Ruby - A Conspiração do Silêncio

Info On 1992 Film "Ruby":

Ruby is a feature film, released in the United States on March 27, 1992, about Jack Ruby, the Dallas, Texas nightclub owner who shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement garage of a Dallas city police station in 1963. The film was directed by John Mackenzie and stars Danny Aiello (as Ruby), Sherilyn Fenn (as Sheryl Ann DuJean a.k.a. Candy Cane), and Arliss Howard. It is based on a play written by British screenwriter Stephen Davis. Ruby was released three months after Oliver Stone's movie JFK.

Plot synopsis

The film begins with Jack Ruby saying, "Lookin' back at it now, what can you say? It feels like it was a dream. Yeah, that's it, a dream. Maybe none of it never happened. Because when i look back on it today, this is the best sense i can make of it." Then the scene shows a murder; a corpse, dressed in a suit, is being drained of blood, having been hung on a meat hook. It is readily apparent that the corpse has been tortured, and it is implied that the presentation of the body is intended to be a brutal message.
The next scene switches location to the Carousel Club of Dallas, Texas in 1962, a burlesque club owned by Jack Ruby. It is a slow night at the club, with only a sparse audience for the featured performer, and few bar patrons. The featured dancer, named Telephone Trixie, is unprepared for the show, unenthusiastic, and well beyond her glory days. Ruby regretfully watches her lackluster performance and ruefully observes the disappointing state of his business. Near closing, Ruby leaves the Carousel through a rear/side exit in order to make a rendezvous with two corrupt officers from the Dallas Police Department in order to supply them with narcotics. The next scene shows an attractive young blond woman sitting in front of a mirror applying make-up to a facial bruise; the scene strongly suggests that her sleeping husband or significant other has been abusing her.
The next set of scenes follows Ruby as he closes the Carousel Club and makes a stop at an all-night diner which is adjacent to a bus station. Inside the diner, Ruby observes the young blond from the previous scene and stops to speak with her and offer a meal and a place to stay. In the course of discussion between the young woman and Ruby, it is made clear that Jack is not making a sexual advance, and is instead offering lodging in a gesture of platonic friendship. Destitute, desperate, and homeless, the young Sheryl Ann DuJean then accompanies Ruby back to Carousel Club where Ruby gives her lodging in an apartment in the area above the club.
The next day, Ruby has a conversation on the state of Carousel with his bartender, who is established to be a young Cuban exile named Diego. Ruby's troubles are further amplified by the appearance cancellation of the next featured dancer who was scheduled to appear on stage. Having heard Ruby's conversation about the cancellation, Sheryl Ann offers to perform for Ruby during his police appreciation show that night. Ruby, reluctant to believe that the innocent and demure Sheryl Ann is stripper material, is desperate and left with no other choice than to allow her to dance. Sheryl Ann adopts the stage name Candy Cane and then takes the stage only to wow the law enforcement crowd with her skilled and enthusiastic performance. Even the jaded Jack Ruby is surprised by her expertise, and realizes she is experienced as a stripper. The crowd reacts enthusiastically, and things begin to look up for Jack Ruby as he has a showstopper as a featured dancer, and a chance at revitalizing his business. Ruby and Candy Cane come to understanding that they be truthful, and a friendship develops between the two.
Shortly after the upswing in business, Jack is contacted by one of his former mob associates, named Louie Vitali, about performing a black bag job in Cuba which the murder victim, Action Jackson, seen in the opening scene, was originally assigned to. Ruby confers with Candy Cane and he ends up inviting her to go along with him to communist Cuba. Once in Cuba, Ruby meets with Vitali and they meet with the elderly and imprisoned Sicilian mobster Santos Alicante, who has been in jail in Cuba since the 1959 communist takeover after his casino hotel was closed down. Vitali tells Ruby that they are to spring Santos from Cuba to put him back in place in the USA as part of a complex operation plan. However after their visit, Vitali accompanies Ruby back to his and Candy’s hotel room where he secretly tells him the real reason for this assignment; he wants Ruby to kill Santos because the people that Vitali works for feel that Santos has outgrown his usefulness to them. Vitali gives Ruby an 8 mm film camera that has a pistol encased in it to carry out the killing. But that evening, Ruby instead kills Vitali on the dock near the prison and springs Santos from his cell by bribing the guards, and then he, Santos, and Candy flee Cuba aboard Vitali’s boat back to America. After arriving in New Orleans, Ruby makes contact with David Ferrie, an old friend from his days in Chicago, to supply him with the necessary papers enabling Santos to re-enter the country. Shortly after, Ruby and Candy return to Dallas, while Santos goes off on his own.
Several months later, Ruby, still managing the Carousel Club in which Candy is now the star attraction, has an encounter one evening when Candy’s estranged and abusive husband, Hank, shows up and confronts her after the show in her apartment, wanting her to return to him. Ruby beats up Candy/Sheryl Ann’s husband and warns him never to come back to the club.
The next day, a mysterious man, identifying himself only by his name of 'Maxwell', pays a visit to Ruby at the currently closed club to talk with him about the killing of Vitali and of the release of Santos from Cuba. With a clearly implied threat of arrest and incarceration, Maxwell wants Ruby to redeem himself to the people that Maxwell works for by being an informant for him on Santos, who has since opened up a new hotel and casino in Las Vegas since his return to the United States as well as Santos’ affiliates. Maxwell supplies Ruby with a mini-tape recorder to assist, and Ruby makes the assumption that Maxwell works for the CIA, which Maxwell neither denies or admits.
