Two conversations over Thanksgiving break made me realize an odd trend in my life – my nearest and dearest have no idea I have this blog.

Whoops.  Weird.  I didn’t do that on purpose.  I guess it stems from being actually oddly shy about my work.  That, and I guess I assumed none of my friends would be interested in it, anyway (they’re not historians) and by not telling them, I spare myself the possibility of disappointment.  I don’t know.

Silly, actually, because my father IS a historian and he’s the whole reason why I became one.  There’s never been a time in my life when I *didn’t* know the great generals of history, or when I *wasn’t* steeped in America’s wars.  I knew Dad would be interested – but he, like many of the Boomer generation, is not tech savvy so I just didn’t think of mentioning it.

All that being said, we have a guest author!  Dad, aside from being instantly interested in this site(and oddly impressed) immediately handed me his Jack Ruby paper and asked me to post it for him.  So here it is – an excellent paper demonstrating the Dallas mob’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination.

Just FYI we are an old Texas family, hailing from the Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex since Reconstruction.  So the Kennedy assassination is something near to all of us, especially Dad who describes the event as one of the worst days of his life.  For my part I’m too young for that experience, but I worked for ten years in Oak Cliff, Oswald’s neighborhood.  I’ve seen movies in the theater where they captured him, had drinks on the patio across from one of his apartments (it has since been demolished – I retrieved several bricks and a window frame for souveniers) and driven past his rooming house countless times.  The Grassy Knoll downtown is a lovely Art Deco park with fountains, a peaceful place except for the folks on the sidewalk trying to hock flyers and reproduction newspapers to the tourists.  The X in the street which marks the spot he was shot is so small you’ll miss it if you don’t know what you’re looking for, and the Book Depository is now a museum.  The commuter train runs behind it.

Anyway, read on!

Organized Crime in Dallas, Texas, and the Murder of Lee Harvey Oswald.

It has been the purpose of many to let history show that the assassin of President John F. Kennedy was himself murdered before there could be a trial. The alleged assassin was shot to death forty-seven hours later while in the custody of the Dallas Police Department. A Presidential Commission was speedily convened by President Johnson, and Lee Harvey Oswald was convicted in absentia of being the lone assassin, sans any taint of conspiracy. The matter was decided, and the case closed.

The murder of President Kennedy remained officially closed by the United States Government until the Senate Church Committee of 1977 and the House Select Committee on Assassinations of 1979. In the interim there had been a groundswell of questioning of the official Warren Commission Report of 1964.  Today, the subject of the Kennedy murder conspiracy is one of the most studied events of twentieth century American history. Most authors (even the modern-day apologists for the Warren Commission) agree that the full truth in the matter of the events of November 1963 will never be known. The enticement of the historical mystery is given further confusion by a kaleidoscope of conjectures, conspiracy theories, and agenda-driven lawyer interpretations. Additionally, the student has encountered glaring examples of shoddy hackmanship with the many authors that have sought to bring forward unsupportable theses for notoriety or financial gain. Therefore, any scholarly approach to this subject requires greater tedium in setting aside distortions and complete falsehoods.

The approach to the subject of this essay will be factually based. Jack Ruby was a member of organized crime, and he did murder Lee Harvey Oswald. This is one of the truths left to posterity, and to see the photograph of the event speaks volumes — Ruby, a known mobster is shooting the accused assassin in the presence of Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry. There is no direct evidence that organized crime silenced the accused assassin (who vehemently proclaimed his innocence), but there is ample documentation to demonstrate that organized crime was a lifestyle for Jack Ruby. Therefore, the purposes of this essay will show that an active member of organized crime in Dallas premeditated and carried out the murder of Oswald. Other authors have noted the large amount of inconclusive and circumstantial evidence that would lead one to conclude that the assassination of the assassin was in fact an execution ordered by a criminal organization. Although the author of this essay cannot adopt this premise as a thesis here, the evidence (circumstantial and otherwise) will nevertheless be presented as it relates to Ruby and organized crime.

I. The Murderous Weekend

On Friday November 22, 1963, a murderous weekend began in Dallas, Texas at 12: 30 pm. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by high-powered gunfire as he rode in an open car motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas.  The Governor of Texas, John B. Connally, was a passenger in Kennedy’s car and he was also shot and seriously wounded. Many scores of horrified spectators witnessed first Kennedy shot, apparently through the neck; then Connally shot as he turned to look at the President; and finally the climatic event of a final shot which forced Kennedy’s whole body back as it removed the top of his head and splattered his brains onto the trunk of the Presidential limousine and the motorcycle policeman escorting from the rear. As the motorcade fled from the scene of the deadly crossfire to Parkland Hospital, police, sheriff deputies, and spectators ran instinctively to the three separate locations in Dealey Plaza which they believed the gunfire reports had emanated from: the Grassy Knoll Plaza, the Texas School Book Depository Building, and the Dal-Tex Building.(1) A sniper’s nest and a rifle with a telescopic sight were quickly discovered in a sixth floor window of the Book Depository. Police Chief Jesse Curry declared an emergency and ordered all police units to converge on downtown. For unknown reasons the patrol unit of Officer Jefferson D. Tippit did not report to downtown, but remained in the Oak Cliff suburb where both Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald lived. According to witnesses, at 1:15 pm one or two assailants shot Tippit to death as he stood in front of his patrol car. An apparent gunman was seen entering the Texas

Theatre. The police were called to the theatre, and as they apprehended Lee Oswald as the suspect in the Tippit shooting, he attempted to shoot the arresting officer with a revolver that could not discharge because the firing pen was bent. He was taken into custody at 1:55 pm, and subsequently charged with the murder of a police officer. Within hours the rifle found at the Book Depository was tied to Oswald, and he was also charged with the murder of the President.

