CA CA - Rose Cole, 16, Oakland, 1972 - #2

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The young girl looks like Rose?


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I did notice that Roses brother Pose signed up for FB earlier this year. Well I assume it's him. Unfortunately he isn't active and only has 1 FB friend. I've always wondered if he had heard from Rose since he was estranged from the family.


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EmiLove832 said:
The young girl looks like Rose?


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She saw the age progression photos in a newspaper, her boss joked how they could be sisters. That got her wondering. Her family hx is a bit complicated. The mother on her FB profile is her adopted mother, btw.

Does anyone know if Rose has a hx of schizophrenia, or depression? Any physical "impairments" such as a snagle tooth or toes that don't work?
 
I don't know about schizophrenia, snaggleteeth or toes that don't work, but I did read something a while back that could be relevant. The daughter of a former neighbor of the Cole family wrote in an online blog that her father believed Rose's mother suffered from bipolar disorder, paranoia and mood swings. (Sadly, I've been unsuccessful in finding this blog again to quote it as a source!) Now I can't say for certain, but what if as a teenager Rose suffered from the same condition? Her experimentation with alcohol and drugs could be the direct result of her own chemical imbalance coupled with an unhappy homelife. Maybe she was "self-medicating."

Here are a few other observations:

Rose's mother, Willie Mae was born a Louisiana native. She moved to Michigan shortly after marrying Jesse Cole. By all accounts, their marriage was brief and rocky, possibly exacerbated by a drinking habit Jesse developed while serving in the Navy. This might have been something of a culture shock for her, especially after one of those icy winter storms blew in. Perhaps it was all too much for Willie Mae. Their marriage finally collapsed sometime after the birth of Rose's younger brother Pose. Rose's mom ended up back in Orange, Texas, not far from the Louisiana state border. I'm sure she was much happier there.

So, while it is possible that Willie Mae was bipolar, it was equally possible that she was suffering from the effects of homesickness and marital strife. Sadly, only she could've said for sure.

Now as for Rose, I'm no psychologist but her pattern of behavior does suggest something out of the ordinary. She was described as being sullen in school. Her stepsister Norma claimed she retrieved her from neighborhood parties in which alcohol and marijuana were present. Her best friend Claire took her to the emergency room after something was allegedly added to her drink. Claire's mother described her as being withdrawn, quiet and weary of adult men in her presence. She was caught running away from home. She unwisely mouthed off to a judge after she was charged with selling and using drugs. Even after a year in a juvenile detention facility, the authorities deemed her unfit to rejoin regular society, so they shipped her off to California to enroll in the Synanon Foundation. But these same authorities failed to realize in time the criminal and cultish atmosphere that Dederich's program was becoming, adding fuel to the proverbial fire. So Rose ran away again, this time into a major metropolitan area (the Bay Area) which she didn't know very well. Her rambling letters home were filled with heartfelt poetry and desperate pleading. As one Websleuth member pointed out, there were burn stains (from smoking marijuana?) appearing on the original legal pad paper she wrote on.

Rose's own letters mention sleeplessness, nightmares, her profound insecurity and feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. She even feared that her family viewed her as "crazy" and consistently made impassioned apologies to her stepmother Opal, her brothers and stepsiblings. She was also supposedly dismayed that she resembled her birth mother, Willie Mae, perhaps feeling her father resented her for it.

Finally, a latter-day stepdaughter of Jesse's claimed he refused to help Rose when she called begging to come home. She would've been a legal adult by this time (1979-1982) and he just didn't want to get caught up in her drama again. Even so, what a way to treat your own daughter!

So what's the diagnosis? I can't say for sure, but clearly Rose was one deeply troubled young woman!
 
I wanted to follow up my last post with a few more observations and questions.

During Rose's time away from Synanon, she stopped referring to herself by name and only used her initials RLC. I assume she did this in case her mail fell into the wrong hands. But whose hands did she consider wrong? Synanon's? Someone else's?

In addition, she was very vague about about where she was or who she was staying with. Perhaps she was afraid that a family member would call the police, who would then be obligated to return her to Synanon custody, or worse juvenile hall. Natually, she was determined NOT to let that happen! But then, why write to them at all? Why take that risk?

Also, if the court dropped all charges against Rose in Jan 1974, why would she feel she still needed to hide? Synanon should've had no further interest in her since they were no longer being paid. And the so-called Imperial Marines would've likely forgotten about her after awhile. Heck, they might not even recognize her anymore. And Chuck Dederich certainly had bigger issues to deal with creating his "church".

