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Jack Ruby

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Jack Leon Ruby
File:Jack Ruby mugshot.jpgDallas Police Department mugshot
StatusDied before new trial
OccupationNightclub owner
Criminal chargeMurder
PenaltyDeath penalty (overturned)

Jacob Rubenstein (March 25, 1911 – January 3, 1967), who legally changed his name to Jack Leon Ruby in 1947, was a businessman and nightclub owner from Dallas, Texas. He was convicted of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, two days after Oswald was arrested for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He successfully appealed his conviction and sentence of death. As a date for his new trial was being set, he became ill and died.

Family and early life

Jack Ruby was born Jacob Rubenstein to Joseph Rubenstein (1871–1958) and Fannie Turek Rutkowski (or Rokowsky) in Chicago, in 1911. His Polish-born parents were Orthodox Jews, although he was not.

His father, Joseph Rubenstein, was born in the town of Sokołów Podlaski, Poland, then part of Imperial Russia. He was a carpenter as was his father. He joined the Russian army in 1893, serving in the artillery. He married while in military service. Joseph later was assigned to forces positioned in China, Korea and Siberia. He grew to detest army life and reportedly "walked away" from it in 1898. The Rubensteins left the Russian Empire about four years later. They briefly lived in the United Kingdom and then Canada. They entered the United States in 1903, and the following year they settled in the heavily Jewish 24th Ward on Chicago's West Side.

Conflicting birth dates for Jacob Rubenstein, ranging March to June of 1911, were quoted by various sources and given by Ruby at various times; March 25, 1911 is the date he most commonly gave for his own birthdate. (Births in Chicago in 1911 were not mandatorily recorded, so there is no official record to consult.) The fifth of his parents' eight living children, growing up in the Maxwell Street area of Chicago, Ruby had a troubled childhood and adolescence, marked by juvenile delinquency and time spent in foster homes. Young Ruby sold horse-racing tip sheets and various other novelties, then acted as business agent for a local refuse collectors union that later became part of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Ruby briefly came to public attention in December 1939 when he was implicated in the fatal shooting of the union's president, attorney Leon Cooke, but was cleared of any wrongdoing. In memory of Cooke, Ruby later adopted "Leon" as his middle name.

In the 1940s, Ruby frequented race tracks in Illinois and California. He was drafted in 1943 and served in the Army Air Forces during World War II, working as an aircraft mechanic at bases in the US until 1946. He had an honorable record and was promoted to private first class. Upon discharge, Ruby returned to Chicago.

In 1947, Ruby moved to Dallas, where he and his brothers soon afterward shortened their surnames from Rubenstein to Ruby. The stated reason for changing the family name had been that Jack and his brothers had opened up a mail order business and feared that some customers would refuse to do business with Jews. Jack later went on to manage various nightclubs, strip clubs, and dancehalls. Among the strippers Ruby befriended was Candy Barr.

He developed close ties to many Dallas police officers, who frequented his nightclubs where Ruby showered them with large quantities of liquor and other favors. Ruby went to Cuba in 1959 to visit a Mafia-connected friend, influential Dallas gambler Lewis McWillie, whom Fidel Castro had briefly imprisoned.

Organized crime links

A number of writers have suspected Jack Ruby of being linked to organized crime, and some have gone on to hypothesize that his alleged links to organized crime were evidence of conspiracy to kill Lee Harvey Oswald and/or John F. Kennedy. The House Select Committee on Assassinations said that Jack Ruby knew restaurateurs Sam (1920–1970) and Joe Campisi (1918–1990) since 1947, and had been seen with them on many occasions. After an investigation of Joe Campisi, the HSCA found,

While Campini's technical characterization in Federal law enforcement records as an organized crime member has ranged from definite to suspected to negative, it is clear that he was an associate or friend of many Dallas-based organized crime members, particularly Joseph Civello during the time he was the head of the Dallas organization. There was no indication that Campisi had engaged in any specific organized crime-related activities.

Similarly, a PBS Frontline investigation into the connections between Ruby and Dallas organized crime figures reported the following:

In 1963, Sam and Joe Campisi were leading figures in the Dallas underworld. Jack knew the Campisis and had been seen with them on many occasions. The Campisis were lieutenants of Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss who had reportedly talked of killing the President.

A day before Kennedy was murdered, Ruby went to Joe Campisi's restaurant. At the time of the Kennedy assassination, Ruby was close enough to the Campisis to ask them to come see him after he was arrested for shooting Lee Oswald.

