Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (87 page)

Less than three hours after shooting Oswald, Ruby was visited by Dallas
attorney Tom Howard. Months later during his trial, Ruby scribbled a note
to attorney Joe H. Tonahill saying: "Joe, you should know this. Tom
Howard told me to say that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and Mrs.
Kennedy wouldn't have to come to Dallas to testify. Okay?"

Ruby also admitted this ploy to attorney Melvin Belli, as recorded in his
book, Dallas Justice. Belli wrote that Ruby told him: "We know I did it
for Jackie and the kids. . . . Maybe I ought to forget this silly story that I'm
telling, and get on the stand and tell the truth."

These confessions coupled with the movements of Ruby during the
assassination weekend all portray a man who consciously stalked Oswaldpropelled by motives that were not his own-before finally shooting him
in the basement of the Dallas Police Station.

According to information developed by both the Warren Commission
and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Ruby awoke about
9:30 A.M. on the day of the assassination and drove to the offices of the Dallas Morning News, where he tried to visit entertainment columnist
Tony Zoppi. Failing to find Zoppi, Ruby said he went to the paper's
advertising office and began to compose ad copy for his club.

Ruby claimed to have remained at the paper from nearly 11 A.M. until
well after the assassination and several News employees, such as John
Newnam and Wanda Walker, confirmed this. However, all the accounts of
Ruby at the newspaper contain gaps when he was out of sight. One
reporter told the FBI that Ruby was "missed for a period of about twenty
to twenty-five minutes" before reappearing shortly after the assassination.

Considering the Dallas Morning News is only two blocks from Dealey
Plaza, there is every reason to believe that Ruby could have been there-as
claimed by Julia Ann Mercer, Jean Hill, Phil Willis, and Policeman Tom
Tilson-and still hurried back to the paper before 1 P.M.

If fact, many researchers and others have claimed that Ruby's presence
at the News was a stratagem calculated to give him an iron-clad alibi for
the time of the assassination. His visit certainly achieved this purpose, if it
was so planned.

According to Ruby, he drove back to the Carousel Club after learning of
the assassination at the newspaper. However, club employee Andrew
Armstrong later stated that Ruby did not come to the club until nearly 2
P.M. and several witnesses-newsmen Seth Kantor and Roy Stamps and
Wilma Tice-placed Ruby at Parkland Hospital.

Ruby made several phone calls from the Carousel Club that afternoon
and was visibly upset, according to the accounts of employees.

He claimed he left the club late in the afternoon, but was reported seen
in the crowded Dallas Police Headquarters between 4 and 4:30 P.M.
Various persons, including a reporter and policemen, placed Ruby at the
police station at different places and time between 4 P.M. and 7:30 P.M.

By 9 P.M., according to phone records, Ruby was back at his apartment,
and at 10 P.M., he visited a Dallas synagogue.

Shortly after 11 P.M. Ruby was back at Dallas Police Headquarters
armed with about a dozen sandwiches he had bought to give to officers.

One officer has even told Texas researchers he saw Ruby enter Captain
Fritz's office while Oswald was undergoing interrogation.

Ruby was still there shortly after midnight when Oswald was taken to a
basement assembly room for a news conference. Mingling with newsmen,
Ruby ended up in the rear of the room, where he elbowed his way onto a
table past news photographer Tony Record. Record later said he thought
Ruby was a fellow newsman but could not understand his insistence on
standing on the table when he didn't carry a camera.

It was during this news conference that a singular incident occurred that
many researchers have pointed to as evidence of Ruby's intimate knowledge of Oswald and his activities. Dallas D.A. Henry Wade, in briefing
newsmen about Oswald's background, stated he belonged to the Free Cuba Committee. Whereupon Ruby corrected Wade by shouting out: "Henry,
that's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee."

While Ruby later claimed to have heard of Oswald's Fair Play for Cuba
Committee affiliation over a local radio station that afternoon, it nevertheless struck researchers as most odd that this nightclub owner with no
known politics would note the difference between the anti-Castro Free
Cuba Committee and the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Of
course, this knowledge would not seem at all odd if the accounts of a
Ruby-Oswald relationship are true.

The midnight news conference was tumultuous and if Ruby's plan was
to silence Oswald there, it is obvious there was never a clear shot.

Ruby contented himself by helping to set up an interview between Wade
and radio station KLIF. Ruby later explained his actions by saying: "I
think it is a childish thing, but I met Henry Wade some time back and I
knew he would recognize me."

The remainder of the night Ruby was a nervous bundle of activity. He
reportedly brought sandwiches and drinks to news personnel at KLIF radio
and sometime after 2 A.M. drove around downtown encountering one of his
strippers, Kay Coleman (known as Kathy Kay) with Dallas policeman
Harry Olsen. During this supposedly chance meeting, Ruby was exhorted
to move against Oswald, if his account can be believed. He told the
Warren commission:

... they talked and they carried on, and they thought I was the greatest
guy in the world, and he stated they should cut this guy [Oswald] into
ribbons, and so on. And she said, "Well, if he was in England, they
would drag him through the streets and would have hung him. " .. .
They kept me from leaving. They were constantly talking and were in a
pretty dramatic mood. They were crying and carrying on.

Ruby claimed he then went to the Dallas Times Herald where he
delivered a twist board-one of his many sales gimmicks-to a composingroom worker. Returning to his apartment, he said he picked up his roommate,
George Senator, then returned to his club.

At the club he claimed to have gathered up a Polaroid camera, some
film, and employee Larry Crafard, and to have driven out on a Dallas
expressway to photograph an IMPEACH EARL WARREN sign before returning to bed.

Later during the day Saturday, Ruby was back at the police station and
he telephoned a local radio station asking for any news about when Oswald
would be transferred to the county jail. He was seen about town by several
people and even claimed to have visited Dealey Plaza where he "... saw
the wreaths on the Plaza and started to cry again."

After brief stops at the Carousel Club and the Dallas Police Station,
Ruby reportedly was at his apartment during the early part of the evening. Then he drove to his club, made some phone calls, then visited the Pago
Club. After stopping again briefly at the closed Carousel Club, Ruby
claimed to have gone back to his apartment and gone to bed.

All in all, even considering that much of what is known of Ruby's
movements during that weekend is confusing and contradictory, it is
evident that the man was in a nervous, anxious condition and touching
bases all over town-especially the Dallas Police Station where Oswald
was being held.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations noted: "These sightings, along with the one on Friday night, could indicate that Ruby was
pursuing Oswald's movements throughout the weekend."

And it was in the early morning hours of November 24, 1963, that Ruby
may have tried to avert his rapidly approaching confrontation with Oswald.
Even the Warren Commission noted this strange incident by reporting:

... between 2:30 and 3 A.M., the local office of the FBI and the
sheriff's office received telephone calls from an unidentified man who
warned that a committee had decided "to kill the man that killed the
President." . . . The police department and ultimately Chief Curry were
informed of both threats.

What the public was not told was that the man who took one of the calls
recognized the voice of Jack Ruby! Dallas police lieutenant Billy R.
Grammer was a young officer working in the communications room early
on November 24, 1963. A man called and asked to know who was on duty
that morning. After hearing Grammer's name, the caller asked to speak
with him. Refusing to give his name-the caller said cryptically "I can't
tell you that, but you know me,"-the man detailed to Grammer the plans
to transfer Oswald, even to the use of a decoy vehicle, and added:
"You're going to have to make some other plans or we're going to kill
Oswald right there in the basement. " Grammer and his superior took the
warning seriously to the extent of writing up a report for Chief Curry.

Later in the morning Grammer was awakened by his wife who told him
that Jack Ruby had just shot Oswald in the basement of the police station.
A stunned Grammer told his wife that he suddenly realized that the
familiar voice on the phone was Ruby's. In 1988, Grammer told British
television that he remains convinced that the caller was Ruby-especially
in light of a chance meeting and conversation that he had with Ruby in a
restaurant near police headquarters only a week before the call.

Of course, if the caller was Ruby and if he did have inside knowledge of
the Oswald transfer, then it is clear that the shooting of Oswald involved
others besides Ruby.

Despite these clear warnings and a few minor changes in the transfer
plans as a result, the execution of Oswald went off according to plan.

Ruby told the FBI and the Warren Commission that he remained at his apartment until after 10 A.M. on that Sunday morning when he left to mail
a money order to Lynn Carlin, but several witnesses and a call from a
cleaning lady seem to belie that notion.

Ruby's roommate Senator also tried to say that Ruby was home in the
early morning but his story proved inconsistent and even the Warren
Commission expressed suspicions about it.

As early as 8 A.M. Warren Richey, a cameraman for WBAP-TV in
nearby Fort Worth, reported seeing a man that he was "positive, pretty
sure in my own mind" was Jack Ruby in front of the Dallas Police
Station. Richey's observation was corroborated by two other WBAP
newsmen, Ira Walker and John Smith. Smith also saw the man about 8
A.M. and, with Walker, about 10 A.M. when the same man approached
them and asked, "Has (Oswald] been brought down yet?"

The three newsmen were amazed a short time later when Ruby's mug
shot was broadcast over the air. Walker told the Warren Commission:
"Well, about four of us pointed at him at the same time in the (mobile
broadcast] truck, I mean, we all recognized him at the same time."
Characteristically, the Warren Commission downplayed their testimony
and suggested they were all mistaken, choosing rather to believe Ruby.

The Commission also failed to seriously consider the statements of Ray
Rushing, a Piano, Texas preacher who had tried to visit Oswald at the
police station that morning. Shortly after Oswald's death, Rushing told
Dallas police lieutenant Jack Revill that he had held a brief conversation
with Ruby about 9:30 A.M. during a ride in a police station elevator.
Revill, in his report, evaluated Rushing as "truthful," but noted that
District Attorney Wade "didn't need IRushing's] testimony, because he
had placed Ruby there the morning of the shooting."

Was Ruby at his apartment as he claimed rather than skulking about the
police station? A call from a cleaning woman has been used to show that
he was indeed home. However, consider the call made by sixty-year-old
Mrs. Elnora Pitts. Pitts, who had the ongoing job of cleaning Ruby's
apartment every Sunday, called sometime just after 8 A.M. November 24.
She told the Warren Commission she called each Sunday to verify if she
should work that day.

She said a man answered and she identified herself but the man didn't
seem to recognize her name or the fact that she was to clean the apartment.
Finally the man said, "Yes, you can come, but you call me." "That's
what I'm doing now ..." replied the exasperated Mrs. Pitts. By now the
woman was frightened by this man who didn't seem to know her. She also
said the man "sounded terrible strange to me . . . he never did sound like
hisself.''

But regardless of where Jack Ruby was earlier on Sunday morning, he
was definitely in the Western Union office located just down the street
from the police station at 11:17 A.M. That is the time stamped on Ruby's
receipt for twenty-five dollars, which he was sending to Karen Carlin in Fort Worth. Carlin, who also had worked for Pat Kirkwood's Cellar in
Fort Worth, told Dallas police she had talked to Ruby earlier that morning:

I needed twenty-five dollars to pay my rent and he said he had to go
downtown anyway, so he would send it to Western Union in Fort
Worth. Jack seemed upset. I picked the money up at Western Union ten
minutes after we heard he had shot Oswald. I was afraid they would
keep my money or something, since Jack had sent it, but they gave it to
me without question. When I talked to him that morning, he sounded
like his voice was going to crack any minute and he did sound like he
had been crying and was very upset. I had to keep saying, "Jack, Jack,
are you there?" and he would say, "Yes."

The time Ruby sent the twenty-five-dollar money order was only four
minutes from the time he shot Oswald.

For years, supporters of the official version of the assassination have
argued that if Ruby intended to shoot Oswald he could not have known
that the transfer would be delayed almost an hour and he would not have
sent the money order. Therefore, they say, Ruby's shooting of Oswald
must have been a spontaneous act.

Most serious researchers now understand that the shooting of Oswald
was not predicated on Ruby knowing the exact time of his transfer, but
rather conversely that Oswald was transferred only after Ruby was in a
position to shoot him.