Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (80 page)

It's like sending a seven-year-old boy who has taken three lessons on
the violin over to the New York Philharmonic and expecting him to
perform a Tchaikovsky symphony. He knows how to hold the violin and
bow, but he has a long way to go before he can make music.

Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, an experienced coroner and former president of the
American Academy of Forensic Medicine, was more blunt:

[Kennedy's autopsy was] extremely superficial and sloppy, inept, incomplete, incompetent in many respects, not only on the part of the
pathologists who did this horribly inadequate medical-legal autopsy but
on the part of many other people. This is the kind of examination that
would not be tolerated in a routine murder case by a good crew of
homicide detectives in most major cities of America.

For whatever reasons-some innocent bumbling and some not so
innocent-the medical evidence in the JFK assassination will forever be
considered tainted, incomplete, and inconclusive.

And the question remains-who had the power to misdirect and confuse
the official medical examination of the assassinated President?

I know there is a terrible conspiracy going on in the world right now.
... The world has the right to hear the truth.

-Jack Ruby

On the day before Kennedy's assassination business appeared normal in
the Dallas District Attorney's Office. There was a continuing parade of
defendants, lawyers, and police officers as the office staff went about
preparing causes. One officer, Dallas police lieutenant W. F. Dyson, later
told the Warren Commission that it was here that he and other officers
encountered a short, stocky nightclub owner who was going out of his way
to make their acquaintance. Dyson overheard this man-Jack Ruby-tell
the officers: "You probably don't know me, but you will."

The following Sunday the entire world knew Jack Ruby-the man who
killed Lee Harvey Oswald.

When on November 24, 1963, Ruby silenced the one man whom
authorities blamed for Kennedy's death, a rumble of discontent and suspicion began that still persists today. Many people could accept the idea of a
"lone-nut assassin," but balked at the idea of two such characters.

Any serious probe of President Kennedy's death must include an indepth look at the life and death of Jack Ruby, one of history's most
unlikely candidates for fame.

In the months following the assassination, the American public was
told-first by news media accounts and then by the Warren Commissionthat Ruby was a small-time Dallas nightclub operator with no significant
ties to organized crime or to Dallas authorities. It was said that his killing
of Oswald was simply the spontaneous act of a man hoping to right the
wrong of the President's death.

Today there is evidence that Ruby, a fixture on the Dallas scene in
1963, was more closely connected with organized-crime figures than
earlier believed and that he, in fact, stalked Oswald throughout the assassination weekend.

It also is now known that Ruby tried to tell what he knew about the plot
to kill Kennedy but was shrugged off by both government investigators
and the news media. To a radio news reporter, Ruby said: "I know there is
a terrible conspiracy going on in the world right now ... I'm speaking the
truth . . . The world has the right to hear the truth . .. "

Shortly after Ruby was granted a new trial, he was filmed by a Texas
television station stating:

... everything pertaining to what's happened has never come to the
surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred-my
motive, in other words. I am the only person in the background to know
the truth pertaining to everything relating to my circumstances.

Asked by the interviewer if this truth would ever come out, Ruby
replied: "No. Because unfortunately these people, who have so much to
gain and have such an ulterior motive to put me in the position I'm in, will
never let the true facts come aboveboard to the world."

"Are these people in high positions?" asked the interviewer. Ruby
answered, "Yes." In letters smuggled out of the Dallas County Jail, Ruby
even named Lyndon Johnson as the person behind the assassination.

Ruby's mob connections stretched back over the years to his childhood
in Chicago and were much more extensive than admitted by the Warren
Commission. In 1964, one of Ruby's childhood friends told the FBI that as
youths, he and Ruby had delivered sealed envelopes for Chicago gangster
Al Capone.

Jack Ruby was born Jacob Rubenstein in 1911, the fifth of eight
siblings. His exact birthdate is not known. Various documents show
different birthdates, although Ruby himself used March 25, 1911, most
frequently. Despite several moves, the family always remained in what was
described by one brother as a "ghetto," complete with noisy streets filled
with pushcarts and peddlers.

