Jack Ruby's Day of Infamy
... of 1967. These are the bare facts of a day in the life of Jack Ruby, the day that he achieved infamy. But what was behind his desperate act of vengeance? He has been variously described as a villain, a patriot, and a scoundrel. A self-described super-patriot, he was politically and socially conservative. Yet he owned and operated a strip club in Dallas. A Yankee and a Jew , his adopted cowboy ethics required him to periodically punch out unruly patrons giving the girls who stripped a hard time. Yet he was known to pay medical and dental bills for his punch-out victims and offer them free patronage at his strip club. He never smoked or drank, but he reveled in imaginative obscenities, able to “cuss straight on, like saying his prayers.” He was a man of contradictions. Despite Ruby’s trial defense of mental disease, as presented by his lawyers, it is clear that his original statements to police of grief and rage at Kennedy’s death were closer to the truth of his motivations in killing Oswald. Ruby was vocal in his support and admiration of Kennedy before the assassination, and he repeatedly expressed his grief and anger after the fact. On the morning of his own fateful day, just two days after the assassination, Ruby said to a friend, “That punk should be killed before he gets to trial,” and “God, that sonvabitch needs killing!” And despite the self-damning words, Ruby died believing that his act of murder was purely spontaneous. November 26 began as a normal day for him. He woke up mid-morning, around ten o’clock, as was normal for a man who operated a night club. He did his normal morning routine, shaving and squeezing grapefruits for breakfast. He took a call from a former employee now down on her luck, and promised to send her some money that morning via Western Union. He told her he was going downtown anyway to feed his dog, kept at his strip club. He kept another dog at his residence, and he took that dog with him in his car. He drove part of the route Kennedy had traveled only two days before. The only Western Union open on Sunday was on the same block as City Hall, and he noticed the activity as he drove by, extra police and television crews. He parked his car and opened the trunk. He took over 2000.00 cash and his pistol out of the trunk, and he left his keys in the trunk. He also left his dog. He went to Western Union and filled out the forms, and the clerk stamped the receipt with the time: 1963 Nov 24 AM 11 16. When he left the Western Union office, he could see there was still a lot of activity down the street at City Hall. He decided to see what was happening. Ruby walked a block and made his way through a cluster of reporters and police just as Oswald was led from the jail. In the face of the television cameras, Oswald seemed to look at the just arrived Ruby. Some later claimed Oswald was looking for Ruby, but he couldn’t have seen him in the glare and dazzle of the television camera lights. Ruby pushed through the line and did not hesitate. He stepped forward quickly and shot Oswald in the abdomen. Ruby, while in prison awaiting execution, was seen by a slew of doctors and psychiatrists. Before his trial, not even defense psychiatrists claimed he was psychotic. Soon after, even prosecution doctors thought he was paranoid and needed treatment, perhaps in the hospital. New doctors came and went diagnosing new things as Ruby’s state of mind underwent alternating swings of depression and paranoia. His guards thought he was “playing crazy” ...