Who was Jack Ruby?

[Ron Bulman]

On 10/2/2016 at 8:18 PM, Jim Hargrove said:

Do some research, Chris. Support your often expressed assertion that Jack Ruby was a Mobster!

I've searched and searched news reports prior to 11/25/1963 and found NO EVIDENCE AT ALL of Jack Ruby's Mob ties!

Prove me wrong.... Here's your chance!

Jim, I respectfully disagree.  No it was never in the newspapers before 11/22/63 but it is documented Ruby was affiliated with the mob.

From Seth Kantor's The Ruby Cover-Up.

Pg. 115.  "He and Barney Rasofsky - who would become World Welter Weight Boxing champion Barney Ross in the 1930's - were among about a dozen young tough's who delivered sealed envelopes at the rate of $1 per errand for Chicago's No. 1 racketeer, Al Capone."  This was shortly after he was arrested at 16 for scalping football tickets at Soldiers Field.  Source is a 1964 FBI interview of Ross.

Pg. 203.  "Ruby confided that the needs of the mob got him "exiled from Chicago."  He had wanted to go to California in 1947, but instead "was directed" to go to Dallas".  Source, Dallas "right wing" businessman Giles Miller, informed FBI 12/17/63.

Pg. 208.  (Former Sheriff) "Guthrie … talked to the FBI and said Ruby specifically had been named by Jones (Paul Rowland) in the recorded conversations as the outsider who would be brought in to front the syndicate in the spring of 1947."  Guthrie and the tapes are a whole different story.

There's more.

Ruby wasn't a made member of la cosa nostra.  He wasn't Italian, Sicilian or Corsican, he was Jewish so he couldn't be.  But he was part of the mob his whole life.  He understood the code of omerta.  And he pulled a hit for them, the CIA, the power elite, on 11/24/63.  I think Justice Warren understood this. 

Edited June 19, 2019 by Ron Bulman

[Ron Bulman]

I've read before I believe that Joe Campisi was the first person to visit Ruby in jail.  He, according to some was second in command of the Dallas mafia under Joe Civello.  Looking for conformation tonight I found this thread and article.  Both very interesting for multiple reasons.  

https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/1989/december/low-profile-the-godfather-of-greenville-avenue/

Joe himself says "the cops said I visited him" and doesn't deny it.  His visit is noted elsewhere in the edu thread but it's not confirmed it was the first.  It's important that he visited him at all, anytime.  He says he knew him, how, how well?  Why did he visit him?  Moral support for a customer/acquaintance?  What did they discuss?  One of the pieces mentions Campisi's Warren Commission testimony.  That he said he barely knew him, called him a crazy SOB.  Googling Joe Campisi Warren Commission didn't turn up any testimony on the first page of links.

The other thing I came across in this regards Ruby possibly eating at Campisi's Egyptian Restaurant both the night before the assassination, the 21'st, and the 23rd, the night before he killed Oswald.   The first is somewhat documented.  I've read somewhere if I remember right Ruby told his old mob friend from Chicago/Cleveland(?) Lawrence Meyers "let me buy you the best steak in town" in the ballroom at the Cabana Hotel.  Betty Oliver's story confirms they went from the Cabana to the Egyptian. 

Then somewhere in these links it mentions Ruby at the Egyptian with Campisi on the night before he shoots Oswald.  Never read that part.  Any one else?

I've not read these two yet but want to and don't want to loose them.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/R Disk/Ruby Jack Associates/Item 09.pdf

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/larry-ronco-and-beverly-oliver.html 

[Ron Bulman]

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/R Disk/Ruby Jack Associates/Item 09.pdf

There it is!  Campisi visited Ruby on November 30th he say's because Sherriff Bill Decker had summoned him to the jail on Ruby's behalf, and, at that time he didn't know of anyone else who had visited Ruby, in jail".  So Ruby asked Decker to call Campisi after he had been in jail six day's with no visitor's ???  

Edited June 20, 2019 by Ron Bulman

[Jim Hargrove]

On 6/18/2019 at 10:49 PM, Ron Bulman said:

Jim, I respectfully disagree.  No it was never in the newspapers before 11/22/63 but it is documented Ruby was affiliated with the mob.

From Seth Kantor's The Ruby Cover-Up[....]

