Geronimo CNN Skull & Bones Crimes

[Keith Ranville]

CNN Student News Transcript: February 25, 2009

Geronimo's Skull

AZUZ: He passed away 100 years ago this month, but Geronimo is actually in the middle of a battle taking place right now! His descendents are accusing one of the country's most well-known secret societies of stealing the famous warrior's skull! And they're fighting to get it back. Deborah Feyerick explores the controversy surrounding Geronimo's remains.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEBORAH FEYERICK, CNN REPORTER: Just his name, Geronimo, conjures up images like these in "An American Legend": a fierce Apache leader and his warriors, greatly outnumbered, fighting off the U.S. calvary in an attempt to save his people and their way of life.

EMIL HER MANY HORSES, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN: And he's eventually surrounded and outmanned, outgunned, he is convinced to surrender.

FEYERICK: Geronimo died a prisoner of war, his body buried in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Now, 100 years later, his family is suing to get his remains back.

HARLYN GERONIMO, GERONIMO'S GREAT-GRANDSON: After a while, you know, it hurts you inside.

FEYERICK: Harlyn Geronimo is the warrior's great-grandson. He and other descendants are suing Yale University and the secret society known as the Order of Skull & Bones, claiming Geronimo's skull was stolen back in 1918 by Yale students, members of the secret order. One of the alleged grave-robbers: Yalie Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of presidents 41 and 43.

GERONIMO: When you desecrate a grave like of this nature, you know, you upset the spirits. And sooner or later, you know, the spirits will come after you.

FEYERICK: For decades, members, called Bonesmen, dismissed the suggestion as a hoax. But a Bonesman's letter written in 1918 discovered two years ago at Yale suggests otherwise: "The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed...now safe inside the T." "T" is believed short for the Tomb, the Bonesmen's private club.

ALEXANDERA ROBBINS, AUTHOR, "SECRETS OF THE TOMB": I spoke with several Bonesmen who told me that inside the Tomb, there's a glass display case containing a skull, and the Bonesmen have always called it Geronimo.

FEYERICK: Author Alexandera Robbins wrote a book on the secret order.

ROBBINS: If it is found that Geronimo's skull is really in there, that's a crime.

FEYERICK: Geronimo's descendants have also sued President Obama and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, hoping to recover Geronimo's remains at Fort Sill.

HER MANY HORSES: He died as a prisoner of war, so he was not free and he was not free to be buried in the old customary ways that the Apache would have been buried at that time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/studentnews/02/24/transcript.wed/index.html#three

[Geronimo]

Shameful.  Even in dearh, our people get no rest or respect.

[Geronimo]

Let his bones be returned to his people for a proper Indian burial!

[Jana Merrill]

They probably don't even have the actual skull.  Those frat boys like to brag and exaggerate everything.

[Keith Ranville]

Geronimo's remains were disturbed? if it happened to a past presidents remains, the investigation inquiry to the missing remains will take start asap; then you would expect the intrusive search would be more intense by the feds, you would be sure doors would be kicked in? especially if natives were being rumored to being disrespectful to the remains from  people of authority.. like these crazy ritualistic college skull and bones fraternity club, the whole thing makes me sick, who joins b.s groupies like them anyways?  

[Victoria Liss]

I looked this up on the internet, and it seems that no one really knows for sure if Skull and Bones even has the skull or not:

Alleged theft of skull

Six members of the Yale secret society of Skull and Bones, including Prescott Bush, served as Army volunteers at Fort Sill during World War I. It has been claimed by various parties that they stole Geronimo's skull, some bones, and other items, including Geronimo's prized silver bridle, from the Apache Indian Prisoner of War Cemetery at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Alexandra Robbins says this is one of the more plausible items said to be in the organization's Tomb.[16]

In 1986, former San Carlos Apache Chairman Ned Anderson received an anonymous letter with a photograph and a copy of a log book claiming that Skull & Bones held the skull. He met with Skull & Bones officials about the rumor; the group's attorney, Endicott P. Davidson, denied that the group held the skull, and said that the 1918 ledger saying otherwise was a hoax.[17] The group offered Anderson a glass case with a skull of a ten-year-old boy, but Anderson refused it.[18] In 2006, Marc Wortman discovered a 1918 letter from Skull & Bones member Winter Mead to F. Trubee Davison that claimed the theft:[19]

    The skull of the worthy Geronimo the Terrible, exhumed from its tomb at Fort Sill by your club... is now safe inside the tomb ("tomb" is the building at Yale University's Skull and Bones) and bone together with his well worn femurs, bit and saddle horn.[19]

[Victoria Liss]

But Mead was not at Fort Sill, and Cameron University history professor David H. Miller notes that Geronimo's grave was unmarked at the time.[19] The revelation led Harlyn Geronimo of Mescalero, New Mexico, to write to President Bush requesting his help in returning the remains:

    According to our traditions the remains of this sort, especially in this state when the grave was desecrated ... need to be reburied with the proper rituals ... to return the dignity and let his spirits rest in peace.[20]



Geronimo's grave at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in 2005.

In 2009, Ramsey Clark filed a lawsuit on behalf of people claiming to be Geronimo's descendants, against, among others, Barack Obama, Robert Gates, and Skull and Bones, asking for the return of Geronimo's bones.[17] An article in The New York Times states that Clark "acknowledged he had no hard proof that the story was true."[21]

Investigators ranging from Cecil Adams to Kitty Kelley have rejected the story.[22][23] A Fort Sill spokesman told Adams, "There is no evidence to indicate the bones are anywhere but in the grave site."[22] Jeff Houser, chairman of the Fort Sill Apache tribe of Oklahoma, also calls the story a hoax.[18]