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 July 12, 2009, 10:28:58 PM
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Super Member
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But, on learning of the assassination Fruge was shocked & acted appropriately, then! What appropriate actions did Fruge take? I read the article by DiEugenio, and the actions taken by Fruge indicate that he was interested in the drug smuggling aspect of Cherami's story, along with the part of her story connecting Ruby to Oswald, but not to the "predicting" of the assassination. This is because she never mentioned it beforehand.Bill, This is getting very boring. All you are doing is repeating the same lame nonsense, over & over again. " This is because she never mentioned it beforehand." -- Bill Brown Just two posts ago, it was shown to you that on Nov. 20th, 1963 Cheramie told Fruge that she was going to Dallas to kill Kennedy. As has been explained several times, Chermie was also heard by other responsible individuals, hospital staff, doctors & nurses, predicting the 22nd assassination on the 20th. How did Cheramie know this? That's also explained in detail in the materials given in this thread, which you continue to ignore. If Ozzie was a LN, then Cheramie would not have known anything in advance of the 22nd. So, QED, Ozzie was not a LN. Sorry, I know this is disappointing news to you, Bill. And quite a shock, too! I guess your next step will be to produce your same-ol'-same-ol' signature cop out: "That's your opinion, but I have my opinion." rofl Here's some more proof:
Rambling Rose by Chris Mill
The hymn that was played as the body was ushered to its final resting place could hardly have been more apt. With heads bowed, the mourners heard the strains of "Take your Burden to the Lord and Leave it There". As Melba Christine Marcades was eased into the next life, it was to be hoped it would prove more successful than the one she had recently departed. At 2:00 p.m., Monday, 6 September 1965 the world threw its last handful of dirt on one of the most intriguing mysteries surrounding the JFK assassination. It had cost just eighty-five dollars to bury the truth!
Early life
Melba had begun life on 14 October 1923, and had managed to squeeze a great deal of sadness into her 41 years. Her mother still lived in her home town of Houston, Texas. A State Police rap- sheet stretched back to 1941, detailing 28 fences until her untimely but nonetheless predictable demise. All of the early listed offences could be regarded as minor, ranging from vagrancy to car theft, and during the war years "aiding soldiers to escape". By 1947, however, she was being reported as criminally insane, and had been arrested on charges of prostitution; this, presumably to feed the drink problem that had also become apparent. Ms Marcades had used many names during her career of petty crime. Between the ages of 18 and 24 she would normally give a name based loosely upon her genuine one - Melba Christine Youngblood, her father being one Thomas J. Youngblood. Notably among her many aliases she never chose to use her mother Minnie's maiden name of Stroud. By 1956 Melba had married and gained the name of Marcades. This appears on her record, along with several invented names, throughout the next four years, until 1960, by which time it appears she was no longer using her husband's name. Her death certificate states that she was a divorcee but does not give the date that her marriage ended. Only once, prior to her death, does the name by which most JFK assassination students know her, show up as Rose Cheramie on the State Police records. Roselie Renee Cheramie was charged on the 21 October 1964 with vagrancy, her behaviour being described as loud and erratic.
Having studied the assassination of JFK for some years, I was familiar with the story - touched upon briefly in several books - that slightly prior to the shooting, a woman had been found apparently thrown from a car and taken to hospital. During her stay, she was said to have made numerous statements to police and doctors to the effect that President Kennedy would be killed during his forthcoming trip to Dallas. I was, initially, reasonably satisfied that as several respected "Warren Commission Critics" had mentioned it in their writings, and the HSCA had apparently investigated these allegations, there could be little here but unsubstantiated turn out. The brief mention given to Cheramie in James Hepburn's "Farewell America" made me reconsider.
Ruby connection?
In what is almost a throwaway line Hepburn says "Ruby dispatched her on 18.11.63 to Miami" as a drags courier.
James Hepburn was a pseudonym. Even now the true identity of the writer remains a mystery. The publishing company, "Frontiers Publishing", did not exist either. The book was not released in the USA, and the combination of these factors gave the author license to say whatever he liked without the fear of retribution either through the courts or otherwise. Could it be true that this woman worked for Ruby? What information did she have concerning the assassination and, more importantly, when did she have it?
