JACK LEON RUBENSTEIN
ASSASSINATED LEE HARVEY OSWALD IN DALLAS,
Jack Leon Rubenstein (March 25, 1911
– January 3, 1967), who legally changed his name to Jack
Leon Ruby in 1947, was an American
Texas. Ruby was originally from
He was convicted of the November 24, 1963
Harvey Oswald. The murder took place two days after
Oswald was arrested by deputy Bill Vaught for the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby
death sentence. As a date for his new
he became ill and died of
cancer on January 3, 1967.
Ruby was involved with major figures in
conspiracy theorists claim that he killed Oswald as part
of an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.
Others have disputed this, arguing that his connection with
gangsters was minimal at best and that he was not the sort
to be entrusted with such an act within a high-level
Allegations of organized crime links
Jack Ruby was known to have been acquainted with both the
police and the mob, specifically the
House Select Committee on Assassinations said that Jack
Ruby had known restaurateurs Sam (1920–1970) and
Campisi (1918–1990) since 1947, and had been seen with
them on many occasions.
After an investigation of Joe Campisi, the HSCA found,
While Campisi'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
Frontline investigation into the connections between
Ruby and Dallas organized crime figures reported the
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
Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss who had reportedly
talked of killing the President.
A day before Kennedy was assassinated, Ruby went to Joe
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.
In his memoir, Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story,
Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss
Bonanno, explains that several Mafia families had
long-standing ties with the anti-Castro Cubans through the
Havana casinos operated by the Mafia before the Cuban
Revolution. The Cubans hated Kennedy because he did not
fully support them in the
Bay of Pigs Invasion; and his brother, the young and
idealistic Attorney General
Robert Kennedy, had conducted an unprecedented legal
assault on organized crime.
The Mafia were experts in assassination, and Bonanno
reports that he realized the degree of the involvement of
other Mafia families when he witnessed Jack Ruby killing
Oswald on television: the Bonannos recognized Jack Ruby as
an associate of Chicago mobster
Within four hours of Ruby's arrest on November 24, 1963,
a telegram sent from La Jolla, CA, was received at the
Dallas city jail in support of Jack Ruby, under the names of
Hal and Pauline Collins.
That telegram supports the Warren Commission exhibit (CE
1510), which names Hal Collins, Jr.
as a character reference listed by Jack Ruby on a Texas
liquor license application.
In 1957, Hal Collin's sister, Mary Ann Collins,
had married Robert L. Clark,
the brother of former U.S. Attorney General and the then
sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice,
Clark. Robert L. Clark was the former Dallas law partner
of Maury Hughes.
Tom C. Clark advised newspaper columnist Drew Pearson in
1946 that the FBI had verified the claims
James M. Ragen that Henry Crown and the
Hilton Hotel chain controlled organized crime in
Tom C. Clark selected Henry Crown's son, John as one of his
two Supreme Court law clerks for the 1956 term,
and Tom Clark provided one of two recommendations to the
Warren Commission to appoint
Albert E. Jenner, Jr.
as a senior assistant investigative counsel responsible for
determining whether either Oswald or Ruby acted alone or
conspired with others.
Some writers, including former Los Angeles District
Vincent Bugliosi, dismiss Ruby's connections to
organized crime as being minimal at best:
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,
unanimously and without exception, think the notion of
his being connected to the Mafia, and then killing
Oswald for them, is nothing short of laughable.
Bill Alexander, who prosecuted Ruby for Oswald's murder,
equally rejected any suggestions that Ruby was
part-and-parcel of organized crime, claiming that conspiracy
theorists based it on the claim that "A knew B, and Ruby
knew B back in 1950, so he must have known A, and that must
be the link to the conspiracy."
Ruby's brother Earl denied allegations that Jack was
involved in racketeering Chicago nightclubs, and author
Gerald Posner suggests that he may have been confused with
Harry Rubenstein, a convicted Chicago felon.
Entertainment reporter Tony Zoppi is also dismissive of mob
ties. He knew Ruby and described him as a "born loser".
Ruby (also known as "Sparky," from his boxing nickname
was seen in the halls of the
Dallas Police Headquarters on several occasions after
the arrest of
Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963, and newsreel footage
NBC shows Ruby impersonating a newspaper
during a press conference at Dallas Police Headquarters on
the night of the assassination.[citation
needed] At the press conference, District
Henry Wade said that Lee Oswald was a member of the
Free Cuba Committee. Ruby was among those who corrected
Wade by stating that it was the pro-Castro
Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
Two days later, after driving into town and sending a
money order to one of his employees, Ruby walked the short
distance to the nearby police headquarters. There is some
evidence his actions were on a whim as he left his favorite
dog, Sheba, in the car, before shooting and fatally wounding
Oswald on Sunday, November 24, 1963, at 11:21 am CST, while
authorities were preparing to transfer Oswald by armored car
from police headquarters to the nearby county jail. Stepping
out from a crowd of reporters and photographers, Ruby fired
Colt Cobra .38 into Oswald's abdomen during a nationally
televised live broadcast.