Some writers, including former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Buglosi, dismiss Ruby's connections to organized crime as hearsay:

It is very noteworthy that without exception, not one of these conspiracy theorists knew or had ever met Jack Ruby. Without our even resorting to his family and roommate, all of whom think the suggestion of Ruby being connected to the mob is ridiculous, those who knew him, unamimously and without exception, think the notion of his being connected to the Mafia, and then killing Oswald for them, is nothing short of laughable.

Public assassination

Ruby (also known as "Sparky," reportedly because of his short temper) frequently carried a handgun, and witnesses saw him with a handgun in the halls of the Dallas police headquarters on several occasions after President Kennedy's assassination and arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963. In addition, it is known that Ruby impersonated a newspaper reporter and was at the police station on the night of November 22, though the reason he went there is unknown.

Ruby received international attention when he shot and fatally wounded the 24-year-old Oswald on Sunday, November 24, 1963, at 11:21 am CST while authorities were preparing to transfer Oswald by car from police headquarters to the nearby county jail. Stepping out from a crowd of reporters and photographers, Ruby fired a snub-nosed Colt Cobra .38 into Oswald's abdomen.

When Ruby was arrested immediately after the shooting, he told several witnesses that his killing of Oswald would show the world that "Jews have guts," that he helped the city of Dallas "redeem" itself in the eyes of the public, and that Oswald's death would spare Jacqueline Kennedy the ordeal of appearing at Oswald's trial. Ruby stated that he shot Oswald to avenge Kennedy. Later, however, he claimed he shot Oswald on the spur of the moment when the opportunity presented itself, without considering any reason for doing so. Ruby never spoke of Oswald by his name, always referring to him as 'that man'.

Prosecution and conviction

Prominent San Francisco defense attorney Melvin Belli agreed to represent Ruby free of charge. Some observers thought that the case could have been disposed of as a "murder without malice" charge (roughly equivalent to manslaughter), with a maximum prison sentence of five years. Instead, Belli attempted to prove that Ruby was legally insane and had a history of mental illness in his family (the latter being true, as his mother had been committed to a mental hospital years before). On March 14, 1964, Ruby was convicted of murder with malice, for which he received a death sentence.

During the six months following the Kennedy assassination, Ruby repeatedly asked, orally and in writing, to speak to the members of the Warren Commission. Only after Ruby's sister Eileen wrote letters to the Warren Commission (and after her writing letters to the commission became publicly reported) did the commission agree to talk to Ruby. In June 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan and other commission members went to Dallas and met with Ruby. Ruby begged Warren several times to take him to Washington D.C., because he feared for his life and those of his family members, claiming among other things that "a whole new form of government is going to take over this country, and I know I won't live to see you another time." Warren refused Ruby's request. According to a record of Ruby's testimony, Warren declared that the Commission would have no way of providing protection to him, since it had no police powers. Ruby said he wanted to convince President Johnson that he was not part of any conspiracy to kill JFK. Eventually, the appellate court agreed with Ruby's lawyers for a new trial, and on October 5, 1966, ruled that his motion for a change of venue before the original trial court should have been granted. Ruby's conviction and death sentence were overturned. Arrangements were underway for a new trial to be held in February 1967, in Wichita Falls, Texas, when, on December 9, 1966, Ruby was admitted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, suffering from pneumonia. A day later, doctors realized he had cancer in his liver, lungs, and brain.

Following Ruby's March 1964 conviction for murder with malice, Ruby's lawyers, led by Sam Houston Clinton, appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in Texas. Ruby's lawyers argued that he could not have received a fair trial in the city of Dallas because of the excessive publicity surrounding the case. A year after his conviction, in March 1965, Ruby conducted a brief televised news conference in which he stated that "everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.".

Former Romanian spy Ion Mihai Pacepa claims that Soviet agents "irradiated Ruby ... right before he was about to be released from jail." Dallas Deputy Sheriff Al Maddox claims: "Ruby told me, he said, 'Well, they injected me for a cold.' He said it was cancer cells. That's what he told me, Ruby did. I said you don't believe that ____. He said, 'I damn sure do!'" Journalist and assassination researcher Jim Marrs, a Texas native, says that a former Dallas lawman told him: "Hell, it wasn't any big deal. They just took Ruby in for X-rays and had him wait in the X-ray room. While he sat there for fifteen or twenty minutes or more, they just left the X-ray machine on him. Not long before he died, Ruby told psychiatrist Werner Teuter, that the assassination was "an act of overthrowing the government" and that he knew "who had President Kennedy killed." He added: "I am doomed. I do not want to die. But I am not insane. I was framed to kill Oswald."