Accident victim
On the evening of 20 November 1963 Lt. Francis Fruge, of the Louisiana State Police, was on duty patrolling Highway 190, near Eunice, when he came upon a woman who seemed to be the victim of a traffic accident. Although she did not seem badly injured Fruge thought it prudent to take her to The Moosa Hospital in Eunice to be examined. During the journey the woman told Fruge that her name was Rose Cheramie, explaining that she was en-route from Miami to Houston via Dallas, when an argument developed between herself and the two "Latin" type men she was travelling with. This concluded with them abandoning her on the road, after which she was stuck by another vehicle. Cheramie was examined at the hospital and found to be suffering from minor abrasions consistent with being struck by a car. As the Moosa was a private hospital and the patient had "no financial basis", the medical staff informed Fruge that they would discharge her. By now it had become obvious that Cheramie was suffering withdrawal symptoms from narcotics. In fact she was a nine-year, mainlining heroin addict having had her last fix at 2.00 PM that afternoon. Fruge decided, as was usual in these situations, to take her to Eunice Jail to "sober up".
Things did not go quite according to plan. At 10.30 p.m., as Cheramie's condition deteriorated, medical help in the form of Assistant Coroner of St. Landry Parish, Dr. F. J. DeRouen, was summoned. The doctor administered a sedative, although he described the patient as being "coherent" at that time. The medication seemed to have little effect. DeRouen was recalled later that evening when Cheramie became violent, she stripped off her clothing, and began to cut her ankles. The doctor agreed to commit her to Jackson East Louisiana State Hospital for treatment. It fell to Fruge to accompany the patient on the journey of between 1 and 2 hours.
It was during this journey that the police officer began to ask Cheramie a few routine questions. Fruge later stated to the HSCA:
"She related to me that she was coming to Dallas with two men who were Italians, or resembled Italians. They had stopped at this lounge and they'd had a few drinks and had gotten into an argument or something. The manager of the lounge threw her out and she got on the road and hitchhiked to catch a ride. This is when she got hit by a vehicle."
The lounge from which she had been ejected was in fact a brothel called the Silver Slipper. When questioned about her business in Dallas, she replied that she intended to "number one, pick up some money, pick up her baby, and kill Kennedy".
Although Fruge later described Cheramie as "quite lucid" at this time, he understandably chose to ignore this warning as being the ramblings of a dope addict going cold-turkey. Late on the night of 20 November Fruge deposited his charge at the hospital where she was duly admitted. An initial examination indicated that the patient was suffering from heroin withdrawal and clinical shock. This hospital was not a new environment to Rose Cheramie. She had been admitted here in March of 1961 suffering from alcoholism and narcotics addiction.
Arrest
Two days later, when Fruge heard the news of President Kennedy's assassination, he immediately telephoned the hospital and asked them not to release Cheramie until he had spoken with her. Unfortunately the officer had to be patient. Cheramie was apparently not well enough to be questioned on the 22nd and Fruge was told he would have to wait. By Monday, Cheramie had recovered enough to be transferred to a ward and was interviewed by Fruge.
Now the policeman was taking more notice of what Cheramie had to say. The story she told was that as a result of connections made while working for Jack Ruby, she was involved in a drags run. Cheramie and her two companions were to go to Dallas where she believed her two companions would kill the president - she had overheard this in a conversation between the two men - she would then collect $8000 from a person she could not or would not identify, and proceed on to Houston where the trio would purchase 8 kilos of heroin from a seaman who was bringing it in by boat to the port of Galveston. The final part of the plan involved escaping to Mexico. Cheramie furnished the officer with details of not only the names of her companions, but also the name of the ship that was bringing the drugs into Galveston and the name of the hotel in Houston where the transaction would take place.
Armed with this information, Fruge informed his superiors who told him to follow up on it. On Thursday she was released into his custody, and placed under arrest. Now, Fruge set out to verify what he could of her story. Most of what could be investigated checked out. Fruge contacted customs officers at the port of Galveston and not only established that the correct ship was due to dock at the time Cheramie specified, but also the seaman that she had named was indeed on board. The customs officer had trailed the seaman as he left the ship but unfortunately lost him shortly after. Years later Fruge was to state that he believed the customs officer in Galveston was also able to verify the name of the man whom Cheramie had said was holding her son.
Drug deal
According to Cheramie, the drug transaction was due to take place in the Rice Hotel in Houston. Fruge took Cheramie on a flight to verify this, and other aspects of her story. On the return journey she caught sight of a newspaper with headlines that indicated that the police were unable to find a link between Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby. Cheramie laughed out loud, telling the officer that she had worked for Ruby, or "Pinky" as she knew him, in his Dallas nightclub and that Oswald and Ruby "had been shacking up for years... They were bed-mates." Taken literally, this is unlikely to be true. There is neither evidence to suggest a long term relationship between Oswald and his killer, nor a sexual relationship between the two. It is possible, however that Cheramie was simply using colloquial phrases to describe how close she believed the two men to be, or she may simply have been exaggerating the little knowledge she actually did possess.
