Urban Legends

URBAN LEGENDS By: Sarah M. Booher

SMB Law

THE MYSTERIOUS MURDER OF ROSE BUSCH

We all have surreal moments as attorneys. It’s unavoidable in this profession. Perhaps my most recent such experience happened in August at a CLE. A non-gambler, I was at Cherokee for the first time. The CLE was put on by a defense firm - and I am as plaintiff’s attorney as they come. We had first gone to a restaurant that was… wait for it… out of food before settling at Gordon Ramsey’s pizza restaurant for our lunch break. But wait, I’m not even to the weird part yet!

As we sat in this mostly-empty upscale cafeteria, a woman with a dog in a stroller parks herself at the table next to us. She starts talking. She could have taught a class on enthusiastic depositions and interviews.

Question: Where you from?

Q: You win big yet?

Q: Oh, you’re attorneys? My husband is an attorney, he’s over there. He’s a… <I wish I could tell you what kind of attorney he was and where they were from, but I was glazing over fast. Unlucky for me, I was the closest to her and my table mates had already tapped out on the conversation.>

Insert musical montage here to demonstrate the passage of time.

Q (honestly, by this point, there’s fewer questions and more statements): You know, my stepfather (I’m pretty sure she said stepfather) is from Knoxville. His mom (mom?)1 was murdered. It’s one of Knoxville’s coldest crimes. <My ears perk up – I always love a good conversation that doesn’t involve the law.> Q: Yeah, her name was Rose Busch. She was a jeweler. At this point, I’m convinced this woman is looney. She has a dog in a stroller in a restaurant in a casino and she’s telling me that a woman with a floral name was murdered in Knoxville years ago and it’s never been solved?!?! And I’ve never heard of it?! Don’t believe it. <Pizza arrives. I speak no more words, because the cheese on that pizza is so cheesy. Seriously, delicious.>

We return to our CLE, but I have to admit, my curiosity got the better of me. And it wasn’t Life Care Plans that had piqued my interest.

My new casino friend might have been crazy, but on this particular topic, she was decidedly lucid. Ms. Rose Busch was a jeweler. She was murdered. She is the lone 1960s cold case on KPD’s website.

As it turns out, Ms. Busch and her husband of 44 years, Harry, lived in Sequoyah Hills. He had a store downtown called Royal Jewelers, eventually bought by Zales, before he opened a pawn shop. The night of November 19, 1968, was cold and dreary. It had been raining. Mr. Busch phoned home to see if Rose needed anything on his way back to their home on what is now Kenesaw Avenue. She didn’t. She was baking a cake. The housekeeper was already gone, and the groundskeeper was about to leave, having politely declined Rose’s usual ride to the bus stop. Before Harry could make it very far, though, he discovered the valve core and stem of one of his car tires had been removed. He had a flat and needed a lift home.

By the time Harry arrived home 45 minutes later, Rose was dead in the hallway. She had been brutally beaten and repeatedly stabbed. News traveled fast – the Busches were very well known in the community between the store, their active involvement in their synagogue, and his membership in the Masons. In the coming days, some clues about Harry’s life and Rose’s death would emerge.

The next morning, a brush crew found a jammed pistol in the grass along Cherokee Boulevard. Evidently the gun jammed on the first shot, grazing Ms. Busch’s hand and forcing the killer to improvise with a steak knife at the scene. Along with the pistol, investigators also recovered a discarded police uniform, bloody white gloves, uniform raincoats, and a broken silencer. Both the weapon and uniform were traced back to Cleveland, Ohio.

It didn’t take long for police to surmise that perhaps the murderer was hired. As it turned out, Mr. Busch had been having an affair for several years with the Knoxville madam, Hazel Davidson. The fortysomething had already been named as the “other woman” in several high-profile Knoxville divorces. A frequent gambler, Ms. Davidson often visited the Busch pawn shop to place bets – and she wasn’t very good. Did she have something to do with it? Did she hire someone to dress as a police officer to entice the very cautious and private Mrs. Busch to turn off her alarm system, open the door, and meet her doom? Did she want Harry all to herself?

It wasn’t a robbery. Nothing was taken.

Eventually Mr. Busch himself was cleared as both a suspect and a potential victim. He passed a polygraph, but he didn’t do himself any favors marrying one of America’s richest women just five months after Mrs. Busch’s death. Some folks have turned their eyes to Detective Bob Chadwell, a high roller whose only unsolved murder was this case, but who also had ties to an Andersonville man found deceased in his trunk in Kentucky.

As the years have faded, so has any evidence that might lead to any definite resolution or justice for Mrs. Busch. Natural disasters, retirement, and old age have taken with them the case files and critical clues necessary to solve this murder. Harry died in Florida in 2002 at the age of 103. Ms. Davidson died in her seventies in Jefferson City.

Even their mid-century home was demolished in 2018, leaving nothing but news stories and guesses as to what really happened that cold fall evening.

1 Evidently not, the couple was childless.