Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (83 page)

It is interesting to note that both McWillie-Ruby's "idol"-and
Matthews-hitman Charles Harrelson's idol-were connected to Dallas
gambling operations during the 1950s; both went to work gambling in Havana, Cuba, in 1958-59; and in later years, both were employed at
Benny Binion's Horseshoe Club in Las Vegas.

When Castro closed the Tropicana, McWillie became pit boss at the
Capri Hotel's casino, another Trafficante property. The Capri was then run
by Charlie "The Blade" Tourine, whose mistress later confirmed that she
was assisting Frank Sturgis in an attempt to poison Castro.

McWillie finally left Cuba in January, 1961. According to Ruby and
others, he was one of the last American mobsters to leave the island.

It is interesting to note that during the first half of 1961 McWillie was in
Miami, the site of the CIA-Mafia assassination meetings involving
Trafficante, Giancana, and Roselli.

Since that time, McWillie has worked at a number of Nevada gambling
casinos including the Cal-Neva Lodge, the Riverside Club, Thunderbird
Club, Carousel Club (Las Vegas), the Horseshoe Club, and the Holiday
Inn Casino.

In early 1959, McWillie's boss Trafficante was arrested and jailed in the
Trescornia Camp outside Havana. Within days of this incident, Jack Ruby
contacted convicted Texas gun runner Robert Ray McKeown. In the
1950s, McKeown owned a manufacturing plant in Santiago, Cuba, but
was forced to leave the island in 1957 after failing to pay kickbacks to
Batista. In 1958, he received a two-year suspended sentence and five years
on probation when convicted by U.S. authorities of conspiring to smuggle
arms to Castro. His gun-running activities brought McKeown into close
contact with two notable Cubans-one of whom was Fidel Castro. McKeown
was photographed with the bearded leader during a visit to Houston in
April 1959. He was also close to Carlos Prio Socarras, former president of
Cuba, who quickly turned against Castro and became a leader of the
anti-Castro Cubans in the United States.

It was due to this closeness to Cuban leaders that McKeown was
contacted by telephone by a man who identified himself as "Jack Rubenstein
of Dallas." The caller said he had obtained McKeown's phone number
through a member of the Houston County Sheriff's Office and had thought
his name was "Davis."

"Davis" was the same name that Ruby mentioned to his attorneys when
asked if he knew of anyone that could damage their legal plea of momentary insanity for Ruby. Indeed, a gun runner named Tommy E. Davis not
only was active in Texas at that time but during Ruby's trial showed up in
Dallas and told Ruby's attorneys that he and Ruby had met several times to
discuss the possibility of running arms to Cuba. However, Davis denied
that anything came of this planning. Tommy Davis was linked to both
U.S. intelligence and crime circles.

McKeown told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that
Rubenstein-after Oswald was killed McKeown realized it was actually
Jack Ruby-told him he represented Las Vegas interests that were seeking
the release of three prisoners in Cuba. The caller offered $5,000 each for help in obtaining release of the prisoners. McKeown told the caller he
would accept the offer if money were forthcoming. The man on the phone
said he would think about it.

About three weeks later, McKeown said he was visited by a man at his
business near Houston. The visitor was Ruby and this time Ruby said he
had access to a large number of jeeps in Shreveport, Louisiana, which he
was going to sell in Cuba. He offered McKeown $25,000 for a letter of
introduction to Castro. Again, McKeown asked for money up front. He
later claimed that Ruby "never returned nor did he ever see him again."

Of equal interest is McKeown's claim in later years that just weeks
before the assassination, he was contacted by yet another man who wanted
to buy weapons, particularly high-powered rifles with scopes. McKeown
said this man indentified himself as "Lee Oswald."

In this story, which has been corroborated by a McKeown friend, Sam
Neill, "Lee Oswald" and a man named Hernandez showed up at McKeown's
home in late September or early October 1963, saying they were involved
in planning a revolution in El Salvador.

Oswald, described as a "smart aleck" dressed only in shirtsleeves, then
offered McKeown $10,000 for four .300 Savage automatic rifles each with
a telescopic sight. McKeown said he refused to sell arms to "Oswald."