As much of what the woman had told him checked out, Fruge telephoned the Dallas Police Department and managed to get through to Captain Fritz. Amazingly, Fritz was dismissive of Fruge's information and said that, as the assassin was dead and his assailant in custody, he was "not interested." Due to the lack of enthusiasm he had encountered, Fruge released Cheramie and his own investigation was concluded. Thus ended the first part of the Cheramie story. It was not until four years later that anyone again showed any interest in the ramblings of Ms Roselie Renee Cheramie.
Garrison
On 23 February 1967, Detective Frank Meloche sent a memorandum to Jim Garrison, then District Attorney of New Orleans. Garrison had reopened an investigation into the murder of JFK after becoming disillusioned with the Warren Commission's official version of events. The memorandum was the statement of one Mr. A H Magruder, who explained that, during the Christmas holidays of 1963, he had been on a hunting trip with a Dr. Victor J Weiss. The two men had fallen into conversation at Magruder's home, when Weiss began to relate some curious events that had occurred at the East Louisiana State Hospital around about the time of the assassination.
Weiss allegedly explained that he was one of the doctors who had treated a woman who was brought in as a narcotics addict and who had supposedly been thrown from an automobile. According to Magruder, Weiss then repeated the story the woman had told him, which varied little from that which Cheramie had told Fruge when first interviewed. She included details of her employment by Ruby as a dope runner and the plot to kill the President. This became one of many leads Garrison was to follow. He asked Frank Meloche to investigate further. The detective soon found that the woman Magruder had referred to was Rose Cheramie, and before long he had the name of the state trooper who had taken her to the Hospital.
Now that Garrison had Fruge, and all the information that nobody had wanted four years previously, he needed to find Cheramie. Fruge was detailed to work for Garrison. He met Meloche in Houston, on 6 March 1967, and began to search for Ms Cheramie. They were soon to be disappointed. In Dallas, Meloche found a Mrs. Morris Wall who told him that her sister, Melba Christine Marcares, was dead.
Death
The events surrounding the death of Marcades/Cheramie are almost as intriguing as the statements that she made two years earlier. It seems, at least according to the official version, that Cheramie had a penchant for walking lonely roads at night. In the early morning of 4 September 1965 she was involved in an accident on Highway 155, 1.7 miles east of the town of Big Sandy, Upshur County, Texas and died later that day of head injuries received. What actually happened deserves closer scrutiny.
At approximately 2.30 am that morning, Jerry Don Moore was driving out of Big Sandy towards his home in Tyler. As Moore drew level with a roadside parking area, he noticed three or four suitcases laid along the yellow line in the middle of the road. Naturally he swerved to his right, to avoid them. Suddenly, looking up, he saw the prone figure of a woman lying at ninety degrees to the highway, with her head on the road. Moore braked as hard as he could. "I don't know exactly whether I hit her or not. There was a sound but it could have been a brake shoe hitting on that old car." Neither the car nor its driver were in good shape. Moore admitted that he was "speeding pretty heavy" and had been drinking, while he described his vehicle as having only one headlight and slick (treadless) tires.
Moore managed to stop only after he had passed the woman. He then returned to where she lay to offer help. Rose Cheramie was still alive, although unconscious. As Moore sought the assistance of a group of black men and women who were driving north on the highway, he noticed a red Chevrolet, which he thought to be either a '63 or '64 model parked in the lay-by opposite where the woman lay. He had no recollection of seeing it, or the suitcases, when he passed this area about 15 minutes earlier. There then followed a bizarre series of events as Moore attempted to obtain first aid for the injured woman. First, he asked the occupants of the car that he had stopped to move the cases to prevent further accidents and then he put the unconscious Cheramie into his car and raced off to Big Sandy where he asked for the nearest doctor. He was told that there was a doctor in Hawkins, a nearby town, and once again set off at breakneck speed.
Once in Hawkins Moore found a cop who escorted him to a doctor's house where Cheramie was laid out in the yard. "She was still breathing, but had pretty good brain damage". The doctor gave her a few shots before the ambulance arrived to take the patient to Gladewater Hospital. What happened at the hospital remains a subject of some conjecture. In three places on Melba Marcades death certificate are the letters D.O.A. (dead on arrival), and yet on the very same document we are told that there was a period of nine hours between onset of injury and death. The certificate also states the time of death as 11 am - approximately nine hours after she was admitted. Did the doctors work for all this time on a corpse?
