Who was Jack Ruby?

Seth Kantor was a news correspondent in Dallas the day JFK was killed, and he knew Jack Ruby.  At Parkland Hospital, just after the assassination, Ruby tapped Kantor on the back, and said hello. Kantor is absolutely sure of this.  Later, Ruby denied ever being there.

“What would make Jack Ruby seek out a news reporter he knew at the hospital on Friday and then, after Sunday, deny having been there?  It’s because Ruby was not involved in a plot to kill anyone on Friday. But by Sunday he was.”   The Ruby Cover-up,  Seth Kantor, 1978.

In 1959, the mob has difficulties with Castro’s Cuba.  A Chicago ‘messenger boy’ –  Jack Ruby, moves to Dallas, which is a ‘border town’, a stopover to Mexico and Havana. Jack Ruby visits Santos Trafficante, who was in comfortable house arrest in a Havana jail.  By 1963 Ruby is heavily in debt. On the same day that Lee Harvey Oswald moves to Dallas from New Orleans – June 5, 1963 – Ruby takes a call from New Orleans, and then promptly travels there, where he has phone conversations with Chicago gangsters. He visits Cuba. On November 11, 1963, he gives power of attorney over his finances to his tax lawyer.  He installs a safe.  He calls associates of James Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, and John Roselli. He meets with a crime syndicate pay master.  He becomes very anxious, and gets prescriptions for tranquilizers. He visits Las Vegas. On November 19, 1963 he tells his tax attorney that his debts will soon be settled.

During the JFR assassination, Ruby is nearby, at the offices of the Dallas Morning News. In the evening, he is trying to get into the interrogation room, with a gun in his pocket, where Oswald is held, but is turned away. That night he is with reporters when Oswald is brought before them. He corrects the District Attorney who misnames the Fair Play for Cuba Committee!  Very late that night he meets with a Dallas police officer, Harry N.Olsen, an officer with a poor record, an officer who rents from the sister of the woman who rents to Lee Harvey Oswald.

On November 24, at 11:17 AM, Ruby is at the Western Union station next to the police station, just before Oswald’s transfer.  A car horn sounds.  At 11:21 Ruby is stepping in front of a policeman to shoot Oswald, the fatal way, into the spleen and across the upper abdomen. He is visibly nervous until he knows that Oswald has died.

In June 1964, Earl Warren visits Ruby, who has been sentenced to die. The transcript is a must read. Ruby talks of things not asked that seem like hints. He asks eight times to be taken to Washington. He is emphatic that his life is in danger. “I can’t say it here . . .why my act was committed”. “I have been used for a purpose“.

Ruby fails a lie detector test on questions about his comings and goings in the police station.   He passes on:  no he was not part of a conspiracy, no he did not know Oswald beforehand . . . .and no he was not at Parkland.