Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (84 page)

The House Committee also expressed interest in a post office box that
Ruby used twelve times, coinciding with the times he met with Agent
Flynn. Researchers have been equally intrigued by Ruby's purchase of
miniature electronic bugging equipment during this time period, suggesting
that Ruby's involvement with the Bureau was not as innocent as reported.

On April 27, 1959, shortly after his first contact with Agent Flynn and the day before their next scheduled meeting, Ruby rented safety deposit
box 448 at Merchants State Bank in Dallas, where he maintained a small
business checking account.

Sometime before he rented the bank box, Ruby bought more than $500
worth of tape-recording equipment. The saleswoman, contacted by Secret
Service agents shortly after the assassination weekend, recalled that Ruby
bought "a wristwatch which held a microphone for the equipment, and also
an instrument to bug a telephone . . . [and a] tie clip and attache case."
An FBI agent also interviewed the saleswoman, but filed a meager twoparagraph report, omitting the descriptions of the electronic bugging equipment.

From the time Ruby acquired the safety deposit box through the fall of
1959, researchers have discerned a pattern-both before and after making
a trip to Cuba, Ruby would enter this deposit box and then contact the FBI.

Flynn denied to the House Committee that he and Ruby discussed the
Cuban visits, but in later years Flynn reportedly admitted to news reporters
that Ruby may have mentioned one trip to Cuba.

And apparently Ruby was making no secret of his Cuban sojourns at the
time. He sent a postcard from Havana to a girlfriend in Dallas and he was
overheard telling one of his employees not to say where he was going
"unless it were to the police or some other official agency. "

It also should be noted that three days after Ruby shot Oswald, authorities in New Orleans received a tip that Jack Ruby had bought some paintings
while in that city in the summer of 1959. While this information seemed
hardly germane to the assassination, its source points to the involvement of
U.S. Intelligence. For this bit of art news came from William George
Gaudet, the CIA operative who accompanied Oswald to Mexico.

So apparently the CIA was tracking Ruby's movements in 1959, and
after the assassination, Ruby was fearful that his activities in New Orleanswhich obviously involved Cuba-would be found out.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations determined that Ruby
may have made as many as six trips to Cuba, but most significantly, this
issue was clouded and passed off by both the FBI and the Warren
Commission.

When Warren Commission attorneys Leon Hubert and Burt Griffinboth assigned to the Ruby aspect of the investigation-requested further
probing of Ruby's Cuban connections, they were rebuffed by both the CIA
and other Commission staff members.

In later years, Warren Commission staffer Howard P. Willens-the
liaison man with the Department of Justice-explained the Commission's
reluctance to probe deeper by telling newsman Seth Kantor: ". . . these
Cuban pursuits represented some kind of bottomless pit and our overall
investigation had to be wrapped up."

Considered all together, the activities of Jack Ruby involving Cuba,
Trafficante, McWillie, and the FBI represent a whole new dimension of
the assassination-one that has yet to be fully explored.

But these connections, especially in light of the current theory of mob
involvement in the assassination, certainly elevate Ruby far above the
simple, emotional nightclub owner pictured by the Warren Commission.

The House Committee's chief counsel Robert Blakey, commenting on
Ruby's connections with both mobsters and Cuba, wrote: "Our conclusion
about Ruby in Cuba did not necessarily mean organized crime had a hand
in the events in Dallas in 1963, but it did shift the balance in the careful
process of weighing the evidence."

As the day of Kennedy's assassination approached, Jack Ruby remained
in contact with a variety of mob figures both by telephone and in person.

One of the most intriguing incidents involved Johnny Roselli, the gangster involved with Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana in the CIA-Mafia
assassination plots.

It has now become known that beginning in the summer of 1963 and
continuing into November, the FBI had Roselli under surveillance.

Researchers were surprised in later years that the Bureau had monitored
two separate meetings between Roselli and Jack Ruby that occurred within
two months of Kennedy's death. (Roselli, who later began to speak openly
to columnist Jack Anderson, admitted to knowing Ruby, calling him "one
of our boys.") What these meetings were about and why they were not
reported to the Warren Commission is not known, but to most researchers
this is yet another clear example of suppression of evidence by the FBI.

One of the most intriguing stories to come out of the assassination case
involved a woman who claimed to have worked for Ruby and who is on
record as accurately predicting Kennedy's death.

On November 20, 1963, two days before the assassination, Louisiana
State Police lieutenant Francis Fruge journeyed to Eunice, Louisiana, to
pick up a woman who had received minor abrasions when she was thrown
from a car. The woman appeared to be under the influence of some drug.
She later was driven to the State Hospital in Jackson, Louisiana. On the
way she told Fruge that she had been traveling with two men "who were
Italians or resembled Italians" from Florida to Dallas. When Fruge asked
her what she planned to do in Dallas, the woman replied: ". . . number
one, pick up some money, pick up [my] baby and . . . kill Kennedy."

Thus began the strange saga of Melba Christine Marcades, better known
as Rose Cheramie.

While at State Hospital, Cheramie told doctors there that Kennedy was
to be killed in Dallas. She appeared quite lucid and hospital records studied
by the House Select Committee on Assassinations reflect the woman was
diagnosed as ". . . without psychosis. However, because of her previous
record of drug addiction she may have a mild integrative and pleasure defect."

Dr. Victor Weiss told Committee investigators that Cheramie said she
had worked for Jack Ruby and that her knowledge of the assassination
came from "word in the underworld."

