devout Methodist; his mother was a homemaker. In 1935, Catherine Phelps died of esophageal cancer at the age of 28. Her aunt, Irene Jordan, helped care for Fred and his younger sister Martha Jean until December 1944, when the elder Phelps married Olive Briggs, a 39-year-old divorcee.

Fred distinguished himself scholastically and was an Eagle Scout. He also was a member of Phi Kappa, a high school social fraternity, president of the Young Peoples Department of Central United Methodist Church and was honored as the best drilled member of the Mississippi Junior State Guard, a unit similar to the Reserve Officer Training Corps. He graduated high school at 16 years old, ranking sixth in his graduating class of 213 students, and was the class orator at his commencement. After graduating from high school he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point; but after attending a tent revival meeting, decided to pursue a religious calling instead.

In September 1947, at the age of 17, he was ordained a Southern Baptist minister and moved to Cleveland, Tennessee, to attend Bob Jones College (now Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina). A combination of Phelps' failure to retain the West Point appointment (which his father had worked hard to obtain), his abandonment of his father's beloved Methodist faith, and his father's remarriage to a divorcee (Phelps would later become an outspoken critic of divorcees) precipitated a lifelong estrangement from his father and stepmother—and by some accounts, from his sister as well. Phelps apparently never spoke to his family members again, and returned all of their letters, birthday cards, and Christmas gifts for his children, unopened.

Phelps dropped out of Bob Jones College in 1948. He moved to California and became a street preacher while attending John Muir College in Pasadena. The June 11, 1951 issue of Time magazine included a story on Phelps, who lectured fellow students about "sins committed on campus by students and teachers", including "promiscuous petting, evil language, profanity, cheating, teachers' filthy jokes in classrooms, and pandering to the lusts of the flesh." When the college ordered him to stop, citing a California law that forbade the teaching of religion on any public school campus, he moved his sermons across the street. In October 1951, Phelps met Margie Marie Simms and married her in May 1952.

In 1954, Phelps, his pregnant wife, and their newborn son moved to Topeka, Kansas, where he was hired by the East Side Baptist Church as an associate pastor. The following year, the church's leadership opened Westboro Baptist Church on the other side of town, and Phelps became its pastor.

Although the new church was ostensibly Independent Baptist, Phelps preached a doctrine very similar to that of the Primitive Baptists, who believe in scriptural literalism — that Christian biblical scripture is literally true — and that only a predetermined number of people selected for redemption before the world was created will be saved on Judgment Day. His vitriolic preaching alienated church leaders and most of the original congregation, who either returned to East Side Baptist or joined other congregations, leaving him with a small following consisting almost entirely of his own relatives and close friends.

Phelps was forced to support himself selling vacuum cleaners, baby strollers, and insurance; later, some of his 13 children were reportedly compelled to sell candy door-to-door for several hours each day. In 1972, two companies sued Westboro Baptist for failing to pay for the candy being peddled by the children.

Legal career

Civil rights cases

Early civil rights career

Phelps earned a law degree from Washburn University in 1964, and founded the Phelps Chartered law firm. However, in 1969, upon a finding of professional misconduct, authorities suspended him from practicing as a lawyer for two years.

Phelps' first notable cases were related to civil rights, and his involvement in civil rights cases in and around Kansas gained him praise from local African-American leaders.

"I systematically brought down the Jim Crow laws of this town", he claimed. Phelps' daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper was quoted as saying, "We took on the Jim Crow establishment, and Kansas did not take that sitting down. They used to shoot our car windows out, screaming we were nigger lovers." She added that the Phelps law firm made up one-third of the state's federal docket of civil rights cases.

Phelps took cases on behalf of African-American clients alleging racial discrimination by school systems, and a predominantly black American Legion post which had been raided by police, alleging racially based police abuse. Phelps' law firm obtained settlements for some clients,

Johnson vs. Topeka Board of Education, et. al.

Phelps' national notoriety first came from a 1973 lawsuit (settled in 1978) on behalf of a 10-year-old African-American plaintiff, Evelyn Renee Johnson (some sources say Evelyn Rene Johnson), against the Topeka Board of Education (which had, in 1954, famously lost the pivotal racial discrimination case of Brown vs. Board of Education, ending legal racial segregation in U.S. public schools), and against related local, state and federal officials. In the 1973 case, Phelps argued that the Topeka Board of Education, in violation of the 1954 ruling, had not yet made its schools equal, and by attending Topeka's east-side, predominantly minority schools, the black plaintiff had received an inferior education.

Initially, Phelps attempted to file the case as a class action, in the U.S. District Court for Kansas. Asking the court to order an end to the alleged discrimination and suggesting that busing might be at least one remedy, Phelps also sought $100 million in actual damages, plus another $100 million in punitive damages -- or, alternatively, $20,000 for each of the 10,000 students he claimed were in the aggrieved class of victims. Nevertheless, the federal district and appellate courts denied the class action filing, limiting the case to Phelp's initial plaintiff, Evelyn Johnson, alone.

The case fueled a national debate about racial integration of schools, and prompted the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, by 1974, to order the Topeka board to develop corrective remedies.

While Topeka's school board essentially offered no contest to the charges, it did not confess to them, either. However, it claimed to settle the matter on the guidance of the Board's insurance provider, for $19,500, ($12,400 of which went to Phelps). While the settlement drew some praise, some controversy arose when the judge, at the request of the school board's insurance company, which paid the settlement -- with the apparent acceptance of the plaintiff and her attorney, Phelps -- ordered the settlement amount kept secret (though it leaked out to the media, anyway). Phelps claimed he would file more such cases, as class actions, though the insurance company stated it would not pay for any more of them.