So could Rose have seen something she shouldn't? Could there have been a reason for Synanon to have a prolonged interest in her? Or was someone else involved?

And wouldn't her running away be taken into account during the court proceedings to drop all charges? And if she wasn't present, shouldn't there have been a missing person's report filed somewhere? If nothing else, the judge himself should've ordered one. Rose was 16 shortly after she ran away, which technically means she was still a minor. She wasn't legally emancipated either. And she would've been considered an endangered runaway and a suspected drug addict besides!

Something about all this just doesn't add up! Was there some sort of jurisdictional conflict going on here? Wasn't Synanon supposed to be answerable to someone? A court official, law agency or the judge perhaps? Shouldn't Dederich's people have been held responsible when their charge went missing? Why didn't they face any immediate legal ramifications regarding the matter? Or scandal? Rose's disappearance was never reported in the press at the time. Nothing in any book I've read and very few online articles about Synanon even make mention of Rose!

Where was the oversight? What happened to Rose's probation officer? Did she check up on her? If yes, why didn't she report her missing at the time? And why did it take Rose's sister-in-law to finally get her listed as a missing person 34 years after she ran away? And furthermore, why won't this sister-in-law help us with the search anymore? And why are Rose's letters home being hidden away now without reason or explanation?

Then there's the Underground Railroad. Why haven't they yielded more clues or memories with us? Did they ever meet Rose at all? If yes, why so much secrecy, evasiveness and mystery after all this time?

Jesse's stepdaughter insists that Rose called almost a decade after she ran away, so why didn't she follow up on her promise to reconnect with her brothers and stepsiblings? Granted there was no public Internet at the time, but there were other ways to find them.

Or was it possible that this stepdaughter was mistaken about who it was that actually called?

Does anyone have access to marriage records that may record someone named Rose Cole? Could she have gotten married under an assumed name? With an fake ID? In another state? And why would she feel the need to marry amid such secrecy?

Could she have bought a house? Signed for a car loan? Filed for some sort of government aid? Social Security? Applied for a job? Applied for a visa to move abroad? Moved onto some hippie commune? Joined another cult? Enrolled in a different treatment program?

I wonder if Rose was somehow returned to Synanon and was moved offsite. Maybe Jesse Cole knew about it but felt it was nobody's business. Could she have remained a part of Synanon or some related community until she was 18...or older? Do Synanon officials have an alternate account filed away somewhere about what really happened?

And if Rose was somehow returned, would there be a police, court or Synanon record of the fact? And would anyone legally have access to them?

Of course, the alternative is equally possible: Could Rose have FAKED running away altogether in a ploy to get attention from her family? Maybe she never left at all and it was all just a cry for help. It could explain why it took her so long to "get a stamp" when mailing her final letter. Synanon people would've wanted all contact home to be minimal.

Or if Rose did run away, perhaps it was very brief? After all, who's to say that Rose wasn't followed the whole time?

Perhaps after all charges were cleared, Rose went to live with another relative or at a halfway house somewhere. Who knows? There are just too many odd and mysterious variables for this to be a coincidence! I'm beginning to get the sense that the story we've been told and what actually happened may NOT be one and the same.

In closing, just who is this Rick guy who gamed her anyway? And why did he do it?
 
Valmont, were the letters still up when you got here? I don't have the one that mentioned Ruth. Man, I wish I'd downloaded them all while I could. All I remember was that it was in relation to the visit to Tomales Bay, but I don't remember the exact reference to Ruth. I wish we could get them posted again!
 
I just noticed some of the ones I don't have are on this YouTube video, but I don't think the ones I'm looking for are there. (The one that mentions Ruth and the one about the older couple in Chinatown/kidney infection) Still, I'll try to pause & transcribe them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5auAGwn5ns0

ETA: I just noticed the letter shown at 3:13 looks like it's written on the back of a newsletter or letterhead, stationery, or something. I wish I could tell what it was! I actually don't recall seeing that letter before.
 