The elder Rubenstein was a violent man known for drunkenness, brawling, and associating with women of the street. He beat his wife and his
children and was frequently arrested on assault charges. A coarse man, he
objected to his children obtaining any sort of higher education.

Fannie Rubenstein, while desiring a better life for her children, nevertheless was herself a burden to the family. Illiterate and unpredictable due
to mental problems, she would berate her husband for his lack of money
and nag the children to improve themselves. The Rubenstein household
constantly shook with violent and noisy fights.

When Ruby was ten years old, his parents separated and he, along with
his three brothers and four sisters, was placed in various foster homes by
the Jewish Home Finding Society. During this time, young Rubenstein
was learning more on the streets of Chicago than in the schoolroom. Like
young Oswald, Ruby was caught by truant officers after skipping school.
Unlike Oswald, who found diversion in the local library and zoo, Ruby
gravitated toward street gangs and amusement parks.

A 1922 psychiatric evaluation by the Illinois State Public Welfare
Department's Institute for Juvenile Research, to which Ruby had been
referred by the Jewish Social Service Bureau, characterized young Ruby as
a boy with an "adequate" IQ but with "attention unsustained," "quick
and careless" reactions, and an "egocentric" personality. This description of young Rubenstein of Chicago could have applied equally forty years
later to Jack Ruby in Dallas.

On the streets, young Ruby was nicknamed "Sparky." According to his
sister, Eva Grant, the name came from Ruby's swaggering walk, which
reminded some people of the wobbling gait of Sunday comic strip character Barney Google's horse, "Sparkplug." Others believed "Sparky" was
a tag reflecting Ruby's volatile temperament.

Ruby quickly found that holding a job was not for him. Years later, he
recalled: "I tried to be an errand boy for a mail-order house but I couldn't
be regimented. I couldn't get up in the morning."

So young street-wise Sparky got along selling novelties from a pushcart,
after obtaining a vendor's license thanks to his brother Hyman's political
pull in Chicago's 24th Ward. The license was soon revoked after nearby
businessmen complained. Undaunted, Sparky scalped sporting event tickets, peddled carnations in dance halls and chocolates in burlesque shows,
and even offered "hot" music sheets in violation of copyright laws. One
close friend described Ruby's promotion schemes as "shady" but
`legitimate.

Also on the street, Ruby gained a reputation with his fists, although the
accounts of his aggressiveness differed with those who knew him. Barney
Rasofsky, who gained fame in the 1930s as World Welterweight Boxing
Champion Barney Ross, in 1964 told the FBI that he and Ruby along with
other young toughs were paid one dollar per trip to deliver sealed envelopes for gangster Al Capone. (If this information was passed along to the
Warren Commission, it was never reported.) Rasofsky also said Ruby was
never a troublemaker, although he always was ready to defend himself
against any attack. Others, too, recalled Ruby as one to avoid a fight if
possible.

These recollections clash markedly with those of others who recalled
Ruby as a street brawler, eager to take up any challenge, even to the extent
of aiding someone else in trouble.

Ruby was also militantly proud of his Jewish ancestry. Although not
particularly devout, he had nevertheless received some instruction in Orthodox Judaism.

In addition to fights with other street gangs because of racial and ethinic
differences, Ruby reportedly joined with Jewish toughs in fights with the
Pro-Nazi German-American Bund during the late 1930s.

In 1933, Ruby, along with several Chicago friends, went to Los Angeles
and then San Francisco seeking employment. In 1936, he was still in San
Francisco living for a brief time with his sister Eva and her husband.

Despite some evidence to the contrary, Ruby later told authorities he
returned to Chicago in 1937-the same year his mother was committed to
Elgin State Hospital with mental disorders. For more than twenty years,
Fannie Rubenstein had frequented doctors and clinics reporting that a fishbone was lodged in her throat despite continuing reassurances that
nothing organic could be detected.