Meanwhile, Jack Ruby had just left Parkland Hospital where he had gone immediately after the assassination. In later testimony to the Warren Commission, Jack said that following the 12:30 pm event he had left the offices of the Dallas Morning News – where he had gone to place some ads – and returned directly to his place of business. In fact, he lied to the Commission. Seth Kantor, a Scripps-Howard reporter, testified before the Warren Commission that he had a conversation with his friend Jack Ruby shortly after 1 pm at Parkland.(2) The bartender at Jack’s Carousel Club stripper bar, Andrew Armstrong, Jr., had seen him arrive shortly before 2 pm. Jack told his young employee that he had been a friend of Officer J. D. Tippit, and then spent the next two hours making telephone calls to Chicago, Los Angeles, and New Orleans.(3) Next, Ruby was seen by police and reporters shortly before 6 pm on the third floor of the Police and Courts Building where Oswald was being questioned in the office of Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz. When Ruby boldly attempted to enter Fritz’s office, he was stopped by one of the detectives, saying, “You can’t be in there Jack.” (4) Chief Jesse Curry then announced his intention to hold a news conference and show the suspected assassin shortly after midnight. Jack was there, to hear a further announcement that Oswald would be transferred to the county jail sometime after 4 pm on Saturday.(5)  During the midnight press event, the District Attorney Henry Wade was asked by one of the many reporters gathered in the basement of Police Headquarters if Oswald was a member of any communist front organizations, to which Wade replied that the only organization that he knew of Oswald belonging to was the “Free Cuba Movement.” In the back of the room, Jack immediately shouted out a correction to prosecutor Wade: “That’s the Fair Play for Cuba Committee Henry.” (6) The mistake of the District Attorney was in saying that Oswald was a member of an anti-Castro group. It is interesting that Ruby was already aware of the correct affiliation with the pro-Castro committee. The stalking of the intended victim continued when Jack returned to the third floor of the Police and Courts Building at 4 pm on Saturday November 23, 1963.(7) Ruby had socialized with the police in the hallway as they awaited the transfer of Oswald to the county jail. Chief Curry came out of his office about 5 pm and announced to the throng of reporters and police that the transfer of the assassin to the custody of Sheriff Bill Decker was postponed until sometime after 10 am on Sunday.  Jack left the Police Building but managed to return just in time for the actual transfer, which took place on Sunday at 11:17 am. At 11:21, Jack Ruby passed through a line of police and reporters and shot Lee Harvey Oswald point-blank in the abdomen with the snub-nosed 38-caliber revolver that he always carried. Oswald was taken to Parkland Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 1:07 pm, never having regained consciousness.(8) A murderous weekend had passed into history — and mystery.

II. The Reaction of the Government

An infamous weekend called for an appropriate reaction from the new President; thus the Warren Commission was established on November 29th, 1963, to swiftly settle the outrages and implications of the assassination and its aftermath. President Johnson had directed that the investigation should be concluded before the Democratic National Convention, and in fact the twenty-six volumes comprising the completed investigation were brought to Johnson on September 24th, 1964. In their haste, the Commissioners produced immediately controversial official conclusions. Commissioner Congressman Gerald R. Ford was confident in the outcome of the Warren Report when he stated: “the twenty-six volumes of testimony and exhibits will speak for themselves.”(9) Concerning the “classic question of the direction from which the bullets had come, this question is so thoroughly covered in the report that it scarcely requires elaboration. ‘ (10) In the beginning, when the Commission had just gotten underway, there had been a lone voice of public dissent coming from lawyer Mark Lane. Lane had been retained to represent the interests of the assassin’s mother, Margurite Oswald. Questions raised by him seemed to irritate some of the Commissioners. On January 4th, 1964, Mark Lane gave information to the Commission in testimony that he had discovered that a long meeting had taken place at the Carousel Club between right-wing political agitator Bernard Weissman, Officer J. D. Tippit, and Jack Ruby, on November 14th, 1963.  H. L. Hunt and his sons Lamar and Nelson had paid for a large anti-Kennedy ad which Weissman placed in the Dallas Morning News on the day of the assassination.(11)’ Gerald Ford would later complain that Mark Lane “harassed the work of the Commission by innuendo and inference. . . ‘ (12)  Overcoming Lane’s many interrogatories by ignoring them, the Warren Report convicted Oswald in absentia for the murder of Kennedy and Tippit.(13) Concerning the possible underworld connections of Jack Ruby, the Commission concluded that “Ruby has disclaimed that he was associated with organized criminal activities, and law enforcement agencies have confirmed that denial.” (14)

The incredible and official conclusions reached in haste by the Warren Commission were driven by the sentiments of the time to close an ugly chapter of history with all its cataclysmic potential. The Chief Justice Earl Warren was heard to remark at the funeral of President Kennedy that “Texas was to blame” for the murder because of the “poisonous atmosphere in Dallas.”(15) Lyndon Johnson was attuned to this rising anti- Texas sentiment in the wake of the assassination, and perhaps his awareness of this caused him to demand an official conclusion in short order. The issues were obviously nationally divisive, and could not inure to the benefit of Texas, or his administration.

Fifteen years later the Republican Senator Arlen Specter from Pennsylvania, who was for the Commission the Junior Counsel in Charge of Basic Facts of the Assassination, would lament the course of events. “It is hard to specify the people or Commissioners who were pushing for a prompt conclusion, but that was an unmistakable aspect of the atmosphere of the Commission’s work.”(16) That important evidence was discarded, either through design or ignorance, concerning Ruby’s mob-connected life, was not in doubt during the 1979 testimony of Judge Burt Griffin to the House Select Committee on Assassination. Griffin, who had been the Junior Council in Charge of Oswald’s Death, stated to the Committee: “I don’t think anybody who could read this and have all this information that is in here would have any doubt that there were lots and lots of associations that he (Ruby) had with underworld types. ‘ (17) It is a great pity that so many fallacies proceeded from the Warren Commission in its misguided attempt to write history, rather than to record it. The fact that Jack Ruby was a syndicate criminal could not be suppressed.

III. Jack Ruby and his Syndicate Associates

Jack “Sparkie” Ruby was born Jacob Rubenstein, in Chicago on March 25, 1911. He was the fifth of eight children from      Jewish Polish immigrants. The family was headed by an alcoholic father and they generally lived in Jewish neighborhoods adjacent to the Italian section. There were frequent fights between the Jews and the Italians.(18) A rudderless existence of truancy characterized Jack’s early years. In 1926, at the age of fifteen, he began his association with the La Cosa Nostra Syndicate when he met Al Capone at the Kit Howard Gymnasium in Chicago. Young toughs and hustlers frequented this bar-bell parlor, and it was the scene of many criminal transactions.

