A Rose by Many Other Names: Rose Cherami & the JFK Assassination

by Todd C. Elliott

  Shortly after, Rose was charged with “aiding soldiers to escape” on September 30, 1942. By 10-10-42, according to the arrest report, Rose was released to “USM”(United States Military?) on a charge of “aiding soldiers to escape.”

  At a most pivotal time in U.S. history, the seemingly egregious charge of “aiding soldiers to escape” might have been punishable by death, as Americans of Japanese descent were, at the time, being rounded up in “concentration camps” in the United States for merely being Japanese.

  But what soldiers was Rose aiding to escape?

  If Rose was “aiding soldiers to escape,” then were they enemy soldiers (POWs) or U.S. soldiers? Her arrest record yields little details. According to the arrest report, Rose was released by the U.S. military with no disposition stated on the “aiding soldiers to escape” charge.

  Nearly one month later, on 11-6-42, Rose was released to the custody of the state of Louisiana, where she was transferred to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, or Angola Prison, in Caddo Parish on 11-9-42 on a charge of “larceny.”

  It should be noted that Angola would be the future site of CIA-funded human, medical experimentation on prisoners for research into behavior modification during the 1950s.

  From Angola, after tangling with the U.S. military in her charge of “aiding soldiers to escape,” less than two years later Rose was then released back into society on 10-9-44.

  After being released in 1944, Rose seemed to “go straight,” with no arrests until 1947 – when she would begin to rack up charges of auto-theft violations of the Dyer Act, for a total of six times in ten years.

  And yet she continued her life of crime unhindered, undeterred by her criminal record. Only by the 1960s, would the words “hold for state charges” begin to appear on her arrest records. Yet, no law enforcement agency could seem to hold her for very long.

  How was this possible?

  In regards to those strangest of charges, from September 30, 1942 she was in the custody of the Sheriff’s Department for “aiding soldiers to escape” from Barksdale. Then, by 10-10-42 she was released to the military. If she wasn’t sent to Angola until 11-6-42, then where was Rose during that month?

  What events transpired with the then-teenaged Rose while in the custody of the U.S. military for nearly one month? How did the charge of “aiding soldiers to escape” and her stint in prison seemingly get reduced to “larceny”?

  Is it possible that she may have been “flipped” to work as an agent for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to the CIA formed during WWII? The OSS had just been officially signed into existence by the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, some three months before Rose would be “aiding soldiers to escape.”

  The OSS, according to recently released personnel files, had more than 24,000 U.S. citizens in its employment (which included celebrity Julia Childs under her maiden name) during WWII, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s official website.

  The CIA described the OSS as an “unusual experiment – to determine whether a group of Americans constituting a cross section of racial origins, abilities, temperaments and talents could meet and risk an encounter with the long-established and well-trained enemy organizations.”

  However, near the time of the arrest and charge of “aiding soldiers to escape.” Rose was also arrested under the name of “Mrs. Albert Rodman” of Shreveport, Louisiana.

  Her relation to Albert Rodman is unknown.

  Declassified OSS personnel files list one “Albert Rodman” – who was an immigrant from Russia who entered the port of Boston many years prior to the event.

  The only declassified OSS personnel that resembled Rose (in name) was a “Lefty J. Cheramie,” with little or no information regarding the agent.

  Among her listed occupations in her arrest reports, it is documented that she was a waitress who lived in Sport, Louisiana to be held for Barksdale Field (Air Force base). After being held by the military for nearly a month, the now 20 year-old (who had a birthday while being detained) then listed her occupation as “stenographer” before being turned over to the state for her prison stint in Angola in Louisiana.

  So, after a month of being held for by the U.S. military for “aiding soldiers to escape,” somehow the waitress became a stenographer? Was she just lying or was she given some military or intelligence training? Why or how was it that she was arrested as a waitress, yet went to Angola a stenographer?

  Rose was also an entertainer who lived at 824 Royal Street in New Orleans, a 33-year-old barmaid who lived at 222 South Cayoso Street in New Orleans and was arrested for arson (Rose’s last recorded New Orleans address in 1964 was 1004 Esplanade Avenue) and, proven by an old photograph, she was a telephone operator in the mid to late 1950s.