Later civil rights career

In 1986, Phelps sued President Ronald Reagan over Reagan's appointment of a U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, alleging this violated separation of church and state. The case was dismissed by the U.S. district court.

Phelps' law firm, staffed by himself and family members, also represented non-white Kansans in discrimination actions against Kansas City Power and Light, Southwestern Bell, and the Topeka City Attorney, and represented two female professors alleging discrimination at Kansas universities.

A defeat in his civil rights suit against the City of Wichita and others, on behalf of Jesse O. Rice (the fired Executive Director of the Wichita Civil Rights Equal Employment Opportunity Commission), among other causes, would lead to further legal actions ending in Phelps' disbarment and censure.

In the 1980s, Phelps received awards from the Greater Kansas City Chapter of Blacks in Government and the Bonner Springs branch of the NAACP, for his work on behalf of black clients.

However, in 1994, a self-published book by Jon Michael Bell averred that, although Phelps worked on behalf of many black clients, he reportedly expressed racist views. One of his sons, Nate, stated that Phelps largely took civil rights cases for money rather than principle. Nate said that his father "held racist attitudes" and he would use slurs against black clients: "They would come into his office and after they left, he would talk about how stupid they were and call them dumb niggers." His sister, Shirley, denies Nate Phelps' account and claims he never used racist language.

Disbarment

A formal complaint was filed against Phelps on November 8, 1977, by the Kansas State Board of Law Examiners, due to his conduct during a lawsuit, against a court reporter named Carolene Brady, who had failed to have a court transcript ready for Phelps on the day he asked for it. Although it did not affect the outcome of the case, Phelps sued her for $22,000.

In the ensuing trial, Phelps called Brady to the stand, declared her a hostile witness, and then cross-examined her for nearly a week, during which he accused her of being a "slut", tried to introduce testimony from former boyfriends whom Phelps wanted to subpoena, and accused her of a variety of perverse sexual acts, ultimately reducing her to tears on the stand.

Phelps lost the case. According to the Kansas Supreme Court:

The trial became an exhibition of a personal vendetta by Phelps against Carolene Brady. His examination was replete with repetition, badgering, innuendo, belligerence, irrelevant and immaterial matter, evidencing only a desire to hurt and destroy the defendant. The jury verdict didn't stop the onslaught of Phelps. He was not satisfied with the hurt, pain, and damage he had visited on Carolene Brady.

In an appeal, Phelps prepared affidavits swearing to the court that he had eight witnesses whose testimony would convince the court to rule in his favor. Brady obtained sworn, signed affidavits from those eight people in question, all of whom said that Phelps had never contacted them and that they had no reason to testify against Brady.

Phelps was found to have made "false statements in violation of DR 7–102(A)(5)". On July 20, 1979, Phelps was permanently disbarred from practicing law in the state of Kansas, although he continued to practice in federal courts.

In 1985, nine Federal judges filed a disciplinary complaint against Phelps and five of his children, alleging false accusations against the judges. In 1989, the complaint was settled; Phelps agreed to stop practicing law in Federal court permanently, and two of his children were suspended for a period of six months and one year, respectively.

Family life

Phelps married Margie M. Simms in May 1952, a year after the couple met at the Arizona Bible Institute. They had 13 children, 54 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren.

Nathan Phelps, Fred Phelps' estranged son, claims that the elder Phelps was an abusive father, that he (Nate) never had a relationship with him when he was growing up, and that the Westboro Baptist Church is an organization for his father to "vent his rage and anger." He alleges that, in addition to hurting others, his father used to physically abuse his wife and children by beating them with his fists and with the handle of a mattock to the point of bleeding. Phelps' brother, Mark, has supported and repeated Nathan's claims of physical abuse by their father. Since 2004, over 20 members of the church, mostly family members, have left the church and his family.

Religious beliefs

Phelps described himself as an Old School Baptist, and stated that he held to all five points of Calvinism. Phelps particularly highlighted John Calvin's doctrine of unconditional election, the belief that God has elected certain people for salvation before birth, and limited atonement, the belief that Christ only died for the elect, and condemns those who believe otherwise. Despite claiming to be an Old School Baptist, he was ordained by a Southern Baptist church, and was rejected and generally condemned by Old School (or Primitive) Baptists.

Phelps viewed Arminianism (particularly the views of the Methodist theologian William Elbert Munsey) as a "worse blasphemy and heresy than that heard in all filthy Saturday night fag bars in the aggregate in the world".

In addition to John Calvin, Phelps admired Martin Luther and Bob Jones Sr., and approvingly quoted a statement by Jones that "what this country needs is 50 Jonathan Edwardses turned loose in it." Phelps particularly held to equal ultimacy, believing that "God Almighty makes some willing and he leads others into sin", a view he said is Calvinist. However, many theologians would identify him as a Hyper-Calvinist ("hyper" meaning "beyond" or "above" not "extreme").

Phelps opposed such common Baptist practices as Sunday school meetings, Bible colleges and seminaries, and multi-denominational crusades. Although he attended Bob Jones University, and worked with Billy Graham in his Los Angeles Crusade before Graham changed his views on a literal Hell and salvation, Phelps considered Graham the greatest false prophet since Balaam. He also condemned large church leaders, such as Robert Schuller and Jerry Falwell, as well as all Catholics.

Church protest activities

All of Phelps' demonstrations and other activities during the last 50 years of his life were conducted in conjunction with the congregation of Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), an American unaffiliated Baptist church known for its extreme ideologies, especially those against gay people. The church is widely described as a hate group and is monitored as such by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center. It was headed by Phelps until his later years when he took a reduced role in the activities of the church and his family. In March 2014, church representatives said that the church had not had a defined leader in "a very long time," and church members consist primarily of his large family; in 2011, the church stated that it had about 40 members. The church is headquartered in a residential neighborhood on the west side of Topeka about three miles (5 km) west of the Kansas State Capitol. Its first public service was held on the afternoon of November 27, 1955.

