The story behind Heartbreak hotel
Posted: October 12th, 2025, 12:31 am
https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/c ... y-mystery/
Randy Boswell says he has solved the mystery not by looking in Miami, but in El Paso, Texas. Scanning digitized records of old newspapers, he came across the story of a man who was shot and killed in a botched liquor store robbery. A man who once told police his life as a criminal was the story of a person who walks a lonely street. He also wrote those words in an unpublished autobiography. “How many people, in August 1955, in newspapers in the United States were summing up their life as "I walk a lonely street?" says Boswell.
What’s more, 27-year-old Alvin Krolik of Chicago also once confessed to police that he fell into his lonely life of crime because of heartbreak – a failed marriage to a beautiful nightclub musician named Agnes Sampson.
All these details - the lonely street, the heartbreak - came out in newspaper articles about his death. The articles were picked up by a wire service and used in countless newspapers across the American south, including one likely read by Tommy Durden. “There are just too many coincidences,” asserts Boswell, “The timing is right. The type of story is correct, and of course above all, the phrase."
Randy Boswell says he has solved the mystery not by looking in Miami, but in El Paso, Texas. Scanning digitized records of old newspapers, he came across the story of a man who was shot and killed in a botched liquor store robbery. A man who once told police his life as a criminal was the story of a person who walks a lonely street. He also wrote those words in an unpublished autobiography. “How many people, in August 1955, in newspapers in the United States were summing up their life as "I walk a lonely street?" says Boswell.
What’s more, 27-year-old Alvin Krolik of Chicago also once confessed to police that he fell into his lonely life of crime because of heartbreak – a failed marriage to a beautiful nightclub musician named Agnes Sampson.
All these details - the lonely street, the heartbreak - came out in newspaper articles about his death. The articles were picked up by a wire service and used in countless newspapers across the American south, including one likely read by Tommy Durden. “There are just too many coincidences,” asserts Boswell, “The timing is right. The type of story is correct, and of course above all, the phrase."