Drug Victim Identified
Monday, May 18th, 1970
ALBUQUERQUE, NM, May 18 – Police today tentatively identified the man who died from an overdose of narcotics early Saturday as a 23-year-old mystic and practicer of black magic living in a hippy community at Cedar Crest.
The man, who was discovered about 12:45 a.m. Saturday in Yale Park, was rushed to the Bernalillo County Medical Center where he was treated for several hours before he died, police reported.
The man has been tentatively identified as James Arnold Rosemond.
Police said that his last known address before he moved to the Albuquerque area was a hippy community in Tapanga Canyon, near San Jose, Calif.
He was identified from a picture postcard which was found in his possession early Saturday.
The card was addressed to the Tapauga Canyon Community known as “The Insane Asylum,” police reported.
Several members of the Cedar Crest community and a University of New Mexico coed have identified Rosemond. Police are attempting to contact his family, believed to be living in El Paso, Tex., for positive identification.
Police said that a friend of Rosemond reported that he was a mystic who claimed the power to conjure up spirits and will people to do as he desired.
He was a friend of Charles Manson, charged in connection with the slaying of actress Sharon Tate, although he had not lived will the Manson “family,” one of Rosemond’s friends told police.
He is the second person reported to have suffered a narcotics overdose near the University damns the weekend, police said.
Late Saturday afternoon a 22-year-old El Rio man was taken to the BCMC by a friend after he “fell to the ground unconscious” in Yak Park.
Police said that they are investigating a rumor that a shipment of ”hot staff” (stronger than usual narcotics) has arrived in the dry.
By JACK SWICKARD
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