PrivateEye56 said:
So much speculation. I really wish you guys would turn your attention to something OTHER THAN Synanon. Rose left in 72 - at that time, Synanon was not yet wierd, non-violent, no Marines, no head-shaving, hardly anything! 1972 was a fantastic time to be in Synanon (except if you were a scared girl who just wanted to get back to her family.) There are no graves at Synanon - no one died there. No secrecy, no paranoia. Chuck Dederich's beloved wife died in early 1977, and her death is what set everything in the direction of the bizarre. All of those posts about Dederich's control freak-ism, the regimentation, the cult-like environment? All that came much, MUCH later. But the kicker in the story is that Rose was ALREADY GONE and she wrote home AFTER she was gone. You already have proof that she was alive AFTER SHE LEFT. No one went to get her. No one. Trust me on this. I lived in Synanon - I know how it worked. Especially in 1972. The authority that sent her there WOULD have been contacted afer she left and her family WOULD have been contacted and it would've been their obligation to go and find her, not Synanon's.

Rose was a very young girl with nowhere to go, and she took off anyway. That's the most unfortunate part. I've read her letters here, and she really does sound bat-**** crazy. Girls like that end up on the streets (which you KNOW she did) and need money (so start selling themselves) and fall prey to monsters, of which there were MANY roaming the Bay Area at that time. IT WASN'T SYNANON. That's just the sexiest part of the story, sure, but you need to stop it and do a reality check. No one from Synanon remembers her. She was one of thousands and thousands that passed through. To be at all memorable to anyone, she would have had to stay for at least a year and make an attempt to turn her life around - she didn't do that, judging from her letters. She felt like a caged animal, and she wanted OUT. She was there for a minute and a half, and then she took off. If you're really interested in finding her, get her DNA sample and send it to the Bay Area for comparisons with the Jane Does they have at the morgues. If she were alive, she would have found her family by now....
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I have to respectfully disagree on several points.

Firstly, you say Synanon was not yet weird. Rose talks in her letters about 'the game' and about being told that her family didn't want her. I realize that 'weird' is subjective, but in my opinion, that is weird.

Secondly, you say Rose sounded crazy in her letters. You have to remember that this girl ran away from home (something that many teens do), and all of a sudden found herself clear across the country, in a cult-like atmosphere, being insulted, yelled at and being told her family didn't want her home. I don't think one could expect a 'normal', well-adjusted teen under those circumstances, do you?

I wish we had a solid theory - and by that, I mean something with evidence to back it up. Until we do, we have to consider the possibility that she went back to Synanon right along with all the other possibilities.
 
Odyssey said:
I have to respectfully disagree on several points.

Firstly, you say Synanon was not yet weird. Rose talks in her letters about 'the game' and about being told that her family didn't want her. I realize that 'weird' is subjective, but in my opinion, that is weird.

Secondly, you say Rose sounded crazy in her letters. You have to remember that this girl ran away from home (something that many teens do), and all of a sudden found herself clear across the country, in a cult-like atmosphere, being insulted, yelled at and being told her family didn't want her home. I don't think one could expect a 'normal', well-adjusted teen under those circumstances, do you?

I wish we had a solid theory - and by that, I mean something with evidence to back it up. Until we do, we have to consider the possibility that she went back to Synanon right along with all the other possibilities.
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Yes, it was harsh. But it was also the truth, judging by her letters and her discussion of her behavior leading up to being placed in Synanon. Everyone was told that, and you know what? It was true! Drug addicts, juvenile delinquents, alcoholics -- they tend to burn a lot of bridges. Yes, I agree with you - crazy is subjective. But one who finds herself in that situation is generally a little more introspective about what she must do to get back to her family, and how to make it so they'll WANT her back. Truthfully, if she'd gone back, someone would have remembered her. At the time she was there, there were hardly *any* juvenile delinquents of her young age in Synanon. Even her travelling companion, Ruth, does not remember her. If she'd gone back, there would be a better recollection somewhere. To get back in, she would have had to "demonstrate", to "sit on the bench" and wait for someone to accept her back. Synanon's philosophy was NOT to drag people back -- it was the opposite. You had to want to change, to want to be there. They purposely made it as difficult as possible, because you had to really, really want to change. And that was the problem with delinquents -- they hadn't hit bottom yet. They didn't really think they needed to change. Synanon didn't do well with delinquents, IMHO.

<modsnip> BTW, I was the one who connected Ruth Rinehart with this site. I would truly like to find out what happened to this poor girl.
 
Hello all, first things first...Welcome aboard Ruth!! Hopefully, your presence here will help us answer some questions.

I was active in the Rose Cole case when it was first brought to WS. i am going through emails and other items i have saved regarding this case. Yannette apparently closed her account where she had letters and pics posted but I saved some of them. I don't know if this will work but I'm going to try to post a letter:

ETA: for some reason, the letter can't be posted as an image or a Word document. I think it's because the way the file was originally saved. Tomorrow I'll try to take a pic of the letter with my cell phone and post it as an image or I'll just type what the letter said. I want you all to be able to see her handwriting so you can feel her desperation.
 
