50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Did Ruby Have Connections To H.L. Hunt Dynasty?

The guy who killed Lee Oswald on tv two days after JFK was eliminated, Jack Ruby, apparently had a few connections to the family of H.L. Hunt. As Texas Rich by Henry Hurt III recalled in 1981:

"The FBI uncovered two...possible links between Jack Ruby and H.L. Hunt. One was Isaiah Howard Haynes. A black laborer and handyman, Haynes had worked for Ruby for 16 years. His job was to clean up at Ruby's Carousel Club between the hours of 4 and 7 pm. But during nine of those years, Haynes had also been employed as a houseman-porter-chauffeur for the Loyd B. Sands family...Loyd Sands was the son-in-law of H.L. Hunt. Haynes was still employed by both Ruby and the Sands on the day Kennedy was shot. Ruby and the Hunt family also shared another black employee--Andrew Armstrong...He was employed at the Holiday Hill apartments, which the Hunts owned, from May to December of 1961. Two months later, in February of 1962, he went to work for Ruby as a maintenance man at the Carousel Club. Strangely enough, the Warren Commsision investigators questioned Haynes and Armstrong about possible connections or contact between Ruby and Oswald (both said they knew of none), but did not ask them about possible connections between Ruby and the Hunts."

(Aquarian Weekly 1/15/97)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Jack Ruby's CIA Connection?

The man who who eliminated Lee Oswald on nationwide tv on November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby, was apparently connected to the CIA, according to the now-deceased former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. In the October 1967 issue of Playboy magazine, for instance, Garrison stated:

"Ruby appears to have been the CIA's bagman for a wide variety of anti-Castro adventures. In this connection, let me point out that one of the documents classified top secret in the Archives is a CIA file entitled `The Activities of Jack Ruby.' Perhaps this will become a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in September 2038."

As early as 1967, The Kennedy Conspiracy: An Uncommissioned Report On The Jim Garrison Investigation by Paris Flammonde noted the following:

"District Attorney Jim Garrison bases his belief that Ruby was involved in a well-organized conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy on the following points: (1) Ruby knew Oswald; (2) Ruby knew Clay Shaw; (3) Ruby knew David Ferrie; (4) he was involved in smuggling guns to anti-Castro rebels in Cuba; (5) he was intimately involved with right-wing anti-Castro exile groups in Dallas; (6) he was a friend of General Walker; (7) he had indicated in letters smuggled out of prison that he belonged to a conspiracy; (8) he was acquainted before the Kennedy conspiracy with Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit; and (9) he was a part-time employee of the Central Intelligence Agency."

(Downtown 2/15/95)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Jack Ruby's Mysterious Cancer Death

The man who silenced the apparently CIA-linked Lee Oswald on November 24, 1963--the apparently CIA-linked Jack Ruby--died of cancer on January 3, 1967. As Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs recalled:

"On December 9, 1966, two days after his new trial site had been announced, Ruby was moved from the Dallas County Jail to Parkland Hospital after complaining of persistent coughing and nausea.

"Docotrs initially diagnosed his problem as `pneumonia.' The next day, however, the diagnosis was changed to cancer...

"Bruce McCarty operated an electron microscope at Southwest Medical School near Parkland...He was called back to work during the holidays in 1966 to make a study of Ruby's cancer cells...

"McCarty confirmed that Ruby's cells were microvilli, indicating his cancer originated in the digestive system. He was shocked when it was announced that Ruby died from lung cancer.

"Could Ruby have been injected with live cancer cells, which could account for the presence of the microvilli?...

"While none of this information established beyond doubt that Jack Ruby was somehow eliminated through cancer, it certainly shows there is cause enough for researchers to be highly suspicious of his sudden and convenient death..."

The same book also observed:

"At least one former Dallas lawman offered a more mundane explanation for Ruby's sudden and rampant cancer. He told another: `...They just took Ruby in for X-rays...While he sat there for 15 or 20 minutes or more, they just left the X-ray machine on him.'"

(Downtown 6/29/94)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Did Ruby, Oswald and Ferrie Work For CIA Together?

In Chapter 1 of its report, the Warren Commission asserted that "No direct or indirect relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby has been discovered by the commission, nor has it been able to find any credible evidence that either knew the other, although a thorough investigation was made of the many rumors and speculations of such a relationship."

Yet in his early 1990s book First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated In The CIA-Mafia Murder Of President Kennedy, former CIA operative Robert Morrow claimed that on October 9, 1962 CIA official Tracy Barnes told him that both Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald were members of Clay Shaw's "inside group." And Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs also stated the following:

"Beverly Oliver...was 19 years old at the time of the assassination and worked for the Colony Club, a stri-show club located next door to Jack Ruby's Carousel Club...Oliver...said that three weeks prior to the Kennedy assassination, she was visiting in Ruby's club. There she met a man whom Ruby introduced as `Lee Oswald of the CIA.' She later recognized Oswald when his picture was broadcast following the assassination.

"She also said David Ferrie was in Ruby's club in late 1963, in fact, he was there so often, Oliver mistook Ferrie as an assistant manager of the Carousel Club.

"A friend of Oliver's also knew of Oswald being in Ruby's club and spoke openly about itt. According to Oliver, her friend disappeared and she `decided it would be in her best interests not to say anything.'"