Ruby and Candy travel to Las Vegas and check into Santos’ new hotel, where a gala event is taking place that involves a stage performance by singer Tony Montana. Ruby is also suspicious when a helicopter arrives and drops off the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, who is attending the event. Candy attends the event with David Ferrie, who sits with her at the table where the president is sitting, while Ruby sits with Santos and several like-minded people who are clearly connected to organized crime. Recording the conversation, the men want Ruby to smuggle into Cuba “special cigars” for Fidel Castro to assassinate him for the loss of all their casinos and business since the 1959 takeover. When Ruby excuses himself to go outside, he meets with Maxwell in the hotel parking lot, where he drives Ruby outside the city and reveals another assignment for him to partake in the assassination of a prominent official, implying it to be Castro.
The next day, Candy tells Ruby that the people that Santos works with want her to stay in Las Vegas to perform as a singer in their hotels, thanks to some presidential connections that she managed to get hold of. Ruby returns to Dallas alone, while he makes use of free time by shooting at watermelons and other targets from a distance in preparation for his next assassination assignment.
Sometime later, Ruby talks with Lenny, an old friend of his, about assignments for CIA associates and Lenny tells Ruby that to take out a "target" relies on two or more rifle marksmen and a "patsy" or "fall guy" to be caught in order to place all the blame for the crime to divert suspicion away from the investigating authorities.
Meanwhile, Diego the bartender meets with David Ferrie where they travel to New Orleans where they make contact with Lee Harvey Oswald, whom they ask to talk about going in on a job.
Back in Dallas, Ruby meets with Santos, Sam Giaccana, and their men at another meeting where Giaccana tells Ruby that his assignment to take out Castro has been canceled because another matter has come up. Giaccana tells Ruby that the CIA has been having troubles with President Kennedy over the Cuba issue and wanting to reveal the CIA’s true nature. After Ruby leaves, Giaccana meets with Maxwell for a talk.
Returning to his club, Ruby sees Candy there, who tells him that she quit her career tour which included performances for the President because she felt they were taking advantage of her and her charms. It is implied that Candy had shared some intimate time with Kennedy and possibly others. While Ruby and Candy decide to revise the club with a new classy act as a singing club, he begins to figure out what Maxwell and the mob associates are doing: planning a high-level assassination. Ruby tells his boss, Proby, that from his views and experiences in the past several months, the CIA and the Mafia work together to stage and carry out contract killings, and get away with it by subcontracting third parties to carry out the work. Proby has some doubts, but he tells Ruby to leave the matter alone for he cannot blow the lid on a complex conspiracy such as this.
On November 22, 1963, JFK arrives in Dallas where Maxwell meets with Oswald, Diego, and two other henchmen, where he tells them their assignments. While Ruby is at a newspaper office to file a new listing for his club, Candy is watching the President’s limo convoy ride through the city. It is shown that Diego, with Oswald as the handler, shoots Kennedy from the sixth-floor window of the Dallas Book Depository, while the second assassin, and his handler, fire the fatal shot, killing Kennedy from the grassy knoll section near the building to the building.
After watching the events on a TV set, a distraught Ruby returns to his club, where Proby is rummaging through his desk to look for the audio tape of the recording of the conversation Ruby had in Las Vegas with Santos and his associates, but the tape is gone. Ruby tells Proby, who has not heard about the assassination, that their enemies have won. The following day, David Ferrie pays a visit to Ruby at the club where they watch a TV broadcast about the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald and that he also was arrested for killing Officer Tippit, a regular customer at the club. Ferrie tells Ruby to forget that they ever met and that he shouldn’t do anything stupid for he calls Ruby only a "small time hood". Ruby vows he will make the world understand.
The next day, Ruby goes to the Dallas county jail where Oswald is being transferred and kills him. Ruby is immediately arrested by the police—just as he wanted them to. In jail, Ruby refuses to give a statement to his lawyer about his motivation and demands that he be taken to Washington to testify before a Senate committee about what he knows. At Ruby’s trial, he refuses to offer an insanity defense for the murder of Oswald and is convicted and sentenced to death. Ruby sees Maxwell as one of the spectators during the trial and knows that Maxwell had some hand in work behind the scenes that has led to his conviction. Ruby appeals the verdict, but aware that the conspirators are monitoring his visits, continues to demand that he be taken to Washington to testify, but he is refused.
Several months later, while still in prison awaiting an appeal, Candy visits Ruby to offer him moral support for his actions, while he tells her not to visit him again and to move far away so the members of the conspiracy will not find her. After Candy leaves Ruby for good, he remains in jail while over the next several months, he thinks that the conspirators are slowly killing him inside when he is forcibly given injections for his failing health. In a final disclaimer, it is said that Ruby died from cancer in jail in 1967 and that his request to testify before a Senate hearing was never granted.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(1992_film) )


