Jack Ruby, It’s One or the Other by Rob Clark

What can eight years do to a man? The tough guy on the right from 1954, appears to epitomize the mafia gangster persona…he looks like he would break your kneecaps if you crossed him or didn’t pay up on time. The guy on the left, has already started his downward spiral, and would be dead in four short years. Was the stress of trying to run “legitimate” businesses in Dallas and turn a profit for his “bosses”, finally wearing the former tough guy down? The guy who wouldn’t blink twice at a deal when there’s money to be made, even if it means running guns to Cuba or brokering supply deals with Fidel Castro?

When it comes to Jack Ruby killing Lee Oswald in the basement on 11/24/63, there is no doubt he did it…hell, he was captured on live network television doing it. The question then becomes his motivation for doing it…do you believe as he has stated and many that knew him, that it was a spur of the moment thing when he saw Oswald’s shit eating grin, and decided he would do Jackie Kennedy and the world a favor and take care of the guy right then and there so she and her family would not have to go through the anguish and emotional agony of having to come back to Dallas for a trial? Or do you believe as Ruby has alluded to, of there being a much bigger story of conspiring to silence Oswald before he had a chance to talk, defend himself, or get a fair trial? Which when combined with stories of Oswald’s movement after the assassination, and the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit, has a feeling that something went horribly wrong, and someone, by killing the patsy, would somehow make it right again. Looking at the first scenario of the Mafioso, gun runner with possible C.I.A. ties, strip club owner suddenly becoming a brutally moral righteous vigilante avenger with a heart, has never held much water for me. And I believe even Ruby himself later acquiesced that the saving Jackie Kennedy story, was pushed on Ruby by his first lawyer as an excuse, possibly setting up a plea for temporary insanity down the road. For a man in his fifties dabbling in illegal activity his entire life, who would rather surround himself with men and live with other grown men, being a flesh peddler and treating woman as nothing more than sexually objective attractions to make him money… Constantly surrounded by beautiful women he probably could have taken advantage of in his position, but the only female he seemingly cared for was his sister?

Treating his dogs like royalty and calling them his children…in the end, does it really matter if Jack Ruby was a homosexual? Probably not, but it does provide a window into the way he treated and thought about women…especially of their feelings, especially the feelings of a woman he has no connection with or knows personally. There is no in-between here, either you believe the “official” story of the potential Jewish hero, or that Jack Ruby was somehow compromised into stalking his prey, and finally striking at the last possible opportunity to complete his mission…KILL LEE HARVEY OSWALD. There is no gray area here…Jack Ruby, or someone that looked a hell of a lot like him was seen all over the place on Friday and Saturday the weekend of the assassination. CLICK HERE FOR A GREAT ARTICLE OF JACK RUBY’S MOVEMENTS ON THE 22ND AND 23RD…He was allegedly seen by Seth Kantor and others at Parkland and has been fingered as the planter of the”magic bullet” on a stretcher there….this is a photo supposedly of Ruby walking away from the camera at Parkland on right side in the suit and fedora…

Ruby was also reportedly seen milling around the TSBD and the Grassy Knoll by Jean Hill…



I have even seen photos of Jack Ruby around the Texas Theater after Oswald’s arrest, and we have this testimony of George Applin who was in the theater when the police came in…

Then we have Ruby stalking Oswald in the police department, even impersonating a reporter, and correcting Wade of Oswald’s involvement with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee…



So just what the hell was Ruby doing that Friday and Saturday? Was he in all these places…or could there have been another?

We know there were Oswald impersonators all over the place, why not one for Jack Ruby too?

Jack Ruby was seen late Thursday night eating and meeting with Larry Crafard at the Lucas B&B diner, likely finalizing plans for the next fateful day…And then we have the mysterious meeting with Officer Harry Olsen who could possibly be tied to the Tippit shooting, lasting deep into the wee hours of Friday evening into Saturday morning. Then the even more mysterious excursion of Ruby, his “roommate” *wink* George Senator, and his boy Friday, Curtis Laverne “Larry” Crafard (who can possibly be tied to the Tippit murder) to photograph a billboard and investigate P.O. boxes at the post office. I think this may have been more of a strategy meeting, because if Crafard, a former Army sniper, had been a shooter, Oswald impersonator, and Tippit killer, he surely would have wanted to get the hell outta Dodge as quickly as possible. A jacket tossed by the Tippit killer contained dry cleaning tags from California, where Crafard was living before coming to Dallas in the late summer of ’63. Marina denied the jacket belonged to Oswald, and Crafard was known to wear jackets like that…

Crafard proceeded to skip town around Noon on Saturday the 24th after meeting with Ruby and Senator. I would imagine Ruby likely would have wanted Crafard to do the deed against Oswald, but killing Tippit may have been an unintended necessity that screwed the plans up. Which left Ruby holding the proverbial bag, he had to kill Oswald himself. Killing another human being, especially one that did nothing to you personally takes a special kind of evil. You are either used to killing (which I don’t believe Ruby was), or he legitimately was temporarily insane or felt he had to. So what could motivate a man to murder…orders from high? Is that enough? Blackmail? Threats to loved ones? Or was it somebody or some entity that told him to do it that he could NOT say no to. Perhaps convinced he would be seen as a hero, for killing the King Slayer? Convinced he would never be convicted for righting a terrible wrong? And if you ask me, this call probably came from Ruby himself…they knew there was a threat, and still didn’t step up security…

In the end, Dorothy Killgallen, the only reporter he opened up to, ended up dead real quickly after being given the “scoop of the century”. He went through 3 or 4 lawyers, and was still paranoid to the end “they” were gonna kill him off in prison. Everybody believes he was given a fast acting cancer, but his autopsy says otherwise…

I don’t know if Jack Ruby smoked or not, but I’m sure being around it constantly for at least 20 years was a contributing factor to his lung cancer. If he was injected with a cancer virus, chances are it would have developed other places before his bronchial airways in his lungs. Still, here we are 51 years later, trying to figure out the motivation for the little big man in Dallas, a man shrouded in mystery…a case shrouded in mystery…and the other forgotten assassin…Jack Ruby.