Time Machine: Murder of passion

(First of two parts. Part 2: 'The trial” next Sunday)

CEDAR RAPIDS - Margaret Bell was cleaning Room 729 at the Roosevelt Hotel on Tuesday, Dec. 14, 1948, when a man came in and asked how much longer she would be. Assuming he was the room's occupant, she replied, 'About ten minutes,” and he left. He returned in five minutes, out of breath from climbing stairs, he said. He waited until she finished and was there when she left the room.

The next morning, shortly after 7 a.m., she entered the room, thinking its occupant had checked out, and found a man's body on the floor, face down in a pool of blood. She ran to the elevator and told the elevator girl to tell the assistant manager or the bell captain to come up.

Bellman Arnold Layer felt for a pulse and finding none returned to the lobby and called hotel officials and the coroner.

Detective Tom Condon, the first policeman on the scene, called for help. Inspector of Detectives Bill Kudrna was assigned the case and police established headquarters in Room 723, several doors from the murder scene. When they were settled in, the hotel sent up lunch. By 2:30, there apparently was little progress in finding out who committed the murder.

What they knew was that the victim was Byron Hattman, 29, an instrument designer in the aircraft armament division of Emerson Electric Co., St. Louis. He was unmarried, a Marine Corps veteran, 6 feet 2 and 180 pounds. He was an athlete who played every position on Emerson's softball team.

Hattman arrived in Cedar Rapids on Monday, Dec. 13, from St. Louis. Collins Radio Co. in Cedar Rapids and Emerson had contracts with the Air Force. Hattman was a contract liaison, conferring with Collins engineers. He had been in Cedar Rapids several times, according to Arthur Collins, company president.

Between 5:15 and 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 14, he left his 1948 Buick convertible in the downtown loop garage that served the Roosevelt. Sometime later he was stabbed to death in his room.

Coroner Robert Brosh determined the immediate cause of death was a stab wound in Hattman's lower left chest, a wound administered with such force that it broke his seventh rib and pierced his heart and liver. Other injuries included several gashes in his head and a badly cut finger, as well as a black eye and bruised lips.

All four walls of the room were spattered with blood, there was blood on the bedspread and floor and a blood-soaked towel in the toilet bowl. The murder weapon was not found.

Hattman's billfold was beside him with no money in it, but his expensive watch still was on his arm. The key to the room was found under the bed near the body, but Hattman's glasses were missing.

Police urged people to be on the lookout for a man with bruises on his face or marks of a fight.

Rumors flew for several days, many centering around Hattman's job. Could it have been a murder for company secrets?

By Friday, the truth was beginning to come out - a story The Gazette had sat on for several days in order not to hinder the police investigation.

Pieces of the puzzle were dropped into the hands of authorities one by one.

First, Bell, the maid, told them about the man in Room 729. When shown a picture of Hattman, she said that wasn't the man she saw. Then Hattman's associates told police that he talked about trouble with a doctor in St. Louis over the doctor's wife.

Mrs. Bee Nichols, credit manager at Handler Motor Co., reported an odd incident with a St. Louis man who had a water pump replaced on his car. Short of cash, he gave several Cedar Rapids references to establish credit. When he called from St. Louis the next day to say he was sending a check, she was suspicious. None of his references were real.

A taxi driver picked up a man from the Roosevelt at about 6 p.m. the night of the murder. The man had a bandage over his right eye.

Gazette police reporter Lou Breuer was the only Cedar Rapids newsman in St. Louis to cover the arrest of pediatrician Dr. Robert Rutledge, 27, on a charge of first-degree murder. Dick Everett, a St. Louis Star-Times reporter who had previously worked at The Gazette also kept in touch with the city desk. As soon as the arrest occurred, the city editor was informed and KCRG broadcast the story when it came on the air at 6 a.m.

Breuer reported from St. Louis: 'I heard Dr. Robert C. Rutledge tell Cedar Rapids and St. Louis police this afternoon that he had been in Byron C. Hattman's room at the Roosevelt Hotel in Cedar Rapids last Tuesday night and that he fought with Hattman there. He denied stabbing Hattman, however. ...

'The doctor was picked up by Cedar Rapids and St. Louis police at his home at 2:20 a.m. today. On the way to the police station he became violently ill and was taken to City Hospital where he remained in a coma until shortly after one o'clock this afternoon.

'He had taken a sleeping potion as police called at his home to question him.

'Awakening from his coma, he said: ‘You shouldn't have brought me around. I would be better off dead. My career is ruined anyhow.'

'Then he began to tell us - the police and me - some of the details of the fatal fight. ‘It was over attentions he (Hattman) had been paying to my wife,' he said.”

A story unfolded about an affair between Rutledge's wife, Sydney, and Hattman.