The day of the assassination, Lieutenant Fruge immediately remembered
the woman and her apparent foreknowledge. He returned to State Hospital
and took Cheramie into custody. During questioning she said the two men
were on their way from Florida to Dallas to kill Kennedy. She said she
was to receive $8,000 for her part in this activity and was then to
accompany the two men to Houston to complete a drug deal and pick up
her young son. She even gave Fruge the name of both a seaman and a ship
that were involved in the drug deal and Fruge was able to verify this
information through U.S. Customs.

Fruge also was able to verify the woman's story by talking to a
Louisiana lounge owner. The owner related how two men and a woman
had stopped at his lounge about November 20 and that the owner knew the
men to be two pimps who regularly transported prostitutes from Florida.
He said the woman became intoxicated and was taken outside after one of
her companions "slapped her around."

Fruge said he soon contacted Dallas police captain Will Fritz, the man
in charge of the assassination investigation, believing that he had uncovered valuable information. However, after Fritz told him he "wasn't
interested," Fruge dropped his investigation.

Interestingly, the House Committee found that, while the FBI had no record
of Cheramie's prognostication of the assassination, it did have reports that
a Melba Marcades (Cheramie) had tipped Bureau agents that she was traveling
to Dallas to deliver heroin to a man in Oak Cliff, then to Galveston to pick
up a shipment of drugs. The Bureau had looked into the matter but decided
that the woman's information was "erroneous in all respects."

On September 4, 1965, one month after yet another attempt to contact
the FBI with similar information, Marcades/Cheramie was found dead by a
highway near Big Sandy, Texas-a small town in East Texas about midway between Dallas and Louisiana. A man told authorities that Cheramie
was lying in the roadway, apparently after being thrown from a car, and
that he drove over her head while trying to avoid her. Police could find no
relationship between the woman and the driver and the case was closed.
However, Fruge later told researchers that when he attempted to contact
the driver, he found the man's Tyler, Texas, address to be nonexistent.

While the entire Rose Cheramie episode was extensively covered in a staff
report to the House Select Committee on Assassinations and essentially
verified, oddly there was no mention of her in the Committee's report.

Both federal investigations of the assassination announced publicly that they
were unable to establish any link between Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald.

The Warren Commission flatly stated: "There is no evidence that
Oswald and Ruby knew each other or had any relationship through a third
party or parties."

Yet according to its own internal memos, Commission staffers were not
all that certain. Arguing that further investigation was needed, Commission lawyers Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert wrote: "In short, we believe
that the possibility exists, based on evidence already available, that Ruby
was involved in illegal dealings with Cuban elements who might have had
contact with Oswald."

The House Select Committee on Assassinations in its report seem to
question the Warren Commission's conclusion by pointing out:

The Commission also found no evidence that Ruby and Oswald had
ever been acquainted, although the Commission acknowledged that they
both lived in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, [both] had post office
boxes at the Terminal Annex, and had possible but tenuous third party
links. These included Oswald's landlady, Earlene Roberts, whose sister,
Bertha Cheek, had visited Ruby at his nightclub on November 18, and a
fellow boarder at Oswald's roominghouse, John Carter, who was friendly
with a close friend and employee of Ruby, Wanda Killam.

In fact, while leaving the impression that no link existed between Ruby
and Oswald, the House Committee left the possibility open by stating:

... the Committee's investigation of Oswald and Ruby showed a
variety of relationships that may have matured into an assassination
conspiracy. Neither Oswald nor Ruby turned out to be "loners," as they
had been painted in the 1964 investigation.

And the body of evidence connecting Ruby and Oswald continues to
grow.

As far back as 1964, Gen. Edwin A. Walker-himself a central figure
in the assassination case-told this author:

... the Warren Commission Report was ridiculous and a sham as well
as an insult to the public's intelligence. Rubenstein knew Oswald;
Oswald knew Rubenstein. The report would have to start all over on this
basic fact.

Recall that Julia Ann Mercer identified both Ruby and Oswald as the
men she saw near the Triple Underpass with a rifle shortly before the
assassination and that Oswald's mother, Marguerite, claimed to have been
shown a photograph of Jack Ruby by an FBI agent the night before
Oswald was shot.

Stories have circulated around Dallas since 1963 about Ruby and Oswald being seen together. On November 26, 1963, the Dallas Morning News
quoted Assistant D.A. Bill Alexander as saying: "[Investigators] have
received at least a hundred tips [linking Oswald to Jack Ruby] and are
checking out each one. As far as I know, none has panned out."

As early as Monday, November 25, 1963, newsmen were receiving
information of a Ruby-Oswald link. Some were not easy to dismiss.
Especially the number that grew out of experiences at Ruby's Carousel
Club.

Madeleine Brown, the alleged mistress of Lyndon Johnson, worked for
one of Dallas's leading advertising firms in 1963. She handled some of the
agency's biggest accounts. After work, she and co-workers would unwind
at various watering holes, including the Carousel Club. Brown recalled
that in the spring of 1963 as she and her friends sat in the Carousel Club
the conversation turned to speculation over who might have taken a shot at
Gen. Edwin A. Walker. The group was surprised to hear Jack Ruby blurt
out that the man who shot at Walker was Lee Oswald.

Brown took note of the name because she had never heard it before and
because Ruby seemed so sure of the name of Walker's assailant. She was
shocked the following November to see the names Ruby and Oswald tied
to the assassination. She told this author:

I asked around and found out that many people knew that Oswald and
Ruby knew each other. In fact, I just assumed that everyone knew this.
I was surprised when, well into the 1980s, I learned that officially they
were not supposed to be connected.