The church has been involved in actions against gay people since at least 1991, when it sought a crackdown on homosexual activity at Gage Park six blocks northwest of the church. In 2001, Phelps estimated that the WBC had held 40 pickets a week for the previous 10 years. In addition to conducting anti-gay protests at military funerals, the organization pickets other celebrity funerals and public events that are likely to gain media attention. Protests have also been held against Jews, and some protests have included WBC members stomping on the American flag.

Lawsuit against Westboro Baptist Church

On March 10, 2006, WBC picketed the funeral of Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder, who died in combat in Iraq on March 3, 2006. The Snyder family sued Fred Phelps for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

On October 31, 2007, WBC, Fred Phelps and his two daughters, Shirley Phelps-Roper and Rebekah Phelps-Davis, were found liable for invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. A federal jury awarded Snyder's father $2.9 million in compensatory damages, then later added a decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for invasion of privacy and an additional $2 million for causing emotional distress (a total of $10.9 million).

The lawsuit named Albert Snyder, father of Matthew Snyder, as the plaintiff and Fred W. Phelps, Sr.; Westboro Baptist Church, Inc.; Rebekah Phelps-Davis; and Shirley Phelps-Roper as defendants, alleging that they were responsible for publishing defamatory information about the Snyder family on the Internet, including statements that Albert and his wife had "raised [Matthew] for the devil" and taught him "to defy his Creator, to divorce, and to commit adultery". Other statements denounced them for raising their son Catholic. Snyder further complained the defendants had intruded upon and staged protests at his son's funeral. The claims of invasion of privacy and defamation arising from comments posted about Snyder on the Westboro website were dismissed on First Amendment grounds, but the case proceeded to trial on the remaining three counts.

Albert Snyder, the father of LCpl Matthew A. Snyder, testified:

They turned this funeral into a media circus and they wanted to hurt my family. They wanted their message heard and they didn't care who they stepped over. My son should have been buried with dignity, not with a bunch of clowns outside.

In his instructions to the jury, U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett stated that the First Amendment protection of free speech has limits, including vulgar, offensive and shocking statements, and that the jury must decide "whether the defendant's actions would be highly offensive to a reasonable person, whether they were extreme and outrageous and whether these actions were so offensive and shocking as to not be entitled to First Amendment protection". (Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, a case in which certain personal slurs and obscene utterances by an individual were found unworthy of First Amendment protection, due to the potential for violence resulting from their utterance). WBC sought a mistrial based on alleged prejudicial statements made by the judge and violations of the gag order by the plaintiff's attorney. An appeal was also sought by the WBC. On February 4, 2008, Bennett upheld the ruling but reduced the punitive damages from $8 million to $2.1 million. The total judgment then stood at $5 million. Court liens were ordered on church buildings and Phelps' law office in an attempt to ensure that the damages were paid.

An appeal by WBC was heard on September 24, 2009. The federal appeals court ruled in favor of Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church, stating that their picket near the funeral of LCpl Matthew A. Snyder is protected speech and did not violate the privacy of the service member's family, reversing the lower court's $5 million judgment. On March 30, 2010, the federal appeals court ordered Albert Snyder to pay the court costs for the Westboro Baptist Church, an amount totaling $16,510. Political commentator Bill O'Reilly agreed on March 30 to cover the costs, pending appeal.

A writ of certiorari was granted on an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the oral argument for the case took place on October 6, 2010. Margie Phelps, one of Fred Phelps' children, represented the Westboro Baptist Church.

The Court ruled in favor of Phelps in an 8–1 decision, holding that the protesters' speech related to a public issue, and was disseminated on a public sidewalk. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, for the majority, "As a nation we have chosen ... to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate." Justice Samuel Alito, the lone dissenter, wrote, "Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case."

Efforts to discourage funeral protests

On May 24, 2006, the United States House and Senate passed the Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act, which President George W. Bush signed five days later. The act bans protests within 300 feet (91 m) of national cemeteries – which numbered 122 when the bill was signed – from an hour before a funeral to an hour after it. Violators face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.

On August 6, 2012, President Obama signed Pub.L. 112–154 (text) (pdf), the Honoring America's Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012 which, among other things, requires a 300-foot (91 m) and 2-hour buffer zone around military funerals.

As of April 2006, nine states had passed laws regarding protests near funeral sites immediately before and after ceremonies:

Illinois

Indiana

Iowa

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maryland

Michigan

Missouri

States that are considering laws are:

Nebraska

Ohio

Oklahoma

South Carolina

South Dakota

Texas

Vermont

Virginia

West Virginia

Wisconsin

Florida increased the penalty for disturbing military funerals, amending a previous ban on the disruption of lawful assembly.

On January 11, 2011, Arizona passed an emergency measure which prohibits protests within 300 feet (91 m) of any funeral services, in response to an announcement by the WBC that it planned to protest at 2011 Tucson shooting victim Christina Green's funeral.

These bans have been contested. Bart McQueary, having protested with Phelps on at least three occasions, filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of Kentucky's funeral protest ban. On September 26, 2006, a district court agreed and entered an injunction prohibiting the ban from being enforced. In the opinion, the judge wrote:

Sections 5(1)(b) and (c) restrict substantially more speech than that which would interfere with a funeral or that which would be so obtrusive that funeral participants could not avoid it. Accordingly, the provisions are not narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest but are instead unconstitutionally overbroad.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in Missouri on behalf of Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church to overturn the ban on the picketing of soldier's funerals. The ACLU of Ohio also filed a similar lawsuit.