When Ruby was arrested immediately after the shooting, he
told several witnesses 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
Ruby stated that he shot Oswald to avenge Kennedy's death.
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.
At the time of the shooting Jack Ruby was taking
central nervous system (CNS)
Another motive was put forth by
Sheeran, allegedly a hitman for the Mafia, in a
conversation he had with the then-former Teamsters boss
Hoffa. During the conversation, Hoffa claimed that Ruby
was assigned the task of coordinating police officers loyal
to Ruby to murder Oswald while he was in their custody. As
Ruby evidently mismanaged the operation, he was given a
choice to either finish the job himself or forfeit his life.
Prosecution and conviction
Ruby v. Texas
Francisco defense attorney
Belli agreed to represent Ruby
Some observers thought that the case could have been
disposed of as a "murder without malice" charge (roughly
manslaughter), with a maximum prison sentence of five
years. Belli attempted to prove, however, 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. The commission showed no interest,
and 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
Gerald R. Ford of
and other commission members went to Dallas and met with
Ruby. Ruby asked Warren several times to take him to
because he feared for his life and wanted an opportunity to
make additional statements. Warren was unable to comply
because many legal barriers would need to be broken and
public interest in the situation would be too heavy.
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.
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
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: "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." When asked by
a reporter: "Are these people in very high positions Jack?",
he responded "Yes."
Dallas Deputy Sheriff Al Maddox claimed: "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 bullshit. He said, 'I damn sure do!'
[Then] one day when I started to leave, Ruby shook hands
with me and I could feel a piece of paper in his palm....
[In this note] he said it was a conspiracy and he said ...
if you will keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, you're
gonna learn a lot. And that was the last letter I ever got
Not long before Ruby died, according to an article in the
London Sunday Times, he 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."
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
A day later, doctors realized he had cancer in his
According to an unsigned Associated Press release,
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... There was no one else," Ruby
Gerald Posner's book Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald
and the Assassination of JFK, Ruby's friends, relatives
and associates stress how upset he was upon hearing of
Kennedy's murder, even crying on occasion, and how he went
so far as to close his loss-making clubs for three days as a
mark of respect.
Dallas reporter Tony Zoppi, who knew Ruby well, claims
that it "would have to be crazy" to entrust Ruby with
anything as important as a high-level plot to kill Kennedy
since he "couldn't keep a secret for five minutes... Jack
was one of the most talkative guys you would ever meet. He'd
be the worst fellow in the world to be part of a conspiracy,
because he just plain talked too much."
He and others describe Ruby as the sort who enjoyed being at
"the center of attention", trying to make friends with
people and being more of a nuisance.
It has been claimed that many of Ruby's statements were
also taken out of context by conspiracy theorists in order
to fit in with their claims.
G. Robert Blakey, staff director and chief council for
House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to
1979, sees it differently. He says, "The most plausible
explanation for the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby was that
Ruby had stalked him on behalf of organized crime, trying to
reach him on at least three occasions in the forty-eight
hours before he silenced him forever."
Ruby died of a
pulmonary embolism, secondary to
bronchogenic carcinoma (lung cancer), on January 3, 1967
Parkland Hospital, where Oswald had died and where
President Kennedy had been pronounced dead after his
assassination. He was buried beside his parents in the
Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge IL.
Ruby's shooting of Oswald, and his behavior both before
and after the Kennedy assassination, have been the topic of
numerous films, TV programs, books, and songs.
A 1978 made-for-television movie, Ruby and Oswald
generally followed the official record, as presented by the
Warren Commission. Ruby's actions and dialogue (as well
as those of the people he comes in contact with) are nearly
verbatim re-enactments of testimony given to the Warren
Commission by those involved, as per the opening narration.
Ruby was played by
Oliver Stone's 1991 film
JFK, Ruby was portrayed by veteran actor
Brian Doyle-Murray. Stone's perspective on events draws
conspiracy theory researchers such as
Fletcher Prouty. At least three scenes further detailing
Ruby were removed from the film and are only available on
DVD. One scene expanded the Oswald shooting by showing
corrupt police letting Ruby enter through a restricted
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
The Cold Six Thousand
Jack Ruby is one of the main characters of
The Cold Six Thousand. The plot revolves around the
aftermath of the assassination of John Kennedy, and the
assassinations of Robert Kennedy and
Martin Luther King, Jr. It speculates about the links of
many historical characters with
Mafia and anti-Castroist
groups with the assassinations.