Punctate stellate wound
The cause of death was "Traumatic head wound with subdural & subarachnoid & Petechial Hemorrhage to the brain caused by being struck by auto."
There was an autopsy performed but unfortunately, the hospital is now unable to locate these records. There are three further points which should be mentioned about Rose's death. First, Moore noticed definite tread patterns on the head of the injured woman - the tyres of his vehicle were treadless. There was very little blood to be found on the road where she lay, and none at all on Moore's car. Secondly, the case was investigated at the time by Officer J A Andrews of the Texas Highway Patrol. Andrews tried to establish a connection between the driver and victim but was unable to do so. Due to the unusual nature of the accident he had doubts about the information received. As the relatives of Cheramie did not wish to pursue the case, it was closed.
Finally, it should be noted that Cheramie's hospital records state that in addition to her other injuries, she had suffered a "deep punctate stellate wound above her right forehead." This type of injury, according to medical textbooks, often occurs as the result of a contact gunshot wound. When a gun is fired touching flesh, the resultant gasses, trapped between a layer of skin and the underlying bone, can cause a bursting, tearing effect on the surrounding tissue leaving a star-shaped (punctate stellate meaning star-shaped puncture) wound.
Fruge interviewed Officer Andrews and reported back to Garrison that although the police report on the incident would lead one to believe that Cheramie was involved in an unfortunate accident whilst trying to hitchhike, in his opinion this was not a likely scenario. He found, as well as the aforementioned irregularities, that Highway 155 was a farm-to- market road running parallel to US Highways 271 and 80; these would have offered a much better chance of a ride. In his report to Garrison, Fruge also stated that back in November 1963, when Cheramie had been in police custody, she had volunteered "that she once worked for Jack Ruby as a stripper, which was verified."
As Cheramie herself was no longer available for interrogation, Fruge pursued other avenues of inquiry that had not been followed up in 1963, but as the Garrison investigation gathered momentum, and attracted the unwelcome attention of the media, Fruge's work was almost forgotten. In Clay Shaw, the New Orleans D.A. had found a bigger fish to fry.
The HSCA
The critics, however, had most certainly not forgotten and in many books published in the late sixties and early seventies, there were references to the Cheramie rumour. When the House Select Committee on Assassinations re- investigated the killing of JFK in the late seventies, one of the witnesses they called was Dr Victor Weiss. Weiss was the doctor mentioned in the Magruder statement that had set Garrison on Cheramie's trail. Now Weiss' story was slightly different from the one he allegedly told to Magruder. Weiss, a resident physician at Jackson in 1963, said that on 25 November of that year he was called by a colleague, Dr Bowers, to examine a patient who had been committed a few days previously. Bowers explained that the woman, Rose Cheramie, had stated before the assassination that the president was going to be killed.
Under questioning from Weiss, Cheramie said she worked for Ruby and stated that "the word in the underworld" was that Kennedy would be hit. The good doctor was very precise about his dates before the HSCA, certainly more so than he was ten years earlier when questioned by Garrison investigator Frank Meloche. At that time, says Meloche, Weiss stated that he "doesn't recall whether this was told to him before or after the assassination." The doctor also went on to say on the Jack Anderson TV Special "American Expose: Who Killed JFK" that "On the 20th November .... she (Cheramie) quite openly and readily told a number of the staff, including the doctors attending her, that she was aware the President was going to be assassinated." Dr Bowers, unfortunately, was not interviewed by the Committee and I am unable to find records of him being interviewed by anyone else.
Of all the information that the HSCA received during its investigation of Cheramie, by far the most difficult to dismiss came from none other than the policeman who first found her. When he had interviewed Rose Cheramie at the hospital, Fruge said she had given him the names of her travelling companions. One, she divulged, had been called Osanto, the other was Sergio Arcacha Smith. During his period working for the Garrison investigation, Fruge had visited the Silver Slipper lounge and interviewed the owner, Mr Mac Manual.
The Silver Slipper was the bar where Cheramie said the argument had taken place between herself and her two companions. Manual remembered the incident clearly, and picked out mug shots of both Arcacha Smith and Osanto from the stack that Fruge showed to him. There had been an argument, stated the bar owner, the woman had become drunk and abusive and was taken outside and "slapped around" by Smith and Osanto. Mr Manual said he recognized the two men as regular transporters of prostitutes in and out of Miami. Who was Sergio Arcacha Smith?
