Do you know who killed Roger Cartwright in 1998? Roger Cartwright, a 47-year-old Caucasian male from Portland, Oregon, was mortally wounded on the night of August 19, 1998. Close to 11 p.m., he stumbled into the Grove Motel at Northwest 4th Avenue and West Burnside Street, bleeding and in obvious distress. The night clerk dialed 911, and responders rushed the 47-year-old male to a nearby hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries. An autopsy later determined that a knife wound ended his life.
In the hours before his death, witnesses placed the 47-year-old male in the Old Town area, where he was known to drift and to be involved with street-level drug use and sales. Accounts described a tense exchange: he had been seen arguing with an unidentified white man with dark hair at the corner of Northwest 4th and Burnside—an argument that, in retrospect, read like a fuse burning down. When he reached the motel lobby, the chance for explanations was already gone; all that remained was the rush to save him, and then the quiet certainty of the medical examiner’s finding.
In the aftermath, detectives opened a homicide case and worked leads tied to Old Town’s transient networks, hoping the public dispute might yield a name. But no arrest followed, and the man seen arguing with the 47-year-old male has never been publicly identified. Years later, the case remains open: a knife, a brief confrontation on a downtown corner, and a suspect who vanished into the Portland night.
