Jack Ruby's conviction was later appealed, and he was to be granted a new trial; however, he became ill in prison and died of a pulmonary embolism from lung cancer on January 3,1967.
87 Facts About Jack Ruby
2.
In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Jack Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald, shooting him on impulse and out of grief over Kennedy's assassination.
3.
Jack Ruby was the fifth of his parents' 10 surviving children.
4.
Jack Ruby eventually skipped school so often that he had to spend time at the Institute for Juvenile Research.
5.
From his early childhood, Jack Ruby was nicknamed "Sparky" by those who knew him.
6.
In either event, Grant stated that Jack Ruby did not like the nickname Sparky, and was quick to fight anyone who called him that.
7.
Jack Ruby was drafted in 1943 and served in the US Army Air Forces during World War II, working as an aircraft mechanic at US bases until 1946.
8.
Jack Ruby had an honorable record and was promoted to Private First Class.
9.
In 1947, Jack Ruby moved to Dallas, purportedly because of the failure of merchandise deals in Chicago and to help operate his sister's nightclub.
10.
Jack Ruby later went on to manage various nightclubs, strip clubs, and dance halls.
11.
Jack Ruby developed close ties to many Dallas Police officers who frequented his nightclubs, where he provided them with free liquor, prostitutes and other favors.
12.
At the time of the assassination, Jack Ruby was living with George Senator, who referred to Jack Ruby as "my boyfriend" during the Warren Commission hearing, but denied the two being homosexual lovers.
13.
Some critics have said that Jack Ruby was involved in criminal activity and linked to organized crime.
14.
Jack Ruby had been involved in illegal gambling, narcotics, and prostitution.
15.
Jack Ruby belonged to an organization known as the Yiddish Connection.
16.
Dallas County Sheriff Steve Guthrie told the FBI that he believed that Jack Ruby "operated some prostitution activities and other vices in his club" in Dallas.
17.
On March 11,1959, FBI agent Charles W Flynn of the Dallas Office approached Ruby to become a federal informant due to his job as a night club operator, since he "might have knowledge of the criminal element in Dallas".
18.
Jack Ruby was willing to become an informant and was contacted by the FBI eight times between March 11,1959 and October 2,1959, but he provided no information to the Bureau; he was not paid, and contact ceased.
19.
Dallas disc jockey Kenneth Dowe testified that Jack Ruby was known around the station for "procuring women for different people who came to town".
20.
Jack Ruby knew a great number of people in Dallas, but he had only a few friends.
21.
Jack Ruby had a volatile temper, and often resorted to violence with employees who had upset him.
22.
Jack Ruby acted as the bouncer of his own club and beat his customers on at least 25 occasions.
23.
Jack Ruby sometimes took his shirt or other clothes off in social gatherings, and then either hit his chest like a gorilla or rolled around the floor.
24.
Jack Ruby sometimes welcomed a guest to his club, but on other nights forbade the same guest from entering.
25.
John Newnam, an employee at the newspaper's advertisement department, testified that Jack Ruby became upset over an anti-Kennedy ad published in the Morning News that was signed by "The American Fact-Finding Committee, Bernard Weissman, Chairman".
26.
Jack Ruby was sensitive to antisemitism and was distressed that an ad attacking the President was signed by a person with a "Jewish name".
27.
Early next morning, Jack Ruby noticed a political billboard featuring the text "IMPEACH EARL WARREN" in block letters.
28.
Jack Ruby was seen in the halls of the Dallas Police Headquarters on several occasions after Oswald's arrest for the murder of Dallas policeman JD Tippit on November 22,1963.
29.
Jack Ruby was present at an arranged press meeting with Oswald.
30.
Newsreel footage from WFAA-TV and NBC shows that Jack Ruby impersonated a newspaper reporter during a press conference held by District Attorney Henry Wade at Dallas Police Headquarters that night.
31.
Jack Ruby was one of several people there who spoke up to correct Wade, saying, "Henry, that's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee", a pro-Castro organization.
32.
Jack Ruby later told the FBI that he had his Colt Cobra.
33.
Jack Ruby then walked half a block to the nearby Dallas police headquarters, where he made his way into the basement via either the Main Street ramp or a stairway accessible from an alleyway next to the Dallas Municipal Building.
34.
Jack Ruby shot him at point blank range, mortally wounding him.
35.
Jack Ruby lost consciousness shortly after and was taken by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where Kennedy had died two days earlier.
36.
Several photographs were taken of the event, capturing the moments around when Jack Ruby pulled the trigger.
37.
Jack Ruby claimed that he shot Oswald on the spur of the moment when the opportunity presented itself, without considering any reason for doing so.
38.
Jack Ruby told the FBI that he was "in mourning" Friday and Saturday.
39.
Jack Ruby said that he cried when he heard that the President was shot, "cried a great deal" Saturday afternoon, and was depressed Saturday night.
40.
Jack Ruby explained that this grief was caused by him being an admirer of President Kennedy and the Kennedy family.
41.
The anguish over the assassination, Jack Ruby stated, finally "reached the point of insanity", suddenly compelling him to shoot when Oswald walked in front of him in the basement that Sunday morning.
42.
At the time of the shooting, Jack Ruby said that he was taking phenmetrazine, a central nervous system stimulant.
43.
Jack Ruby responded that there would be a problem if a man by the name of "Davis" should come up.
44.
Jack Ruby told his attorney that he "had been involved with Davis, who was a gunrunner entangled in anti-Castro efforts".
45.
Later, Jack Ruby replaced attorney Tom Howard with prominent San Francisco defense attorney Melvin Belli, who agreed to represent him pro bono.
46.
