There are so many patent inaccuracies about Jack Ruby in the outrageously over-exploited film ”JFK” that I feel that I must correct them.
I was one of the attorneys who helped set aside Ruby`s death sentence and, with his brother Earl, I taped his deathbed statement. I also am the author of a long-ago published book about Ruby which many regard as the definitive study of his life. What I say here is confirmed in every detail.
On that fateful Sunday morning, Ruby was asleep in his apartment long past the announced time of Oswald`s removal from the Dallas police station to the county jail. His home was some distance from the police station. He had closed his nightclub for the weekend out of respect for the assassinated president. He was telephoned by a stripper employed by him, who begged him to wire money to her Fort Worth apartment because her landlord threatened to evict her for non-payment of rent. This he said he would do.
He found that the only Western Union office from which he could send the promised money was in Dallas, a short distance from the police station. He placed his beloved dog Sheba in his car and drove to the Western Union office. He had a considerable amount of money and a gun in his pants pocket. That was his personal bank because of tax trouble with the IRS; he carried a gun because it was Dallas and everyone, especially a nightclub proprietor, had guns.
When he drove past the police station he noticed a crowd. He made a mental note, such being his inquisitive nature, to see what was going on after he wired the promised money. We know exactly when he wired the money because of the time clock at the Western Union office. Less than five minutes later Oswald was shot.
After he parked his car, with Sheba in it, he walked towards the entrance to the police station. The officer who was supposed to guard it was diverted by another police car, and Ruby walked down the ramp unmolested. When he reached the bottom, the door of the elevator was opened and Oswald came out between two plainclothes detectives. By sudden impulse, Ruby shot Oswald.
Nobody had secretly and deliberately let him into the station at the fatal time despite what is depicted so melodramatically in this movie. Ruby had never seen or known Oswald, except at the press conference shortly after Oswald`s arrest.
There are other falsehoods about Ruby in the film, such as the precise nature of his testimony before the Warren Commission.
By the time I knew Ruby as his attorney, he had developed paranoid qualities. He believed that the male Jews of Dallas were being taken to the basement of the county jail where he was imprisoned and there they were castrated and killed. In a letter that I saw, which is still in existence, he urged his brother Earl to flee to Israel before he would become one of the victims.
Oliver Stone and his associates must believe that the public has an insatiable appetite for the sensational as unfolded in a conspiracy in which Ruby and many others are the participants.
The sober truth is that Ruby was so uncontrollably talkative that he could not have kept his participation in any conspiracy secret for even five minutes. I had great difficulty at all times in keeping him from talking with reporters while the various legal proceedings were going on. I had to intercede with the judges to keep the reporters from talking with him.