Sergio Arcacha Smith
In the month of March, 1952, Fulgencio Batista accomplished a coup d'etat similar to one that he had successfully carried out twelve years previously. Once again he was president of Cuba. Batista encouraged tourism, gangsters of all types were welcome, crooked casinos flourished and the bourgeois and the rich grew richer. Behind this thin veneer of prosperity seethed a restless under-class. They lived on the streets, ate when they could, formed a guerrilla group and bided their time. That time came on 1st January 1958. Although the leader of the rebels opposing Batista was still in Oriente, some five hundred miles from Havana, the dictator had fled the country late the previous night and Cuba had itself a new president - Fidel Castro.
544 Camp Street
Fearful of Castro's reprisals against Batista's corrupt officials, many of them followed their leader's example and ran for safety. One such ex-diplomat was Sergio Arcacha Smith, who settled in Miami along with many of his exiled countrymen. Here they plotted the overthrow of the rebel president and dreamed of a return to their good old days. One of their number formed them into a cohesive group and, with the help and encouragement of the CIA, leading exiles moulded the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front. Various cities in the USA had branches of the movement and in 1961 Sergio Arcacha Smith was sent to head the new group in New Orleans. The address of his new office - 544 Camp Street, may raise an eyebrow on many an assassination student.
This was the same address that would appear on handbills issued by Lee Oswald three years later, the same address where Guy Banister, ex-FBI man and CIA contact, had his private investigators office, the same office in which witnesses claim to have seen both David William Ferrie (a major suspect in the Garrison investigation) and Lee Oswald. Was this just coincidence? Let us look closer.
It is likely that the infamous CIA agent, E Howard Hunt, had helped Arcacha Smith to find the office. Banister, Hunt, Ferrie and Smith were active in the 1961 "Bay of Pigs invasion" that went tragically wrong for the exiles when, at the eleventh hour, Kennedy refused air -support. The attack was a debacle, with many of the invaders being cut down on the beaches by Castro's forces before they could make any headway. The CIA and the surviving Cuban Exiles held the American President responsible. The exiles continued to train, encouraged and funded by the CIA, in the southern states of the USA hoping for a better result on their next attempt. Ferrie, who had reportedly been a pilot on the ill-fated invasion, set to work moulding the Cuban recruits into a fighting force. The base for this training camp was a ranch owned by the family of Mafia money-man Meyer Lanskey. According to an April 1961 FBI report, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello was funding Smith and his group in return for favors in Havana when Castro was toppled and the exiles regained power. Marcello, Hunt, Banister, and Ferrie have all been strongly linked to the investigation into the assassination of JFK.
Ferrie letter
During the Garrison investigation of 1967 Smith was accused of a munitions robbery from Schlumberger Well Surveying Company. His accuser was Gordon Novel, a self-confessed CIA agent. The stolen goods were apparently deposited at Guy Banister's office. David Lewis stated that he saw Quiroga, a close associate of Smith, in the late summer of 1963, in a restaurant on Camp Street in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald.
When the CDRF folded, the CIA helped form The Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRV) to which Smith became a delegate. As an illustration of his ties to David Ferrie, consider the following: when Ferrie, a homosexual, was dismissed as a pilot by Eastern Airlines, a letter of support was sent to the company describing his heroic efforts on behalf of the Cuban cause. Its author - Sergio Arcacha Smith. There are many other witnesses and statements connecting Smith to Ferrie, Banister, Marcello and Hunt. Smith was finally relieved of his post as a result of funds being mis-appropriated. He moved to Dallas and in 1967, Garrison, despite pleas to Texas authorities, was unable to extradite him. It was actually John Connally himself who refused Garrison's request.
If Cheramie is to be believed, and her travelling companion was indeed Arcacha Smith, then by virtue of his connections in New Orleans it is possible he did have foreknowledge of the assassination.
As a final footnote to Smith's alleged involvement - on 17 September 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald, or someone using his name, applied for a Mexican tourist visa. The next visa was issued - by pure coincidence, of course - to CIA operative William Gaudet. This agent denied knowing Oswald but, in a later interview, said "Another vital person is Sergio Arcacha Smith. I know he knew Oswald, and knows more about the Kennedy affair than he ever admitted."
This is not intended to be a definitive article on Arcacha Smith; he deserves much deeper investigation, but it has hopefully exposed how unlikely it would be that Rose Cheramie should pluck this man's name out of thin air. I am aware that others are currently researching the Cheramie incident and am confident that the last word has not yet been heard on the predictions of "Rambling" Rose Cheramie.
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