Jack Ruby broke into tears at his bond hearing in January 1964, as he talked to reporters regarding the assassination of Kennedy.
47.
Jack Ruby said that he could not understand "how a great man like that could be lost".
48.
On March 14,1964, Jack Ruby was convicted of murder with malice and was sentenced to death.
49.
Jack Ruby's conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on the grounds that "an oral confession of premeditation made while in police custody" should have been ruled inadmissible, because it violated a Texas criminal statute.
50.
Jack Ruby asked Warren several times to take him to Washington DC, saying that "my life is in danger here" and that he wanted an opportunity to make additional statements.
51.
Jack Ruby said that he wanted to convince President Lyndon Johnson that he was not part of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
52.
Arrangements were underway for a new trial to be held in February 1967 in Wichita Falls, Texas, but Jack Ruby was admitted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas on December 9,1966, suffering from pneumonia.
53.
Jack Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism on January 3,1967 at Parkland Hospital, the same facility where Oswald and Kennedy died.
54.
Jack Ruby was buried beside his parents in the Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge, Illinois.
55.
The Warren Commission found no evidence linking Jack Ruby's killing of Oswald with any broader conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy.
56.
The Commission indicated that there was not a "significant link between Jack Ruby and organized crime" and said he acted independently in killing Oswald.
57.
Warren Commission investigator David Belin said that postal inspector Harry Holmes arrived unannounced at the Dallas police station on the morning that Jack Ruby shot Oswald and, upon invitation by the investigators, had questioned Oswald, thus delaying his transfer by half an hour.
58.
Belin concluded that, had Jack Ruby been part of a conspiracy, he would have been downtown 30 minutes earlier, when Oswald had been scheduled to be transferred.
59.
Jack Ruby was one of the most talkative guys you would ever meet.
60.
Jack Ruby knew Ruby and described him as a "born loser".
61.
Author Norman Mailer and others have questioned why Jack Ruby would have left his two beloved dogs in his car if his killing of Oswald had been planned.
62.
Jack Ruby said that he had become acquainted with Ruby while he was a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald newspaper.
63.
Jack Ruby denied that he had been at Parkland Hospital and the Warren Commission dismissed Kantor's testimony, saying that the encounter at Parkland Hospital would have to have taken place in a span of a few minutes before and after 1:30 pm, as evidenced by telephone company records of calls made by both people.
64.
Kantor reported that Jack Ruby might have tampered with evidence while at Parkland.
65.
Remember: "I have been used for a purpose," the way Jack Ruby expressed it to Chief Justice Warren in their June 7,1964 session.
66.
Jack Ruby's shooting of Oswald was not a spontaneous act, in that it involved at least some premeditation.
67.
Grammer believed that Jack Ruby's shooting of Oswald was "a planned event".
68.
Russell Moore, an acquaintance of Jack Ruby, testified to the Commission that Jack Ruby expressed no bitterness towards Oswald and called him "a good looking guy," comparing him to Paul Newman.
69.
David Scheim noted in his book Contract on America that some people claimed that Jack Ruby was upset over the weekend of the assassination, while others said that he was not.
70.
Announcer Glen Duncan said that Jack Ruby "was not grieving" and seemed "happy that evidence was piling up against Oswald".
71.
Scheim suggests that Jack Ruby made a "candid confession" when giving testimony to the Warren Commission.
72.
Schiem noted several people who knew Jack Ruby who claimed that the patriotic statements which Jack Ruby professed were quite out of character.
73.
Jack Ruby's lawyers, led by Sam Houston Clinton, appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after his 1964 conviction, the highest criminal court in Texas.
74.
Jack Ruby's lawyers argued that he could not have received a fair trial in Dallas because of the excessive publicity surrounding the case.
75.
Jack Ruby conducted a brief televised news conference in March 1965, a year after his conviction.
76.
Kantor speculated in 1978 that the man by the name of "Davis" that Jack Ruby mentioned to attorney Tom Howard may have been Thomas Eli Davis III, a CIA-connected mercenary.
77.
Not long before Jack Ruby died, according to an article in the London Sunday Times, he told psychiatrist Werner Teuter that the assassination was "an act of overthrowing the government" and that he knew "who had President Kennedy killed".
78.
Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, stated in Bound By Honor that he realized that certain Mafia families were involved in the JFK assassination when Jack Ruby killed Oswald, since Bonanno was aware that Jack Ruby was an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana.
79.
Jack Ruby was known to have been acquainted with both the police and the Mafia.
80.
The HSCA said that Jack Ruby had known Chicago mobster Sam Giancana and Joseph Campisi since 1947, and had been seen with them on many occasions.
81.
Jack Ruby knew the Campisis and had been seen with them on many occasions.
82.
Willens outlined the commission's investigative priorities and terminated an investigation of Jack Ruby's Cuban related activities.
83.
In 1946, Tony Accardo allegedly asked Jack Ruby to go to Texas with Mafia associates Pat Manno and Romie Nappi to make sure that Dallas County Sheriff Steve Gutherie would acquiesce to the Mafia's expansion into Dallas.
84.
Jack Ruby went to see a man named Lewis McWillie in Cuba four years before the assassination of Kennedy.
85.
McWillie had previously run illegal gambling establishments in Texas, and Jack Ruby considered him one of his closest friends.
86.
McWillie was supervising gambling activities at Havana's Tropicana Club when Jack Ruby visited him in August 1959.
87.
James E Beaird claimed to be a poker-playing friend of Ruby, and he told The Dallas Morning News and the FBI that Ruby smuggled guns and ammunition from Galveston Bay, Texas to Fidel Castro's guerrillas in Cuba in the late 1950s.