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Bill, How Did Rose Cheramie Know What Lee Was Going To Do ?  (Read 9467 times)

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Bill,

You say that Lee was a lone nut who operated alone on his own, completely without the foreknowledge and/or assistance of anyone else, any abetting conspirators, in Lee's perpetration of the assassination.

OK

Now, a simple question, please:

How come, then, did Rose Cheramie know on Nov. 20, 1963 that Lee was going to kill JFK?

Thanks

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« Last Edit: June 27, 2010, 02:41:07 PM by Miles Scull »

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This was after she died.

She was still ALIVE when they took her to the hospital after finding her in the street. How could she be shot and then run over by a car and treated at the hospital and them no notice a bullet hole in her?
Wouldn't that be malpractice?
Are you saying they just overlooked it or thought it was a laceration?


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« Last Edit: January 16, 2012, 02:50:08 AM by Anthony Marsh »

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She was still when they took her to the hospital after finding her in the street. How could she be shot and then run over by a car and treated at the hospital and them no notice a bullet hole in her?
Wouldn't that be malpractice?
Are you saying they just overlooked it or thought it was a laceration?



Without looking it up (this might be recorded on this thread), I recall that a notation was made and recorded that a punctate stellate wound was observed & recorded:



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.


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----------------------------- RAMBLING ROSE -----------------------

by Chris Mills


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 pm, 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.1

Early life

Melba had begun life on 14 October 1923(2) 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 offences 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 on the State Police records. Roselle Renee Cheramie was charged
on the 21 October 1964 with vagrancy, her behaviour being described as
loud and erratic.3

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 rumour. 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 drugs courier.5 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 licence 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 road 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 2.00pm 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 10.30pm, as Cheramies
condition deteriorated, medical help, in the form of Assistant Corone
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,
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 manger of the lounge threw her out and she got on the road and
hitch-hiked 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."6

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.7

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 25th Cheramie had recovered enough to be transferred to a ward
and was interviewed by Fruge.8

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 drugs 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.9 Armed with
this information, Fruge informed his superiors who told him to follow up
on it. On Thursday 25th she was released into his custody, and place
under arrest.10 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.11

Drugs deal

According to Cheramie, the drug transaction was due to take place in the
Rice Hotel in Houston.12 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."13 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."14 Due to the lack of enthusiasm he had encountered, Fruge
released Cheramie and his own investigation was wound up. 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 Roselle Renee
Cheramie.

Garrison

On 23 February 1967, Detective Frank Meloche sent a memorandum to Jim
Garrison, the then District Attorney of New Orleans. Garrison had
re-opened 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 to 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.15 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 Marcades,
was dead.16

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.17 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 it's 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) tyres. 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
1963 or 1964 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.
Firstly, he asked the occupants of the car that he had stopped to move
the cases to prevent further accidents, 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.18 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?19

Punctate stellate wound

The cause of death was "Traumatic head wound with subdural &
subarachnoid & Petechial Hemorrage to the brain caused by being struck
by auto".20 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. Firstly, 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.21

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.22 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." 23 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
hitch-hike, 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 worked
for Jack Ruby as a stripper, which was verified." 24

As Cheramie herself was no longer available for interrogation, Fruge
pursued other avenues of enquiry 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 was reference
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.25 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.26 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 it's 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.27 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 out side and "slapped
around" by Smith and Osanto. Mr Manual said he recognised the two men as
regular transporters of prostitutes in and out of Miami.28 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 guerilla 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 the 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 be the head of the
new group in New Orleans. The address of his new office - 544 Camp
Street, may raise an eyebrow on many an assassination student.29 This
was the same address that would appear on hand-bills issued by Lee
Oswald three years later, the same address where Guy Bannister, 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.30 Bannister, 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.31 According to an April 1961
FBI report, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello was funding Smith and
his group in return for favours in Havana when Castro was toppled and
the exiles regained power.32 Marcello, Hunt, Bannister, 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 Bannister's office.33 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.34

When the CDRF folded, the CIA helped form The Cuban Revolutionary
Council (CRV) of 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. It's author - Sergio Arcacha Smith.35 There are many
other witnesses and statements connecting Smith to Ferrie, Bannister,
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 the Texas authorities, was unable to extradite him. It
was actually John Conally himself who refused Garrison's request.36


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.