Info On Jack Ruby (connected with the movie...):

Jack Leon Ruby (born Jacob Leon Rubenstein; March 25, 1911^[1] – January 3, 1967) was a nightclub operator in Dallas, Texas. On November 24, 1963, Ruby fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald, who was in police custody after being charged with the assassination of John F. Kennedy two days earlier. A Dallas jury found Ruby guilty of murdering Oswald, and Ruby was sentenced to death. Later, Ruby appealed his conviction and death sentence and was granted a new trial. As the date for his new trial was being set,^[2] Ruby became ill and died of a pulmonary embolism due to lung cancer.
Many contend Ruby was involved with major figures in organized crime, and conspiracy theorists widely assert that Ruby killed Oswald as part of an overall plot surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy. Others have argued against this, saying that Ruby's connection with gangsters was minimal at most, or circumstantial, and also that Ruby was not the sort to be entrusted with such an act within a high-level conspiracy.^[3]

Associations with organized crime and gunrunning allegations

In 1964, the Warren Commission provided a detailed biography of Ruby's life and activities to help ascertain whether he was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.^[10] The Commission indicated that there was not a "significant link between Ruby and organized crime"^[11] and said he acted independently in killing Oswald.^[12] Fifteen years later, the House Select Committee on Assassinations undertook a similar investigation of Ruby and said that he "had a significant number of associations and direct and indirect contacts with underworld figures" and "the Dallas criminal element" but that he was not a "member" of organized crime.^[13]
Ruby was known to have been acquainted with both the police and the Mafia. The HSCA said that Ruby had known Chicago mobster Sam Giancana (1908-1975) and Joseph Campisi (1918–1990) since 1947, and had been seen with them on many occasions.^[14][15] 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 crime-related activities.^[16]

Similarly, a PBS Frontline investigation into the connections between Ruby and Dallas organized crime figures reported the following:

