Fifty years ago this month, one of the most notorious unsolved murders of the Knoxville area was committed. It is a passionate tale of mystery and intrigue which might soon come to a cold, dead halt. The 1920's home, was designed as a utopian getaway for the affluent of Knoxville, by Farrell and Foust before the Great Depression. This historic home is slated to be demolished within the next 30 days, unless it is added to the National Historic Registry. Rose Busch, 68, was the wife of a prominent Knoxville jeweler and Pawn Shop owner named Samuel Harry Busch who resided in this 3,200 square foot home on Kennesaw Ave, previously known as Scenic Drive. It was in this historic home, that Rose Busch was murdered in cold blood.
It was in the upper 30s, a Tuesday, November 19th of 1968 and Thanksgiving was coming the following week. Rose had baked a cake and was icing it in the kitchen. The maid who tended to the property finished up around 4 o'clock and the gardener left about an hour later. Rose had the one-story 3,200sq ft ranch to herself. Harry Busch would later recall speaking with his wife around 5:25 p.m. to let her know he was heading home from downtown. Shortly after the call, Harry was made aware that he had a flat tire. But this was not just any type of flat, the valve stem had been completely removed from the tire, a major to-do. But would now be needing a ride home from a co worker, which would delay Harry's arrival to the ranch. It was during this time, that someone managed to finagle their way into the Sequoyah Hills home. Rose was stabbed 10 times with a paring knife, hit multiple times in the head with a Ruger 22-caliber pistol and was shot at least once, grazing her hand. The killer fled, apparently tossing a police officer's uniform, bloody white gloves, police rain coat, a broken silencer and the Ruger pistol at various spots in the West Knoxville neighborhood. The blade of the paring knife remained in Rose's chest, broken off in her heart. This was clearly a crime of passion. Harry found her on the floor in the hallway near the kitchen dead after being dropped off after work. Let's review a few things, Rose was a Poland native who had immigrated to the United States as a child and typically kept the home locked and secured. They even had ADT in 1968, records were pulled to see that Rose had indeed armed the alarm after the Gardener left. But on this day, someone was able to get inside, perhaps fooling Rose by wearing a police officer's uniform. The killer entered through the carport and, police theorized, which would have startled Rose, who'd been busy in the nearby kitchen with her cake. At least one shot went off from the Ruger 22 pistol. Grazing her hand. This is when investigators believe that the gun must of jammed, and instead became the tool used to fracture her skull. The gun and silencer were said to be of high quality but the thread on section of the barrel where the silencer joined had been fouled up. The attacker then grabbed a paring knife from Rose's kitchen. The killer stabbed Rose again and again until the blade broke off in her chest. Harry Busch, her husband of 44 years, found her lying dead on her back, on the hallway floor when he got home around 6:10 p.m. The blade was still buried in her left breast. The only thing missing appeared to be her wedding ring and a few hundred dollars from Rose's purse. Knoxville Police Department officers were on the scene within 5 minutes of the call, and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation eventually joined the case when the leads went cold. City workers would later find the pistol, the bent silencer, police rain jacket, the policeman's uniform and the bloody gloves as mentioned, along Cherokee Blvd as if tossed from the passenger side of a car. The uniform was an old one from the Cleveland, Ohio, police department. Authorities also traced the gun back to Ohio. It was registered to 5 different owners, and then to a gun show, where the trail fizzled to an end. Knoxville Police scrutinized Mr. Busch. In doing so, they learned interesting information, such as the fact that he'd been having an affair with a notorious Knoxville "Madame" Hazel Davidson. Ms. Davidson ran a house of prostitution that was being operated at 2306 Hoitt Avenue. But Harry passed a polygraph exam with KPD. 50 years ago that device still carried enough weight in a criminal investigation. Today they are no longer used... Davidson claimed she knew nothing about the killing. However, Police theorized that she may in fact have hired someone to kill Rose so she could have Harry to herself. Or perhaps Harry had hired someone for the killing and arranged the alibi of a flat tire to draw attention away from himself. In July 1972, some 3.5 years after the murder of Rose Busch in her Sequoyah Hills home, the body of Oscar "Buck" Hugh Willman, 58, of Andersonville was found stuffed in the trunk of his car in the parking lot of a cheap motel in Lexington, Ky. Willman had ties to carnival game operations and pornography businesses, and he too lived in the Sequoyah Landing section of Anderson County with his wife, Henrietta. In Knoxville, his wife went by "Cindy Ogle," and she was known to run a house of