  Coupled with her new-found (military?) training as a stenographer, could her experience as a telephone operator have presented Rose with an opportunity to overhear a plot to assassinate JFK? Could she have been made an operative of the FBI or of the U.S. Department of Justice?

  Curiously, the idea of Cherami working for the government was put forth in the collected testimony and published findings of the HSCA in April of 1979. According to the documents, after the Kennedy assassination, Rose (using the name Rozella Clinkscales) tipped FBI agents to prostitution rings – which were transporting women (as well as Rose herself) to cities like Galveston and Houston in Texas as well Oklahoma City and Montgomery, Alabama.

  It is further revealed in the HSCA findings that, in 1965, Rose tipped the FBI agents to a ship in New Orleans that was transporting a large amount of heroin into the country through the Port of New Orleans. FBI verified with a call to U.S. Coast Guard officials that indeed the ship was under a narcotics investigation at the time.

  The FBI, after this tip from Rose, seemed to drop their pursuit in the matter of this information, though Rose could now be seen as an official informant for the FBI.

  According to the HSCA findings, “just 1 month after she contacted the FBI” about the prostitution and the drugs, Rose was found dead. It was also revealed in the HSCA report that the FBI had no knowledge that their informant had been found dead on September 4, 1965.

  Louisiana State Police, according to the record, had no idea that the FBI had an interest in Rose when Fruge began in 1967 to investigate her “accidental death” on behalf of the District Attorney of Orleans Parish Jim Garrison.

  Garrison would have been very interested in Rose’s State of Louisiana Department of Public Safety-Division of State Police records, which also state that on January 1, 1958 she was admitted as a patient to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C. – a mental hospital that could be nicknamed “the assassins hospital,” as it housed the attempted presidential assassins Richard Lawrence (the would-be assassin of President Andrew Jackson) and John Hinckley, Jr. (famous for his assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan). During his trial and while awaiting execution, St. Elizabeths also housed Charles J. Guiteau, who assassinated President James Garfield in 1881.

  Prior to her St. Elizabeths stint, Rose was arrested in Albuquerque, New Mexico for violating the Dyer Act. The next entry on her arrest record showed that she wound up in St. Elizabeths Hospital for possibly more than two years, as her next arrest showed her in Oklahoma City on 6-3-60.

  Rose’s stay in a Washington, D.C. is significant because it was the same St. Elizabeths Hospital that purportedly saw the OSS testing “truth serums” on unwitting patients during WWII.

  According to H.P. Albarelli’s book A Secret Order, St. Elizabeths Hospital was the site of CIA “behavior modification” projects using CIA physicians. The CIA projects, like MK/ULTRA, reportedly tested LSD on mental patients, prisoners, drug addicts and prostitutes. Rose possessed the ideal traits for a CIA guinea pig, a person who could not fight back.

  Her appearance in Oklahoma, confirmed by her arrest record, soon after her release from St. Elizabeths is also significant, as it is near another mental facil
ity in Norman, Oklahoma – where the CIA began covertly operating their MK/ULTRA behavior modification or mind-control project at the Central State Mental Hospital, according to Albarelli’s book.

  As it turns out Rose was arrested three years later in Norman, Oklahoma, on 6-1-63.

  Oddly enough, Lee Harvey Oswald had a Norman, Oklahoma address written down in his address book with no name attached to it, according to Albarelli – who alleges that Rose was a patient in that Norman, Oklahoma facility. The HSCA report says the FBI claimed that Rose had been “confined” to a mental institution in Norman on three separate occasions.

  But, in regards to St. Elizabeths, how did Rose get admitted in to a massive, federally funded, government-operated Washington, D.C. mental hospital following an arrest in New Mexico? If she went to the District of Columbia on her own accord, then what business did she have in D.C. to begin with? There is no record of Rose spending any other time in D.C.

  Interestingly enough, in 2007, the old St. Elizabeths Hospital became the new home of the Department of Homeland Security.