Both McKeown and his friend Neill independently recognized Oswald
on November 22, 1963, as the man who had visited a few weeks earlier.
However, both men decided to keep quiet about the Oswald visit, saying
later they were "scared" to tell the FBI in 1964 what they knew. Indeed, a
January 28, 1964, FBI document pertaining to McKeown's interview
states: "To his knowledge, he has never seen or met Lee Harvey Oswald."

Although the House Committee pointed to inconsistencies in McKeown's
various accounts of his contact with both Ruby and Oswald, on the
whole-especially with the Neill corroboration-his story is suggestive to
many researchers.

But there may be much more to it in light of the statements of a former
poker partner of Ruby named James E. Beaird. Beaird told the Dallas
Morning News in 1978 that he was an automobile dealer in Houston and
knew that Ruby had been involved in arms deals near McKeown's home in
Kemah, located southeast of Houston on Galveston Bay. Interviewed by
the FBI in 1976, Beaird said he "personally saw many boxes of new guns,
including automatic rifles and handguns" stored in a two-story house near
the channel at Kemah. He said these arms were loaded onto what appeared
to be a fifty-foot military-surplus boat nearby.

The FBI reported: "[Begird] stated each time that the boat left with guns
and ammunition, Jack Ruby was on board . . ." Beaird said Ruby would
show up in Kemah usually on weekends and play poker to kill time until
the boat was loaded. He told the FBI that he saw this operation take place
at least twice while he was there.

Beaird said after the assassination, he contacted the FBI. In a newspaper article, he said he waited until 1966 and "nothing had come out [regarding
Ruby's gun running], so I called them [FBI] just to find out why . . . I
was curious. However, they didn't see fit to even mention it to me again,
so I never heard of anything they ever opened up on it."

He said suddenly in 1976, an FBI agent showed up to talk to him. In his
report, the agent wrote: ". . . there had been so much speculation as to
possible foreign connections and [Beaird] thought it better not to mention
his knowledge of Jack Ruby in Kemah." This FBI report made no mention
of Beaird's attempt to tell the Bureau what he knew in 1966.

Yet another incident occurred in 1961 that indicates that Ruby's gunrunning activities may not have ceased in 1959. Nancy Perrin Rich worked
for Ruby and became involved in Cuban gun-running activities while
married to Robert Perrin in Dallas. In interviews with both the FBI and
Warren Commission, she related how her mob-connected husband met in
1961 with a group of anti-Castro Cubans. The meeting, which took place
in a Dallas apartment, was presided over by a U.S. Army lieutenant
colonel. During this meeting, her husband was offered $10,000 to bring a
boatload of Cuban refugees to Miami. The couple demanded a cash
retainer.

A few nights later, the Perrins met again with the Cubans, who apparently were expecting money. This time the Cubans mentioned taking stolen
arms to Cuba and promised that more money was on the way. Rich told
the Warren Commission: "I had the shock of my life.... A knock comes
on the door and who walks in but my little friend Jack Ruby. . . . and
everybody looks like . . . here comes the Savior."

Rich claimed to have detected a bulge in Ruby's jacket that disappeared
quickly. That plus the fact that the Cubans' plans became more definite
with Ruby's arrival led her to conclude that Ruby was the "bag man"
bringing funds to the Cubans. She said she and her husband finally bowed
out of the deal because they "smelled an element that I did not want to
have any part of."

Less than a year after the meeting with the Cubans, Ruby, and the
military officer, Perrin was found dead of arsenic poisoning. His death was
ruled a suicide.

While McKeown claimed to have had no further contact with Jack Ruby
and the Warren Commission proclaimed Ruby's jeep deal "abortive,"
something worked right, for shortly after a Ruby visit to Cuba in the
summer of 1959, three Castro prisoners-Loran Hall, Henry Saavedra,
and Santos Trafficante-were released from prison and ordered out of
Cuba.

It may have all been due to Jack Ruby.

According to Elaine Mynier she was asked by Ruby to deliver a
message to McWillie in Cuba not long after Castro took over. She told the
FBI: "[It was] . . . a short-written message in code consisting of letters and
numbers and including the word `arriving.' "

On November 26, 1963, long before any in-depth investigation was
done on Ruby's background, a British journalist, John Wilson, informed
the American embassy in London that he had been held in the Trescornia
Camp outside Havana with Trafficante in the summer of 1959. Wilson said
there he "met an American gangster called Santos" and that "Santos was
visited several times by an American gangster type named Ruby." Wilson
claimed the man named Ruby would come to the prison with people
bringing food to Trafficante.