Ron,

From JA’s writeup in Jack Ruby on my website:

According to former schoolmate Leonard Patrick, who knew Jack Rubenstein as a youth in Chicago, Rubenstein had no contact with local mobsters. Another childhood friend, Dave Yaras, said that Rubenstein was “positively on his own and not outfit connected." Bill Roemer, an FBI agent who investigated the Mafia in Chicago, said “Ruby was absolutely nothing in terms of the Chicago Mob. We had thousands and thousands of hours of tape recordings of the top Mobsters in Chicago, including Giancana, and Ruby just didn’t exist as far as they were concerned. We talked to every hoodlum in Chicago after the assassination, and some of the top guys in the Mob, my informants. I had close relationships with them—they didn’t even know who Ruby was. He was not a front for them in Dallas.” The Warren Commission reported, “Both State and Federal officials have indicated that Ruby was not affiliated with organized criminal activity." Jack Ruby was never arrested nor linked to any known mob-related activities such as loan-sharking, prostitution, numbers, protection, fencing, contract killing, bribery, robbery, extortion, etc. in Chicago, Dallas, New York or anywhere.

Considering Ruby’s business, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see that he had some brush-ups with organized crime people.  But what bothers me with accusing him as being a mobster is that it is used an excuse to deny his hidden but increasingly obvious intell connections.   

The precedent for this type of thing is just awful.  Richard Sprague clearly was ousted as the HSCA’s chief counsel because he was asking too many questions about Agency involvement in the assassination.  His replacement, of course, was Robert Blakey, who saw the Mafia as a potential boogeyman for the hit.

What kind of a mobster enjoyed hanging out with cops as much as Ruby did?  Why was his Cuban gunrunning protected by the CIA?  Why did he communicate so much with KLIF founder Gordon McClendon, who just happened to be David Atlee Phillips’ lifetime friend and associate?  Don’t let this Mafia business hide what really went down in Dallas.  The Mafia didn’t make the U.S. government cover up the true nature of the assassination for more than half a century!

[Ron Ecker]

So Jack Ruby went and committed a murder in broad daylight, in the very presence of the cops, because the CIA told him to do it? Well, whatever Langley wants!

I think Jim Marrs' explanation makes more sense: "There are no alternatives to Mob directives." Doesn't matter if Ruby was a "made" man in the Mob or not. He was a dead man if he didn't do what the Mob told him to do (on behalf of the CIA or whomever).

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim Hargrove]

Do you think CIA's Frank Sturgis (real name Frank Fiorini) was friendlier than a Mafia hit man?  Somewhere there is a picture of him posed with a gun on a bunch of human skeletons.

[Ron Ecker]

14 minutes ago, Jim Hargrove said:

Do you think CIA's Frank Sturgis (real name Frank Fiorini) was friendlier than a Mafia hit man?  Somewhere there is a picture of him posed with a gun on a bunch of human skeletons.

So why didn't they tell Sturgis or someone like him to do it? A real shooter instead of a flunky like Ruby. They were lucky that Oswald died. (As I recall, Oswald got some help in dying from some Good Samaritan who gave him "artificial respiration," making sure he would bleed good inside.)

 

 

 

[Joe Bauer]

48 minutes ago, Ron Ecker said:

So why didn't they tell Sturgis or someone like him to do it? A real shooter instead of a flunky like Ruby. They were lucky that Oswald died. (As I recall, Oswald got some help in dying from some Good Samaritan who gave him "artificial respiration," making sure he would bleed good inside.)

 

 

 

Transfer safety plans for Lee Harvey Oswald, (the most threatened criminal suspect in American history) did not include having an ambulance close by in case he was shot in this vulnerable situation.

And was there no security plan "doctor in the house" anywhere close by when Oswald's guts were blown apart by the Jackie Kennedy saving Jack Ruby?

The only way Oswald might have had a chance at survival was if he could have made it to Parkland sooner than he did.

Oswald's killing in the DPD building was perhaps the second most important failed security action in our history by agencies tasked with this responsibility. JFK's murder being number 1.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Joe Bauer

[Ron Ecker]

This is solely from memory, because I can't find it right now, but someone will know what I'm talking about. There was a memo, I believe from the FBI, that contained a concluding paragraph about possible Ruby ties to the Mob. When that memo appeared as a WC exhibit, the concluding paragraph about possible ties to the Mob was gone.

 

[Ron Bulman]

I was wrong about Warren Commission testimony.  It was to the HSCA.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/m_j_russ/hscacamp.htm

[Robert Harper]

In the FWIW department, the one Hollywood union - the The American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA), has the fewest members, and primarily represented, "exotic dancers."  When actress Penny Singleton (who had been active in supporting the 1967 strike of the AGVA-represented Rockettes against Radio City Music Hall), was elected president of AGVA in 1969, she became the first woman to be president of an AFL-CIO union. They were regularly investigated for lubricating organized crime's interest in territories. You might recall that Ruby often said he called the union number and discussed "issues" with them with colleagues. I don't think there is any question that he was associated with the City's organized crime structure.

Edited June 20, 2019 by Robert Harper

[Jim Hargrove]

5 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I was wrong about Warren Commission testimony.  It was to the HSCA.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/m_j_russ/hscacamp.htm

Ron,

Thank you for the link.  I skimmed through Campisi’s HSCA testimony for the second time (the first time was many years ago) and didn’t see anything close to a smoking gun regarding Ruby’s so-called Mob ties... other than the fact that Campisi claimed he knew him.  Did I miss something?

