The Ruby Cover-up.

by Seth Kantor

From Jacob Leon Rubenstein (March 25, 1911-January 3, 1967), who legally changed his name to Jack Leon Ruby in 1947, was convicted of the November 24, 1963 murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy. Ruby, who was originally from Chicago, Illinois, was then a nightclub operator in Dallas, Texas. Convicted of the murder on March 14, 1964, Ruby appealed the conviction and death sentence. As a date for his new trial was being set, he became ill and died of lung cancer on January 3, 1967. ~ Ruby was involved with major figures in organized crime; conspiracy theorists claim that he killed Oswald as part of an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy. Others have disputed this, arguing that his connection with gangsters was minimal at most and that he was not the sort to be entrusted with such an act within a high-level conspiracy. ~ Ruby (also known as "Sparky," from his boxing nickname "Sparkling Ruby") 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. 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 spoke up to correct Wade, "Henry, that's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee," a pro-Castro organization. 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. ~ Two days later on Sunday, November 24, after driving into town and sending a money order to one of his employees, Ruby walked to the nearby police...

Paperback

First published November 1, 1980

Reviews

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is another example of primary source material pertaining to the assassination of John Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. Seth Kantor was a member of the press pack following the presidential visit to Texas. He had previously been a news hound in Dallas itself. Followers of this case well know the story of Kantor, following the shooting, at Parkland Hospital, where he came in contact with a face he knew from his old Dallas days, none other than Jack Ruby. Kantor testified to the Warren Commission regarding this meeting, however the verdict was that Kantor must have been mistaken.
'The Ruby Cover-Up', published in 1978, explores many other avenues that the Warren Commission failed to pursue in regard to Ruby. The author catalogues many missed and lost opportunities concerning it's two Ruby investigators, attorneys Leon D. Hubert Jr. and Burt W. Griffin. None more glaring than the Commission's jail interview with Ruby, where the two attorneys were kept away.
Followed, at that same interview by Warren's refusal to act on Ruby's request to be moved to Washington, away from Dallas. "I may not live tomorrow to give any further testimony...and the only thing I want to get out to the public, and I can't say it here, is with authenticity, with sincerity of the truth of everything, and why my act was committed, but it can't be said here."
The book explores the many dark threads of Jack Ruby's career, from Chicago to Dallas and the links to drug and gun running, shady visits to Cuba in the late 50's and the many colleagues within the D.P.D. The focus is on not just Warren, but the suppressed information to the commission by the FBI.
Kantor also wrote another book on this subject 'Who was Jack Ruby'.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unlike the Warren Commission and the later House Select Committee on Assassinations, journalist Seth Kantor actually looked into Jack Ruby's background and closely examined his actions over the two days leading up to his murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. Ruby's links to organized crime and anti-Castro organizations is well-documented now - but that wasn't the case when Kantor originally published his book in 1978. Few private citizens were in a better position to do the research. Not only was Kantor a Washington correspondent for Scripps-Howard, he was travelling with the Presidential party in Dallas and was there in Parkland Hospital following the shooting - and he was in the Dallas jail two days later to witness Ruby's shooting of Oswald first-hand. He also knew Jack Ruby from the time he spent in Dallas before taking the Washington job in 1962. Kantor was even interviewed by the Warren Commission, testifying to the fact that he spoke to Jack Ruby in Parkland Hospital just moments prior to Malcolm Kilduff's press conference announcing JFK's death. The Warren Commission decided Kantor was mistaken, just as they decided many other witnesses were mistaken about the things they saw and did.

Kantor includes a lot of important information on Ruby in the pages of this book. He follows the evidence linking Ruby to all sorts of underworld criminal figures, going all the way back to Ruby's teenaged years delivering messages for Al Capone; he examines Ruby's several mysterious trips to Havana in the late 1950s and early 1960s (including his visit to jailed Florida Mafia kingpin Santo Trafficante in one of Castro's prisons); he talks about deals wherein Ruby helped transfer guns to Cuba; and he asks important questions about Ruby's significant patter of phone calls to Mafia-linked individuals like Lewis McWillie in the seven months leading up to the assassination. He also goes where no government investigator has ever gone, trying to ascertain whether Ruby had help from any local Dallas policemen in setting up his murder of Oswald. Few investigators have really examined this last possibility - despite the facts that everyone knew that the whole Dallas police force was corrupt, a large number of policemen clearly knew Jack Ruby, and even Warren Commission investigators questioned the testimony of at least one of the policemen overseeing the security of the prisoner transfer that morning.

If nothing else, Kantor proves that there was a cover-up in the highest of places concerning Ruby's real history and possible role in any sort of conspiracy. Hoover's FBI never shared the fact that they had used Ruby as an informant over several months in 1959, while the falsely CIA claimed to have nothing in their files whatsoever on the man. The Ruby investigation also counts as one of the many huge problems with the Warren Commission investigation. Warren actually pulled the original two Ruby staff investigators out of Dallas, told neither one of them about his trip to interview Ruby himself, and ignored Ruby's pleas to transfer him to Washington so that he could testify to things he was clearly afraid to mention from within the confines of a Dallas prison.

Kantor could find no solid, non-hearsay evidence indicating Ruby and Oswald knew each other, but he clearly gives the impression that he feels Ruby was ordered to kill Oswald by the Mafia and that he had assistance from one or more Dallas policemen in entering the Dallas police basement just in time to carry out the murder - and I think he provides compelling evidence to support both of those theories. We may never have the final chapter in Jack Ruby's true story, but Kantor's book makes for a darn good opening chapter.