prostitution in the 2300 block of Riverside Drive. She was also good friends with the infamous Knoxville Madame Hazel Davidson. The highly publicized killing of Rose Busch and the less publicized killing of Buck Willman remain unsolved. Some investigators in the Willman case came to suspect that the two crimes are connected. When Lexington Police probed into Willman's death, Knoxville Police Department Detectives Bob Chadwell and Bill Pressley went to the funeral home where Willman's body was taken after the autopsy. They handed over $1,200 in cash from a stack of $100 bills, they paid for expenses already incurred and for a cremation that they ordered, funeral home officials told the News Sentinel in 1972. This would ensure, that no second autopsy could be ordered. Was this also an inside job? Corruption? Maybe Bob and Bill were clients of Hazel and Cindy? Whatever the answer, the odd incident led Lexington investigators to compare fingerprints of Chadwell and Pressley with prints in Willman's car. However they did not match, according to a letter from the Lexington Police Department to Knoxville PD. Chadwell was Knoxville's lead investigator in the 1968 Rose Busch case. And this case was his only unsolved homicide in his career. By the time of Willman's 1972 killing, Davidson was evolving into a flamboyant madame. Her friend "Cindy Ogle" operated in near secrecy, until the Riverside Drive business was made public in news accounts of her husband's killing. Bob Marshall, now retired from the KPD spoke with Hazel in recent years. She told him, "that Buck Willman was killed because he had killed Mrs. Busch and was starting to drink heavy and talk about it, Hazel said his wife was starting to get scared and killed him. She said Cindy hit him twice in the head with a big vase." University of Kentucky tested of flies and maggots on Willman's body and were able to confirm that Willman's death occurred in Tennessee, NOT in Kentucky. The leading theory was that Willman was killed at the Riverside Drive house and driven across the border to be disposed of. Willman, or Cindy Olge as she would rather be called, told Caldwell that her husband left the Riverside Drive house at 11 a.m. July 18, headed to Indiana to run a carnival game. On July 23, his body was found in the trunk of his Studebaker. His shoes were missing, but he was otherwise fully dressed. The autopsy report said that he had probably died within an hour of his last meal, and that he had choked to death on his own vomit, following blows to the head. According to a police report, items reported to be missing from Willman included his eyeglasses, car keys, yellow gold wedding ring with five inset diamonds, antique silver pocket watch, $300 to $400 in cash and a .38-caliber revolver which he always carried. Now, Rose's final resting place is in a plot meant for two off Keith Avenue in the New Jewish Cemetery in Knoxville, Tn. where she rests alone. Her "beloved" Harry moved to Miami soon after, and remarried twice, dying at 103yrs old in 2002. The Mid-century modern house where she was murdered, sits empty awaiting an unsure fate, Lexington Police Department files of the Willman case were destroyed in a flood, Henrietta Willman's (Cindy Ogle) criminal court records have all been expunged, and Hazel, who kept an oil painting of she and her "friend" Harry, has passed away in a Jefferson Co. nursing home, without sharing the story she promised to give. Below in the gallery are screenshots of our LiveEVP session at the Location. If anyone can bring peace to Buck and Rose, please reach out to the Knoxville Crime Hotline at 865-215-7212, or email me at [email protected], with any information that might be pertinent to this case, before it is truly too late. #historicarchaeology #murderforhire #affair #madame #scruffycity #mikethehikingguide #knoxville #coldcasefiles #coldcasedetective #tennessee #unsolvedmysteries
3 Comments
Linda Downey Gardner
11/14/2018 01:00:24 pm
I grew up in West Knoxville on Craig Rd on Westland Dr
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Mike
11/20/2018 07:30:26 pm
It makes you think about the angle of an inside job. It blows my mind that you remember this case, and it makes me smile knowing that Rose is still in people's hearts and minds. Are you familiar with the Seqoyah Hills neighborhood?
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Susie Darling
1/27/2024 08:36:34 pm
I can't believe I stumbled across this article I know it's old but I had to comment..I worked for Hazel Davidson when she lived in Hoytt Ave I think that's how u spell it anyway .it was off Cherry street in Knoxville..I was one of her regular girls between 1986 till she got busted in 1987..She use to get drunk and talk about how the police thought she had done it..She was righting a book before they busted us..I remember we took that book with all the pictures she had placed where she wanted them to be in the book....I'm hoping to hear from someone..I live in Asheville NC now and i still have alot of memories of Hazel Davidson house especially all the famous people that would pop up..I remember when Mr Rose covered glasses him self walked in...
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