(Downtown 9/29/93)

50 Years After JFK Assassination Retrospective: How Did Jack Ruby Enter The Dallas Police Station Basement?

A number of people have claimed that prior to his silencing of Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963, Jack Ruby was escorted into the Dallas Police Station basement in Dallas' City Hall by Dallas Assistant Chief of Police Charles Batchelor, via the elevator. Coincidentally, during the March 31, 1964 testimony of Dallas Police Lt. Jack Revill before Warren Commission Assistant Counsel Leon Hubert Jr., the following exchange took place:

Lt. REVILL: "Prior to the shooting...he arrived at city hall at 9:30. This preacher's name is Ray Rushing...He came to the city hall and went to the third floor, and--by the way, he rode up on the elevator with Jack Ruby, now...Rode to the third floor...This preacher was one of the people that we located and he related this story to me, that he rode up on the elevator with Jack Ruby on the morning of Nov. 24 [1963]..."

Mr. HUBERT: "In other words, Rushing says that he rode up with Ruby on the morning of the 24th, prior to the shooting?"

Lt. REVILL: "Yes, sir..."

Mr. HUBERT: "Did he say whether he had any conversation with him?"

Lt. REVILL: "He talked about the weather. I asked him."

Mr. HUBERT: "Did he say whether he was--whether he saw Ruby there afterwards?"

Lt. REVILL: "He said he [Ruby] turned to the right and--went up to the third floor and after arriving on the third floor, he [Ruby] turned to the right and went to the administrative office and talked to Chief Assistant Batchelor."

(Downtown 4/1/92)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Who Conspired To Silence Oswald?

Both Lee Oswald's mother and the witness who stated that she had seen Jack Ruby dropping off a man with a rifle near the grassy knoll one hour before JFK was ambushed claimed that an FBI agent showed them a photograph of Ruby on the day befor Ruby silenced Oswald.

In his book Who Was Jack Ruby?, journalist Seth Kantor noted that Ruby's roommate, George Senator, "could not account for about six hours of his time on the day before Ruby shot Oswald" and "Ruby could not account for large chunks of time that day, too." Kantor also recalled in his book that:

"At the moment Oswald was shot, Senator was having coffee in the nearby Eatwell Cafe. The moment a waitress at the Eatwell excitedly said there was a news report about Oswald getting shot, Senator went right to a phone and called Jim Martin, a Dalla lawyer who knew Ruby and would become one of Ruby's first lawyers, along with Tom Howard, after the shooting. The only strange thing about what Senator did is that he telephoned Martin five minutes before there was any public announcement that Ruby was the person who had shot Oswald."

(Downtown 3/25/92)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Dallas Assistant Police Chief Batchelor And Jack Ruby

On November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby conveniently silenced Lee Oswald in the Dallas Police Station basement. Coincidentally, according to High Treason: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy--What Really Happened? by Robert Groden and Harrison Livingston:

"...As Gary Shaw writes in Cover-Up: `...No less than the Assistant Chief of Police was recruited to personally escort Jack Ruby into the Dallas Police Station basement to kill Oswald'...Attorney...James Nell...claims that Ruby...entered the police station with Assistant Chief of Police Charles Batchelor, who later became the Chief of Police.

"Batchelor was in charge of security precautions for both the motorcade of November 22 [1963], and the transfer of Oswald on November 24 [1963]. He lost both his charges, and was promoted to Chief when [Dallas Chief of Police] Curry retired.

"The original source of the Batchelor story was apparently Red Davis of the Dallasa Police...who stated...that Batchelor took Ruby inside via the elevator."

Coincidentally, according to Coincidence or Conspiracy? by the Committee to Investigate Assassinations, after Ruby killed Oswald, Long Beach Independent Press Telegram reporter Bill Hunter, "accompanied by Ruby's rommmate, lawyer, and another reporter, went to Ruby's apartment to inspect the premises" and "on April 23, 1964, as Bill Hunter was conducting an interview at the Long Beach Police Station in his home city he was shot in the head and killed instantly."

Coincidentally, the same book also notes:

"Jim Koethe, a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald was the other reporter who visited Ruby's apartment on the night of November 24, 1963.

"On September 21, 1964, 3 days before the Warren Commission Report was issued, Jim Koethe was killed by a karate chop to the throat, while stepping from the shower in his own Dallas apartment."

(Downtown 3/25/92)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Jack Ruby's Nov. 22, 1963 Movements

According to former New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison's book, On The Trail Of The Assassins, "approximately an hour before the arrival of Kennedy's motorcade, Jack Ruby...was observed alongside the grassy knoll, unloading a man carrying a rifle in a case" and "the statement of Julia Ann Mercer, the witness to that event, was altered by the F.B.I. to make it appear that she had been unable to identify Ruby as the man."

According to Who Was Jack Ruby? by Seth Kantor, at the very moment JFK was shot, Ruby was "five blocks away" on the second floor of the Dallas Morning News building, complaining about the anti-JFK advertisements which, the newpaper had published that morning. According to the same book:

"...Some 10 minutes after the shooting, advertising salesman Richard L. Saunders encountered Ruby, standing numbly amid the confusion, uncharacteristically subdued and pale. It was Ruby's quietness that startled Saunders. He had known Ruby several years and always had found him to be an excessive talker, but Ruby was no more than barely responding to comments everyone else seemed to be making about how terrible the situation was."

Kantor also noted that "An hour after the shooting of President Kennedy I encountered Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital" but "the Warren Report declared that `Kantor probably did not see Ruby at Parkland Hospital'" around the time JFK's death was confirmed.

(Downtown 3/4/92)