Notes

1) Statement from "Malcolm Stone Funeral Home". 4 September 1965.
2) Death Certificate - Melba Christine Marcades. Texas State File No.
AX-8-3976 ( The HSCA give the date of birth as 1932. I believe this to
be incorrect. Not only does the death cert., contradict this, but
accepting the HSCA's date would mean that her first criminal offence of
vagrancy occurred when she was only nine years old!)
3) Louisiana State Police record. Document No.256375
4)James Hepburn, Farewell America, (Frontiers Publishing 1968).
5) Hepburn, pp. 349.
6) Memorandum, Det. Frank Meloche to Jim Garrison, 13 March 1967, and
House Select Committee on Assassinations Volume 10 pp. 201.
7) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 200.
8) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 201, 202. and Memorandum, Det. Frank Meloche to
Jim Garrison, 13 March 1967.
9) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202. and Anthony Summers interview with Lt.
Francis Fruge 1978
10) Memorandum, Det. Frank Meloche to Jim Garrison, 13 March 1967.
11) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202.
12) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202.
13) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202. and R Groden and H E Livingstone, High
Treason, Conservatory Press, 1989. pp.122.
14) Memorandum, Meloche to Garrison 13 March 1967.
15) Memorandum, Det. Frank Meloche to Jim Garrison, re- statement A H
Magruder 23 February 1967.
16) Memo. Meloche - Garrison 13 March 1967.
17) Death cert. Marcades.
18) Interview of Jerry Don Moore by J H West and J Gary Shaw.
19) Death cert. Marcades.
20) Death cert. Marcades.
21) Interview of Jerry Don Moore by J H West and J Gary Shaw.
22) Francis Fruge's staement to Garrison. 4 April 1967. re interview
with officer J A Andrews.
23) J Gary Shaw, "Case Closed" or Posner's Pompous & Presumtuous
Postulations, Dateline Dallas, Nov 1993 pp. 12.
24) Francis Fruge's staement to Garrison. 4 April 1967.
25) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 200, 201.
26) Memo. Meloche to Garrison 13 March 1967.
27) Summers, Interview with Fruge 1978.
28) Summers, Interview with Fruge 1978. and HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202.
29) Weberman & Canfield, Coup d'etat in America, Quick American
Archives, 1992, pp.36.
30) Weberman & Canfield, Coup d'etat in America, Quick American
Archives, 1992, pp.36.
31) Bob Callhan, Who Shot JFK, Simon Schuster, 1993, pp.86.
32) Weberman & Canfield, pp. 44. and J H Davis, Mafia Kingfish, McGraw
Hill, 1989. pp. 85.
33) R S Anson, They've Killed the President, Bantam, 1975, pp.108.
34) Wardlaw & James, Plot or Politics, Pelican Publishing, 1967, pp.
49.
35) Callahan, pp. 8.
36) Milton Brener, The Garrison Case, Clarkson N Potter, 1969, pp. 184.


Acknowledgements

For providing information, documents, access to the HSCA Vols., Warren
Commission Vols., and their valuable time: J Gary Shaw, Ian Griggs,
Walter Anderson and John Rudd.

Chris Mills
76 Main Street Burton Joyce Nottingham NG14 5EH
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« Last Edit: January 15, 2012, 12:11:35 AM by Miles Scull »

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Without looking it up (this might be recorded on this thread), I recall that a notation was made and recorded that a punctate stellate wound was observed & recorded:



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.


So you can't show me the autopsy report? But yet you claim to tell me what the autopsy report said. Is that called hearsay?
Can you at least tell me the date of the autopsy?
Is there anything on the admitting forms or reports of the doctors treating her about a bulllet wound?

If she was shot in the forehead she was pretty lucky to still be alive.


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So you can't show me the autopsy report? But yet you claim to tell me what the autopsy report said. Is that called hearsay?
Can you at least tell me the date of the autopsy?
Is there anything on the admitting forms or reports of the doctors treating her about a bulllet wound?

If she was shot in the forehead she was pretty lucky to still be alive.


Maybe the bullet went in one ear and out the other?


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Maybe the bullet went in one ear and out the other?


Forehead. Anyway this stellate puncture wound has nothing to do with the original incident where she was found in the road.
So if they were trying to silence her before the assassination because she had foreknowledge, they didn't shoot her and they didn't do a very good job of running her over. Maybe they tried an overdose of drugs, but got
the dosage wrong. Something to rescue your theory. Then they wait until 1965 to finish the job? Maybe that was enough time for her to get into more trouble with her drug friends.
And yet she said nothing more about the assassination by then.


