Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination
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164 Dawn Meredith, Esq., 2 Oct. 2010, “Ruby Injected with Mercury Thallium,” Deep Politics Forum, emphasis in original: https://deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-4388.html?s=984c061d304653e8db413aaf2cdbe772
165 “If Adlai Stevenson Had Been Vice President…,” pm247, accessed 23 Nov. 2012: http://my.firedoglake.com/pm247/tag/jack-ruby/
Victim
Jack Zangetty, mobster with links to Chicago Mob, managed a high-end casino in Oklahoma that was popular with high-rollers and, due to its safe and remote nature, was also used to host high-level national Mafia meetings.
Cause of Death
Multiple Gunshots
Official Verdict
Unsolved Murder
Actual Circumstances
Victim was found dead in swimming pool, multiple gunshots to chest, and appeared to have been dead in the water for one-to-two weeks.
Inconsistencies
1. Victim made one of the uncanny predictions in history. Right before the virtually unknown nightclub operator, Jack Ruby, killed Oswald, Zangetty specifically told friends (on November 23, 1963) the following:
A man named Ruby will kill Oswald tomorrow, and in a few days, a member of Frank Sinatra’s family will be kidnapped just to take some of the attention away from the assassination.166
Ruby did indeed shoot Oswald the following day—and Frank Sinatra’s son was kidnapped a few days later. So Zangetty apparently had obvious foreknowledge that he must have picked up via his connections.
2. Working backwards from the one-to-two week estimate of being dead in the swimming pool, Zangetty’s murder would have taken place shortly after making the above statements.167
3. A further confidence to friends from Zangetty was that “three other men—not Oswald—killed the President.”168
166 Penn Jones, Jr., “Disappearing Witnesses,” Jan 1984, The Rebel magazine: http://www.maebrussell.com/Disappearing%20Witnesses/Disappearing%20Witnesses.html
4
Jack Zangetty,
Late November, 1963
Jack Zangetty was the manager of a very popular and very high-end casino in Oklahoma called The Red Lobster. It was known as a safe hangout for “high-rollers,” and was often used for high-level Mob meetings for “wise guys” from all over the country.169
The day after the assassination, Zangetty told friends that Oswald would be killed by Ruby and also that Frank Sinatra’s son would be kidnapped “just to take some of the attention away from the assassination.” Zangetty was murdered shortly after making those statements.170
Just like Jack Ruby’s nightclub in Dallas, The Carousel Club, and Frank Sinatra’s casino hotel in Nevada, The Cal-Neva Lodge, Zangetty’s swank casino hotel in Oklahoma, The Red Lobster, was apparently a “front” for the Mob. They no doubt had hidden interests in the operation, just as they did in the aforementioned—that’s the way that they operated. These guys don’t go to a bank to start a business operation—they go to their benefactors because that’s where they know they can get the money. It comes, however, with a price.
Conclusions Based On Evidentiary Indications
Zangetty’s predictions indeed came true; in fact, he was apparently so confident of his statements that they should properly be termed “prior knowledge” rather than “predictions.”
• Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, as a live TV audience and a roomful of cops silently watched it take place (the cops didn’t move a muscle, or even flinch, until after Oswald was hit at very close range);
• Frank Sinatra, Jr. was indeed “kidnapped”; though, even at the time, many suspected that the whole thing was staged, due to some odd circumstances. Things like loaning gas money to his kidnappers, who had casually waltzed into Sinatra’s hotel room at a Nevada casino, struck a false chord in the public perception.
167 Ibid.
168 Ibid.
169 Roberts & Armstrong, The Dead Witnesses
170 Penn Jones, “Disappearing Witnesses”
Conclusion
Murdered
High probability that his killing was directly linked to his “talking out of turn” regarding knowledge of post-assassination facts.
In any event, his “predictions” came true: Just as Zangetty had termed it, Ruby killed Oswald and then the Sinatra kidnapping was headline material and a major distraction that took national attention away from the Ruby/Oswald fiasco.
Victim
Melba Christine Marcades (also known as Rose Cheramie, Rose Cheramie)
Cause of Death
Hit-and-run auto accident
Official Verdict
Accidental
Actual Circumstances
Rose was part of a heroin-smuggling ring in which she was forced to participate. (They threatened to harm her child, whom they were holding until she finished performing as drug courier for the heroin network.)
It has been substantiated by multiple parties that she actually correctly predicted how, where, and when President Kennedy would be assassinated.
Inconsistencies
1. Although the victim died from a head wound after being run over by a car, she also had a large round wound in her head, leading to speculation she may have been shot first and then run over to make the death appear as accidental. However, faced with very limited information at the scene—or people of influential means, as we describe further in the material that follows—police ruled the death was apparently accidental.171
2. Autopsy report disappeared.172
3. Our additional research revealed that evidence of the gunshot wound was blatant. See below.
5
Melba Christine
Marcades,
September 4, 1965
Like Jack Zangetty, Rose Cheramie was another clearly established case of a person possessing obvious foreknowledge of important events related to the JFK assassination.