Capone used Jack and other teenagers to deliver envelopes downtown for him. One of the other Syndicate errand boys was Mickey Cohen, a life-long friend of Ruby’s and a future notorious Los Angeles Syndicate mobster.(19) Another member of this early west- side neighborhood gang was Leonard “Lenny” Patrick. Twenty-five years later the Federal Bureau of Narcotics reported that Patrick was a member of the second echelon of the Chicago Syndicate.(20)  Jack spent the remainder of his youth as a strong-arm man. His peers nicknamed him “Sparkle” because of his reputation for having an explosive temper.(21)

In 1937, Rubenstein surfaces as the union organizer and enforcer for the Chicago Scrap Iron and Junk Handlers Union Local 20467. Two years later the President of the Local was murdered and the mobster Paul Dorfman took over.(22)  Jack continued to be a union associate of the Teamsters until 1940, when he and Ben “Zuckie the Bookie” Zuckerman began a book making operation. By 1943, the enterprise had gained enough momentum to attract the attention of the Chicago Police. There arose a territorial and/or tribute dispute with Lenny Patrick, and Zuckie was subsequently murdered.

In 1943, Jack Rubenstein was drafted. He was discharged in 1946, and had apparently expanded his activities to include illegal drugs because the Unites States Bureau of Narcotics was watching his activities at the room he kept at Chicago’s Congress Hotel in 1946 and 1947.(23) Rubenstein and his sister Eva Grant moved to Dallas in 1946, but they maintained ties to Chicago through many trips and phone calls. Lenny Patrick admitted to the House Select Committee in 1979 that he had seen them frequently. (24)

After moving to Dallas in 1946, Jack had Rubenstein changed to Ruby and he and Eva opened the Singapore Club. An important contact had migrated with Jack and his sister from the old west-side Chicago neighborhood. His name was Paul Roland Jones, a known member of the Capone Syndicate. He was sent to Lansing with a life sentence for murder in 1931. Jones received a pardon in 1946 and was directed to move to Dallas and pose as a local sportsman. His true purpose was to take over gambling, slot machines, and the numbers racket. Nick De John and Pat Manno helped Jones establish all-important contacts with Dallas Boss Joe Piranio and liquor distributor Abe Schepps (also of Schepps Dairy). These men were helpful in the setting up of the front operation, the San Jacinto Liquor Store.(25)

As soon as Jones had been set up in Dallas in 1946 he and Ruby were involved in a bribery attempt of Sheriff-elect Steve Guthrie. The outgoing sheriff Smoot Schmid and his under-sheriff Bill Decker had, for years, been corruptible, and Jones and Decker were hopeful that Guthrie could be enlisted. Ruby and Jones asked Dallas Police Detective George Butler to arrange a meeting with the new Sheriff Butler then asked Guthrie to help him with an investigation of the attempted bribery. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was brought in to secretly record the meeting on November 7th, 1946.

The FBI tapes that were made available to the House Select Committee in 1979 were of poor quality and not fully transcribed. Chicago mobsters Paul Roland Jones, Pat Manno, Sheriff Steve Guthrie, and Detective George Butler attended the meeting. Jones was heard to say on the recording that Bill Decker and District Attorney Dean Gauldin had welcomed his arrival in Dallas and promised every cooperation. Guthrie responded to this stating, “We all know that Bill Decker is the payoff man.” (26)  According to subsequent FBI interviews with Guthrie and Butler, Jones proposed to set up a nice restaurant club that would be the front operation for illegal gambling and Jack Ruby would manage the operation. Ruby, who was not present at the recorded meeting, avoided prosecution; Jones did not. (27)

While bribery and racketeering charges were proceeding against Jones, Butler and the FBI continued their investigation of his activities. On October 21st, 1947, Detective George Butler interviewed Homer Raymond Padgett, the former manager of Jack’s Singapore Club. He related to Butler that he was eavesdropping on a table conversation between Paul Jones, Eva Grant, Jack Ruby, Abe Schepps, and two others. The conversation topic was Chicago Syndicate involvement in illegal activities in Dallas. Realizing that the coup was being overheard, one of the men jumped up from his chair and hit the eavesdropper. The man then held Padgett while Jack worked him over with a blackjack.(28)  Three days later, on October 24th, Jones was arrested in Laredo, Texas by Federal narcotics agents as he brought a shipment of heroin in from Mexico. Ruby was interviewed by the FBI in reference to the investigation several days later.(29)

In 1950, Eva grant moved to California and Jack took over the Singapore Club. The name was soon changed to the Silver Spur. Ruby’s criminal interests expanded during the next several years to vice and pornographic venues. In 1953, he became business partners with Joe Bonds, another old friend who had also moved from Chicago to Dallas in 1946. They obtained permission from La Cosa Nostra Dallas Boss Joe Piranio to open the strip joint, The Vegas Club. The relationship between the two old friends became mutually hostile, and Ruby was observed by club patrons to have on one occasion chased his partner with a pistol. In 1954, Bonds was convicted of white slavery and sodomy. Jack retained ownership of the Vegas Club until 1963. (30) At the same time the partnership had commenced with the Vegas Club, Ruby had taken over the notorious downtown porn house, the Ervay Theater. In 1955, Jack sold the Silver Spur. (31)

Violence continued as a lifestyle for many of Capone’s west-side errand boys from the Kit Howard Gymnasium. In November 1955, an FBI memorandum reports that Leonard “Lenny” Patrick, along with Charles “Chuckle the Typewriter” Nicoletti, were hit-men for Chicago La Cosa Nostra.(33) In 1955, Jack had part of his index finger bitten off in a fight in his Vegas Club. He beat the other man into unconsciousness with brass knuckles. (34) From 1950 to 1963, there are fifteen documented occasions when Ruby assaulted patrons in his club with a pistol or a blackjack.(35) In contrast to the great capacity for violence that Jack demonstrated, he was only arrested eight times during the entire period — on a variety of charges ranging from disturbing the peace and carrying a concealed weapon to assault and battery. During this period, the most severe penalty incurred by him was the forfeiture of a thirty-five dollar bond. The infrequency of arrest was attributed to Ruby’s friendship with the Dallas Police. Joe Bonds told the FBI in 1963 that Jack supplied girls to the police.(36)

