Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (89 page)

To appeal to the mindset of Dallas at that time, Ruby's brother Earl
insisted that his brother's friend, attorney Joe Tonahill, take part in his
defense. Tonahill had the East Texas drawl and the rural mannerisms more
acceptable to a Dallas jury.

But the heavyweight of Ruby's defense was flamboyant San Francisco
super-attorney Melvin Belli, who quickly set himself at odds with the
downhome provincialism of Dallas.

Belli's avenue of defense was to have Ruby declared a victim of
"temporary insanity" due to "psychomotor epilepsy." To this end, Belli
put a string of psychiatrists on the stand to testify. It also meant that he
would not allow Ruby to take the stand on his own behalf.

This failure to allow Ruby to testify, coupled with the tight security in
the Dallas County Jail, effectively kept Ruby isolated from the news media
and the public. Ruby even cautioned his few visitors to the jail that his
conversations were being recorded and monitored.

One of the only reporters to get a private interview with Ruby during his
trial was nationally syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, who prevailed
on lawyer Tonahill to arrange the meeting with presiding Judge Joe B.
Brown. She claimed to have a message for Ruby from a mutual friend who
11 may have been some kind of singer."

Judge Brown, impressed with the famous Broadway newspaperwoman,
agreed and, according to Kilgallen biographer Lee Israel, the pair met in a
small office behind the judge's bench without the presence of the four
sheriff's deputies who were always at Ruby's side. Israel wrote: "They
were together privately for about eight minutes in what may have been the
only safe house Ruby had occupied since his arrest."

Although Kilgallen mentioned this unique private meeting with Ruby to
close friends, she did not publicly write about it. The fact that she did not
publicly disclose what she learned in this meeting prompted author Israel
to write:

That she withheld suggests strongly that she was either saving the
information for her book, Murder One, a chapter of which she had
decided to devote to the Ruby trial; that he furnished her with a lead
which she was actively pursuing; that he exacted a promise of confidentiality from her; or that she was acting merely as a courier. Each
possibility puts her in the thick of things.

Israel also records that toward the end of her life, Kilgallen may have
obtained inside assassination information from yet another source. He
wrote:

Dorothy began to draw drinking companions to her. Joan Crawford .. .
was among them. She tooled around with Crawford . . . they boozed
abundantly together in the back of Crawford's touring car, which was
well stocked with hundred-proof vodka.

Recall that, upon the death of her husband, Crawford became a principal
owner of Pepsi-Cola, the firm that counted Richard Nixon as an attorney.
Both Nixon and Crawford had been in Dallas the week of the assassination
and may have been privy to more information than the public was receiving.

Whatever information Kilgallen learned and from whatever source,
many researchers believe it brought about her strange death. She told
attorney Mark Lane: "They've killed the President, [and] the government
is not prepared to tell us the truth ... " and that she planned to "break the
case." To other friends she said: "This has to be a conspiracy! [The Warren
Commission is] laughable . .. I'm going to break the real story and have
the biggest scoop of the century." And in her last column item regarding
the assassination, published on September 3, 1965, Kilgallen wrote: "This
story isn't going to die as long as there's a real reporter alive-and there
are a lot of them."

But on November 8, 1965, there was one less reporter. That day
Dorothy Kilgallen was found dead in her home. It was initially reported
that she died of a heart attack, but quickly this was changed to an overdose
of alcohol and pills. Her death certificate, dated November 15, 1965, stated the cause of death was: ". . . acute ethanol and barbiturate
intoxication-circumstances undetermined."

Biographer Israel wrote:

After three years of investigating the events surrounding Dorothy's
death, it is clear to me that she did not die accidentally and that a
network of varied activities, impelled by disparate purposes, conspired
effectively to obfuscate the truth.

No trace of her notes or writings about what she may have learned from
Ruby or Crawford was ever found.

During Ruby's trial, Dallas D.A. Henry Wade made a strong case for
premeditation but carefully skirted the issue of conspiracy. According to
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of March 18, 1964, Wade's "big decision"
was not to call witnesses "who insisted they had seen Ruby and Oswald
together at various times."

A parade of police witnesses recalled various remarks reportedly made
by Ruby at the time of the shooting, such as:

You rotten son of a bitch, you shot the President. . . . I intended to get
off three shots. . . . I did it because you [the police] couldn't do it... .
I did it to show the world that Jews have guts.... I first thought of
killing him at the Friday night press conference.

It was such statements as these, as well as Judge Brown's refusal of a
change of venue, that prompted the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to
reverse Ruby's conviction on October 5, 1966. The appeals court ordered
a new trial but Ruby died before it could take place.

Although Ruby was not allowed to testify at his trial, he was interviewed by the Warren Commission on June 7, 1964. Representing the
Warren Commission were Chief Justice Earl Warren and Representative
Gerald R. Ford along with general counsel J. Lee Rankin, staff attorneys
Arlen Specter and Joseph Ball. Also present were attorneys Leon Jaworski
and Robert G. Storey, who were acting as liaison between the Commission
and Texas authorities; Secret Service agent Elmer W. Moore; Dallas
assistant district attorney Jim Bowie; Sheriff Bill Decker; Ruby attorney
Joe Tonahill; and several Dallas police officers.

