The Secret Ledger: How a Hotel Key Wrote a Murder's Trail

The Secret Ledger: How a Hotel Key Wrote a Murder's Trail

A cream leather travel case with the monogram E.R. was found wedged behind a painted iron door in a hotel basement - forty-three dollars untouched and a train ticket stub dated January 4. The hotel ledger inexplicably records Room 214 being entered at 11:18 p.m. for a "pipe check, upper floor" under the maintenance supervisor's name; who signed a key out he later claimed he had not? What did the photograph kept for fifteen years reveal?

In this episode, we follow the chain of facts left at the Hargrove Continental Hotel and the people who noticed them. The episode covers Erin Romano's stay and disappearance, the ledger entry that shouldn't have existed, and the clerk who preserved the critical evidence - but what opened the door to the basement where her case was found?

Person: Erin Romano
Date: January 7-9, 1926
Location: Hargrove Continental Hotel, Tulloch Falls, Wyoming
Age: 37
Witness: Amy Hicks, clerk from Wyoming State Attorney's office

- The cream leather traveling case monogrammed E.R. was found in a gas-meter alcove behind a painted iron door in the hotel basement.
- Inside the case were a silk blouse, a comb, a train ticket stub dated January 4, and $43 in an envelope.
- Room 214 showed personal items left in place: hat on the hook, winter coat on the door, and a second pair of shoes beneath the bed.
- The hotel key ledger records an 11:18 p.m. January 7 entry for Room 214 under Walter Pruitt with the note "pipe check, upper floor"; Pruitt had left the hotel around 9:00 p.m. claiming illness and did not sign out a key.
- Amy Hicks photographed the January 7 ledger page during a two-day visit and kept the photograph for fifteen years after writing two memos that prompted no action.

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