I can show you any number of FBI reports indicating that close Ruby friends, associates and law enforcement investigators were unaware of any real ties between Ruby and the mob. But, of course, that’s what we’d expect the FBI to show us, just as we’d expect G. Robert (“the Mob did it”) Blakey’s HSCA to find otherwise.  

From Wikipedia:

George Robert Blakey (born January 7, 1936, in Burlington, North Carolina) is an American[3] attorney and law professor. He is best known for his work in connection with drafting the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act and for scholarship on that subject.... Blakey drafted the "RICO Act," Title IX of the Organized Crime Control Act of 1970, signed into law by Richard M. Nixon.[1]....” 

Blakey was all about Organized Crime investigations, just as the HSCA's recently ousted Richard Sprague was all about investigating the CIA.  The fact that Blakey couldn't pin Ruby on the Mob speaks volumes.

[Ron Bulman]

Jim you mentioned Lenny Patrick and Dave Yaras vouching for Ruby.  In looking for more info on Campisi I resorted to an old Mafia did it (which I don't believe) book, Contract On America.  It Is well documented.

Lenny Patrick was identified in a 1965 U S Senate report as a high ranking nonmember associate of the Chicago branch of the Mafia.  His activities included "extortion, mayhem and murder", plus gambling, loan sharking, and narcotics dealing, which he reportedly controlled on Chicago's West side.

Like his close associate Lenny Patrick, David Yaras was included in a U S senate list of Chicago Mafia nonmember associates, characterized by an activity code indicating "extortion, mayhem and murder".  Arrested 14 times … monitored by an FBI bug in 1962 planning a contracted murder … work strictly on contracts for the board of directors.  Yaras served as a go between for Carlos Marcello and Santos Traffacantie (as well as Sam Giancana since he was from/represented Chicago in his dealings). 

Joseph Campisi is identified in DEA files as a member of organized crime.  Connected with gambling for years, arrested only once, for murder, shooting a guy point blank in the gut with a shotgun, dismissed, self defense.  … very close relationship with Marcello's of Louisiana, often visited Carlos.

They are three of over a dozen Chapter 9,  Ruby's Underworld Contacts.

Do you expect these guy's to rat on him and in turn themselves?  To say "he's one of ours"?  Only Johnny Roselli did that, years later.  Look what happened to him, garroted, arms and legs cut off, stuffed in a barrel, floating in the ocean.

Roselli told columnist Jack Anderson that he knew Ruby, and described Ruby as "one of our boys." The two may have first met in 1933when both became involved with the newly opened Santa Anita race track in Los Angeles. (The same Santa Anita race track where Dallas Cowboy's oilman owner Clint Murchison later paid for FBI director Hoover and partner Clyde Tolsons annual vacations?  The same track Sirhan Sirhan worked at the summer of 1967?).  Source: Malone, New Times 1/23/78, WR 786-87.  Ruby and Roselli reportedly met twice in Miami in the fall of 1963 (Malone, New times, 1/23/78).

I consider it possible that when Oswald turned up in jail instead of dead … Somebody high in the CIA, Dulles, Angleton, Helms? … called someone else in the CIA, Maheu, Harvey, Phillips, Morales? … who called, given his role in the Castro plots, Johnny Roselli and said words to the effect of we have a problem here, this Oswald is one of our boy's.  Roselli then called maybe Ruby.  Maybe Giancana or Marcello for approval. Maybe one of them called Civello who had Campisi summon Ruby.  Ruby starts stalking Oswald, ends up at the Egyptian restaurant on Saturday night 11/23/63.  Speculation? Yes.  Reasonable?  Ruby knew the consequences of refusing the order. 

[Ron Bulman]

Even a blind pig will stumble across a nugget now and then.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg Subject Index Files/R Disk/Ruby Jack As Gangster Related/Item 01.pdf

[Sandy Larsen]

3 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I consider it possible that when Oswald turned up in jail instead of dead … Somebody high in the CIA, Dulles, Angleton, Helms? … called someone else in the CIA, Maheu, Harvey, Phillips, Morales? … who called, given his role in the Castro plots, Johnny Roselli and said words to the effect of we have a problem here, this Oswald is one of our boy's.  Roselli then called maybe Ruby.  Maybe Giancana or Marcello for approval. Maybe one of them called Civello who had Campisi summon Ruby.  Ruby starts stalking Oswald, ends up at the Egyptian restaurant on Saturday night 11/23/63.  Speculation? Yes.  Reasonable?  Ruby knew the consequences of refusing the order.

 

That's what I've always thought to be the  most reasonable explanation of how it happened.