Lewis McWillie was another important friend and associate of Jack Ruby, but he was never called to give testimony to the Warren Commission.(37) More than just a gambler, McWillie arranged high-stake card games at the Petroleum Club and Highland Park Country Club, as well as other prestigious private venues. His patrons included big- oil men: Clint Murchison, Sid Richardson, and H. L. Hunt. In 1954 and 55, McWillie enlisted the help of the liquor magnate Abe Schepps to get curfew restrictions set aside at Jack’s Vegas Club.(38) McWillie’s high profile patrons earned him the reputation of being a money manager, and in 1958 he became the manager of the Tropicana in Havana, Cuba. His employers were Pedro and Martin Fox, members of the Tampa, Florida La Cosa Nostra. They were involved in narcotics as well as gambling and they answered to Boss Santo Trafficante, Jr..(39) McWillie exclusively handled the Tropicana proceeds by taking the casino money to Miami for deposit in the Pan American Bank.(40) Fifteen years later House Select Committee on Assassinations Chief Counsel Robert Blakey, incredulous at the resume of Lewis McWillie, had the following testimonial exchange with former Warren Commission Counsel Burt Griffin: “Mr. Blakey: In your professional judgment, did you adequately explore the relationship between Ruby and McWillie, and possible connections to organized crime figures? Judge Griffin: If we were conducting an investigation into whether there could have been a conspiracy to assassinate the President that involved the underworld . . . my answer would be that this was not adequate.’ (41)

In the early 1950’s, Boss Joe Piranio ran the Dallas La Cosa Nostra. Since 1930, he had controlled bootlegging, gambling, bars and strip joints in Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. In 1956, Piranio committed suicide and his Underboss Joe Civello took over operations. Both Civello and his Underboss Joe Campisi, claimed kinship with New Orleans La Cosa Nostra Boss Carlos Marcello. Through these men, Marcello controlled the various illegal rackets and vice business in Dallas, and Texas. Civello had been convicted for narcotics trafficking in 1937, but after his parole from Leavenworth, he and his associates Joe Campisi, Sam Campisi, and John Colletti rose in the ranks of the Dallas Piranio Family. In November 1957, Marcello designated Civello as his representative at the historic La Cosa Nostra Appalachian Summit in upper New York state. With him in attendance were his I Jnderho ss Joe Campisi, and John Colletti. These two escaped capture during the police roundup of over one hundred Mafia men, but Civello was arrested and subsequently became the object of FBI surveillance.(42) At the same time that Joe Civello achieved stature in Syndicate operations, so too he gained respectability for his many years of proprietorship of a high-end retail grocery and liquor store in the affluent neighborhood around Southern Methodist University. In the same neighborhood was the Campisi Brothers front operation — the Egyptian Room. Jack Ruby was a frequent visitor to Civello’s grocery and Campisi’s restaurant. According to an FBI interview of November 1963, Robert Moore, an employee of both Civello and Ruby, said both men had been friends and business associates since the early 1950’s. (43)

Jack Ruby’s entourage of criminal friends and associates was punctuated by three lesser Syndicate hoods: Russell Douglas Matthews, James Henry Dolan, and James Robert Todd.   R. D. Matthews was an important Dallas bookmaker, and several of Jack’s strippers had liaisons with him in the 1950’s. In 1955, Elizabeth Matthews had been his wife. She was working in the Vegas Club and was listed by police as a known prostitute. In 1958, a Drug Enforcement Agency report stated that another of Ruby’s girls, Juanita “Candy Barr” Phillips, and R. D. were involved in a drug smuggling operation on the Texas Mexican border. Matthews’ book business was facilitated by Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker, who had been friends with R. D. for “all his adult life.” Matthews moved to Havana, Cuba in 1958, and owned two bars there, before moving back to Dallas after Fidel Castro took over. In 1963, the FBI listed him as a known associate of the Campisi Brothers.(44) The extensive bookmaking activities of Matthews sometimes required collection and recovery efforts. These were carried out by James Henry Dolan. Know primarily as a strong-arm man, Dolan was a gangster with an extensive criminal record, including armed robberies of gamblers and bookies. He was extensively tied to Tampa Boss Santo Trafficante and New Orleans Boss Carlos Marcello as an enforcer.  One of the strippers at the Vegas Club, Beatrice Arnell, had sought to retain the services of Dolan to redress a beating that she had received from her employer; but Dolan refused to accost Ruby on the issue, and further advised her to “forget the incident because Ruby had too much on the Dallas Police for such a trivial charge. (45) James Robert Todd was also used by Matthews in his bookmaking operations; sometimes in a supporting role with Dolan. Todd had an extensive criminal record that included burglary and murder.  Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Charles Flynn reported from an interview with Jack Ruby on March 11 , 1959, that Todd was a thief and safecracker associated with Dallas bookmakers, as well as the Campisi Brothers and Boss Joe Civello.(46)

IV. Jack Ruby and Cuba

The Syndicate associations and lifestyle of the 1950’s inevitably led Jack to participate in business and political interests in Cuba. He was connected with more associates in Havana that just Lewis McWillie and R. D. Matthews. In January 1959, Castro began the consolidation of the Cuban Revolution. Within months the new government seized most La Cosa Nostra assets, imprisoned Boss Santo Trafficante, Jr., and expelled his confederates from Cuba. Trafficante’s front owners of the Tropicana, Pedro and Martin Fox, were designated to orchestrate the efforts to gain his freedom, and Jack Ruby was enlisted to help achieve this end. The summer of 1959 was a busy time for Jack as he shuttled back and forth between Dallas, Havana, and New Orleans. From August 8 to September 13  he made at least three and possibly four round trips from Dallas to Havana. During the same time period he had a dinner meeting at Love Field airport with the Fox Brothers and their two lawyers and was interviewed by FBI agent Charles Flynn concerning his most recent business.(47) On September 13th, he was in New Orleans. Also in September, Ruby and his business partner Paul Roland Jones opened up a new downtown strip joint — the Carousel Club.