In his 1989 novel Libra, Don DeLillo portrays Ruby
as being part of a larger conspiracy surrounding the
president's assassination, imagining that an FBI agent
persuades Ruby to kill Oswald.
Jack Ruby is a song from the 1989 album
Key Lime Pie by
Camper Van Beethoven. In the song, Ruby is described as,
"...the kind of man who beats his horses or the dancers who
work at a bar."
Bicentennial is a song from the 1976 album
T Shirt by
Loudon Wainwright III. The verse referring to Ruby is
"You know we have our heroes. I mean
Murphy, including old Jack Ruby. Wasn't Jack wonderful?
Oh, you know he certainly was. "
^ His tombstone gives April 12, 1911 as his
^ Note:His tombstone at Westlawn Cemetery,
Chicago has April 25, 1911 as his birthdate
Waldron, Martin (December 10, 1966). "Ruby
Seriously Ill In Dallas Hospital".
New York Times: p. 1.
Posner, Gerald (1993). Case Closed.
^ HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 9, p. 336,
Joseph Campisi. Ancestry.com, Social Security
Death Index [database on-line], Provo, Utah, USA:
The Generations Network, Inc., 2007. Ancestry.com,
Texas Death Index, 1903-2000 [database on-line],
Provo, UT, USA: The Generations Network, Inc., 2006.
^ HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 9, p. 336,
Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?, 2003.
^ HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 9, p. 344,
^ HSCA Appendix to Hearings, vol. 9, p. 344,
^ Bonanno, Bill (1999). Bound by Honor: A
Mafioso's Story. New York: St Martin's Press.
"'42 GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE COLLINS DIES". The
Dallas Morning News.
Alexander Fulton Lewis Jr. (1954-22-04).
"Washington Report". The Reading Eagle.
^ Washington, DC
"Clark Accused In Parole Quiz". The Milwaukee
^ Scott, Peter Dale. "Crime and Cover-Up:
The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate
Connection". Brainiacbooks, 1977, p. 44.
^ Drew Pearson
"'Songbird' Was Murdered". The Palm Beach Post.
^ Abell, Tyler
Drew Pearson Diaries Volume I, 1949-1959.
Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
^ Scott, Peter
Deep Politics and the Death of JFK pg 155.
University of California Press.
^ Gentry, Curt
J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets.
W. W. Norton & Company. p. 332.
Official and confidential: the secret life of J.
Edgar Hoover. G.P. Putnam's Sons. p. Page
^ Evica, George
And we are all mortal:. University of
Hartford Press. p. Page 387.
Item notes: nos. 51-90 -. Washington
observer newsletter Issues 51-90. 1968.
"Ex-farmer, judge Crown remembered as 'wise,...".
^ Gibson, Donald
The Kennedy assassination cover-up Page 96.
Kroshka Books Div. of Nova Science Publishers.
Kris (2008). How To Kill. The Definitive History
of the Assassin. London: Arrow Books. p. 93.
Warren Commission Hearings, vol V, p. 189
Testimony of Jack Ruby. 5.
Washington: Government Printing Office. 1964.
Charles (2004). I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank
"the Irishman" Sheeran and the inside story of the
Mafia, the Teamsters, and the last ride of Jimmy
Hoffa. Hanover, New Hampshire (USA): Steerforth
Press. p. 242.
Warren Commission Hearings, vol V, p. 194
^ 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."
Jack Ruby Press conference on
Marrs, Jim (1989).
Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy. New
York: Carroll & Graf. pp. 431–432.
Ruby's Letter From Prison on
"JFK Lancer". JFK Lancer.
Press (December 20, 1966). "Ruby Asks World to Take
New York Times: p. 36.
"A Last Wish".
Time. December 30, 1966.
^ Reitzes, David
"In Defense of Jack Ruby: Was Lee Harvey Oswald's
killer part of a conspiracy?".
^ Goldfarb, Ronald. Perfect Villians,
Imperfect Heroes: Robert Kennedy's War Against
Organized Crime (Virginia: Capital Books, 1995),
^ "Ruby Buried
in Chicago Cemetery A longside Graves of His
Parents". The New York Times: p. 15. January
^ "Ruby Called
'Avenger' at Rites in Chicago". The Los Angeles
Times. Associated Press: p. 4. January 7, 1967.
^ "Ruby Services
Limited to Family, Few Friends". The Los Angeles
Times. Associated Press: p. 20. January 5, 1967.
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Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy.
St. Martin's Griffin. 1992.
Bugliosi, Vincent (2007).
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John
F. Kennedy. W. W. Norton & Company.
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The Last Investigation. Thunder's Mouth Press.
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Who Was Jack Ruby?. Everest House.
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(1996). The Death of a President: November November
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