In the case of Snyder v. Phelps, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that "distasteful and repugnant" protests surrounding funerals of service members were protected by the First Amendment. But attorneys for the service member's family appealed the decision on the grounds that such speech should not be allowed to inflict emotional distress on private parties exercising their freedom of religion during a funeral service. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case on October 6, 2010 and ruled 8–1 in favor of Phelps in an opinion released on March 2, 2011. The court held that "any distress occasioned by Westboro's picketing turned on the content and viewpoint of the message conveyed, rather than any interference with the funeral itself" and thus could not be restricted.

People targeted by Phelps

Beginning in the early 1990s, Phelps targeted several individuals and groups in the public eye for criticism by the Westboro Baptist Church.

Prominent examples include President Ronald Reagan, Princess Diana, Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, National Football League star Reggie White, Sonny Bono, comedian George Carlin, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, atheists, Muslims, murdered college student Matthew Shepard, children's television host Fred Rogers, Australian actor Heath Ledger, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, political commentator Bill O'Reilly, film critic Roger Ebert, Catholics, Australians, Swedes, the Irish, and US soldiers killed in Iraq. He also targeted the Joseph Estabrook Elementary School in Lexington, Massachusetts, center of the David Parker controversy.

In 2006, they planned a protest at the funeral for the five girls murdered during the West Nickel Mines School shooting in Pennsylvania, but called it off, opting to spread their messages on a local radio station instead. In 2007 he stated that he would target Jerry Falwell's funeral.

Phelps' daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, has appeared on Fox News Channel, defending the WBC and attacking homosexuality. She and her children have also appeared on the Howard Stern radio show attempting to promote their agenda and church. Phelps' followers have repeatedly protested the University of Kansas School of Law's graduation ceremonies.

In August 2007, in the wake of the Minneapolis I-35W bridge collapse, Phelps and his congregation stated that they would protest at the funerals of the victims. In a statement, the church said that Minneapolis is the "land of the Sodomite damned".

Political activities

Anti-gay

In the movie Hatemongers, members of the Westboro Baptist Church state their children were being "accosted" by homosexuals in Gage Park, about 1⁄2 mile (800 m) from the Phelps' home (and a mile (1.6 km) northwest of the Westboro Church). Shirley Phelps-Roper says that, in the late 1980s, Fred Phelps claimed to have witnessed a homosexual attempting to lure her then five-year-old son Joshua into some shrubbery. After several complaints to the local government about the large amount of homosexual sex occurring in the park, with no resulting action, the Phelpses put up signs warning of homosexual activity. This resulted in much negative attention for the family. When the Phelpses called on local churches to speak against the activity in Gage Park, the churches also lashed out against the Phelps family, leading to the family protesting homosexuality on a regular basis.

In 2005, Phelps and his family, along with several other local congregations, held a signature drive to bring about a vote to repeal two city ordinances that added sexual orientation to a definition of hate crimes and banned the city itself from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. Enough signatures were collected to bring the measure to a vote. Topeka voters defeated the repeal measure on March 1, 2005, by a 53–47% margin. In the same election, Phelps' granddaughter Jael was an unsuccessful candidate for the Topeka City Council, seeking to replace Tiffany Muller, the first openly gay member of the Council.

Electoral politics

Phelps ran in Kansas Democratic Party primaries five times, but never won. These included races for governor in 1990, 1994, and 1998, receiving about 15 percent of the vote in 1998. In the 1992 Democratic Party primary for U.S. Senate, Phelps received 31 percent of the vote. Phelps ran for mayor of Topeka in 1993 and 1997.

Phelps supported Al Gore in the 1988 Democratic Party presidential primary election. In his 1984 Senate race, Gore had opposed a "gay bill of rights" and stated that homosexuality was not something that "society should affirm", a position Gore had publicly changed by 2000 as his official position. Phelps stated that he supported Gore because of these earlier comments.

In 1996 Phelps opposed Clinton's (and Gore's) re-election because of the administration's support for gay rights; the Westboro congregation picketed a 1997 inaugural ball.

Saddam Hussein

In 1997, Phelps wrote a letter to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, praising his regime for being "the only Muslim state that allows the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to be freely and openly preached on the streets".

Arrests and traveling restrictions

United States

In 1994, Phelps was convicted of disorderly conduct for verbal harassment, and received two suspended 30-day jail sentences.

Phelps' 1995 conviction for assault and battery carried a five-year prison sentence, with a mandatory 18 months to be served before he became eligible for parole. Phelps fought to be allowed to remain free until his appeals process went through. Days away from being arrested and sent to prison, a judge ruled that Phelps had been denied a speedy trial and that he was not required to serve any time.

United Kingdom

On February 18, 2009, two days before the Westboro Baptist Church's first UK picket, the United Kingdom Home Office announced that Fred Phelps and Shirley Phelps-Roper would be refused entry and that "other church members could also be flagged and stopped if they tried to enter Britain". In May 2009, he and his daughter Shirley were placed on the Home Office's "name and shame" list of people barred from entering the UK for "fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence".

In the media

In 1993, Phelps appeared on a first-season episode of the talk show Ricki Lake, alleging that homosexuals and "anyone who carries the AIDS virus" deserved to die. When Phelps and his son-in-law Charles Hockenbarger (married to Phelps’ daughter Rachel) became increasingly belligerent, Lake ordered the Phelps family to leave the studio. During a commercial break, the two were forced off the set and escorted out of the building by security. After Phelps died, Lake tweeted that when he had been on the show, he had told her that she worshipped her own rectum — a remark that led her to take action off-stage to have Phelps removed from the set.