PrivateEye56 said:
So much speculation. I really wish you guys would turn your attention to something OTHER THAN Synanon. Rose left in 72 - at that time, Synanon was not yet wierd, non-violent, no Marines, no head-shaving, hardly anything! 1972 was a fantastic time to be in Synanon (except if you were a scared girl who just wanted to get back to her family.) There are no graves at Synanon - no one died there. No secrecy, no paranoia. Chuck Dederich's beloved wife died in early 1977, and her death is what set everything in the direction of the bizarre. All of those posts about Dederich's control freak-ism, the regimentation, the cult-like environment? All that came much, MUCH later. But the kicker in the story is that Rose was ALREADY GONE and she wrote home AFTER she was gone. You already have proof that she was alive AFTER SHE LEFT. No one went to get her. No one. Trust me on this. I lived in Synanon - I know how it worked. Especially in 1972. The authority that sent her there WOULD have been contacted afer she left and her family WOULD have been contacted and it would've been their obligation to go and find her, not Synanon's.

Rose was a very young girl with nowhere to go, and she took off anyway. That's the most unfortunate part. I've read her letters here, and she really does sound bat-**** crazy. Girls like that end up on the streets (which you KNOW she did) and need money (so start selling themselves) and fall prey to monsters, of which there were MANY roaming the Bay Area at that time. IT WASN'T SYNANON. That's just the sexiest part of the story, sure, but you need to stop it and do a reality check. No one from Synanon remembers her. She was one of thousands and thousands that passed through. To be at all memorable to anyone, she would have had to stay for at least a year and make an attempt to turn her life around - she didn't do that, judging from her letters. She felt like a caged animal, and she wanted OUT. She was there for a minute and a half, and then she took off. If you're really interested in finding her, get her DNA sample and send it to the Bay Area for comparisons with the Jane Does they have at the morgues. If she were alive, she would have found her family by now....
Click to expand...

Frankly, I'd welcome any and all new information we can get on Rose's comings and goings after leaving Synanon. I agree that speculation only goes so far. Any new clues, old memories, insightful observations, or relevant records we don't already have would be far more useful. And I think that Rose's letters home (if someone would kindly repost them) are the best sources of evidence we currently have to what direction she initially went. Hopefully Ruth will be a great help too.

I wish we had access to Rose's letters. I've only read two of them, one from the YouTube video and the other from a summary on this website. I can't say if Rose sounded "crazy" or not without reading more of them. She certainly was troubled though. And if she did wind up on the streets, there's no telling where she ended up going or what became of her based on what little we know.

Oh, and Rose's brother Jesse Cole already provided a DNA sample to the Oakland Police Dept. several years ago, so it's already on file with no conclusive results so far.
 
Valmont1905 said:
Frankly, I'd welcome any and all new information we can get on Rose's comings and goings after leaving Synanon. I agree that speculation only goes so far. Any new clues, old memories, insightful observations, or relevant records we don't already have would be far more useful. And I think that Rose's letters home (if someone would kindly repost them) are the best sources of evidence we currently have to what direction she initially went. Hopefully Ruth will be a great help too.

I wish we had access to Rose's letters. I've only read two of them, one from the YouTube video and the other from a summary on this website. I can't say if Rose sounded "crazy" or not without reading more of them. She certainly was troubled though. And if she did wind up on the streets, there's no telling where she ended up going or what became of her based on what little we know.

Oh, and Rose's brother Jesse Cole already provided a DNA sample to the Oakland Police Dept. several years ago, so it's already on file with no conclusive results so far.
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Thank you, Valmont1905. I've posted again on the Synanon.org website and also on the Synanon Facebook page, asking if anyone might remember her. I was able to locate Ruth on the .org website -- she had signed in there, so I was able to search for a "Ruth" that was there in 1972 that I did not know and voila! So, really glad to find that piece of the puzzle. Another thought is this: Rose's letters mention staying in San Francisco with an older couple and battling a kidney infection. I'm wondering if that couple perhaps had been affiliated with Synanon and took her in. There was also a Synanon facility in SF at that time, on 24th Street near SF General. There were many "game club members" who were not residents of Synanon, perhaps that was how she met this couple? Anyway, I've posted again (as people have in the past) asking people to put on their memory caps and see if they remember anything about this girl. Kidney infections can be quite severe - could she have ended up in the hospital?
 