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« Last Edit: January 17, 2012, 07:53:50 AM by Anthony Marsh »

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----------------------------- RAMBLING ROSE -----------------------

by Chris Mills


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 pm, 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.1

Early life

Melba had begun life on 14 October 1923(2) 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 offences 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 on the State Police records. Roselle Renee Cheramie was charged
on the 21 October 1964 with vagrancy, her behaviour being described as
loud and erratic.3

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 rumour. 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 drugs courier.5 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 licence 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 road 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 2.00pm 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 10.30pm, as Cheramies
condition deteriorated, medical help, in the form of Assistant Corone
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,
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 manger of the lounge threw her out and she got on the road and
hitch-hiked 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."6

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.7

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 25th Cheramie had recovered enough to be transferred to a ward
and was interviewed by Fruge.8

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 drugs 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.9 Armed with
this information, Fruge informed his superiors who told him to follow up
on it. On Thursday 25th she was released into his custody, and place
under arrest.10 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.11

Drugs deal

According to Cheramie, the drug transaction was due to take place in the
Rice Hotel in Houston.12 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."13 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."14 Due to the lack of enthusiasm he had encountered, Fruge
released Cheramie and his own investigation was wound up. 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 Roselle Renee
Cheramie.

Garrison

On 23 February 1967, Detective Frank Meloche sent a memorandum to Jim
Garrison, the then District Attorney of New Orleans. Garrison had
re-opened 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 to 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.15 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 Marcades,
was dead.16

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.17 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 it's 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) tyres. 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
1963 or 1964 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.
Firstly, he asked the occupants of the car that he had stopped to move
the cases to prevent further accidents, 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.18 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?19

Punctate stellate wound

The cause of death was "Traumatic head wound with subdural &
subarachnoid & Petechial Hemorrage to the brain caused by being struck
by auto".20 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. Firstly, 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.21

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.22 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." 23 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
hitch-hike, 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 worked
for Jack Ruby as a stripper, which was verified." 24

As Cheramie herself was no longer available for interrogation, Fruge
pursued other avenues of enquiry 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 was reference
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.25 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.26 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 it's 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.27 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 out side and "slapped
around" by Smith and Osanto. Mr Manual said he recognised the two men as
regular transporters of prostitutes in and out of Miami.28 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 guerilla 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 the 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 be the head of the
new group in New Orleans. The address of his new office - 544 Camp
Street, may raise an eyebrow on many an assassination student.29 This
was the same address that would appear on hand-bills issued by Lee
Oswald three years later, the same address where Guy Bannister, 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.30 Bannister, 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.31 According to an April 1961
FBI report, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello was funding Smith and
his group in return for favours in Havana when Castro was toppled and
the exiles regained power.32 Marcello, Hunt, Bannister, 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 Bannister's office.33 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.34

When the CDRF folded, the CIA helped form The Cuban Revolutionary
Council (CRV) of 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. It's author - Sergio Arcacha Smith.35 There are many
other witnesses and statements connecting Smith to Ferrie, Bannister,
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 the Texas authorities, was unable to extradite him. It
was actually John Conally himself who refused Garrison's request.36


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.