The Phelps family was the subject of the 2007 TV program The Most Hated Family in America, presented on the BBC by Louis Theroux. Four years after his original documentary, Theroux produced a follow-up program America's Most Hated Family in Crisis, which was prompted by news of family members leaving the church. Phelps' son Nate has broken ranks with the family and in an interview with Peter W. Klein on the Canadian program The Standard, he characterized his father as abusive and warned the Phelps family could turn violent. Writing in response to Phelps' death in 2014, Theroux described Phelps as "an angry bigot who thrived on conflict", and expressed the view that his death would not lead to any "huge changes" in the church, as he saw it as operating with the dynamics of a large family rather than a cult. Theroux returned for a third documentary in 2019, titled Surviving America's Most Hated Family.

Kevin Smith produced a horror film titled Red State featuring a religious fundamentalist villain inspired by Phelps.

Phelps appeared in A Union in Wait, a 2001 Sundance Channel documentary film about same-sex marriage, directed by Ryan Butler after Phelps picketed Wake Forest Baptist Church at Wake Forest University over a proposed same-sex union ceremony.

Excommunication and death

Fred Phelps preached his final Sunday sermon on September 1, 2013. Five weeks later, sermons resumed from various members.

On March 15, 2014, Nathan Phelps, Phelps' estranged son, reported that Phelps was in very poor health and was receiving hospice care. He said that Phelps had been excommunicated from the church in August 2013, and then moved into a house where he "basically stopped eating and drinking". His statements were supported by his brother, Mark. Church spokesman Steve Drain declined to answer questions about Phelps' excommunication, and denied that the church had a single leader. The church's official website said that membership status is private and did not confirm or deny the excommunication.

Phelps died of natural causes shortly before midnight on March 19, 2014 at the age of 84. His daughter, Shirley, stated that a funeral for her father would not be held because the church does not "worship the dead". According to Nathan Phelps, Fred Phelps' body was immediately cremated and no information about the disposition of his ashes has been released.

Phelps had been reportedly suffering from some form of dementia in his final year, and started behaving very irrationally. This led to church members believing that God had condemned him. It has been claimed that Phelps "had a softening of heart at the end of his life," according to accounts published in a memoir written by Phelps' granddaughter Megan Phelps-Roper, and reporting from The New Yorker citing former members of the church. This includes an incident in 2013, in which Phelps is said to have stepped outside the church and called over to members of Planting Peace, a nonprofit that bought a house on the other street and painted it with an LGBT rainbow, saying: "You're good people!" In an interview with NPR, Megan Phelps-Roper said this outburst was "the proximate cause" of Phelps being excommunicated, a claim that the church has denied. According to Phelps' grandson and former church member Zach Phelps-Roper, Phelps' actions were regarded as "rank blasphemy" by the church members.

Electoral history

Democratic primary for Governor of Kansas, 1990

Joan Finney: 81,250 (47.18%)

John Carlin: 79,406 (46.11%)

Fred Phelps: 11,572 (6.72%)

Democratic primary for United States Senate, Kansas 1992

Gloria O'Dell: 111,015 (69.20%)

Fred Phelps: 49,416 (30.80%)

Democratic primary for Governor of Kansas, 1994

Jim Slattery: 84,389 (53.02%)

Joan Wagnon: 42,115 (26.46%)

James Francisco: 16,048 (10.08%)

Leslie Kitchenmaster: 11,253 (7.07%)

Fred Phelps: 5,349 (3.36%)

Democratic primary for Governor of Kansas, 1998

Tom Sawyer: 88,248 (85.28%)

Fred Phelps: 15,233 (14.72%)

The Murder of Artemus Ogletree

 

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, United States of beating and stabbing injuries. His death was preceded by a two-day stay in Room 1046 at the Hotel President in what is now the city's Power & Light District marked by communication with someone named "Don", and unusual behavior and incidents noted by the hotel's staff, before he was found wounded in his room the morning of his death. 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 "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. Later she received two letters purportedly from him, some from as far away as Egypt. In August 1935 a caller claiming to be from Memphis, Tennessee told her that Artemus was in Cairo. The letters had also been sent after Artemus' death. Records kept by shipping companies found no records that Ogletree had gone to Egypt. No other suspect has ever been identified.

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.

In 2012, a historian at the Kansas City Public Library wrote two posts on the library's blog about the case. At the end of the last one he revealed that in 2003 or 2004, he had taken a call from someone out of state related to the case. The caller said that they had been helping to inventory the belongings of a recently deceased elderly person when they found a box with newspaper clippings about the Ogletree case and an item mentioned repeatedly in the stories, but they refused to say what that item was. The Kansas City police continue to investigate.

Biography

Artemus Ogletree was born in Florida in 1915, one of three children. During his childhood an accident with some hot grease left a sizable scar on his head above his ear, which remained hairless afterward. In 1934 he left his family, by then living in Birmingham, Alabama, to hitchhike to California. He kept them updated on his progress by mail; they wired him money.

President Hotel stay

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, with a Los Angeles address. Staff remembered him as dressed well and wearing a dark overcoat; he brought no bags with him.

Ogletree paid for one night. The staff noted that in addition to the visible scar on his temple, he had cauliflower ear, and concluded he was probably a boxer or professional wrestler. They believed him to be in his early 20s.

Randolph Propst, a bellhop, accompanied Ogletree up in the elevator to the 10th floor. On the way, Ogletree told him that he had spent the previous night at the nearby Muehlebach Hotel but found the $5 ($100 in current dollars) nightly rate too high. Propst opened Room 1046, which per the guest's request was on the inside, overlooking the hotel's courtyard rather than the street outside. He watched as Ogletree took a hairbrush, comb and toothpaste from his overcoat pocket, the extent of his unpacking.

After Ogletree put those items above the sink, he and Propst left the room. The bellboy returned to lock it, and gave Ogletree the key. After returning to the lobby, he saw Ogletree leave the hotel. A short time afterward, Mary Soptic, one of the hotel maids, returned from a day off to work the afternoon shift. She went into Room 1046 and was surprised to find Ogletree there, since the previous night a woman had been in the room. She apologized, but he said she could go ahead and clean the room.