PrivateEye56 said:
Thank you, Valmont1905. I've posted again on the Synanon.org website and also on the Synanon Facebook page, asking if anyone might remember her. I was able to locate Ruth on the .org website -- she had signed in there, so I was able to search for a "Ruth" that was there in 1972 that I did not know and voila! So, really glad to find that piece of the puzzle. Another thought is this: Rose's letters mention staying in San Francisco with an older couple and battling a kidney infection. I'm wondering if that couple perhaps had been affiliated with Synanon and took her in. There was also a Synanon facility in SF at that time, on 24th Street near SF General. There were many "game club members" who were not residents of Synanon, perhaps that was how she met this couple? Anyway, I've posted again (as people have in the past) asking people to put on their memory caps and see if they remember anything about this girl. Kidney infections can be quite severe - could she have ended up in the hospital?
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That's a good question. She said she was staying in Chinatown, but I've looked through the city directories from 1973 and about 98% of the residents were Chinese. I've long wondered if the people she was staying with were Chinese, and I'm thinking they possibly were. I recall one of her letters referred to sitting in a room among laughter and chatter, but feeling all alone. (I'm paraphrasing as I don't recall the exact wording she used.) It seems to possibly point to the idea that the people didn't speak English.

I also wonder what 'an older couple' would be to a 16 year old. 30s'? 70's? It's really hard to say.

PrivateEye, is the Synanon facility you are referring to related to Delancey Street? From what I understand, Delancey Street was/is a sort of spin-off of Synanon, started by ex-Synanon members. I've also thought it was a possibility that she ended up there, after running out of options on her own. Although, it was a drug rehab program and I've still found nothing that points to Rose ever having used drugs. Her friends from home say she didn't. She apparently was sent to Synanon after running away from home and making a wisecrack to the judge.
 
Welcome, PrivateEye56, and thanks for joining us! Sorry that I have only enough time now for a quick question: What years were you at Synanon? TIA.
 
PJFL said:
Welcome, PrivateEye56, and thanks for joining us! Sorry that I have only enough time now for a quick question: What years were you at Synanon? TIA.
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I started hanging around the Santa Monica facility when my parents got involved as "Squares" in 1969. Moved into Oakland as a "Lifestyler" in 1974 when I was 17 and stayed for 11 years. Left at 28, in 1985 -- after the community had lost all appeal for me. I was a hippie kid who missed Woodstock, and I liked the communal living aspect of it. After things went bad, not so much. I worked in the legal department for six years, and then I worked for five years as assistant to Jady Dederich (Chuck's daughter) who was made Chairman after he had to step down.
 
Yes, Delancey Street is a spinoff of Synanon founded by John Maher, who was from Synanon. To my recollection, it wasn't in existence yet in 1972, though I could be wrong. The place young people went (also Synanon offshoot) was called CEDU.

Odyssey said:
That's a good question. She said she was staying in Chinatown, but I've looked through the city directories from 1973 and about 98% of the residents were Chinese. I've long wondered if the people she was staying with were Chinese, and I'm thinking they possibly were. I recall one of her letters referred to sitting in a room among laughter and chatter, but feeling all alone. (I'm paraphrasing as I don't recall the exact wording she used.) It seems to possibly point to the idea that the people didn't speak English.

I also wonder what 'an older couple' would be to a 16 year old. 30s'? 70's? It's really hard to say.

PrivateEye, is the Synanon facility you are referring to related to Delancey Street? From what I understand, Delancey Street was/is a sort of spin-off of Synanon, started by ex-Synanon members. I've also thought it was a possibility that she ended up there, after running out of options on her own. Although, it was a drug rehab program and I've still found nothing that points to Rose ever having used drugs. Her friends from home say she didn't. She apparently was sent to Synanon after running away from home and making a wisecrack to the judge.
Click to expand...
 
"Squares?"
 
I just ordered a book called Longtime Californ' - A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown.

"In these days of tragedy and uncertainty, it was a pleasure to seek escape in a beautiful presentation of the past. The Nees' work gives a most complete and engrossing portrait of San Francisco's Chinatown in the early 1970s. Through 400 intensive, but mostly informal, interviews, the authors developed a comprehensive picture of the crowded Chinese ghetto in the heart of the city, one of the oldest continuing ghettos in the USA."

Maybe it will help somehow in identifying people who might have known Rose. It was published in 1974, so my hope is that the interviews were from the time that Rose was there. I'll let you guys know when I get it and have a chance to go through it.
 
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