A Career of Deception

Theft. Fraud. Breaking Parole. Using Aliases. Impersonation. Forgery. James Arthur Hogue Appears To Have Made...

SOMERVILLE--Police and law enforcement officials say it should come as no surprise that many residents interviewed here on Marion St. say they've never heard of James Arthur Hogue, who lived here in Apartment One.

Already a convicted felon before he arrived at Harvard last year, Hogue, 33, was arrested two weeks ago today for allegedly stealing between $50,000 and $100,000 in precious gems from the Harvard Mineralogical Museum.

Despite a tireless effort by police to piece together the Extension School student's convoluted and illicit past, to many whom have known and studied him, Hogue remains a mystery.

Two days after Harvard detectives found a cache of precious gems in Hogue's apartment, Lt. John F. Rooney, Detective Richard Mederos, Detective Paul Westlund and Sergeant Kathleen Stanford were still working to get a complete picture of the man they had arrested.

Moreover, police say the shroud surrounding Hogue's background, aliases and all, may be the creation of an highly imaginative--and criminal--mind.

"As you can see," Rooney said in his office two days after Hogue's arrest, "this gentleman has quite a history."

In his hand Rooney extended a thick stack of press reports of Hogue's previous arrests, aliases and parole records.

Much of the former convicted felon's illicit background--which includes at least four arrests in four different states--remains unclear, Rooney says.

What is known is that as Alexi Indris-Santana, who told admissions officials he was a self-educated son of a goat herder, Hogue was accepted by Princeton University in 1988 and attended the university for at least 18 months between 1989 and 1991.

In February 1991, Princeton Borough police arrested Hogue for defrauding Princeton of nearly $22,000 in financial aid, which together with assuming a false identity and crossing state lines, was a violation of an earlier parole agreement.

It was while preparing for this 1991 arrest that police learned of Hogue's extended history of deceiving authorities.

In 1985, after attending the University of Texas and the University of Wyoming, Hogue, then 25, enrolled at Palo Alto, California High School under not just one, but two aliases, as Riivk Huntsman and Jay Mitchell Huntsman. Claiming his parents were killed in Bolivia, Hogue told officials he was raised on a commune.

But the game was up six weeks later, according to police reports, when Hogue's deception was discovered and the impostor expelled.

Check forgery was Hogue's next gambit. In 1986, he was arrested in Palo Alto for writing false checks, but according to police reports, charges against him were dropped. Later that year, Hogue resurfaced in Vail, Co. posing as Stanford Ph.D. and bioengineer Dr. James Hogue.

Leaving Colorado, Hogue returned to California, where in 1987 police said he stole $20,000 in bicycles and bicycle equipment--from his roommate's store. Police soon caught up with the lubricious Hogue in St. George, Utah, where along with the stolen property, they found a substantial amount of correspondence with Ivy League universities, including Harvard, Yale, Brown and Princeton, conducted under the alias Alexi Indris-Santana.

After his arrest in early 1988 for the bicycle thefts, Hogue received his acceptance from Princeton. But Hogue must have realized that he would have to serve at least one year of his five-year larceny sentence back in Utah. He applied for a one-year deferment, claiming this time that he needed to care for his mother, whom he said was dying of leukemia in Switzerland. Evidently, Hogue's fictitious mother had risen from her Bolivian grave only to travel to Europe and contract cancer.

Hogue's request for a deferment was approved, and he broke his parole, granted after one year of his sentence, to travel to the New Jersey school. There, he succeeded in bilking Princeton of nearly $22,000. After he was arrested for breaking parole, defrauding the university and several other charges, he served nine months at the Mercer County Detention Center in New Jersey.

But the felon who defrauded Princeton of $22,000 was never extradited to Utah. Hogue was set free last year. Arriving in Cambridge, he enrolled at Harvard's Extension School--this time under what police believe is his real name, James Arthur Hogue.

The same name appears on the mailbox of Apartment One at 82 Marion St. in Somerville.

"We got an anonymous tip that this gentleman had a shady background and based on that information we began doing an investigation," Lt. Rooney said of the probe which eventually led Harvard detectives to Hogue's residence.

According to Associate Curator of the Mineralogical Museum Carl A. Francis, Hogue worked at the Museum as a cataloger, and it was through his work that Hogue gained access to the gems, stored in the museum's archive.

"In the course of his employment with the museum, Hogue had free access to the property stored in the museum's archive," said Detective Mederos, the arresting officer.

But his work in the museum was not Hogue's first exposure to rocks and minerals. He was arrested at Princeton while participating in a geology lab, and had enrolled in at least one course on rocks and minerals at Harvard's Extension School.

Harvard Professor of Mineralogy Charles W. Burnham said Hogue was auditing his class, Earth and Planetary Sciences 50, "Materials of the Earth's Crust," last semester.

Burnham said that in the course of Hogue's work for the class, which included one laboratory or field trip each week, Hogue examined rocks from the Mineralogy Museum's collection.

But Burnham also said he did not have a sense of what kind of student James Arthur Hogue was.

As for Hogue, who remains in Cambridge city jail, the future remains uncertain, according to Jill Reilly, spokesperson for the Middle-sex County District Attorney's office.

After a pre-trial conference Friday, Hogue's case was transferred from Somerville courts to Cambridge Third District Court, Reilly said. Hogue is being represented by two public defense attorneys from the Committee for Public Council Services, she said.

Hogue has another pre-trail conference scheduled for this Friday, but according to Reilly that meeting may never come to pass.

Sometime next week Hogue may face a grand jury indictment, Reilly said, adding that Hogue "is still wanted as a fugitive from justice in New Jersey." Utah may also seek to arraign Hogue on similar charges, she said.

Meanwhile, the Harvard investigation, which ranks as one of the largest recoveries in the history of the university, has drawn national media attention and commendation from upper-echelon administration officials, including President Neil L. Rudenstine.

For Harvard police and Detective Mederos, who arrested Hogue, the Sisyphian task of cataloging the hundreds of stolen items and completing the paperwork on Hogue continued even more than a week and a half after the recovery.

"This is the tough part," Mederos said.

But Mederos' and other police officers' task, solving the mystery of Hogue's past, strewn across the globe like the rocks and minerals he studied, may prove even more difficult.

Evidently, Hogue's fictitious mother had risen from her Bolivian grave only to travel to Europe and contract cancer.