  Chapter Nine

  Young Blood

  During Jim Garrison’s investigation into the possible plot to kill JFK, Garrison compiled a box of information on Rose. The more than 40 pages of Garrison’s files, which Garrison’s son donated to the National Archives in Washington, D.C. shed more light on Rose.

  Another name that keeps circling around the JFK conspiracy and Rose Cherami: Youngblood. Perhaps a married name, Rose used the last name Youngblood on more than one occassion.

  According to the FBI files, Rose was arrested in Amarillo, Texas under the name of Christine Youngblood on 6-12-41 for car theft. She was released to Dallas Sheriff’s Office authorities on other charges of car theft. She was incarcerated at the Gainesville reformatory prison in Texas on 6-15-41.

  After being released from Gainesville, she was arrested again in Shreveport, Louisiana under the name “Melba Christine Youngblood” on an investigation charge for larceny dated back to 8-7-42.

  However, again we see Rose as “Melba Christine Youngblood Rodman,” this time on 9-30-42, when her charge stated “hold for Barksdale.”

  The infamous, “aiding soldiers to escape” charge happened on 10-10-42 to Melba Christian Youngblood Rodman.

  By 1947, in New Orleans, after her time in Angola prison, she was arrested under the name Melba Christine Youngblood for disturbing the peace in a police station by using obscene language. New Orleans police added to her charge these words: “subject believed to be insane.”

  When the charge came up before the powers that be, prosecution was declined and the complaint was dismissed. Perhaps the name Youngblood carried some weight with it in certain circles of New Orleans at the time.

  Her criminal record also points to a possible date that she could have worked in Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club in Dallas.

  Rose was arrested in Dallas for being drunk and disorderly, this time under her real name of Melba Christine Marcades, on 5-15-63 – which was little more than six months prior to Kennedy’s murder in that city.

  Was this when she overheard something about a plot to kill JFK?

  By the 1950’s, according to her criminal record, Rose ceased using the last name Youngblood. It’s possible that it was a married name, rather than an assumed name.

  In Garrison’s file, companioned with Rose’s arrest records and various notes, is a weighty section of FBI files of a man named Robert George Youngblood. According to FBI file of record number “222-651-A,” Robert George Youngblood has listed as a contributor of his fingerprints, “Army.” The date of 7-13-40 is listed as his date of being arrested or received in Houston, Texas.

  Then again on 8-21-42, the contributor of fingerprints listed “CAA, Wash., D.C.” also with the words “applicant F.P.” on the documentation that was once in the hands of Jim Garrison. This of course was, about one month prior to Rose being arrested for “aiding soldiers to escape” at Barksdale Airfield.

  This Robert George Youngblood was also arrested in Reno on the charge of being a “shill” on 12-10-46.

  By 1949, Youngblood was released into the custody of the USM (United States Military) in New Orleans where he was “on Gov. Reservation,” after he was arrested on 6-30-49 on a charge of theft of Government property. According to the file, the charge was pending.

  At first glance,the charge of “theft of government property” reeks of gun running. Gun runners back then (and possibly still today) were often military or ex-military who would steal weapons from military installations, or as stated in the file, a “government reservation.”

  There are similarities between his crime record and that of Rose.

  He was a known car thief with a list of aliases that included Johnnie C. Youngblood, Johnnie Cleveland Youngblood, J.C. Gaines, Jake Youngblood and J.C. Youngblood. The Atlanta Police Department arrested Jake Youngblood for being a suspect in an “assault to murder charge” on 5-8-48.

  However, by 1950 the information on Youngblood goes “dark,” with his final arrest on 1-6-50, in Atlanta, for violation of the Dyer Act, much like Rose. According to the paperwork, his disposition is “pending” with no release to a prison or any further arrests.

  Curiously enough, the last name Youngblood breathed new life with a mention in the Warren Commission Report, from the sworn testimony of a woman with New Orleans connections.

  Nancy Perrin Rich, who was mentioned in a hand written note in Garrison’s files with the inscribed message: “man by this name was at party – Nancy Perrin Rich.” The writing had a drawn arrow on the page pointing to the name “Youngblood” as it pertained to Melba Christine Youngblood: Rose.