Although Wilson is now dead, there is considerable corroboration to his
story. In 1978, author Anthony Summers talked with the prison superintendent, who confirmed that the "English journalist" indeed was held in
the same area as Trafficante. He also confirmed that Trafficante received
special meals from one of the Havana hotels.

According to Ruby's travel documents, he stayed at the Capri Hotel,
where Trafficante held a major interest.

This story is also corroborated by Gerry Hemming, a CIA agent who in
1959 was serving with Castro's forces. Hemming has said he saw Ruby in
a meeting with Castro leader Captain William Morgan during this time and
the talk centered around efforts to release Trafficante from prison.

There also is an intriguing mention of this matter in a confidential House
Assassinations Committee briefing memorandum that stated: "Lewis J.
McWillie, a close friend with Ruby and a man with many contacts among
organized crime figures, indicates that in 1959 Jack Ruby traveled to Cuba
and visited Santos Trafficante in jail. "

Although during testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Trafficante plainly stated, "I never remember meeting Jack
Ruby," the Committee concluded there was considerable evidence that
such a meeting did take place.

Sources within the Dallas underworld claim Ruby was the middleman
who, acting on orders of McWillie, bought Trafficante's freedom from
Cuba with the sale of black-market jeeps to Castro.

While this has not yet been officially confirmed, it is certainly significant that there appears to have been much closer contact between Jack
Ruby, Oswald's slayer, and Santos Trafficante, the mob boss who predicted that Kennedy would be "hit."

The fact that Ruby idolized the stylish, gray-haired McWillie and would
do "anything" for his mentor is especially intriguing in light of the close
association between McWillie and Trafficante.

And during those active days in 1959, Ruby made another astonishing
contact-the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The Warren Commission
was quietly notified in early 1964 that Jack Ruby had been contacted by
the Bureau in 1959 as an informant but asked that the Commission keep
this explosive fact a secret. The contents of this February 27, 1964 memo
from Director Hoover to Warren Commission general counsel J. Lee
Rankin was not made public until 1975. The memo, belatedly discovered through "a search of all files in the Dallas [FBI] office wherein references
to Jack Ruby appeared," stated:

For your information, Ruby was contacted by an Agent of the Dallas
Office on March 11, 1959, in view of his position as a nightclub
operator who might have knowledge of the criminal element in Dallas.
He was advised of the Bureau's jurisdiction in criminal matters, and he
expressed a willingness to furnish information along these lines. He was
subsequently contacted on eight occasions between March 11, 1959,
and October 2, 1959, but he furnished no information whatever and
further contacts with him were discontinued. Ruby was never paid any
money, and he was never at any time an informant of this Bureau.

The Commission not only failed to see the significance of the nine
meetings between the FBI and Ruby during the very time he was trying to
free mob boss Trafficante, but also did not bother to question the FBI
agent who had met with Ruby.

But many law-enforcement officers, both state and federal, have privately stated that both the frequency and duration of these Ruby contacts
suggests there was more to the relationship than Hoover was admitting.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations did interview FBI Agent
Charles W. Flynn, the agent who met with Ruby. According to Flynn,
Ruby initiated the contacts on March 11, 1959, rather than the Bureau as
stated in the Hoover memo. Flynn said Ruby told him he wanted to give
information on a confidential basis and so Flynn opened a "Potential
Criminal Informant," or PCI file on Ruby. Flynn said he closed the file on
November 6, 1959, because Ruby had not been particularly helpful.

The House Committee staff also found this connection between Ruby
and the FBI at the time Ruby was making trips to Cuba intriguing. The
Committee's chief counsel later wrote:

Ruby could, of course, have contacted the FBI with no ulterior motive,
and it could have been wholly unrelated to his Cuban activities . . . We
]the Committee staff] believed, however, that Ruby's behavior was
consistent with the pattern of seasoned offenders, who often cultivate a
relationship with a law enforcement agency during a period when they
are engaging in a criminal activity in the hope that, if they are caught,
they can use the relationship to secure immunity from prosecution.