Who was Jack Ruby?

[Guest]

Thanks to Malcolm Blunt

 

 

And

 

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fvb35_0lY-b4WH_sUSrp-SP2xecUGqlO/view?usp=sharing

Most interesting, esp the ones of the DPD cops.

[Ron Bulman]

Well this is kind of perplexing.  Ruby tells Nichols his signed card will be worth something some day (and he seems not as jovial as usual) on the 21st.  Ruby tells the Assistant DA you may not know me now but you will, on the 21st.  Then he invites an FBI informant to watch the fireworks, they do, then Ruby heads towards the Dallas Morning News.  Where he says he was, way longer than needed to conduct his business.

All three stories would seem to indicate foreknowledge.  Why would he say the card would be worth something some day and you don't know me now but you will unless he knew he would be involved somehow, publicly (afterwards?).  I've never thought of the possibility but was Ruby maybe supposed to meet Oswald somewhere after the assassination and kill him.  But Oswald wised up and didn't show up?  I dunno.  Just brainstorming, trying to see what sticks to the wall.

[Ron Bulman]

From the Blunt/Kamp files posted Monday this one in particular has some interesting info.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WyKEuHna_3CYy8JmWzUWYSLc3PmVpNK_

I've never read page 13.  12/3/63 Mary Lawrence contacts FBI SA Williams at 1:00 PM about a 6:00 AM anonymous  call warning her "If you don't want to die you better get out of town".  Head night waitress at the B & B restaurant on Oaklawn she says she'd known Ruby 8 years.  Also says she saw Ruby was there around midnight on 11/22 with someone identical to Oswald.

Hard to imagine Ruby being seen in public with someone identical to Oswald after Ozzie had supposedly shot the prez, been arrested, and Jack had corrected Fritz about the FPCC at O's showing to the press.

But I guess stranger things are scattered throughout the bigger picture. 

[James DiEugenio]

I agree Ron. The assistant DA story plus the Nichols story certainly  seem to suggest Ruby knew something in advance.

And if you add on that to the "fireworks" story, well, that just takes it further.

Maybe Ruby was not just the clean up guy after all?

[Ron Bulman]

It's been quite a while since I'd read anything about Ruby's hour and a half plus supposedly hanging out at the Dallas Morning News through the assassination.  I thought I remembered something about the story being a little fishy.  

I also thought I remembered something about it being in Crossfire by Jim Marrs.  "Ruby woke up about 9 a.m. then went to the Dallas Morning News...  tried to visit entertainment columnist Tony Zoppi.  Failing to find Zoppi, Ruby said he went to the paper's advertising office and began composing ad copy for his club (how long could this have taken, he did it every week (?) and he wasn't writing War and Peace).  Ruby claimed to have remained at the paper from 11 a.m. until well after the assassination and several News employees such as John Newman and Wanda Walker confirm this.  However, ALL the accounts of Ruby at the newspaper contain gaps where he was out of sight.  One reporter told the FBI that Ruby was "missed for a period of about twenty to twenty-five minutes" before reappearing shortly after the assassination."  Pg. 398, second edition.

Thinking there was still more to the story I checked Seth Kantor's the Ruby Cover-Up.  Nothing I could find about Ruby at the DMN in a quick review of the index and a few relevant pages.

So I went to what some may dismiss as a questionable source given it's assertion and conclusion, which I don't agree with, but think it is pretty well documented from checking some of its end notes/sources myself.  

"Between 9:00 and 9:30 a.m. on November 22, Dallas Police Officer T. M. Hansen, Jr. saw Jack Ruby outside the Dallas police building.184  Hansen told the FBI Ruby was standing with four or five others 'directly to the side of the stairway which leads to the basement" at the Harwood Street entrance.185  As Hansen passed Ruby, whom he knew casually, Hansen "shook his hand and said good morning".186  Filling in Ruby's alibi for later that morning was Tony Zoppi, the entertainment columnist who lamented reports of "quick buck artists" linking Ruby to the mob and assassination.187  At about 10:30 a.m.***  Friday morning, according to Zoppi  and Ruby (?), Ruby stopped in Zoppi's office in the Dallas Morning News building.  Zoppi said that Ruby had come to discuss "an ESP expert he wanted Zopoi to plug.  Ruby testified  that he picked up a brochure about a memory expert while in Zoppi's office that morning."

"however this story was fatally flawed.  For in a 1978 Congressional interview, Zoppi detailed his assassination morning conversation with Ruby; Zoppi noted that "Ruby appeared too calm to have been involved in a conspiracy".  Ruby's script of events, however, included no actual meeting with Zoppi.  Ruby told the FBI in 1963 that a few hours before the assassination, he " went to the office of Tony Zoppi , but Tony was not there".  Ruby subsequently testified that he "went down there Friday morning to Tony Zoppi's office, and they said he went to New Orleans for a couple of days." 194

"During his polygraph hearing of July 1964, Ruby himself noted this problem in his story:

Oh yes, they didn't ask me another question: "if I loved the President so much, why wasn't I at the parade?"200  Pgs. 296-297. 

David Scheim, Contract On America, Zebra Books, 1989. 

 

Edited February 24, 2020 by Ron Bulman

[Larry Hancock]

Ron, if you have SWHT I go through the changes in Ruby's mood in considerable detail over that afternoon and the rest of the weekend.  Basically it starts with Ruby being interested in the motorcade, watching it pass with his friend there on Main and going back to the DMN.  However from that point on, as he begins to hear of the attack, of president being injured and then his death he ends up tossing his cookies at his sisters, only to talk with Gruber in LA and then move into a totally different mood and role.  Its another one of those situational things where a look at just one incident during one time slice can actually be misleading in light of the overall story.

[James DiEugenio]

Scheim's story about Zoppi is really interesting if its true.