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 lieutenants of Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss who had reportedly talked of killing the President.^[17]

A day before Kennedy was assassinated, Ruby went to Joe Campisi's restaurant.^[18] 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.^[15][19][20]
Howard P. Willens — the third highest official in the Department of Justice^[21] and assistant counsel to J. Lee Rankin — helped organize the Warren Commission. Willens also outlined the Commission's investigative priorities^[22] and terminated an investigation of Ruby's Cuban related activities.^[23] An FBI report states that Willens's father had been Tony Accardo's next door neighbor going back to 1958.^[24] In 1946, Tony Accardo allegedly asked Jack Ruby to go to Texas with Mafia associates Pat Manno and Romie Nappi to make sure that Dallas County Sheriff Steve Gutherie would acquiesce to the Mafia’s expansion into Dallas.^[25]
Four years before the assassination of President Kennedy, Ruby went to see a man named Lewis McWillie in Cuba. Ruby considered McWillie, who had previously run illegal gambling establishments in Texas, to be one of his closest friends.^[26] At the time Ruby visited him, in August 1959, McWillie was supervising gambling activities at Havana's Tropicana Club. Ruby told the Warren Commission that his August trip to Cuba was merely a social visit at the invitation of McWillie.^[26] The House Select Committee on Assassinations would later conclude that Ruby "…most likely was serving as a courier for gambling interests."^[27][28][29] The committee also found "circumstantial," but not conclusive, evidence that "…Ruby met with [Mafia boss] Santo Trafficante in Cuba sometime in 1959."^[30][31]
James E. Beaird, who claimed to be a poker-playing friend of Jack Ruby, told both The Dallas Morning News and the FBI that Ruby smuggled guns and ammunition from Galveston Bay, Texas to Fidel Castro's guerrillas in Cuba in the late 1950s. Beaird said that Ruby "was in it for the money. It wouldn't matter which side, just [whichever] one that would pay him the most." Beaird said that the guns were stored in a two-story house near the waterfront, and that he saw Ruby and his associates load "many boxes of new guns, including automatic rifles and handguns" on a 50-foot military-surplus boat. He claimed that "each time that the boat left with guns and ammunition, Jack Ruby was on the boat."^[32][33][34]
Blaney Mack Johnson, an FBI informant, said Ruby was "active in arranging illegal flights of weapons from Miami" to pro-Castro forces in Cuba in the early 1950s.^[34][35]

Timeline

November 21

The Warren Commission attempted to reconstruct Ruby's movements from November 21, 1963 through November 24.^[36] The Commission reported that he was attending to his duties as the proprietor of the Carousel Club in downtown Dallas and the Vegas Club in the city's Oaklawn district from the afternoon of November 21 to the early hours of November 22.^[36]