(48)  It is conceivable that there were proceeds that were forthcoming from Ruby’s services as an errand boy, which he had used to expand his vice business; but the Warren Commission was disinterested in the Cuban activities and matters of organized crime in 1963 and 64. In the week following the assassination of President Kennedy, the British journalist John Wilson, told the American Embassy in London what he knew of Ruby in Havana. Wilson had also been in Castro’s prison in the summer of 1959, and had enjoyed the company of Trafficante, and his “frequent” visitor, Jack Ruby.(49) With so-called “historical hindsight” it is now a given fact that the Commission refused awareness of investigative facts that were available. The FBI, however, was quite aware of Ruby’s connections to organized crime in Dallas, Chicago, New Orleans, and Havana as they interviewed him on numerous occasions.(50)

Following the deportation of Trafficante from Cuba in 1959, Syndicate members were understandably anti-Castro. Ruby was an active participant in mob pro-action circles to reclaim the Havana assets through the elimination of Fidel Castro. Militant anti-Castro groups were organized in New Orleans by former FBI agent Guy Bannister in 1961. These had the backing of two of the most important men in the South: Carlos Marcello, and Clay Shaw. According to Bannister’s assistant Thomas Edward Beckham, Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were among the regular attendees at meetings and training sessions held in New Orleans and Algiers, Louisiana in 1961 and 62. These militant groups were presided over by David Ferrie, the pilot and personal assistant to Boss Marcello. (51) Nancy Elaine Perrin, one of Jack’s prostitutes, contacted the FBI on November 27, 1963 to report that she and her husband had attended a meeting that was presided over by Ruby that involved arms shipments to Cuba.(52)

There are further indications that Oswald and Ruby were more than just passing political acquaintances at Free Cuba Committee meetings presided over by Guy Bannister and David Ferrie. Gladys Palmer, a stripper who worked at the Carousel Club, said that she and Jack had been in New Orleans with Oswald.(53) Rose Cheramie, another prostitute and stripper at the Vegas and Carousel Clubs, reported to the Louisiana State Police on November 24, 1963 that Ruby and Oswald were familiars.(54)  Finally, according to an FBI report of March 5th, 1967, Monk Zelden, a Teamster attorney, affirmed that Oswald had listed Jack Ruby as a personal reference for employment with a New Orleans trucking company (55)

V. Jack Ruby and His Non-Syndicate Associates

Organized criminal activities and Syndicate operations in Dallas were assisted by law enforcement and big-oil interests. These found commonality of purpose in La Cosa Nostra political and economic objectives. Sheriff Bill Decker was recognized as the senior law enforcement official in Dallas throughout the 1950’s and 60’s. He began as an elevator boy at the county courthouse before the First World War, and in 1935 he was appointed Chief Deputy Sheriff. His associations with R. D. Matthews, Paul Roland Jones, and other well-known hoods have been previously cited. He was also a friend of Boss Joe Civello, having provided a character reference for him when he was paroled from Leavenworth on his 1937 narcotics trafficking conviction. Within hours of Oswald’s murder on November 24 , 1963, Sheriff Decker had called Underboss Joe Campisi to visit Ruby in jail to assist with his defense.(56) Campisi and Mickey Cohen apparently then made the arrangements to have mob lawyer Melvin Belli take the case.(57)

Jack Ruby also had hundreds of friends and confederates in the Dallas Police Department. Several policeman married Ruby strippers, and many scores more enjoyed liaisons with them(58).  Two of Jack’s policeman friends bear mention here: Sergeant Patrick Dean, and Officer Jefferson D. Tippit. Dean was the police officer in charge of the security detail for the transfer of Oswald on November 24th 1963, to the custody of Sheriff Decker. Dean had stationed himself at the basement door and apparently let Jack in to have his fateful shot at the alleged assassin. The snub-nosed 38-caliber revolver that Ruby had used for dispatching Oswald was registered to Dallas policeman Joe Cody, who claimed it was an earlier gift to his longtime friend.(59) Another close friend of Dean was Boss Joe Civello. In the wake of the La Cosa Nostra Appalachian summit meeting of November 1957, Civello had been placed under surveillance by the FBI. Agents assigned to the task reported that they had observed Dean having dinner at the Civello home on more than just one occasion.(60) Unfortunately for the course of the 1964 investigation, the importance of the unusual liaison between the Dallas Mafia and the police escaped the scrutiny of the Warren Commission. Since the Ruby connection to organized crime was rejected by the Commission, the 1964 testimony of Dallas police officer Jack Hardee, Jr. (also a friend of Jack) that verified a ten year friendship between J.D. Tippit and Ruby was discounted as well.(61) The Commission also never investigated lawyer Mark Lane’s information concerning the November 14th, 1963 meeting at the Carousel Club between Ruby, Weissinan, and Tippit.

Following World War II, big-oil interests in Dallas and organized crime operated in two cooperative spheres of influence. Their various collaborations involved money and politics. Syndicate and oil interests were united in their opposition to Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, and Fidel Castro. The Murchison Family led by Clint, Sr., had developed associations with La Cosa Nostra and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had invested heavily in Murchison’s oil business and so had the Syndicate. In 1960, twenty per cent of the Murchison Oil Lease Company in Oklahoma was owned by Gerardo Catena, the Underboss of the Genovese Family.(62)  Clint, Jr. (later owner of the Dallas Cowboys), maintained his own ties with the Teamsters. He and James R. Hoffa had real estate partnerships in Florida. The Teamster Pension Fund had on more than one occasion facilitated deals such as these with large loans to Murchison. The Washington registered Teamster lobbyist, Irving Davidson, was also Clint, Jr.’s lobbyist. Davidson’s ties to New Orleans Boss Carlos Marcello are well known, being named along with him on the same indictment in 1979 for bribery and racketeering .(63)  The Murchisons maintained business and social exchanges with Marcello throughout the period of 1950 to 1980.(64)

One of the wealthiest families in the world was the Hunt Family. Haroldson Lafayette Hunt was a legend in his own time for launching his fortune in a high-stakes card game. He was a regular familiar of gambler Lewis McWillie and was associated with James Henry Dolan.(65) H. L. was a friend of Lucky Luciano, having played in many card games with him. He was also a friend of Carlos Marcello.(66)  H. L. and his sons, Lamar and Nelson, had supported General Edwin Walker and the John Birch Society in the summer of 1963 efforts on the anti-Kennedy campaign. H. L. was an influential right-wing political spokesman for many years through his regular radio program, Lifeline Dallas, Texas. H. L. Hunt also knew Jack Ruby. According to a 1981 interview with historian Dick Russell, Madeleine Brown, the mistress of Lyndon Johnson, stated that H.L. had dated one of Ruby’s girls — a stripper named Lacey. Brown was well connected to the Hunt social strata, and had been introduced to Johnson by H. L. (67)

