Jack Ruby

The backstory

The shooting

Shortly after noon on Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, and a short while later Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and placed in the Dallas city jail, according to the appeals court’s statement of the case.¹ Two days later, on Sunday, Nov. 24, Oswald was being transferred from the basement of the city jail to the county jail when Ruby shot him “at close range,” the court wrote; Oswald died of the wound.¹ The court noted that “countless thousands witnessed this shooting on television.”¹

The Warren Commission found that Ruby entered the police basement “shortly after 11:17 a.m.” and killed Oswald at 11:21 a.m.³ It wrote that although “the evidence on Ruby’s means of entry is not conclusive,” the weight of the evidence indicated that he walked down the ramp leading from Main Street.³ Ruby was arrested at once and, minutes later, placed in a cell on the fifth floor of the police jail, the Commission reported.³ It also found the department’s decision to move Oswald “in full public view” unsound, and its security arrangements that morning inadequate, deficiencies that “contributed to the death of Lee Harvey Oswald.”³

The statement to Sgt. Dean

After his arrest, while Ruby was in a jail cell and had already been questioned by other officers, he talked with Sgt. Dean of the Dallas police, according to the appeals court.¹ Before answering, he asked whether his answers would be made available to “magazines or publications,” and when told the questions were for police purposes, he said, “I’ll be glad to answer your questions.”¹ He then told Dean, as the court summarized the testimony, that he had seen Oswald in a police line-up two nights before and that, when he saw “the sarcastic sneer on Oswald’s face,” he decided that “if he got a chance to do so, he would kill him.”¹ The court wrote that the time between Ruby’s arrest and this conversation “varies between 10 and 40 minutes depending upon whether Dean’s testimony at the trial or his written report” was accepted.¹ Dean repeated the statement at trial over the defense’s objection.¹

The trial

Ruby was indicted for Oswald’s murder four days after the shooting.¹ His brother hired the lawyer Melvin Belli, who replaced a “sudden passion” defense planned by Ruby’s first lawyer with an insanity defense.¹⁵¹⁶ A hearing on the defense motion to move the trial out of Dallas began Feb. 10, 1964, and the motion was denied; jury selection ran from Feb. 17 to March 3.¹ Judge Joe B. Brown presided; District Attorney Henry Wade and Assistant District Attorney William Alexander prosecuted, and Belli and Joe Tonahill led the defense.¹⁰

The defense. Ruby’s “sole defense was that of insanity in that he was suffering from psychomotor epilepsy,” the appeals court wrote.¹ According to Time’s account of the testimony, Dr. Roy Schafer, a Yale psychologist, testified that Ruby had organic brain damage and that “the most likely nature of it was psychomotor epilepsy”; Dr. Martin Towler, a neurologist and psychiatrist, testified that Ruby’s brain-wave tracings showed “paroxysmal discharges,” but on cross-examination did not testify that Ruby was out of his mind; and Dr. Manfred Guttmacher, a Baltimore psychiatrist, testified that Ruby could not tell right from wrong at the time of the shooting.¹⁰ In surrebuttal, Dr. Frederic A. Gibbs testified that Ruby had “a particular, very rare type of epilepsy.”¹⁰ Ruby did not testify; Belli said he was not mentally capable of taking the stand.¹⁰

The state’s rebuttal. Three neurologists called by the state, Francis Forster, Roland Mackay and Robert S. Schwab, testified that Ruby’s brain-wave charts showed no seriously marked ailment; asked whether the tracings supported psychomotor epilepsy, Forster answered, “They would not,” Time reported.¹⁰ A former Dallas prosecutor who later reviewed the case files said the state’s cross-examination of the defense experts, who mostly did not testify that Ruby was legally insane, “carried a lot of weight with the jury.”¹⁵

Closing arguments. Alexander called the shooting “a wanton killing” and asked for the electric chair, and Wade told the jury, “If you turn this man loose, you’d set civilization back a century,” according to Time.¹⁰

The verdict

On March 14, 1964, after two hours and 19 minutes of deliberation, the jury of eight men and four women returned its verdict, which Judge Brown read: “We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of murder with malice and assess the penalty at death.”¹⁰¹ Belli shouted to Ruby, “Don’t worry, Jack! We’ll appeal this and take it out of Dallas,” and later called the trial “the biggest kangaroo court disgrace in the history of American law,” Time reported.¹⁰

The appeal

His lawyers on appeal included Phil Burleson, Sol Dann, Joe Tonahill, William Kunstler, Sam Houston Clinton and Elmer Gertz.⁸ While it was pending, the Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the trial court to hold a hearing on whether Ruby had become insane and so unable to choose his lawyers; the record came back “containing a finding that appellant was presently sane.”¹ Judge Brown recused himself from the case, “properly so,” the appeals court wrote, and Judge Louis T. Holland took it over.¹⁸

On Oct. 5, 1966, the court reversed the conviction, in an opinion by Presiding Judge Morrison; Judge McDonald concurred.¹² It gave two grounds.