Her story was selected as the opening sequence for the film JFK, and readers will likely remember its ominous overtones of conspiracy and intrigue.
From the victim’s standpoint, it’s a sordid story. Rose was a dope runner associated with Jack Ruby and other mobsters. The Mob guys held her child as “insurance” that she’d complete her work. She was a courier for the dope ring; she brought the money to pay for a large heroin shipment that was coming into the port of Galveston, Texas in late 1963. She was to pick up the money from the man who was holding her child, pay for the drugs, and then take the heroin shipment. En route to the transaction, an argument apparently broke out between her and the two men who were transporting her. They threw her out of the car and she was run over by another car and then taken to a hospital, where police were then called.1
Her story was then told to a Lieutenant Fruge of the Louisiana State Police. Lieutenant Fruge verified the story, learning that Rose was a courier for the drug and prostitution ring that was known to be operating in the Southeastern U.S. He was amazed to also find out that, before throwing her out of the car, the two men had discussed a conspiracy plan to assassinate President Kennedy in Dallas. Now here’s the amazing part: This all took place on November 20, 1963, two days before the assassination.
As Lieutenant Fruge testified to a Congressional committee, Rose’s itinerary was to:
. . . pick up some money, pick up her baby, and to kill Kennedy.2
1 James DiEugenio & Lisa Pease, The Assassinations, 225-228.
2 Deposition of Francis Fruge, April 18, 1978, House Select Committee on Assassinations
171 J. Gary Shaw, Dateline: Dallas, November, 1993.
172 J. Gary Shaw, Conspiracy of Silence
So that was before the assassination of President Kennedy, and Lieutenant Fruge had dismissed it as the rambling talk of a drug user. Two days later, when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas; Lieutenant Fruge felt like he’d been hit by a bolt of lightning:
Fruge dismissed this all as the ranting of a drug user. But after Kennedy was killed, he went to the hospital to question her
and also turn her over to the authorities. He later learned that she had also predicted at the hospital that the assassination was going to happen. Rose also told two men at the hospital, Doctors Weiss and Owen, that Ruby was involved in the Kennedy plot. And she told both Weiss and Fruge that she had seen
Oswald at Ruby’s club.1
It gets even weirder.
At the hospital, Cheramie again predicted the assassination. On November 22, several nurses were watching television with Cheramie. According to these witnesses, “. . . during the telecast moments before Kennedy was shot, Rose Cheramie stated to them: ‘This is when it is going to happen’ and at that moment Kennedy was assassinated. The nurses, in turn, told others of Cheramie’s prognostication.” (Memo of Frank Meloche to Louis Ivon, 5/22/67. Although the Dallas motorcade was not broadcast live on the major networks, the nurses were likely referring to the spot reports that circulated through local channels in the vicinity of the trip. Of course, the assassination itself was reported on by network television almost immediately after it happened.)
Furthermore, according to a psychiatrist there, Dr. Victor Weiss, Rose “. . . told him that she knew both Ruby and Oswald and had seen them sitting together on occasions at Ruby’s club.”2
In fact, Fruge later confirmed the fact that she had worked as a stripper for Ruby.3 (Louisiana State Police report of 4/4/67.)
When she came out with the Kennedy business, I just said, wait a minute, wait a minute, something wrong here somewhere.4
Assassination researcher James DiEugenio has documented the facts of this case conclusively:
The word spread throughout the hospital that she had predicted Kennedy’s murder in advance. Dr. Wayne Owen, who had been interning
1 DiEugenio & Pease, The Assassinations, 225-228.
2 Jim DiEugenio, “Rose Cheramie: How She Predicted the JFK Assassination,” July-August 1999, Probe Magazine, Vol. 6 No. 5: http://the-puzzle-palace.com/files/pr799-rose.html
3 Ibid.
4 Deposition of Francis Fruge, April 18, 1978, House Select Committee on Assassinations
from LSU at the time, later told the Madison Capital Times that he and other interns were told of the plot in advance of the assassination. Amazingly, Cheramie even predicted the role of her former boss, Jack Ruby, because Owen was quoted as saying that one of the interns was told “. . . that one of the men involved in the plot was a man named Jack Rubinstein.” Owen said that they shrugged it off at the time. But when they learned that Rubinstein was Ruby, they grew quite concerned. “We were all assured that something would be done about it by the FBI or someone. Yet we never heard anything.”1 In fact, Cheramie’s association with Ruby was also revealed to Dr. Weiss. For in an interview with him after the assassination, Rose revealed that she had worked as a drug courier for Jack Ruby.2
How reliable a witness was Cheramie? Extremely. Fruge decided to have the drug deal aspect of her story checked out by the state troopers and U. S. Customs. The officers confirmed the name of the seaman on board the correct ship coming into Galveston. The customs people checked the Rice Hotel and the reservations had been made for her under an assumed name. The contact that had the money and her baby was checked and his name showed that he was an underworld, suspected narcotics dealer. Fruge checked Cheramie’s baggage and found that one box had baby clothes and shoes inside.3
Lieutenant Fruge thought that the Dallas Police Department would be extremely interested in the witness he had found. They told him, in no uncertain terms, they were not interested. Fruge then thought that the Warren Commission would be interested. They too, were not. But when New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison mounted an authentic investigation a few years later, he found out about the story, hired Lieutenant Fruge as an investigator and sent him to find Rose Cheramie. However, she was now dead. She had been run over by a car on an extremely remote area of Highway 155 at around two o’clock in the morning, a mile and a half east of Big Sandy, Texas. It was reported that she had been hitchhiking on the road.4
District Attorney Garrison was so suspicious of the circumstances of her death that he attempted to have her body exhumed. That request was denied, somehow precluded by local authorities.5
Lieutenant Fruge went to Texas and located the investigating officer:
But in Fruge’s written summary of his interview with the investigating officer, one J. A. Andrews, Fruge writes that although Moore attempted to avoid Cheramie, “he ran over the top of her skull.” After a rather cursory investigation, due to the reluctance of Cheramie’s family to pursue it,