Notes

1) Statement from "Malcolm Stone Funeral Home". 4 September 1965.
2) Death Certificate - Melba Christine Marcades. Texas State File No.
AX-8-3976 ( The HSCA give the date of birth as 1932. I believe this to
be incorrect. Not only does the death cert., contradict this, but
accepting the HSCA's date would mean that her first criminal offence of
vagrancy occurred when she was only nine years old!)
3) Louisiana State Police record. Document No.256375
4)James Hepburn, Farewell America, (Frontiers Publishing 1968).
5) Hepburn, pp. 349.
6) Memorandum, Det. Frank Meloche to Jim Garrison, 13 March 1967, and
House Select Committee on Assassinations Volume 10 pp. 201.
7) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 200.
8) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 201, 202. and Memorandum, Det. Frank Meloche to
Jim Garrison, 13 March 1967.
9) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202. and Anthony Summers interview with Lt.
Francis Fruge 1978
10) Memorandum, Det. Frank Meloche to Jim Garrison, 13 March 1967.
11) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202.
12) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202.
13) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202. and R Groden and H E Livingstone, High
Treason, Conservatory Press, 1989. pp.122.
14) Memorandum, Meloche to Garrison 13 March 1967.
15) Memorandum, Det. Frank Meloche to Jim Garrison, re- statement A H
Magruder 23 February 1967.
16) Memo. Meloche - Garrison 13 March 1967.
17) Death cert. Marcades.
18) Interview of Jerry Don Moore by J H West and J Gary Shaw.
19) Death cert. Marcades.
20) Death cert. Marcades.
21) Interview of Jerry Don Moore by J H West and J Gary Shaw.
22) Francis Fruge's staement to Garrison. 4 April 1967. re interview
with officer J A Andrews.
23) J Gary Shaw, "Case Closed" or Posner's Pompous & Presumtuous
Postulations, Dateline Dallas, Nov 1993 pp. 12.
24) Francis Fruge's staement to Garrison. 4 April 1967.
25) HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 200, 201.
26) Memo. Meloche to Garrison 13 March 1967.
27) Summers, Interview with Fruge 1978.
28) Summers, Interview with Fruge 1978. and HSCA, Vol. 10, pp. 202.
29) Weberman & Canfield, Coup d'etat in America, Quick American
Archives, 1992, pp.36.
30) Weberman & Canfield, Coup d'etat in America, Quick American
Archives, 1992, pp.36.
31) Bob Callhan, Who Shot JFK, Simon Schuster, 1993, pp.86.
32) Weberman & Canfield, pp. 44. and J H Davis, Mafia Kingfish, McGraw
Hill, 1989. pp. 85.
33) R S Anson, They've Killed the President, Bantam, 1975, pp.108.
34) Wardlaw & James, Plot or Politics, Pelican Publishing, 1967, pp.
49.
35) Callahan, pp. 8.
36) Milton Brener, The Garrison Case, Clarkson N Potter, 1969, pp. 184.


Acknowledgements

For providing information, documents, access to the HSCA Vols., Warren
Commission Vols., and their valuable time: J Gary Shaw, Ian Griggs,
Walter Anderson and John Rudd.

Chris Mills
76 Main Street Burton Joyce Nottingham NG14 5EH
email: As a guest, you are not allowed to view links. Register or Login



The speculation that the stellate puncture wound was a bullet hole comes only from the writer, not the record.


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Forehead. Anyway this stellate puncture wound has nothing to do with the original incident where she was found in the road.
So if they were trying to silence here before the assassination because she had foreknowledge, they didn't shoot her and they didn't do a very good job of running her over. Maybe they tried an overdose of drugs, but got
the dosage wrong. Something to rescue your theory. Then they wait until 1965 to finish the job? Maybe that was enough time for her to get into more trouble with her drug friends.
And yet she said nothing more about the assassination by then.


Correct.  One would have to be a fool to believe that Rose Cherami had foreknowledge of the assassination.  Just read my posts throughout this very thread.


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"The TRUTH doesn't require anyone's belief." - Dale Myers

"The human mind craves a mystery more than it loves the truth." - Dan Rather

"Reason does not always appeal to unreasonable men." - John F. Kennedy

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Correct.  One would have to be a fool to believe that Rose Cherami had foreknowledge of the assassination.  Just read my posts throughout this very thread.

Correct.

Your posts prove that Rose had foreknowledge of the assassination. hello


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Gary Shaw was formerly co-director with Larry N. Howard of the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas. He has written several books on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He was co-author with Larry R. Harris of Cover-Up: The Government Conspiracy to Conceal the Facts About the Public Execution of John Kennedy (1976).

Shaw, now a self-employed architect in Cleburne, Texas, he is also co-author with Charles Crenshaw of Trauma Room One (2001).

PROBABLE CAUSE AUSTRALIA

A Continuing Inquiry into the JFK Assassination

Issue 5 - Feb. 1994

Probable Cause Australia is the only Australian magazine dedicated to the JFK assassination.

"CASE CLOSED" OR POSNER'S POMPOUS & PRESUMPTUOUS POSTULATIONS by J. Gary Shaw - Copyright October 1993

The Rose Cheramie Affair

In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that the Protective Research Section, a preventive intelligence division of the Secret Service, had received information on more than 400 possible threats on the life of President Kennedy during the period from March through November of 1963. Knowledge of one such threat, never reported to authorities until after the assassination, concerns the allegations of Rose Cheramie, a former stripper for Jack Ruby. Posner offhandedly dismisses the Cheramie issue with a footnote. He does so in his customary way; by utilizing insinuation, innuendo, and outright error.
Of all the reported threats on the President's life, perhaps none is more chilling than the one revealed by Rose Cheramie. On November 20, 1963, two days before the assassination, Miss Cheramie was found bruised and disoriented, lying beside a road near Eunice, Louisiana. The state trooper who found her reported that, while driving her to the hospital she described being abandoned by two men whom she perceived to be of Italian extraction. The men, she said, were on their way from Miami to Dallas to kill the President. The trooper described her as "quite lucid". Several employees of the hospital also confirmed that Miss Cheramie had stated before the assassination that the President was going to be murdered.
As bizarre and incomprehensible as it may seem, the Louisiana State Police trooper did not report this sinister revelation to the Secret Service - or to other responsible authorities - until after the assassination and following the execution-style murder of the prime suspect in the case, Lee Harvey Oswald. Only then did the remissful trooper contact Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz and notify him of Miss Cheramie's potentially explosive information. Amazingly, according to the trooper, Captain Fritz's response to this information - information which should, at least at this early stage, have been considered an important potential lead - was simply that he was "not interested". Louisiana authorities dropped the matter and a provocative and potentially revealing component of a possible conspiracy was lost forever.

Rose Cheramie died less than two years later on September 4, 1965, becoming one of several individuals associated with the investigation of the Kennedy assassination who died within three years of the event. If she was ever questioned by authorities concerning her purported prior knowledge of a plot to kill the President, there is no report in the public record. And her untimely and violent death, like her allegations of the "two men from Miami" who were planning to kill the President, is shrouded in mystery.

For the second time, this time in east Texas, Miss Cheramie was found injured and lying beside a road. Suspected of having been struck by a passing automobile, she was taken first to the nearby home of a physician, and then on to the hospital. Her death certificate reported, at three different places on the document, that she was "DOA" (Dead on Arrival). Official hospital records, however, describe resuscitation efforts, and treatment of her injuries for a period of more than eight hours. More significantly, these records, in addition to enumerating her other injuries, also describe a mysterious "deep punctate stellate wound" above her right forehead. Such an injury, according to medical textbooks, can often occur with contact gunshot wounds - that is, when the barrel of a gun is placed against a victim's body and discharged. This type of injury is especially applicable to a gunshot wound of the skull, in which case the gases expelled from the barrel of the weapon are trapped between the thin layer of skin and its underlying bone and causes a rapid expansion and bursting of the surrounding flesh. The resultant injury is a hole having radiating-tears which form a stellate (starlike) or cruciform-appearing wound of entrance. Unfortunately, the autopsy that could shed light on the actual or probable cause of Miss Cheramie's death has been lost and cannot be located by the responsible authorities.

The driver suspected of striking Miss Cheramie swears to this date that he did not do so. He reported that she was already lying beside the road when he came upon her and that he had to swerve his car to avoid hitting her. A subsequent investigation of the alleged "accident" appears to confirm his story. An examination by a Texas Highway Patrolman revealed that there was no blood, flesh, or hair located on the suspect's vehicle.

Of further suspicion is the driver's reported sighting of a late-model "red" Chevrolet which he remembered seeing parked near the scene when he passed that location a few minutes prior to his finding the injured Miss Cheramie. This observation was confirmed by Miss Cheramie's sister, who, when questioned by state investigators, was asked if she had any knowledge of any friends of Miss Cheramie who owned such an automobile. According to the sister, these investigators had also noticed the red car's presence at the scene as they were making their usual patrol of the area just a short time before the accident.

It should also be noted that the death of Miss Cheramie, who had a prior record as a government informant, occurred just one month after she had re-contacted the FBI to, allegedly, offer a tip concerning a New Orleans' based heroin smuggling operation.

With the Cheramie story, as with other portions of his book, Posner first misleads the reader by using insinuation. He writes that Dr. Victor Weiss, a resident physician at the hospital where Miss Cheramie was taken for treatment, "...told investigators that he did not hear her say anything about the assassination until November 25, the day after Ruby killed Oswald." With this statement from Dr. Weiss, as reported in the House Select Committee on Assassinations (X HSCA 200), Posner apparently hopes to convince the reader that Miss Cheramie did not tell anyone of the plot to kill the President until after the fact. Of course, had he chosen to be completely forthright, Posner would have explained that Dr. Weiss, Chief of Psychiatry at the East Louisiana State Hospital, learned of Miss Cheramie's revelations from several of the members of the hospital personnel who did hear her tell of the assassination plans prior to the President's murder. In Dr. Weiss' own words, "On the 20th of November...she (Miss 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".