  The testimony of Nancy Perrin Rich was taken at 11 a.m., on June 2, 1964, at 200 Maryland Avenue NE., Washington, D.C., by Burt W. Griffin and Leon D. Hubert, Jr., assistant counsel of the Warren Commission. In her testimony, she described how at the time of the testimony she resided in Massachusetts and how her previous husband, Robert L. Perrin, died in New Orleans in 1962 by arsenic poisoning, which was ruled a suicide.

  She mentioned how her late husband once worked for a man named Jack Dragna, who, at the time, was serving time in San Quentin prison. Dragna and his associates were members of organized crime, and thus her husband was as well.

  She claimed that her husband ran guns to General Franco in Spain during the war and that his new Mafia associates were about “everything from prostitution to illegal gambling to narcotics.” She also said that her husband served time in Spanish prison, that he was “a professional soldier” who fought for both sides.

  Rich claimed that while the couple did reside for a time in Belmont, Massachusetts, her husband left her while he made his way to Dallas, Texas.

  Seeking him out, she began to call Dallas looking for her husband to rejoin him, according to her testimony in the Warren Commission Report:

  “Mrs. RICH. I was in New Hampshire with the state legislature at the time. I was doing public relations. And I had just obtained a job, a position for him, and I telephoned to Massachusetts to tell him to come on down, and there was no answer. And I had a feeling that something was wrong. So I hightailed it back to Massachusetts, and there was a note. And the note said that he was going to Dallas. I called and he wasn’t there. I called halfway over the United States, thinking of places he told me he had been, and I couldn’t find him.

  “Mr. HUBERT. What place did you call in Dallas?

  “Mrs. RICH. I called the police department and a foundry he had mentioned in a letter, and had read the name of a gentleman he had mentioned at this time whose name eludes me – Youngblood – I take it back.

  “Mr. HUBERT. Do you remember his first name?

  “Mrs. RICH. No; I don’t. But my husband claimed – and I couldn’t ask him, because if he was he couldn’t have told me – claimed he was some sort of a Government agent, which was in all probability true.

  “Mr. HUBERT. Did you contact Mr. Youngblood?

  “Mrs
. RICH. Yes; he hadn’t seen him. Then I proceeded to call Kansas City and various other points I thought he might be.”

  Thus, according to the Warren Commission, in 1961 Youngblood was the name of a mysterious “government agent” living in Dallas, who knew a Mafia-connected, mercenary named Robert L. Perrin, who wound up dead in about a year’s time in New Orleans.

  According to Mrs. Rich’s testimony, one of the first people that she met when she arrived in Dallas was officer J.D. Tippit – who was also slain in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Mrs. Rich said that she had spoken to Tippit by phone over a period of time before leaving for Dallas.

  Allegedly, Tippit, or others at the Dallas Police Department, helped her to establish a residence at a boarding house until she could find her husband.

  Her first job while in Dallas was at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club as a bartender. Nancy Perrin Rich just rolled into town from Massachusetts and happened to meet two major characters in the JFK mystery, possibly because of her connections with her husband and this “Youngblood” agent.

  In Garrison’s notes, the “party” that Mrs. Rich attended was actually a series of three meetings in a scantly furnished apartment in Dallas.

  Her husband’s friend in Dallas, one David Cherry (which sounds a lot like David Ferrie), helped to broker a deal to do some work that needed the precision and discipline of a mercenary type.

  Mrs. Rich claimed that they met with a Colonel or possibly a Lt. Colonel of the U.S. Army in the seemingly bare apartment in Dallas. The Colonel offered her husband $10,000 to help pilot a boat to Cuba in an effort to help Cuban refugees to escape while running rifles into mainland Cuba.

  According to Garrison’s research, Youngblood attended at least one of the meetings.

  Mrs. Rich claimed that at the second meeting, Jack Ruby showed up with a bulge in his coat pocket. She claimed that she assumed Ruby brought a large amount of cash to the party, because everybody was happy to see Jack.