Rose
Cheramie (Cherami) was found unconsciousness by the side of the road
at Eunice, Louisiana, on 20th November, 1963. Lieutenant Francis Frugé
of the Louisiana State Police took her to the state hospital. On the
journey Cheramie said that she had been thrown out of a car by two
gangsters who worked for Jack
Ruby.
She claimed that the men were involved in a plot to kill John
F. Kennedy.
Cheramie added that Kennedy would be killed in Dallas within a few
days. Later she told the same story to doctors and nurses who treated
her. As she appeared to be under the influence of drugs her story
was ignored.
Following
the assassination, Cheramie was interviewed by the police. She claimed
that Lee Harvey Oswald had visited Ruby's
night club. In fact, she believed the two men were having a homosexual
relationship.
Rose
Cheramie
was found dead on 4th September, 1965. At first it appeared she had
been involved in a road accident. Later it was argued that she had
been shot in the head before being run over by by a car in order to
disguise the original wound.
However, the Louisiana State Police Memo reported: "Cheramie
died of injuries received from an automobile accident on a strip of
highway near Big Sandy, Texas, in the early morning of September 4,
1965. The driver stated Cheramie had been lying in the roadway and
although he attempted to avoid hitting her, he ran over the top of
her skull, causing fatal injuries. An investigation into the accident
and the possibility of a relationship between the victim and the driver
produced no evidence of foul play. The case was closed"
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Michael
Kurtz,
Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination From a Historians
Perspective (1982)
During the
middle of the night of 20 November 1963, Lieutenant Francis Fruge
of the Louisiana state police drove a woman to a hospital near Eunice,
Louisiana. Since the lady, Rose Cheramie, was a known narcotics addict,
Fruge paid little attention to her rambling, half incoherent tale.
Cheramie claimed that she and two male companions were making a "drug
run" from Louisiana to Houston, Texas. During the automobile
ride, they discussed the imminence of an assassination attempt against
President Kennedy in Dallas on Friday, 22 November. After Cheramie
got high on drugs, the men threw her out of the car. Lieutenant Fruge
thought nothing of Rose Cheramie's story, nor did the physician to
whom she repeated it. After learning of the Dallas murder, however,
Fruge called the Dallas police and informed them of Cheramie's tale,
but the Texas authorities were uninterested.
(2)
Gary
Richard Schoener, Fair
Play Magazine, A
Legacy of Fear (May,
2000)
On November 20, 1963 Rose Cherami (born Melba Christine Marcades)
was thrown from a vehicle on highway 190 near Eunice, Louisiana. She
was taken to the local hospital and then to jail, but moved to the
East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson when it appeared that she
was having narcotic withdrawal. She told Dr. Victor J. Weiss Jr.,
a psychiatrist, that the President and other public officials were
going to be killed on their visit to Dallas. After the President and
Texas Governor John Connally were shot in Dallas on November 22, Dr.
Weiss told at least one friend, Mr. A H. Magruder about the incident.
Rose Cherami, who had a
long-criminal record and 19 known aliases, told Lt. Francis Fruge
of the Louisiana State Police that she had been part of a narcotics
ring working between Louisiana and Houston. On November 26, four days
after the assassination, she was released from the hospital in the
custody of Lt. Fruge and Capt. Ben Morgan of the Louisiana State Police
plus Anne Diechler of the Revenue Division. They flew to Houston to
investigate the narcotics ring and on the flight Rose allegedly picked
up a newspaper which had a story about Jack Ruby's murder of Lee Harvey
Oswald in which Ruby was quoted as denying he had ever known Oswald.
According to Lt. Fruge Rose laughed and stated that Ruby and Oswald
were very good friends, had been in Ruby's club together, and were
even "bed partners." Upon arrival in Houston she repeated
this claim to Capt. Morgan but refused to talk to federal authorities
saying she's didn't want to get involved in this mess. According to
Lt. Fruge, the information Rose Cherami supplied about the narcotics
ring was "true and good information."
When an investigator working
for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison attempted to locate
Rose Cherami in early 1967, he learned that she had been killed on
Sept. 4, 1965, when a car ran over part of her head near Big Sandy,
Texas. The driver of the car, who reported the accident to the Texas
Highway Patrol after taking Rose to the hospital, claimed that the
accident had been unavoidable because the victim had been lying on
the roadway with her head and the upper part of her body resting on
the traffic lane. Due to the unusual circumstances and the lack of
prominent physical evidence, Officer J. A. Andrews attempted to determine
whether the driver and Rose had any relationship. He found no evidence
of such and although he was allegedly not completely satisfied that
he had all the facts, he closed the case since the victim's relatives
did not pursue the matter. Left unanswered were how Rose Cherami ended
up lying on the highway, especially Texas highway 155, a "farm
to market road." Had she been hitchhiking at 2 AM when the accident
occurred, one would have expected her to have been on either of the
two larger U. S. highways, 80 and 271, which parallel Texas highway
155. And, last but not least, was Rose Cherami's alleged prediction
a lucky guess and were her statements about the Ruby-Oswald connection
fabrications, or did she really know something of importance?
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