November 22: The assassination of Kennedy

According to the Warren Commission, Ruby was in the second-floor advertising offices of the Dallas Morning News, five blocks away from the Texas School Book Depository, placing weekly advertisements for his nightclubs when he learned of the assassination of Kennedy around 12:45 p.m.^[37] Ruby then placed telephone calls to his assistant at the Carousel Club and to his sister.^[38] The Commission stated that an employee of the Dallas Morning News estimated that Ruby left the newspaper's offices at 1:30 p.m., but indicated that other testimony suggested he may have left earlier.^[37]
White House correspondent Seth Kantor — who was a passenger in the motorcade — told the Warren Commission that he went to Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy received medical care after the shooting, at about 1:30 pm, an hour after President Kennedy was shot. Kantor said that as he was entering the hospital, he felt a tug on his coat. He turned around to see Jack Ruby who called him by his first name and shook his hand.^[39][40] (Kantor said that he had become acquainted with Ruby while he was a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald newspaper.)^[41][42] According to Kantor, Ruby asked him if he thought that it would be a good idea for him to close his nightclubs for the next three nights because of the tragedy and Kantor responded that he thought that doing so would be a good idea.^[40][43][44]
The Warren Commission dismissed Kantor's testimony, saying that the Parkland Hospital encounter would have had to take place in a span of a few minutes before and after 1:30 pm, as evidenced by telephone company records of calls made by Kantor and Ruby around that time. The Commission also pointed to contradictory witness testimony and to the lack of video confirmation of Ruby at the scene.^[45] The Commission concluded that "Kantor probably did not see Ruby at Parkland Hospital" and "may have been mistaken about both the time and the place that he saw Ruby".^[45]
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reexamined Kantor's testimony and stated: "While the Warren Commission concluded that Kantor was mistaken [about his Parkland encounter with Ruby], the Committee determined he probably was not."^[46][47]
According to the Warren Commission, Ruby arrived back at the Carousel Club shortly before 1:45 pm to notify employees that the club would be closed that evening.^[48]
Ruby (also known by the childhood nickname "Sparky")^[49] was seen in the halls of the Dallas Police Headquarters on several occasions after the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963; and newsreel footage from WFAA-TV (Dallas) and NBC shows Ruby impersonating a newspaper reporter during a press conference at Dallas Police Headquarters on the night of the assassination.^[50] District Attorney Henry Wade briefed reporters at the press conference telling them that Lee Oswald was a member of the anti-Castro Free Cuba Committee. Ruby was one of several people there who spoke up to correct Wade, saying: "Henry, that's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee," a pro-Castro organization.^[51][52][53] Some speculate that Ruby may have hoped to kill Oswald that night at the police station press conference. Ruby told the FBI, a month after his arrest for killing Oswald, that he had his loaded snub-nosed Colt Cobra .38 revolver in his right-hand pocket during the press conference.^[54][55][56]

November 24: The murder of Oswald

Later in the day, after driving into town with his two pet dogs and sending an emergency money order to one of his employees, Ruby walked to the nearby police headquarters, where he made his way to the basement via the Main Steet ramp. At 11:21 am CST — while authorities were escorting Oswald through the police basement to an armored car that was to take him to the nearby county jail — Ruby stepped out from a crowd of reporters and fired his .38 revolver into Oswald's abdomen, fatally wounding him. The shooting was broadcast live nationally, and millions of television viewers witnessed it. Author Norman Mailer, and others, have questioned why Ruby would have left his two beloved dogs in his car if he had planned on killing Oswald at police headquarters.^[57]
The House Select Committee on Assassinations in its 1979 Final Report opined:

…Ruby's shooting of Oswald was not a spontaneous act, in that it involved at least some premeditation. Similarly, the committee believed it was less likely that Ruby entered the police basement without assistance, even though the assistance may have been provided with no knowledge of Ruby's intentions… The committee was troubled by the apparently unlocked doors along the stairway route and the removal of security guards from the area of the garage nearest the stairway shortly before the shooting… There is also evidence that the Dallas Police Department withheld relevant information from the Warren Commission concerning Ruby's entry to the scene of the Oswald transfer.^[58]

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 "…Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial."^[59] At the time of the shooting Ruby said he was taking phenmetrazine, a central nervous system stimulant.^[60]
Ruby's explanation for killing Oswald would be "exposed … as a fabricated legal ploy", according to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In a private note to one of his attorneys, Joseph Tonahill, Ruby wrote: "Joe, you should know this. My first lawyer 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. OK?"^[46][61][62]
Another motive was put forth by Frank Sheeran, allegedly a hitman for the Mafia, in a conversation he had with the then-former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa. During the conversation, Hoffa claimed that Ruby was assigned^{[by whom?]} the task of coordinating police officers who were loyal to Ruby to murder Oswald while he was in their custody. As Ruby evidently mismanaged the operation, he was given a choice^{[by whom?]} to either finish the job himself or forfeit his life.^[63]
Within hours of Ruby's arrest for shooting Oswald, a telegram was received at the Dallas city jail in support of Ruby, under the names of Hal and Pauline Collins.^[64] In one of the Warren Commission's exhibits, Hal Collins is listed as a character reference by Ruby on a Texas liquor license application.^[65]