Ruby made a final statement from his hospital bed on December 19 that he and he alone had been responsible for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. "There is nothing to hide," Ruby said. "There was no one else." He died of a pulmonary embolism, secondary to bronchiolar lung cancer, on January 3, 1967 at Parkland Hospital, where Lee Harvey Oswald had died and President Kennedy had been pronounced dead after his assassination.

He is buried in the Westlawn Cemetery in Chicago.

In popular culture

Ruby's shooting of Oswald, and the mystery surrounding his behavior both before and after the Kennedy assassination, have been the topic of three films.

Ruby and Oswald

A 1977 made-for-television movie, Ruby and Oswald, generally supported the Warren Commission conclusions. Ruby was played by Michael Lerner.

JFK

In Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK, Ruby was portrayed by Brian Doyle-Murray. Stone's perspective on events draws heavily from conspiracy theory researchers such as Jim Marrs and L. Fletcher Prouty.

At least three scenes further detailing Ruby were removed from the film and only available on DVD. One showed Ruby being poisoned in his cell by men in black.

The other expanded the Oswald shooting by showing corrupt police letting Ruby enter through a restricted entrance.

A lunch meeting between Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) and Dean Andrews (John Candy) is expanded to include the comment by Andrews, “Jack Ruby gets a new trial and dies of cancer a few days later. That’s some kind of cancer. I’d say that’s a going out of business kind of cancer.” When this conversation took place Ruby would still have been alive.

Ruby

The 1992 feature film Ruby speculated on Ruby's more complex motivations. Among the impulses explored by the film that might have propelled Ruby into shooting Oswald were Ruby's reputation among family and friends as an assiduous, emotionally volatile publicity-seeker, and the influence of his long-time organized crime and Dallas police connections. Ruby was played by Danny Aiello.

In popular music

  • In "Wishing the Days Away," Billy Bragg sings "A man can spend a lot of time / Wondering what was on Jack Ruby's mind."
  • In Paul Brady's song "Nobody Knows", the second line of the chorus is "Nobody knows what Ruby had to hide."
  • In "Bicentennial", Loudon Wainwright III sings "And including old Jack Ruby. Wasn't he wonderful? Oh, you know, he certainly was."
  • In "Jack Ruby", Paul Metsa sings about the many theories surrounding the assassination of J.F.K. and the life of Jack Ruby.

Further reading

References

  1. Martin Waldron, "Ruby Seriously Ill In Dallas Hospital," New York Times, Dec. 10, 1966, p. 1.
  2. HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 9, p. 336, par. 917, Joseph Campisi. Ancestry.com, Social Security Death Index , Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2007. Ancestry.com, Texas Death Index, 1903-2000 , Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006.
  3. HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 9, p. 336, par. 916, Joseph Campisi.
  4. Frontline: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?, 2003.
  5. HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 9, p. 344, par. 919, Joseph Campisi.
  6. HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 9, p. 344, Joseph Campisi.
  7. Bugliosi, Vincent, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy p. 1130.
  8. From Ruby's testimony to the Warren Commission: "I think I used the words, 'You killed my President, you rat.' The next thing, I was down on the floor. I said, 'I am Jack Ruby. You all know me.' I never used anything malicious, nothing like s.o.b."
  9. Warren Commission Hearings, vol.5, p. 198–199, Testimony of Jack Ruby.
  10. Ruby, ibid., p. 199
  11. Warren Commission Hearings, Volume V page 194 history-matters.com
  12. From Ruby's testimony to the Warren Commission: "I realize it is a terrible thing I have done, and it was a stupid thing, but I just was carried away emotionally…I am as innocent regarding any conspiracy as any of you gentlemen in the room … And all I want to do is tell the truth, and that is all. There was no conspiracy."
  13. Jack Ruby (Oswald's assassin) makes a statement to reporters after his trial ntlworld
  14. "JFK's Assassin Described as Moscow Agent," New York Sun, Nov. 6, 2007
  15. Marrs, Jim. Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989), p. 432. ISBN 0-88184-648-1
  16. Marrs, Crossfire, p. 433.
  17. Marrs, Crossfire, p. 431.
  18. JFK Lancer
  19. Associated Press, "Ruby Asks World to Take His Word," New York Times, Dec. 20, 1966, p. 36.
  20. "A Last Wish," Time, Dec. 30, 1966.

External links

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