On Thursday, November 21st, 1963, the day before the assassination of President Kennedy, H. L. Hunt and his son had two meetings that are of note to history. In the late morning, Jack Ruby and a young woman named Connie Trammel had been to a meeting at the Hunt Oil Company offices in the Mercantile Building with H. L. and Lamar Hunt.(68) The early afternoon meeting was with three men from New Orleans. One was named James Braden; the other two men are unknown, but one of them might have been Ruby. Braden was a criminal with several names, having used aliases such as Jim Brady and James Brady Lee. His real name was Eugene Hale Brading, and he was known by the FBI to be a courier for La Cosa Nostra. Brading had an extensive criminal record in California, Arizona, and Texas. In 1951, the FBI conducted surveillance of his activities with James Henry Dolan in Phoenix and Los Angeles.(69) Between 1950 and 1963, he was arrested at least thirty-five times in California alone. His various convictions included: burglary, illegal bookmaking, embezzlement, mail fraud, and the transportation of stolen property across state lines.(70) He was also a known associate of Los Angeles mobster Meyer Lansky.(71) Brading was friends with Teamster officials in Los Angeles, and was a charter member of the up-scale Teamster financed La Costa Racket Club. It is conceivable that he was also connected to Carlos Marcello. His office in New Orleans in the Pere Marquette Building just happened to be next door to David Ferrie and Marcello lawyer G. Wray Gill.(72) Eugene Hale Brading had legally changed his name to Jim Braden some six weeks before his Thursday afternoon meeting with the Hunts; and it is safe to assume that H. L. would have been as shy about meeting with a Eugene Hale Brading as he was to be seen in the Carousel Club with Lacey.(73) Brading was on parole from his latest extortion conviction, and had received permission from his parole officer to be in Dallas on “oil business” until only November 21st.(24)

Instead of returning to New Orleans after the Hunt meeting, Brading checked into the Cabana Motel (which was built by the Teamster Pension Fund) on the other side of the triple overpass that ran through Ted Dealey Plaza.(75) Also checked into the Cabana, was Lawrence V. Myers, a Jack Ruby friend from Chicago. Apparently Myers also had some associations with New Orleans mobsters because the telephone records of David Ferrie indicated that on September 24th, 1963, he had called Myers in Chicago.(76) Myers was seen at the Carousel Thursday evening with a young woman identified as Jean West. On the night before the assassination of the President, Ruby ate dinner with Underboss Joe Campisi at the Egyptian

Lounge. The telephone records of the Egyptian indicated several conversations with Carlos Marcello earlier in the day (77). After dinner with Campisi, Jack went to the Cabana Motel and met with Lawrence Myers, and possibly Eugene Brading.(78) Also staying at the Cabana was Ralph Meyers (no relation to Lawrence, who spelled his name differently), a U. S. Army intelligence officer with a crypto-clearance. Brading and another army intelligence officer, James Powell, were arrested the next day immediately following the assassination for being on the third floor of the Dal-Tex Building “without a good reason.” Brading’s driver’s license had his new legal name, Jim Braden, and the police released him without ever knowing his true identity. (79) He left Dallas at 2 pm on November 22nd (80).

The as-yet unsubstantiated confession and claims of the so-called “grassy knoll gunman” must be considered at this point, because they are given weight by reputable researchers in the field of the Kennedy assassination. In 1994, the private investigator Joe West was informed by an FBI agent of James Files, who was serving a fifty-year sentence in the Joliet State Penitentiary for the murder of a policeman. Files subsequently agreed to an interview in which he claimed to have been supervised by Central Intelligence Agency agent David Atlee Phillips, and Chuckle “The Typewriter” Nicoletti. On the morning of November 22nd, Files stated that he met with Nicoletti, Johnny Roselli, and Eugene Hale Brading to receive a final briefing on the assassination plans. Nicoletti and Brading went to the Dal-Tex Building, and Files to the grassy knoll. According to Files, he and Nicoletti shot the President from the back and the front, with shots three

and four, at the same instant. Files took Kennedy’s head off with a wax- tipped mercury projectile fired from a Remington Fireball Pistol equipped with a telescopic sight.  Files returned to Chicago the next day, and was paid $35,000. for the hit.(81) Noted assassination researcher historians – Robert Groden, David Scheim, Jerry Kroth, and Dick Russell among others- have given credence to the stories of James Files although they admit that there is no physical evidence for his amazing claims.

As previously cited, H. L. Hunt and his sons Lama and Nelson had met with Jack Ruby and Eugene Hale Brading on the day before the assassination of President Kennedy. On November 22nd, H. L. Hunt took a decidedly more transparent interest in the murder of the thirty-fifth President of the United States.  At 2 pm he sent his security chief Paul Rothermel, Jr., to the home of Abraham Zapruder with a large amount of cash in a briefcase to buy the motion picture that Zapruder had just made of the assassination.  The film would not be seen by the public until years later.(82)  On Saturday afternoon of November 23rd, H. L. summoned his Chief Assistant John Currington and instructed him to go to police headquarters, appraise the security protecting Lee Harvey Oswald, and report back to him on this no matter what the hour. Currington came to Hunt’s residence at 1 am November 24th, and reported that the security surrounding Oswald was little and lax.(83) A few hours later, H. L. went to Washington D. C. “to help Lyndon out.” A few hours after that, Jack shot Oswald in the basement of police headquarters. 

H.L. came back from Washington a week later. According to an interview with author historian Dick Russell in 1992, John Currington recalls: “the Saturday morning a week after the assassination, about ten thirty or eleven, Mr. Hunt asked me to go downstairs and stay in the lobby. We were at that time officed in the Mercantile Bank Building downtown, and also had offices in the adjoining Mercantile Securities Building. There was a common door between them, which required a passkey to go through. Mr. Hunt asked me first to secure the door between the two buildings, then stay in the lobby and not let any Hunt employee come up to the seventh floor, where our offices were, which in itself seemed a little unusual of a request. Mr. Hunt said he would come down and get me when he got through with what he was doing.  I hung around there for fifteen or twenty minutes and

The Oswald family: Lee, Marina, and daughter June

nobody came in or out. Then the elevator door opened and Marina Oswald stepped off. I recognized her from the photos on TV and in the newspapers. I hadn’t seen her go up. I followed Marina to the exit of the building. She got into an unmarked car and I took the license number, and had it run through the Dallas Police.  Turned out the car was registered to the FBI. I never asked Mr. Hunt whether he had seen Marina. He was difficult to work with and most people did not have a longevity with him, but I survived twenty years without cross-examining him on anything. (84)

VI.     Before the Murderous Weekend

According to the affidavit of Julia Ann Mercer, given to Dallas County Sheriff Dill Decker on November 22nd 1963, the last thing Jack Ruby did before the murderous weekend began was to park a pickup truck at the triple overpass in Dealey Plaza on Friday morning, and then walk away from it towards downtown.(85) This unusual action highlights the inevitable question – whether or not Ruby had received instructions to assist in the perpetration of events set to unfold. While it is unlikely that definitive proof (concealed and/or destroyed) will ever emerge to reveal the answer to this question, it is nonetheless necessary to consider the circumstantial and the inconclusive evidence that is currently available to posterity.