Prosecution and conviction

After his arrest, Ruby asked Dallas attorney Tom Howard to represent him. Howard accepted and asked Ruby if he could think of anything that might damage his defense. Ruby responded that there would be a problem if a man by the name of "Davis" should come up. Ruby told his attorney that he "…had been involved with Davis, who was a gunrunner entangled in anti-Castro efforts."^[66][67] Davis was identified years later — after research by journalist Seth Kantor — as being Thomas Eli Davis III, a CIA-connected "soldier of fortune."^[68][69]
Later, Ruby replaced attorney Tom Howard with prominent San Francisco defense attorney Melvin Belli who agreed to represent Ruby pro bono. Some^[who?] observers thought that the case could have been disposed of as a "murder without malice" charge (roughly equivalent to manslaughter), with a maximum prison sentence of five years. Belli attempted to prove 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 initially showed no interest. Only after Ruby's sister Eileen wrote letters to the commission (and her letters became public) did the Warren Commission agree to talk to Ruby. In June 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, and other commission members went to Dallas to see Ruby. Ruby asked Warren several times to take him to Washington D.C., saying "my life is in danger here" and that he wanted an opportunity to make additional statements.^[70] He added: "I want to tell the truth, and I can't tell it here."^[71] Warren told Ruby that he would be unable to comply, because many legal barriers would need to be broken and public interest in the situation would be too heavy. Warren also told Ruby that the commission would have no way of protecting him, since it had no police powers. Ruby said he wanted to convince President Lyndon Johnson that he was not part of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy.^[72]

Alleged conspiracies

The Warren Commission found no evidence linking Ruby's killing of Oswald with any broader conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.^[12]
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 received a fair trial in 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 from him."^[73] 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."^[73][74][75]
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 pneumonia. A day later, doctors realized he had cancer in his liver, lungs, and brain. Three weeks later, he died.
According to an unnamed Associated Press source, Ruby made a final statement from his hospital bed on December 19 that he alone had been responsible for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.^[76] "There is nothing to hide… There was no one else," Ruby said.^[77]
Journalist Seth Kantor — who testified that on the day of the assassination, he encountered Ruby at Parkland Hospital — also reported that Ruby might have tampered with evidence while at Parkland.^[78] Goaded by the Warren Commission's dismissal of his testimony, Kantor researched the Ruby case for years. In a later published book Who Was Jack Ruby?, Kantor wrote:

The mob was Ruby's "friend." And Ruby could well have been paying off an IOU the day he was used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald. Remember: "I have been used for a purpose," the way Ruby expressed it to Chief Justice Warren in their June 7, 1964 session. It would not have been hard for the mob to maneuver Ruby through the ranks of a few negotiable police [to kill Oswald].^[79]

In his book, Contract on America, David Scheim presented evidence that Mafia leaders Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante, Jr. and Jimmy Hoffa ordered the assassination of President Kennedy. Scheim cited in particular a 25-fold increase in the number of out-of-state telephone calls from Jack Ruby to associates of these crime bosses in the months before the assassination.^[80] According to Vincent Bugliosi, both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations determined all of these calls were related to Ruby seeking help from the American Guild of Variety Artists in a matter concerning two of his competitors.^[81] The House Select Committee on Assassinations report stated "...that most of Ruby's phone calls during late 1963 were related to his labor troubles. In light of the identity of some of the individuals with whom Ruby spoke, however, the possibility of other matters being discussed could not be dismissed."^[82]
In his memoir, Bound by Honor, Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, stated that he realized that certain Mafia families were involved in the JFK assassination when Ruby killed Oswald, since Bonanno was aware that Ruby was an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana.^[83]

Criticism

In 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 money-losing clubs for three days as a mark of respect.^[84]
Dallas reporter Tony Zoppi, who knew Ruby well, claims that one "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."^[85] 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.^[84]

Death

Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism, secondary to bronchogenic carcinoma (lung cancer), on January 3, 1967 at 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, Illinois.^[86][87][88]

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ruby )


History Channel documentary about Jack Ruby:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dsnky8b8weY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cke8tSvqbyo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEH488Sm1WE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shTu2A68hcs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNOaFmby_8o


Various related footage from YouTube: