The JFK 100

Did Rose Cherami predict the JFK assassination? Who was Rose Cherami? Here are the facts.

Rose Cherami was a 41-year-old drug addict and prostitute who was picked up on Highway 190 near Eunice, Louisiana, on November 20, 1963 -- two days before the Kennedy assassination -- by Lt. Francis Frugé of the Louisiana State Police.⁽¹⁾ Cherami allegedly told Frugé that John F. Kennedy would shortly be killed.⁽²⁾

When Cherami began acting violent, it was determined she was suffering from narcotics withdrawal. She was taken to the East Louisiana State Hospital, a mental hospital, in nearby Jackson, where she was confined for several days.⁽³⁾

The woman known to assassination
researchers as "Rose Cheramie" [sic]

During her confinement, and prior to the time JFK was shot in Dallas, Cherami supposedly spoke of the impending assassination.⁽⁴⁾ After Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Cherami reportedly claimed that she had worked for Ruby as a stripper, that she knew both Ruby and Oswald, and that the two men were "bed partners" who "had been shacking up for years."⁽⁵⁾

According to Lt. Frugé, Cherami declined to repeat her story to the FBI.⁽⁶⁾ She was killed when struck by a car on September 4, 1965, apparently while hitchhiking, near Gladewater, Texas.⁽⁷⁾

Among conspiracy theorists, the story has been considered quite credible since 1979, when an account by investigator Patricia Orr was published by the House Select Committee reviewing the JFK assassination (HSCA). This account was based primarily on the HSCA depositions of Francis Frugé and Victor Weiss, a doctor at the Jackson hospital.

The problem is that in accounts given by Frugé and Weiss to the New Orleans District Attorney's Office over a decade earlier, in 1967, there is no mention whatsoever of Cherami having made any statements about the assassination prior to the time it occurred.

On the contrary, several 1967 accounts by Frugé state only that, following Cherami's November 26 release from the Jackson hospital, Cherami informed Frugé that she had worked for Ruby, that Ruby and Oswald had been in Ruby's club together, and that the two were "good friends" and "bed partners."⁽⁸⁾

In 1967, Dr. Victor Weiss recalled speaking to Cherami in 1963, but stated he couldn't remember whether she had spoken of the assassination before or after it occurred.⁽⁹⁾

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's office conducted numerous interviews with East State Louisiana Hospital personnel, but couldn't come up with a single first-hand witness who heard Rose Cherami predict the assassination.⁽¹⁰⁾

Would Cherami have made a credible witness in the first place? It was never verified that she had ever worked for Jack Ruby, or that she was acquainted with either Ruby or Lee Harvey Oswald. She claimed that she had been one of Ruby's strippers, but she was 41 years old and quite haggard. (See her 1964 mug shot, above.) And her claim that Ruby and Oswald were "bed partners" who "had been shacking up for years" hardly speaks well for her credibility.

It also should be noted that in her short life, Rose Cherami was arrested over fifty times in ten different states for charges including larceny, auto theft, possession of narcotics, driving under the influence of narcotics, driving while intoxicated, prostitution, arson, vagrancy, drunk and disorderly behavior, and still other charges. She committed at least one documented suicide attempt, in 1947, was "believed to be insane" at that time, and was ruled "criminally insane" in 1961. She was institutionalized several times, with "psychotic" and "psychopathic" behavior noted. On several occasions she attempted to become a criminal informant, she was turned away because her information turned out to be false.⁽¹¹⁾

Yet this is the "witness" with which Oliver Stone leads off his movie about the John F. Kennedy assassination.

NOTES:

1. Frank Meloche, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, March 13, 1967. (Throughout her life, Cherami gave a variety of dates as her ostensible date of birth. October 23, 1923, is the date of birth entered on her death certificate.) According to JFK's script, Cherami was thrown from a car by "two Cuban males," which implies that Cherami's associates were Cuban exiles linked to the assassination conspiracy detailed later in the movie. But in March 1967, Francis Frugé said that Cherami was "suppose[d] to have been thrown from a vehicle by two white males," while Frugé would tell the HSCA in 1978 that Cherami "related to me that she was coming from Florida to Dallas with women who were Italians or resembled Italians. [Emphasis added.] 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, and this is when she got hit by a vehicle." (House Select Committee Hearings Vol. X, p. 201.) Yet Frugé also said that Cherami told him "that the two men [emphasis added] traveling with her from Miami were going to Dallas to kill the President. For her part, Cheramie [sic] was to obtain $8,000 from an unidentified source in Dallas and proceed to Houston with the two men to complete a drug deal." (HSCA Hearings Vol. X, pp. 201-02.) The lounge where Cherami and her companions reportedly stopped was called the Silver Slipper. Lounge owner Mac Manual told Frugé in 1967 "that Cheramie [sic] had come in with two men who the owner knew as pimps engaged in the business of hauling prostitutes in from Florida." (HSCA Hearings Vol. X, p. 202.) From photos shown him by Frugé, Manual identified two of Jim Garrison's suspects, Sergio Arcacha Smith and Emilio Santana, as the two men, although neither man had anything to do with prostitution. Arcacha was considered a suspect by Garrison primarily because he had once run an office for anti-Castro fundraising out of a building whose address was later used by Lee Harvey Oswald on a pro-Castro leaflet. Santana was considered a suspect primarily because he was Cuban and had once lived near Alvin Beauboeuf, associate of Garrison suspect David Ferrie. Jim Garrison believed strongly in what he called "The Propinquity Factor" -- his theory that one could identify conspirators because they often lived near one another.

2. House Select Committee Hearings Vol. X, p. 201.

3. Frank Meloche, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, March 13, 1967.

4. House Select Committee Hearings Vol. X, pp. 200-01.

5. Had seen Ruby and Oswald together: Frank Meloche, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, March 13, 1967. Had worked for Ruby as a stripper, Ruby and Oswald "bed partners": Lt. Francis Frugé, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, April 4, 1967. Ruby and Oswald "had been shacking up for years": HSCA Hearings, Vol. X, p. 202 (from Frugé's HSCA deposition).

6. Frank Meloche, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, March 13, 1967.

7. Frank Meloche, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, March 13, 1967.

8. Frank Meloche, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, March 13, 1967. Lt. Francis Frugé, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, April 4, 1967.

9. Frank Meloche, Memorandum to Jim Garrison, March 13, 1967.

10. This does not stop author Jim DiEugenio from citing several hearsay accounts as evidence of such foreknowledge, even when such accounts are easily debunked. For example, DiEugenio cites a Madison Capital Times report that Louisiana State University intern Wayne Owen and several others "were told of the plot [by Cherami] in advance of the assassination." However, the New Orleans Times-Picayune of February 3, 1968, clarifies that Owen and his fellow students had simply, at a later date, heard a hearsay account of the Cherami story from an unnamed professor of theirs at LSU Medical School. (Jim DiEugenio, "Rose Cheramie [sic]: How She Predicted the JFK Assassination," Probe, Vol. 6, No, 5, July-August 1999.)

11. Dave Reitzes, "Impeaching Clinton, Part Two: Jackson."