Andrews reluctantly closed the probe as an accidental death.6
1 Ibid.
2 DiEugenio, “Rose Cheramie: How She Predicted the JFK Assassination”
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
Author Jim DiEugenio investigated the death of Rose Cheramie in detail and was left with many questions:
Furthermore, there are oddities in the extant medical records at Gladewater Hospital. Moore states that Rose was still alive at the scene. So he drove her to Big Sandy and asked for the nearest doctor. The doctor gave her a few shots before the ambulance arrived to take her to Gladewater. On Cheramie’s death certificate, in 3 different places, she is listed as DOA (dead on arrival). Yet also on this document, we are informed that a period of eight hours elapsed between the onset of injury and her death. This eight-hour time period would coincide with the time of death, which is listed as 11:00 AM. So what happened at the hospital in the intervening hours?1
We also uncovered some virtually heretofore unknown evidence that is extremely relevant. Longtime JFK researcher and historian, Walt Brown, came up with this noteworthy addition:
Rose Cheramie, on the other hand, is always listed as “Big Sandys” Texas. It is never taken far enough to state that she was found on the easement to the property of either Jerome Ragsdale or Paul Rothermel, whom I can never keep apart. Either way, she wasn’t found in the street.2
Well, as it turns out, a key witness turning up dead very near the property of Paul Rothermel (and otherwise in the middle of nowhere on a remote Texas highway), is actually very noteworthy indeed. Paul Rothermel was the Security Chief for billionaire H. L. Hunt, who has often been linked to the JFK assassination. (It was Hunt to whom Lee Harvey Oswald wrote the cryptic note asking for more information before he proceeded with the plan.) Rothermel was an ex-FBI agent and, as Hunt’s chief of security, obviously should have raised some red flags if the dead body of a crucial witness was found on the easement to his property.
As far as Rose’s death, things got even weirder, and then they ended there too:
According to researcher J. Gary Shaw in the book Conspiracy of Silence, the official autopsy of Cheramie has now disappeared. But in the records he did find, he discovered that in addition to her other injuries, she had suffered a “deep punctate stellate wound above her right forehead” (Dateline Dallas, 1993). Shaw researched this type of injury and found out that, according to medical textbooks, it often occurs as the result of a contact gunshot wound. When a gun is fired in contact with 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 wound. (Punctate stellate means a star-shaped puncture.) Whatever the true facts of Cheramie’s passage, she certainly does qualify as one of the mysterious deaths that surround the JFK murder.3
1 Ibid.
2 Walt Brown, Ph.D., 26 Oct 2012, email to author.
3 DiEugenio, “Rose Cheramie: How She Predicted the JFK Assassination”
Our research uncovered evidence of a gunshot wound that was far more blatant.
Jay Harrison was a member of the Dallas Police Department and, in the years following the JFK assassination, a veteran JFK researcher. He was also a member of that special tactical Intelligence unit which we covered in the opening chapter on J.D. Tippit.
Jay was a Dallas
police officer and member, for a short time, assigned to one of these Dallas Special Intel units (reserve).1
And here’s the clincher on the case, folks. Get a load of this little gem:
Somehow, J. Harrison got the original death certificate--a certified blue copy, and he investigated “where” it happened, and the address turned out to be Rothermel’s; the body, if memory serves, had been moved, just as Henry Marshall’s body was moved from where he “committed suicide.” Left in the street, Melba was run over, but the bullet wound in the forehead was obvious and the blood stains were on the property.2
And if that sounds sinister, it darn well should!
Conclusions Based On Evidentiary Indications
• Victim clearly possessed accurate foreknowledge of the JFK assassination;
• The fact that the victim was found on the property of the Chief of Security for H. L. Hunt is extremely noteworthy;
• The bullet wound in the head and blood on the property are clearly indicative of murder, not accidental death.
Conclusion
Murder; Directly linked to the JFK assassination.
1 Tosh Plumlee, email to author, 6 Nov. 2012.
2 Walt Brown, Ph.D., email to author, 5 Nov. 2012.