Having returned to Chicago about 1937, Ruby began working for the
Scrap Iron and Junk Handlers Union, according to Social Security Administration records. Chicago attorney Leon R. Cooke, a close friend to Ruby,
had founded the union and was financial secretary. When gangsters connected to the Chicago underworld began taking control of the union and its
funds, Ruby went along. Union president John Martin, who earlier had
been indicted along with a major Chicago mobster for withholding tax
information, named young Rubenstein union secretary. However, according to a statement Ruby made to police at the time, he was little more than
a bagman for union thugs.

On December 8, 1939, Martin fatally shot Cooke in the union's offices
after an argument over missing funds. Martin fled and Ruby was arrested.
The incident was splashed all over the Chicago newspapers at the time.
Although Cooke was shot in the back, Martin claimed self-defense and
never served time for the murder.

While Ruby claimed such close friendship for the slain Cooke that he
eventually took the name Leon as his own middle name, he nevertheless
stayed on with the corrupt union after Cooke's brutal murder.

Following the bad publicity over Cooke's murder, the union was reorganized as the Waste Material Handlers Union, Local 20467, American
Federation of Labor. Martin was replaced and the reorganized union was
dominated by its secretary-treasurer, Paul J. Dorfman, a man with longstanding connections to Chicago racketeers.

In his book The Enemy Within, Robert Kennedy mentioned Dorfman
while telling how Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa expanded his influence
nationwide:

For [Hoffa], the key to the entire Midwest was Chicago, He needed a
powerful ally there-and he found his man in Paul Dorfman. Dorfman,
[the McClellan Committee] testimony showed, was a big operator-a
major figure in the Chicago underworld who also knew his way around
in certain labor and political circles . . . Dorfman took over as head of
the Chicago Waste Handlers Union in 1939 after its founder and secretarytreasurer was murdered . . . Hoffa made a trade with Dorfman. In
return for an introduction to the Chicago underworld, the Committee
found, Hoffa turned over to him and his family the gigantic Central
Conference of Teamsters Welfare Fund insurance.

Several months after Dorfman took over, Ruby suddenly left the union.
In 1964, Ruby told the Warren Commission:

I was with the union back in Chicago and I left the union when I found
out a notorious organization had moved in there. . . . I have never been
a criminal . . . I am not a gangster . . . I had a very rough start in life,
but anything I have done, I at least tried to do it in good taste.

Young Rubenstein went back to hustling-this time manufacturing and
selling gambling punchboards. His punchboard "company" had no fixed
address, but operated out of inexpensive hotels.

It was during this time, claimed Chicago attorney Luis Kutner, who both
represented mob figures and worked for the Kefauver Committee, that
Ruby became connected with Sam Giancana and his crowd.

By mid-1943, Ruby found a more permanent home-the U.S. Air
Force. At the beginning of World War 11, he had been granted a draft
deferment for reasons not entirely clear. One version is that he feigned a
hearing disability by wearing a hearing aid, while another is that he was
granted a "economic hardship" deferment because he was the only
Rubenstein child remaining at home. Whatever the reason, it was insufficient in 1943 when he was reclassified 1-A and, despite an appeal to his
local board, inducted into the Air Force on May 21.

Upon his discharge from the Air Force in February 1946, Ruby returned
to Chicago where he entered an unsuccessful sales business with his three
brothers, Hyman, Sam, and Earl. As in their childhood, the four Rubenstein
brothers constantly argued with each other-this time over how to run the
business. One of the few things they agreed on was the need to obtain a
more "American" name. After Hyman left the business, Sam, Earl, and
Jack all shortened their name from Rubenstein to Ruby. Their stormy
partnership lasted only one year, and by 1947 Jack Ruby had left Chicago
for Texas.

Shortly after Jack arrived in Dallas his name change was made official
by a decree from the 68th Judicial District Court of Dallas on December
30, 1947.

Although the official story of Ruby's move is that he went to help his
sister operate a nightclub, several different sources-some within the
mob-have claimed that Ruby was part of a plan to bring Dallas rackets
under the control of the Chicago underworld. Shortly after the JFK assassination, Dallas businessman Giles Miller added support for this idea by
telling the FBI that in 1959 Ruby had told him he wanted to go back to
California in 1947 but "was directed" to go to Dallas.