A known prostitute and drug courier, Rose Cherami, was picked up by authorities in Eunice, Louisiana some 48 hours before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. She claimed to have been in the company of men who were on their way to kill the President in Dallas that Friday. Born Melba Christine Marcades, she is a key piece or the puzzle that is the Louisiana connection to the JFK assassination - but has survived only as an enigmatic shadow for 50 years. Immortalized by Oliver Stone in the opening scenes of his history-shaking film, JFK, Cherami here becomes the main focus for the first time. A Rose By Many Other Names reveals how She became, just minutes after the assassination, the center of the first, non-publicized investigation info President Kennedy's murder. Her absorbing tale shifts away from Dallas' Dealey Plaza to Louisiana and peers into local police and FBI files. It reveals a life in a netherworld of crime and intrigue that ties her to mob figures Carlos Marcello, the godfather of the Louisiana/Texas Mafia, and Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner and assassin of Lee Harvey Oswald.

But was she more than Just a tragic, underworld castaway? Rose is considered by many to be a "JFK statistic" due to the fact that she is one of the many witnesses and individuals surrounding the assassination investigation to meet with an untimely demise. The story of her life and death is a specter haunting America's history. With new interviews, new photographs and new documented testimony, investigative journalist Todd C. Elliott of the Eunice News, transports readers back to a another time in America, leading us on a guided tour through Louisiana backcountry. Elliott helps us make sense of the convoluted paper trail of one of the most intriguing figures swept up in the JFK assassination conspiracy. A Rose By Many Other Names unravels much of the mystery, dispels some of the legend and provides valuable new information about the woman known as Rose Cherami. Book jacket.