The statement to Sgt. Dean. The defense had objected that Ruby’s statement was “not admissible as res gestae,” an exception for statements made spontaneously as part of an event.¹ The court agreed that it was not spontaneous: Ruby was in a cell, had already been questioned and had asked how his answers would be used. “The test in this State is spontaneity and these facts do not fit the test,” the court held.¹ It wrote that “obviously this statement constituted an oral confession of premeditation made while in police custody and therefore was not admissible,” and that its admission “was clearly injurious and calls for a reversal of this conviction.”¹

Venue. The court also held that “the trial court reversibly erred in refusing appellant’s motion for change of venue.”¹ It relied on two U.S. Supreme Court decisions on publicity and fair trials, Estes v. Texas and Sheppard v. Maxwell, which it noted “were decided after appellant’s trial” but which concerned trials held before his, “and both are hereby controlling.”¹ The judgment was “reversed, and the cause is remanded with directions that the venue be changed to some county other than Dallas.”¹ The Dallas County records name the 30th Judicial District Court of Wichita County as the new venue.⁹

Death before retrial

Ruby died at Parkland Hospital in Dallas on Jan. 3, 1967, about a month before his second trial, the Associated Press reported.¹¹ District Attorney Wade said he would dismiss the murder charge, and Burleson, his Dallas lawyer, said, “Of course Jack died not a convicted man.”¹¹

The sources reviewed contain no statement from Oswald’s family about Ruby’s trial or death.

Personal backstory

Early life in Chicago

The Warren Commission found that Ruby was born Jacob Rubenstein in Chicago in 1911; his birth date is uncertain, and he most often used March 25.⁴ His father, a carpenter, and his mother were both born near Warsaw, Poland, and came to the United States in the early 1900s.⁴ He was the fifth of eight surviving children.⁴ At his polygraph examination in 1964 he confirmed that he was born in Chicago in 1911 and that his name “was Rubenstein and was changed to Ruby.”⁶

In 1922, at 11, he was referred to Chicago’s Institute for Juvenile Research for “truancy and incorrigible at home,” the Commission reported; the institute’s records described him as “quick tempered” and “disobedient,” and in 1923 it recommended “placement in a home, where intelligent supervision and discipline can be given.”⁴ A juvenile court case followed, and he spent time in foster care: the records say “for a short time in 1922-23,” while he and a sister later said it lasted four or five years.⁴ He probably finished the eighth grade in 1927, and the Commission thought it unlikely that he went to high school.⁴

Work and military service

As a young man he scalped tickets and sold novelties in Chicago and sold racetrack tip sheets and newspaper subscriptions in Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to the Commission.⁴ From late 1937 to early 1940 he worked as an organizer for a local of the Scrap Iron and Junk Handlers Union; the Commission found no evidence that the local’s activities were tied to organized crime.⁴ He was inducted into the U.S. Army Air Forces on May 21, 1943, and discharged on Feb. 21, 1946, as a private first class with a good conduct medal.⁴

Dallas and the nightclubs

He settled in Dallas in late 1947, after first coming to help an older sister run the Singapore Supper Club; he later said his business deals in Chicago had failed, and the Commission concluded that both factors probably drove the move.⁴ On Dec. 30, 1947, he changed his name by court decree to Jack L. Ruby, and two of his brothers also took the surname Ruby that year.⁴ Over the next 16 years he ran a series of clubs, among them the Silver Spur, the Vegas Club and the Carousel Club, a burlesque club downtown.⁴ “I have been away from Chicago 17 years down in Dallas,” he told the Commission.⁵

The Commission found that he was arrested eight times in Dallas between 1949 and 1963, mostly on liquor and after-hours dancing charges, some of them dismissed, and on one assault charge in 1963 on which he was found not guilty.⁴ His finances were disorganized: he carried cash, rarely used bank accounts and owed about $40,000 in federal excise taxes, with interest, on the Vegas Club.⁴ He told the Commission’s examiner, “I never have been in any criminal activity.”⁶

In his own words

Ruby testified to Chief Justice Earl Warren and Rep. Gerald Ford at the Dallas County Jail on June 7, 1964, with his lawyer present.⁵ He asked to be taken to Washington (“Gentlemen, unless you get me to Washington, you can’t get a fair shake out of me”) and said, “my life is in danger here.”⁵ He said that “the thought of doing, committing the act wasn’t until I left my apartment” that morning, that he “didn’t sneak in,” and that he did not want Mrs. Kennedy to have to come back to Dallas for a trial: “someone owed this debt to our beloved President to save her the ordeal of coming back.”⁵ He also said he wanted to show his love for his faith, “being of the Jewish faith.”⁵ “I never knew Lee Harvey Oswald,” he testified, and “I am as innocent regarding any conspiracy as any of you gentlemen in the room.”⁵

At his request, and against the advice of his lawyers, FBI agents gave him a polygraph examination for the Commission on July 18, 1964; he answered “No” when asked whether he knew Oswald before Nov. 22, 1963, or helped him in the assassination.⁶ His rabbi, who visited him the day after the shooting, later said Ruby told him, “I was angry. It was a fit of passion,” and always denied a conspiracy when asked.¹³

Illness and death

He was taken to Parkland Hospital in December 1966 with what was thought to be pneumonia, and doctors found advanced cancer.¹⁷ In his last weeks, according to a report published the day after his death, he told his brother, “I’m not hiding anything. I’m not protecting anybody.”¹² He died on Jan. 3, 1967, at 55; his sister said he died peacefully, and his body was to be sent to Chicago for funeral services.¹¹ His death certificate gives the cause as “pulmonary embolism secondary to bronchiolar carcinoma of the lungs.”¹⁷