While she did, she noticed that he had the shades drawn and left only one dim lamp on. This would remain the case when she encountered Ogletree in the room on other occasions during his stay. "He was either worried about something or afraid" in addition to this preference for low light, she told police later. After she had been cleaning for a few minutes, Ogletree put his overcoat on and brushed his hair. He then left, but asked her to leave the room unlocked as he was expecting some friends in a few minutes.

Soptic did as he asked. At 4 p.m., she returned to the room with freshly laundered towels. Inside, the room was dark. She saw Ogletree lying on the bed, fully dressed. Visible in the light from the hallway was a note on his bedside table that read "Don: I will be back in fifteen minutes. Wait".

January 3

The next morning, Soptic returned to Room 1046 around 10:30. The door was locked, which led her to assume that Ogletree was out since it could only be locked from the outside, but when she opened it with her own key Ogletree was present, sitting in the dark just where he had been the previous afternoon. The phone rang and he answered it. "No, Don, I don't want to eat. I am not hungry. I just had breakfast ... No, I am not hungry", he said.

Still holding the phone, Ogletree asked Soptic about her job as she cleaned. He wanted to know if she was responsible for the entire floor, and if the President was residential. He repeated his complaint about the Muehlebach's exorbitant rates, after which she finished cleaning, and left.

Again at 4 p.m., Soptic returned with fresh towels. Inside Room 1046, she could hear two men talking, so she knocked. A voice she described as loud and deep, probably not Ogletree's, asked who it was. She responded that she had brought fresh towels, to which the voice said "We don't need any". Yet Soptic knew there were no towels in the room, as she had taken them herself in the morning.

Two hours later, Jean Owen of Lee's Summit, near Kansas City, checked into the President after having shopped in the city for a few hours. Feeling sick, she had decided not to drive back home that night. She was given Room 1048; her boyfriend, who worked in a flower shop in the city, came to visit her there at 9:20 p.m. and stayed for two hours. Later that night, she told police, she heard men and women talking loudly and profanely all over the floor.

Owen was not the only person to note unusual late night activity on the President's 10th floor. Elevator operator Charles Blocher, who began his shift at midnight, reported later that he was fairly busy until 1:30 a.m. After that time, most of the hotel quieted down for the night, except for a loud party in Room 1055.

Blocher recalled one visitor in particular, a woman he had seen at the hotel visiting male guests in their rooms on other occasions and thus believed to be a prostitute, a conclusion shared by other hotel staff who were familiar with her. She came in first sometime during his first three hours; he took her to the 10th floor where she asked about Room 1026. Five minutes later, the elevator was summoned there again; it turned out to be the same woman, who expressed puzzlement that her client was not in Room 1046 since, she said, he had called her and on previous visits with him he had always been present. She wondered if, in fact, he was in Room 1024 since she could see through the room's transom window that the light was on in there. She remained on the floor after the conversation.

A half-hour later, Blocher got another signal to take the elevator back to the 10th floor. The woman was waiting again and he took her down to the lobby. An hour later he took her, and a different man, to the 9th floor. At 4:15 a.m., a call from that floor turned out to be the woman; he took her to the lobby and she left the hotel for the night. Another call to the 9th floor 15 minutes later turned out to be the man who had come up with her. He told Blocher he could not sleep and was going out for a walk.

Possible encounter outside hotel

Whether these activities are related to the Ogletree case has not been established. He may not have been at the hotel earlier that night. At 11 p.m. Robert Lane, a city worker driving on 13th Street near Lydia Avenue, saw a man dressed in only an undershirt, pants and shoes run into his path and flag him down. When Lane stopped, the man apologized, saying he had taken Lane's car for a taxi.

The man asked Lane if he could take him to somewhere he might be able to get a taxi. Lane agreed and let the man in. "You look as if you've been in it bad", he observed; the man swore he would kill someone else tomorrow, presumably in retaliation for whatever had been done to him. In the mirror Lane saw a deep scratch on the man's arm; he also noticed that he was cupping his arm, possibly to catch blood from a more severe wound.

At the nearby intersection of 12th Street and Troost Avenue, where taxi drivers often waited for fares during the overnight hours, Lane stopped and let the man out. The man thanked him, got out, and honked the horn of a taxi parked nearby, drawing the driver from a nearby restaurant, after which Lane drove away.

After Ogletree's death, Lane went to view the body. He saw the same scratch on the arm and went to the police, telling them he believed Ogletree had been the man he picked up.

January 4

At 7 a.m., a new switchboard operator, Della Ferguson, came on shift. She was preparing to make a requested wakeup call to Room 1046 when she noticed a light indicating that the phone there was off the hook.

Propst, who had led Ogletree there two days earlier, was on shift again and drew the assignment. The door to Room 1046 was locked, with a "Do Not Disturb" sign hanging from the doorknob. After several loud knocks, a voice from inside told him to enter; however he could not as the door had been locked. The same voice told him, after another knock, to turn on the lights, but he still could not enter. Finally, Propst just shouted through the door to hang the phone up, and left.

Propst told Ferguson that the guest in Room 1046 was probably drunk and she should wait another hour. At 8:30 a.m., the phone had still not been hung up. Another bellboy, Harold Pike, was sent to the 10th floor. The "Do Not Disturb" sign was still on the door, and it was still locked, but Pike had a key and let himself in. Inside he found Ogletree in the dark, lying on the bed naked, apparently drunk. The light from the hallway showed some dark spots on the bedding, but rather than turn on the room light Pike went to the telephone stand, where he saw the phone had been knocked to the floor. He put it back on the stand, replacing the handset.