Some of the best inconclusive evidence comes from Louisiana politician Morgan Goudeau, who was the Manager of the Kennedy for President campaign in Louisiana and the District Attorney in Saint Landry Parrish. According to Goudeau, his long-time friend, Dallas La Cosa Nostra Boss Joe Campisi, had bragged over dinner and cocktails at the Egyptian Lounge in 2003 that he had the direct role in helping Ruby to murder Oswald.(86) The House Select Committee on Assassinations of 1979, also brought to light circumstantial evidence that suggested planning for a major event. The telephone records of Joe Campisi in October and November 1963, indicate up to twenty phone calls a day between the Egyptian and Carlos Marcello

offices in New Orleans.(87) The telephone records of Jack Ruby during this same period are even more interesting for conspiratorial purposes.  Jack typically averaged twenty-five to thirty long distance phone calls a month; but in October and November, his calls positively spiked when he made seventy- five and ninety-six respectively.(88)  One of these calls is of particular interest because it was made to an important lieutenant of Carlos Marcello. On October 30, 1963, Jack telephoned Nofio Pecora at the Tropical Court Tourist Park in New Orleans. Pecora was a known La Cosa Nostra member and a heroin dealer. His associate, Emile Bruneau, had bailed Lee Harvey Oswald out of jail in New Orleans a few months earlier in connection with his Cuban activities for Guy Bannister and Clay Shaw.(89)  Ruby was also in Las Vegas in November. According to two casino employees at the Stardust Hotel, Jack had cashed a large check there the weekend before the assassination(90) Conspiracy theorists have singled out the Las Vegas trip of November 16th as a money errand before the assassination with the clear implication that Ruby was paid for his services (whatever they were). The Chicago mobster Paul Roland Jones stated that he knew Ruby as well as anyone, having made four trips to Dallas per year between 1950 and 1963 and meeting with Jack on those occasions.(91) Jones said that money would have been the deciding factor for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald or participation in any conspiracy to assassinate the President of the United States.(92) Blind emotionalism did not motivate Jack Ruby to murder.

VII.     The Apologists

Skilled and reputable attorneys Vincent Bugliosi and Gerald Posner have posed as historians in their treatment of Jack Ruby and his connections to organized crime.  Instead of compiling all of the facts pertaining to the issues at hand, they are guilty of serious omissions in their presentations. It is not possible that these deficits are caused by oversight; rather, careful researchers that both of them are, the various pieces of the missing puzzle are in fact culled out in order to establish a preconceived thesis. Their so- called discovery winds up being manipulated to arrive at distorted conclusions that are masked as history. The original commission of lawyers, the Warren Commission of 1964,  was not only agenda-driven but time table-driven as well. This approach was touted by the executive as being entirely necessary due to the cold war tensions of 1963. In fact, the Warren Report and its official conclusions served only the short-term interests of the few unknowns that did have the three classic elements to any murder — motive, means, and opportunity. Perhaps the apologists for the Warren Commission are still retained by the unknown interests that would seek to perpetuate befuddlement and enigma ad infinitum.

Lawyer Bugliosi in his book, Reclaiming History, devotes a major essay in an attempt to assure the reader that the Ruby murder of Oswald was not premeditated, but instead was a burst of emotionalism. The spontaneity of Jack’s actions and his just-in- time arrival at the murder scene are cited as examples to prove that the murder was completely uncharacteristic of the classical tactics of a typical mob hit. Further, the connections of Jack Ruby to organized crime are down-played and apologized for, because poor old Jack was just “too dumb and a loser” to be an active participant in the furtherance of La Cosa Nostra enterprises.(93) Lawyer Bugliosi displays titanic exercises of verbosity in his “history” of Ruby, yet ignores the evidence that his research is hip deep in — that Jack stalked and stalked his victim unto death. Indeed, Ruby’s constant presence near the victim has previously been cited here in. The murder of Oswald after he was in police custody, by necessity had to be a crime of opportunity — thus the constant rehearsal with the snub-nosed pistol always ready. Bugliosi sums up his argument for a crime of passion devoid of premeditation by pointing out that Jack left his favorite dog, Sheba, in his car when he went to shoot Oswald, and because he was such a dog aficionado (often referring to them as his “children”), he would never leave his dog in forlornment.(94) In his narrative, the lawyer does not speculate (as he is so good at doing) that Jack had no better place to leave Sheba than in his car. Perhaps at the Carousel

or at his apartment would have been a better place to leave his dog. Lawyer Bugliosi should have begun his essay by reporting that Ruby had as many as ten dogs at one time. Dachshunds were his passion. In the month before the assassination of Kennedy, Jack had been giving his dogs away. He was down to three dogs by the beginning of November. One week before the assassination, he had shipped two of his three remaining dachshunds to friends in Los Angeles, retaining only Sheba for the end game.(95) Immediately after the murder of Oswald, Jack’s policemen friends had retrieved Sheba from his nearby car.

Bugliosi’s account of Ruby as a “relatively law-abiding citizen” who “ran a clean club,” is thinly veiled subjectivism at best.(96) Copious footnotes and great verbosity cannot qualify a work that is fraught with omissions, to be an objective historical endeavor.

Gerald Posner, in his book, Case Closed, also is guilty of important omissions in his narrative on Jack Ruby and organized crime in Dallas, Texas. Al Capone, “Zuckie the Bookie,” and Sergeant Patrick Dean are not to be found in the index of the Posner work. Connie Trammel is mentioned, but incredibly at the same time, not H. L. Hunt or his sons. The lawyerly approach once again appears to be agenda-driven, but this time with less verbosity than prosecutor Bugliosi, and with more accessible footnotes. Beyond these tripped-over facts, other mistakes are made by Posner when he claims that the House Select Committee on Assassinations found that Jack Ruby had made two, and possibly three trips to Cuba in the summer of 1959. In actuality, the Committee determined that Ruby had made three, and possibly four trips to Cuba in that period, as has previously been cited in this paper.(97) Lawyer Posner is once again in error when he writes: “Ruby’s long distance calls were all made much earlier, not during assassination weekend.”(98) It is true that Jack could only have made a smaller percentage of the November ninety-six long distance phone calls in a forty-eight hour period, because he was also busy stalking Oswald seeking the opportunity to commit the murder; but following the assassination, when he returned to his Carousel Club, he was on the telephone constantly, talking to Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Chicago. The title of the Posner book, Case Closed, is entirely descriptive as to the author’s pre-conceived agenda, as opposed to any historical inquiry or discovery. The case was closed before it was ever re-opened by him, with a sifting of the facts and the selective presentation of them. Like so many conspiracy theorists in the consideration of these monumental events, the lines between them are blurred, and in this way they are equally unreliable for the pursuit of objective history.