Furthermore, in a completely unbiased presentation, Posner would have informed the reader that in the same report, and directly across the page from his source for Dr. Weiss' statement, was additional confirmation of what Miss Cheramie had told the hospital personnel. There, on page 201 of HSCA's Volume X, is the sworn testimony of the Louisiana State Policeman who had picked up and transported the injured Miss Cheramie to the hospital on November 20th. Miss Cheramie, the trooper says, told him at that time that she was on the way to Dallas with the two men to "pick up some money, pick up her baby, and to kill Kennedy".

Next, Posner attempts to sway his reader by using his own unsubstantiated opinion and charges that " . .Cheramie had never worked for Ruby." Where he got this bit of misinformation is unknown; it's certainly not in the HSCA's investigative report on Miss Cheramie. And, as usual, had Posner cared to check his facts he would have found that there is verification of her having once worked for Ruby. It is found in an official report to Louisiana authorities dated April 4, 1967 which was filed by Louisiana State Police Lt. F. L. Fruge; the officer responsible for much of the original investigation into Miss Cheramie's allegations. In his report, Lt. Fruge unequivocally asserts that Miss Cheramie, while in custody, had " . . slated that she once worked for Jack Ruby as a stripper, which was verified."

Finally, with his assertion that Cheramie ' . . had a history of providing the FBI and U.S. Customs with elaborate and false stories about narcotics deals," Posner makes use of innuendo in attempting to denigrate Miss Cheramie, thereby casting doubt and suspicion on her disturbing story of prior knowledge of the assassination (and perhaps the assassins). His doing so is an obvious effort to turn the reader's attention away from the real facts - the veracity of the Louisiana state trooper and the hospital's attending medical personnel - and toward Miss Cheramie and her problematical reputation. In other words, when the message cannot be discounted or rebutted, then attack the messenger. And where have we seen this ploy before?

Conveniently, and understandably in Posner's instance, Case Closed makes little mention of another Miami-linked pre-assassination threat which was disclosed by a right-wing extremist named Joseph Milteer. Of course, this threat would be too difficult for Posner to explain away - it was tape recorded by police two weeks before the assassination and passed on to the Protective Research Section of the Secret Service. This threat, one of two which outlined plans to kill the President with high-powered rifles - both occurring in early November 1963 - was not relayed to agents responsible for advance preparations for the Dallas trip. In light of this, one cannot help but wonder if there might be a connection between this Miami threat and Miss Cheramie's "two Italian men from Miami?"

There is absolutely no doubt that Rose Cheramie possessed a very troubled past. Her lengthy record of arrests and convictions bears this out. But while her past record may cast doubt on Miss Cheramie's credibility in some matters, it does not in any way destroy the credibility and veracity of the several, honest, well-respected, and coherent individuals who heard her state - before the fact - that the President was going to be killed when he went to Dallas. Many of those witnesses who heard Rose Cheramie that day are still living and continue to tell the same story...not that Posner bothered, or even cared, to check. Posner's flagrant attempt to distract the reader's attention from the true facts of this affair is not only unconscionable, it is also intellectually dishonest.

In conclusion, it should be noted that Case Closed has been described by some as a "great" prosecutorial brief against Oswald. I don't see it that way at all. In my opinion, Posner's selective effort to ascribe motive, means, and opportunity to Oswald as the lone assassin would be thoroughly destroyed in very scant time by any first-year law student who acquaints himself with all of the facts in the case and is provided with fair and equitable adversarial conditions for presentation of Posner's case against Oswald. For, while Posner may be a slick attorney - and even a good writer - his astonishing lack of knowledge concerning the Kennedy case is laid bare for all to see in his poorly-researched, thoroughly misleading, and completely discredited book Case Closed. I predict a much shorter life expectancy for this book than that experienced by its ill-fated predecessor, The Warren Report.




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« Last Edit: January 16, 2012, 06:50:29 PM by Miles Scull »

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She knew Oswald was going to shoot the president ?

But you don't know how she knew.



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Oswald admitted his guilt when he claimed to have been a patsy.

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Go back & read this thread.     buttkick


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