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Ruby in Vegas Monday 11/18/1963 and Tuesday 11/19/63


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Reading this in Larry Hancock's Tipping Point was a Boom moment for me (pages 174-175).  Why?  It's documented and "the Warren Commission refused to add his appearance there to Ruby's officially recorded activities."

So, they knew this and ignored it.  Two separate sources reported on his presence there, one to the Sheriff's Office, one to the FBI.  Verified through phone and motel records.  At the Tropicana, Roselli's baby so to speak, where also his friend Lewis McWillie had worked.  He also cashed a check at the Stardust using McWillie's name as a reference.

As a result of the WC burying this in three years being in jail no one ever asked him, Jack, why were you in Vegas 3-4 days before the assassination, on business?  See anyone you knew?    

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15 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

Reading this in Larry Hancock's Tipping Point was a Boom moment for me (pages 174-175).  Why?  It's documented and "the Warren Commission refused to add his appearance there to Ruby's officially recorded activities."

So, they knew this and ignored it.  Two separate sources reported on his presence there, one to the Sheriff's Office, one to the FBI.  Verified through phone and motel records.  At the Tropicana, Roselli's baby so to speak, where also his friend Lewis McWillie had worked.  He also cashed a check at the Stardust using McWillie's name as a reference.

As a result of the WC burying this in three years being in jail no one ever asked him, Jack, why were you in Vegas 3-4 days before the assassination, on business?  See anyone you knew?    

Was Johnny Roselli in Las Vegas at the time?

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That question is covered in detail in SWHT 2010, basically the FBI was doing day to day surveillance on Roselli in LA, using people in his apt. building plus one of his sources (they also checked daily for his car there).  They were also doing an airport watch for him Vegas.  During the week before the assassination Roselli had set up a diversionary trip with a friend and a couple of women and the FBI lost him until they located him again in Vegas the weekend after the assassination.   Ron might take some more detail on this from the book, which has a Roselli chapter in the 2010 edition since I'm doing this from memory. 

Bottom line is that its hard to place Roselli specifically anywhere for a few days....but by Sunday there is a call from Vegas which gets answered by the partner of a lawyer being recruited to defend Ruby and he later stated he recognized the voice as being that of Roselli, who he had met previously.

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I neglected to note Tipping Point points out that Ruby notified his tax attorney on Tuesday 11/19/64 that he finally had the money to pay off his years long IRS debt.

Perused SWHT on Roselli along with Handsome Johnny by Lee Server.  It seems the FBI's ongoing somewhat close surveillance of Roselli did drop the ball so to speak from Wednesday 11/20/63 until I think it said the 25th.  The day after Ruby silenced Oswald.   

Edited by Ron Bulman
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Someone Would Have Talked discusses the trip in much the same detail, but this shows flight numbers and times.  From Handsome Johnny page 417.

Johnny and Friedman planned a trip to Arizona and Washington, DC, for the third week of November.  . . . Accompanying them were two young women.  The FBI described them as call girls.  They reported that one, Johnny's girl was to receive $2000 for going on the trip, and the other Friedman's companion would get a new car.  On (Saturday) November 16, at 6:55 a.m., the four departed Loss Angeles for Phoenix on American Airlines flight 70.  At 9:30 local time they checked into the Mountain Shadows Hotel in Scottsdale, taking a three-room suite.  They stayed two days.  The planned next leg to Washington where they were to confer with an unnamed congressman about unknown business was "postponed", the women were told.  At 12:45 p.m. on the 18th all four went by limo to Sky Harbor Airport.  The two women were ticketed for an afternoon flight to Los Angeles on American Airlines.  Johnny Roselli and Maurice Friedman bought tickets on Bonanza Air for a 1:50 flight to Las Vegas.  They arrived at 2:00 local time.  Johnny registered at the Desert Inn Hotel.  He was seen again in the evening in conversation with Ruby Kolod, the DI's co-owner.  The FBI records show no further account of his activities - or the report has gone missing - from November 20 to November 27.

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It took a little reviewing and then writing out some of the details in the above posts for this to hit me.  

What the FBI records are telling us here is Jack Ruby and John Roselli were both in Las Vegas on Monday November 18, 1963, four days before the assassination.  

Ruby at the Tropicana at 3801 Las Vegas Blvd. "Specifically", there.  Roselli's place on the strip so to speak.

Roselli checking in to the Desert Inn at 3145 Las Vegas Blvd. That afternoon. Seen with the co-owner that evening.

Jack Ruby was seen at the Stardust, 3000 Las Vegas Blvd. cashing a check using friend from Dallas and Cuba night club manager and former Tropicana manager Lewis McWille as a reference.

So, Ruby and Roselli seen within a block of each other four days before the JFK Assassination in Vegas.

Ruby tells his attorney, I've got the money for the years long deep IRS debt on Tuesday the 19th, three days before the assassination.

The Warren Commission knows this but ignores and buries it.  

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Ron, the Warren Commission's field investigators in Dallas (the only two field investigators they had) developed serious suspicions about Ruby's involvement, which is why the WC essentially dumped them, not even calling them in as consultants as they promised when they traveled to Dallas to interview Ruby. 

If you look in SWHT at the micro-analysis of Ruby's behavior that day and the days that followed  you find a very clear, progressive change in his attitude and activities...as well as frantic calls for him at the Club from unnamed parties and finally his call to LA - all of which suggest that his role dramatically changed as soon as Oswald was taken into custody. In my view Ruby and his prior interest in and connections to Cuba connect the dots to the organizers of the attack - including Roselli and the people he had been working with in Miami and who trusted him based on that history. 

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Just for grins I looked up Ruby in the index of SWHT.  40 references over 82 total pages.  I'd forgotten he was that prominent in it, it's been around a dozen years since I've read it.  So, I've started re-reading them all to refresh my memory.  It is a classic after all.  Roselli is already turning up early in relation to him even before where I am now, pg. 117.

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Seth Kantor's book "Who Was Jack Ruby" gains more and more factual credibility gravitas and importance with every new decade of Jack Ruby research.

Kantor's research, speculations and assessment of Jack Ruby as being much more involved with nefarious JFK hating others than the WC would ever acknowledge or pursue, is being proven more and more correct, time and time again.

The huge increase of Ruby's long distance calls record ( to highest level notorious Mafia goons in Chicago and Detroit) in the weeks before 11,22,1963, as well as his trip to Las Vegas to see Lewis McWillie and Sam Giancana capo ( and Wild Bill Harvey best friend ) Johnny Roselli just days before JFK was taken out, really are as important in the Jack Ruby story as Kantor states.

The WC official record stance that Seth Kantor did not see and talk to Jack Ruby at Parkland hospital just one hour after JFK was taken there, is one of the most blatant and shameful coverups by them in their entire report.

To me, Seth Kantor was the true intrepid journalistic effort, ethics and integrity hero antithesis to Clark Kent self-promoted Hugh Ainsworth.

 

Edited by Joe Bauer
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