Shortly after 10:30 a.m., another operator reported that the phone in Room 1046 was once again off the hook. Again Propst was sent to the room to see what was going on; the "Do Not Disturb" sign remained on the knob. This time he had a key, and after his knocks drew no response, he opened the door and found Ogletree on his knees and elbows two feet (60 cm) away, his head bloodied. Propst turned the light on, put the phone back on the hook, and then noticed blood on the walls of both the main room and bathroom, as well as on the bed itself.

Propst went downstairs immediately for help. He returned with the assistant manager, but when they did they could only open the door six inches (15 cm), as Ogletree had in the interim fallen on the floor. Eventually Ogletree got up and when the two hotel employees were able to enter the room, he went and sat on the edge of the bathtub.[a] The assistant manager called the police; they were joined by Dr. Harold Flanders of Kansas City General Hospital.

Ogletree had been bound with cord around his neck, wrists, and ankles. His neck had further bruising, suggesting someone had been attempting to strangle him. He had been stabbed more than once in the chest above the heart; one of these wounds had punctured his lung. Blows to his head had left him with a skull fracture on the right side. In addition to the blood Propst had seen, there was some additional spatter on the ceiling.

Dr. Flanders cut the cords from Ogletree's wrist and asked him who had done this to him. "Nobody", Ogletree answered. Asked, then, what had caused these injuries, he said he had fallen and hit his head on the bathtub. The doctor asked if he had been trying to kill himself. After saying no, Ogletree lost consciousness and was taken to the hospital. He was completely comatose by the time he arrived and died shortly after midnight on January 5.

Investigation

The Kansas City Police Department (KCPD) began investigating immediately by interviewing Jean Owen, whose identical last name and proximity to the dead man overnight struck them as interesting. They detained her while she told them what she had heard the night before. After her boyfriend came to the police station and corroborated her account, she was released and returned to Lee's Summit.

Cause of death

Doctors performed an autopsy on Ogletree and determined he had died from his wounds. Dr. Flanders had examined not just the body but the bloodstains in the room. Since much of it had dried by the time he had arrived, he estimated the wounds had been inflicted between 4 and 5 a.m. that day, consistent with what Pike had seen and before Propst's first visit.

Detectives searching Room 1046 took note as much of what they did not find as what they did. Consistent with what Propst had observed, there were no clothes in the closets or drawers. The only evidence of anything other than what Ogletree had been wearing was the tag of a necktie, indicating it had been made by a New Jersey company. Also missing from the room were the soap, shampoo, and towels provided by the hotel to every room.

There were no knives, which led to the dismissal of suicide as a cause of Ogletree's death since the stab wounds in his chest could not be accounted for; the cords tying him up also suggested the involvement of others. One of the room's two glasses was found in the sink, missing a piece; the other was on the shelf. Detectives found some other items that might have been evidence: a hairpin, safety pin, unsmoked cigarette, and a full bottle of diluted sulfuric acid. Four fingerprints, small enough that detectives believed they had been a woman's, were found on the room's phone; they could not be matched to Ogletree or to any of the hotel employees who had been known to have entered the room.

The police sought help through the press. Both of the city's evening newspapers carried the story on their front pages the next day. "There is no doubt that someone else is mixed up in this", Detective Johnson told reporters, confirming that the case was considered a homicide.

Identity

It soon became apparent that "Roland T. Owen" was in all likelihood an alias. Officers in Kansas City contacted the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) to notify next of kin, but were informed that they could find no record that anyone under that name was living in the California city at the time. The dead man's fingerprints were sent to what was at the time the Justice Department's Bureau of Investigation (later the FBI) to find a possible match in their collection.

A woman called the Hotel President that night to ask what "Roland T. Owen" looked like. She told the desk that he lived in Clinton, 50 miles (80 km) southeast of Kansas City. On January 6, the Sunday newspapers reported that the man in Room 1046 had died under an assumed name, and tips began coming in. Members of the public went to the local funeral home where he had been laid out, leading Lane to tell police of his encounter with the man. After interviewing Lane, Johnson was not as certain as Lane was that the man had been Ogletree, since none of the hotel staff had reported seeing him leave or return during the night of January 3–4. Police were able to establish one sighting of Ogletree outside the hotel, a report that he had been seen with two women at several "liquor places" on 12th Street.

Wire services began picking up the story, and it ran in newspapers and on radio around the country, with requests to send photographs to Kansas City. More leads on the man's identity came in as a result, and the KCPD had to devote considerable time to corresponding with police all over the country via mail and telegram to follow up on leads. Eventually they were able to eliminate many.

In Kansas City, an early lead proved false when a bloodied towel found at the hotel turned out to have been used to clean up Room 1046 after the police had left. Officers recalled Propst's account that on his way there after he checked in, the man had said that he had left the nearby Muehlebach Hotel after one night due to their high rates, and checked with that hotel's staff. No Roland T. Owen had checked in there, but staff recalled a man of Ogletree's appearance checking in under the name Eugene K. Scott, also giving Los Angeles as his address, and requesting a room on the interior of the building. Again, after investigating, the LAPD reported that there was no one by that name in their city.

The mystery seemed solved when a man identified the body as his cousin, but then when the man's sister came to view the body, she confirmed that the cousin had in fact died five years earlier; the resemblance between the two had been very strong. A week into the investigation, Toni Bernardi, a wrestling promoter from Little Rock, Arkansas, said after viewing the body that the man, identifying himself as Cecil Werner, had approached him around the beginning of December 1934 about wrestling some matches. Bernardi had referred him to another promoter in Omaha, Nebraska, but that promoter did not recognize Ogletree.