Conclusions

The initial Unites States Government policy concerning Jack Ruby and organized crime was one of obfuscation. The vehicles of this official power were the Warren Commission and The Federal Bureau of Investigation. These were driven by President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Director J. Edgar Hoover, which make them at least accessories after the fact in the murder of President Kennedy. While this has not been the thesis of the present work, it is a conclusion here that calls for articulation in a future essay. Hoover and Johnson were successful until 1976, when America first learned that the FBI had recognized Jack Ruby as an active member of organized crime and had used him as an informant.(?) Then in 1977, the classic intervention of legislative oversight of the executive branch began to roll back the official version of the assassination event in Dallas. The new and declassified information that emerged between 1977 and 1980, fueled the fires of many conspiracy theorists to the point of further obfuscation of the truth. The apologists for the original 1964 Report then had their own ascendancy. There are similarities between the modus operandi of the conspiracy theorists and the apologists for the official version, in that they both discard reason and discovery. The theorists rely upon conjecture, and the apologists ignore the government documents that put the lie to the official version.  Objective purposes dictate that the pendulum must remain close to center — especially when dealing with this historical murder mystery. Therefore, the approach to this subject has out of necessity avoided the so-called plausible scenarios (and there are many of them) in favor of historical accuracies, the central one of which is that Jack Ruby was mentored by and worked for organized crime.

April 28th, 2010

Brown J. Akin, III

Citations

1. David Kaiser, The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2005) p. 371

2 G. Robert Blakey and Richard Billings, The Plot to Kill the President (New York: Times Books. 1981) p. 315

3. United States Congress, House, Select Committee on Assassinations, The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vol. IX (hereafter cited as HSCA) 95th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1979) p. 205

4. The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Hearings, Vol. XXI (hereafter cited as WC) (Washington D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1964) p. 309-10

5. Blakey and Billings, p. 319

6. Kaiser, p. 373

7. Blakey and Billings, p. 319

8 The President’ Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, Warren Commission Report, (hereafter cited as WCR) (Washington D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1964) p. 357

9 Gerald R. Ford and John R. Stiles, Portrait of the Assassin (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965) p. 440

10. Ibid., p. 441

11. Mark Lane, Push to Judgment, A Critique of the Warren Commission’s Inquiry into the Murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J. D. Tippit, and Lee Harvey Oswald (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett Publications, 1967) p. 211

12. Ford and Stiles, p. 440.

13. WCR, p. 423

14. Ibid., p. 371

15. Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why, (Lawrence, Kansas. The University of Kansas Press, 2005) p. 36.

16. HSCA, Vol. XI, p. 26

17. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 298

18. WCR, p. 779-80

19. Blakey and Billings, p. 283

20. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 944

21. Blakey and Billings, p. 284

22. Ibid., p. 285

23. Blakey and Billings, p. 286

24. HSCA, IX, p. 949

25. Ibid., p. 514-15

26. HSCA, IX, p. 517

27. Ibid.,Vol. IX p. 151

28. HSCA,Vol. IX, p. 155

29. Ibid., p. 518.

30. Blakey and Billings, p. 290-91

31. WCR, p. 793.

32. Blakey and Billings, p. 291

33. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 946

34. WCR, p. 796

35. WCR, p. 804

36. Blakey and Billings, p. 292

37. HSCA, Vol. IX, 803

38. Kaiser, p. 15

39. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 503

40. Blakey and Billings, p. 299

41. HSCA, Vol. XI, p.26

42. Kaiser, p. 140

43. Blakey and Billings, p. 314

44. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 524-32.

45. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 415-24

46. Ibid, p. 969-90

47.Blakey and Billings, p. 297

48. Ibid, p. 291

49. Ibid, p. 300

50. HSCA, Vol. IV, p. 462

51. Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK’s Assassination, and the Case that Should Have Changed History, (Washington D. C.: Potomac Books, 2005) p. 79

52.Kaiser, p. 319

33 Mellen, p. 216-17

54. Ibid., p. 206›

55. Ibid., p. 96

56. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 364

57. Kaiser, p. 376

58. WCR, p. 800-01

59. Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, (New York: Norton and Company, 2007) p. 1077

60. Blakey and Billings, p. 322

61. WRC, Vol. XXIII, p. 372-73

62. Dick Russell, Hired to Kill Oswald and Prevent the Assassination of JFK, Richard Case Nagell is The Man Who Knew Too Much, (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 1992) p. 520

63. Ibid., p. 521

64. Jerry Kroth, Conspiracy in Camelot, The Complete History of the Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, (New York: Algora Publishing, 2003) p. 209

65. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 428

66. Russell, p. 521

67. Ibid., p. 605

68. WC, Exhibit 2270, p. 333

69. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 424

70. Kroth, p. 111

71. Blakey and Billings, p. 397

72. Kaiser, p. 371

73. Russell, p. 605

74. Blakey and Billings, p. 396-97

75. Kroth, p. 203

76. Mellen, p. 63-3

77. Blakey and Billings, p. 314

78. Kaiser, p. 371

79. Kroth, p. 196

80. Ibid., p. 111

81. Kroth, p. 197-99

82.Russell, p. 522

83. Ibid.,  601-02

84. Ibid., p. 602

85. Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, p. 262-63

86. Ibid., p. 82

87. Blakey and Billings, p. 314

88. Ibid., p. 303

89. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 194

90. Blakey and Billings, p.308

91. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 523

92. Blakey and Billings, p. 310

93. Bugliosi,  p. 1070-77

94.  Ibid., p. 1078

95. HSCA, Vol. IX, p. 987-88.

96. Bugliosi, p. 1099

97. Gerald Posner, Case Closed, Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, (New York: Random House, 1993) p. 360

98. Ibid., p. 364

99. McKnight, p. 276

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