[Joseph McBride]

Ruby tried to tell Earl Warren that he was part of the conspiracy

to kill JFK, but Warren wouldn't listen. Carl Oglesby has a brilliant

analysis of that fascinatingly cryptic jail testimony in his book THE YANKEE AND

COWBOY WAR. Ruby wanted to come clean but couldn't speak

freely in the jail because he sensibly feared for his life. He pleaded

with Warren to take him to DC to testify, but Warren of course

didn't want to hear the truth. Ruby suggested in his filmed

interview during the trial that LBJ was involved

in the JFK hit.  I believe it is possible Ruby was at the Tippit

killing scene (close to his own apartment) on 11/22/63 and  that he helped orchestrate it, including lining up some

of the witnesses in advance, as I discuss in INTO THE NIGHTMARE (a theory

first advanced by Jerry Rose in 1985). Then Ruby went to Parkland, where

Seth Kantor encountered him. Possibly Ruby planted the stretcher bullet there.

Edited February 24, 2020 by Joseph McBride

[Ron Bulman]

7 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

Ron, if you have SWHT I go through the changes in Ruby's mood in considerable detail over that afternoon and the rest of the weekend.  Basically it starts with Ruby being interested in the motorcade, watching it pass with his friend there on Main and going back to the DMN.  However from that point on, as he begins to hear of the attack, of president being injured and then his death he ends up tossing his cookies at his sisters, only to talk with Gruber in LA and then move into a totally different mood and role.  Its another one of those situational things where a look at just one incident during one time slice can actually be misleading in light of the overall story.

I'll be re reading in a few moments, your work is always a best source.  I'd forgot you went into Ruby.

[Ron Bulman]

6 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

Ruby tried to tell Earl Warren that he was part of the conspiracy

to kill JFK, but Warren wouldn't listen. Carl Oglesby has a brilliant

analysis of that fascinatingly cryptic jail testimony in his book THE YANKEE AND

COWBOY WAR. Ruby wanted to come clean but couldn't speak

freely in the jail because he sensibly feared for his life. He pleaded

with Warren to take him to DC to testify, but Warren of course

didn't want to hear the truth. Ruby suggested in his filmed

interview during the trial that LBJ was involved

in the JFK hit.  I believe it is possible Ruby was at the Tippit

killing scene (close to his own apartment) on 11/22/63 and  that he helped orchestrate it, including lining up some

of the witnesses in advance, as I discuss in INTO THE NIGHTMARE (a theory

first advanced by Jerry Rose in 1985). Then Ruby went to Parkland, where

Seth Kantor encountered him. Possibly Ruby planted the stretcher bullet there.

I've never read Yankee - Cowboy War between time to and thinking it was an LBJ did it book.  I've come to reconsider his role in recent years in that given he was involved in the coverup, might he have been informed in advance of his soon to be promotion, to smooth the process.   And, possibly, as a facilitator of connections of people in Texas and Dallas in particular (He and Henry Wade as well as Judge Barefoot Sanders were all tight, corresponded over many years).

The Warren and Ford only questioning of Ruby was a really low point in in Our History.

Aye, yae, yaheh. If Ruby was at the Tippit murder is it possible Ruby might have been there to assassinate Oswald?  But he didn't show?

Nichols and Williams  make me wonder.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Ron Bulman

[Larry Hancock]

When looking at Ruby and looking at Tippett, its always interesting to remember Harry Olson.  Did he really have a broken kneecap, what was really going on with guarding an "estate" off eight street with 24 hour security.  Penn Jones pointed out that from Olson's location if nothing else he could have watch the route Oswald took across Eight Street.  Did he really walk five blocks to his girlfriends on crutches that night. And there is a good chance his motorcycle roommate who was in the motorcade might have been the other security person. 

Ruby may simply have been "used" as he said, but he was in a position to do some really useful things he might have seriously begun to regret just about the time he hit his sisters bathroom that afternoon, sick to his stomach.

[David Andrews]

13 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I've never read Yankee - Cowboy War between time to and thinking it was an LBJ did it book. 

 

Yankee & Cowboy War available here:

https://archive.org/details/OglesbyCarlTheYankeeAndCowboyWar/page/n6/mode/2up

Edited February 25, 2020 by David Andrews

[James DiEugenio]

The Tippit case has been woefully ignored and terribly investigated by both the WC and the HSCA.

So we should all be grateful about McBride's book on that case.

But Joe told me that he could not find Harry O.  I agree he is fishier than a large aquarium.  Who was the last guy to talk to him?  Bill Turner?

[Joseph McBride]

Ruby matches the description of the Tippit gunman given by Acquilla Clemmons: 
"He was kinda chunky, he was kinda heavy, he wasn't a very big man. He was [a] kinda short guy."

As we know, she said that man had an accomplice, tall and thin. 

Numerous candidates have been mentioned as the Tippit gunman or gunmen, and I explore

some of those in INTO THE NIGHTMARE. I explore what Harry Olsen

was doing in Oak Cliff, how late that night he egged on (ordered?) Ruby to shoot Oswald,

and how he was fired by Chief Curry and left Dallas. 

I greatly admire Mrs. Clemmons for her

bravery and honesty. After doing the filmed interview with Mark Lane and Emile

de Antonio, she was never seen again, unfortunately. She had been threatened

by the police if she kept talking. She gave some press interviews before that as well.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Joseph McBride

[James DiEugenio]

de Antonio later said two really interesting things about that film he made with Lane.

First, looking back at his career, he said  he had never been involved in a production where so many people were so frightened to talk. And he had done some controversial films.

Second, he and Lane both said that when they went to purchase outtakes from CBS for the film, they saw that the witnesses were being directed off screen to say certain things.  The day after they saw this, CBS kicked them out and broke their agreement.