Within a few days, two new homicides in the city drew detectives' attention away from the case, even as more were assigned to the homicide squad. Leads were still followed, but less vigorously than they had been in the week after the case, and none of them yielded any significant information. Newspaper coverage likewise dwindled.

Funeral

The case returned to the newspapers on March 3, when the funeral home where the body had been kept announced it would be burying the man in the city's potter's field the next day. That day, the funeral home received a call from a man who asked that the funeral be delayed so they could send the funeral home the money for a grave and service at Memorial Park Cemetery in Kansas City, Kansas, so, the caller said, the dead man would be near his sister. The funeral director warned the caller he would have to tell the police about the call; the caller said he knew and that did not bother him.

The caller was slightly more forthcoming when the funeral director asked why Ogletree had been killed. According to the caller, Ogletree had had an affair with one woman while engaged to marry another. The caller and the two women had apparently arranged the encounter with him at the President in order to exact revenge. "Cheaters usually get what's coming to them!" the caller said, and hung up.

The service was postponed per the anonymous caller's request. On March 23, the funeral home received a delivery envelope, the address carefully lettered using a ruler with $25 ($500 in current dollars) wrapped in newspaper; it was enough to cover the expenses. The sender was unknown.

Two additional envelopes with $5 each were sent to a local florist for an arrangement of 13 American Beauty roses to go with the grave, after a similar call was made to them; both phone calls turned out to have been made from pay phones. Included with this payment was a card, with disguised handwriting, reading "Love Forever – Louise". The funeral was held shortly afterwards. Besides the officiating minister, the only attendees were police detectives, some of whom served as pallbearers. Other detectives, posing as gravediggers, staked out the grave for the next several days, but no one came to visit.

Several days after the funeral, a woman called the Kansas City Journal-Post's newsroom to inform them that their earlier story that the dead man from Room 1046 would be buried in a pauper's grave was incorrect, that he had in fact been given a formal funeral. She said the funeral home and flower shop could verify this. Asked to identify herself, she said "Never mind, I know what I'm talking about", Pressed for what that was, she responded, "He got into a jam", and ended the conversation.

Identification

Images of the dead man continued to be circulated nationwide in the hope of identifying him. One of these finally did, when a friend of Ruby Ogletree in Birmingham, Alabama, showed her an issue of The American Weekly, a Sunday newspaper supplement published by the Hearst Corporation, with an article about the case. The unidentified man looked a great deal like her son Artemus, whom the family had not seen since he left to hitchhike to California in 1934, although he had kept up correspondence with them.

Ruby contacted the KCPD, and was able to provide enough information about the previous pseudonymous corpse, including a description of his head scar, which she explained was the result of a childhood accident in which some hot grease had spilled there. In November, another issue of the supplement carried a story identifying the man as Artemus Ogletree and explaining how his identity had been determined.

While that question had been answered, Ruby's account raised more questions. She had received several letters purportedly from her son after he had been killed. The first, early in 1935, postmarked in Chicago, aroused her suspicions since it was typewritten, and Artemus as far as she knew did not know how to type. It was also written in a highly colloquial style, with much slang, that was not consistent with his previous letters.

In May 1935, another letter purportedly from Artemus said he was going to Europe. It was followed by a special-delivery letter saying that his ship was sailing that day. Both missives were sent from New York.

Three months later, in August, Ruby received a telephone call from Memphis, Tennessee. A man on the other end of the line told her that Artemus had saved his life in a fight. Artemus himself could not call because he was now living in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, where he had married a wealthy woman and was well. He was unable to write, the caller said, because he had lost one of his thumbs in the fight where he had saved the caller.

Ruby talked with the man for a half-hour. She recalled that he had talked wildly and irrationally, but seemed to have firsthand knowledge of Artemus. She gave the police the name the man identified himself by; it has never been made public.

If Artemus had, at some point before his death, gone to Egypt or anywhere else overseas, he had not done so under his own name. No steamship company at the time had any record that he had traveled with them. The consular section at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo was unable to find any evidence he had been there.

Later developments

Information developed through the police's conversations with Ruby Ogletree helped them establish a third hotel in Kansas City, the St. Regis, where Artemus had stayed. There, he had roomed with another man. Whether that had been "Don" could not be established.

In 1937 the New York City police arrested a man named Joseph Martin on a murder charge, after he had killed a man he roomed with and put the body in a trunk to be shipped to Memphis. Among the several aliases he was found to have used was "Donald Kelso". According to a story about the case in The New Yorker, the KCPD had matched samples of his handwriting to that in the letters written to Ruby Ogletree.

No charges were filed against the man for the Ogletree case, and the KCPD kept the case open. The files show that different detectives reviewed the case every few years through the 1950s. Each time they noted that they would keep the case open and follow up, but no new evidence was uncovered. Gradually the case went cold.

In 2003 or 2004, John Horner, a local historian at the Kansas City Public Library, fielded a call from someone out of state who said they had been helping to inventory the belongings of an elderly person who had recently died. Among them was a shoebox which turned out to be filled with newspaper clippings related to the case, as well as, according to them, one item mentioned in the newspaper stories. The caller identified neither themselves nor the item. Horner did not make this public until the conclusion of the second of two posts he made on the library's blog retelling the story in 2012.

Theories

The absence of suspects has not prevented theories about the case from arising. The telephone calls alleging that Ogletree was killed in retaliation for his broken engagement have provided support for that theory. Organized crime has also been considered, since the name "Don" can also be a title for a Mafia boss. Lastly, it has been suggested that "Don", whoever he was, killed Ogletree for some personal reason, either with the help of the "commercial woman" Blocher saw in the hotel late that night or by himself.

Notes

Some accounts conflate these two events, suggesting that Ogletree was sitting on the edge of the bathtub when the room was opened.

In other accounts the first responders are described as the hotel's house doctor and detective.