Oddly enough, due to an internal squabble over the handling of Dallas
witnesses, the two Commission staffers who were in charge of the Ruby
investigation-Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin-were not allowed to sit in
on this important interview.

During this interview Ruby was vacillating. After about an hour of a
rambling account of his activities prior to shooting Oswald and some rather
innocuous questions-for example, Rankin asked, "Did you have this gun
a long while that you did the shooting with'?"-Warren appeared ready to wrap up the interview. Sensing this, Ruby said: "You can get more out of
me. Let's not break up too soon."

Ford then began questioning Ruby about his trips to Cuba in 1959, but
just as the answers appeared to be leading into fruitful territory, Warren
cut Ford off and changed the subject.

Tonahill later told newsman Seth Kantor:

Ford never did finish his interrogation on Cuba. Warren blocked Ford
out on it. That was very impressive, I thought. Ford gave him a hard
look, too. I was sitting right there and saw it happen.

Ruby became desperate, saying:

Gentlemen, my life is in danger here. . . . Do I sound sober enough to
you as I say this? . . . Then follow this up. I may not live tomorrow to
give any further testimony. . . . the only thing I want to get out to the
public, and I can't say it here, is with authenticity, with sincerity of the
truth of everything and why my act was committed, but it can't be said
here. . . . Chairman Warren, if you felt that your life was in danger at
the moment, how would you feel? Wouldn't you be reluctant to go on
speaking, even though you request me to do so?

Having previously voiced the suspicion that his words and actions were
being monitored in Dallas, Ruby then began to ask to be taken out of his
present circumstances, saying:

Gentlemen, if you want to hear any further testimony, you will have to
get me to Washington soon, because it has something to do with you,
Chief Warren. . . . I want to tell the truth and I can't tell it here. Does
that make sense to you?

Ruby begged to be taken to Washington, away from Dallas, at least
eight times. He complained that his "life was in danger . . . [My] whole
family is in jeopardy." He was shrugged off by Warren, who replied:
"There are a good many things involved in that, Mr. Ruby."

Asked to explain, Warren said:

Well, the public attention that it would attract, and the people who
would be around. We have no place for you to be safe when we take
you out, and we are not law enforcement officers, and it isn't our
responsibility to go into anything of that kind. And certainly it couldn't
be done on a moment's notice this way.

Ruby grew more blunt:

... If you don't take me back to Washington tonight to give me a
chance to prove to the President that I am not guilty, then you will see
the most tragic thing that will ever happen. And if you don't have the
power to take me back, I won't be around to be able to prove my
innocence or guilt. . . . All I know is maybe something can be saved.
Because right now, I want to tell you this. I am used as a scapegoat. . . . Now maybe something can be saved. It may not be too late,
whatever happens, if our President, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth
from me. But if I am eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing.

At another part of his interview, Ruby may have uttered an ironic truth.
Asked if he knew Officer Tippit, he replied that "there was three Tippits
on the force" but he knew only one and didn't think he was the murdered
policeman. Incredibly, no one followed up on this to find out which Tippit
Ruby did know and how he knew it wasn't the murdered officer. To this
author's knowledge, there were no other Tippits on the police force at that
time.

Then Rankin asked him about a rumor that Ruby had been seen in the
Carousel Club shortly before the assassination with a Mr. Weissman-the
man who had paid for an anti-Kennedy newspaper ad-Officer Tippit,
and a rich Dallas oilman.

Ruby said the story was untrue; then, looking around the room, he
proclaimed: "I am as innocent regarding any conspiracy as any of you
gentlemen in the room ... " In later years, the potential irony of this
statement has not been lost on assassination researchers.

As early as December 1963, Ruby had asked to be given a lie detector
test-perhaps reasoning that such a test would bring out the truth by
revealing his account of events to be false. During his meeting with
Warren he again begged to be given a polygraph test and the Commission
dutifully agreed. A polygraph test was administered to Ruby on July 18,
1964, and his answers did not indicate he was lying: No, he had not
known Oswald; No, he did not assist Oswald in the assassination; No, he
did not shoot Oswald to silence him; Yes, he entered the police basement
by the Main Street ramp; Yes, he told the Warren Commission the entire
truth; No, he never did any business with Castro; No, he never met
Oswald or Officer Tippit at his club.

This test has been used over the years-as late as November 1988, by
Warren Commission apologist David Belin-to support the contention that
Ruby was not part of any conspiracy and only shot Oswald out of personal
motives.

Few people bothered to read the last page of the Warren Report, where
in Appendix XVII, J. Edgar Hoover commented:

It should be pointed out that the polygraph, often referred to as "lie
detector" is not in fact such a device.... During the proceedings at Dallas, Texas, on July 18, 1964, Dr. William R. Beavers, a psychiatrist, testified that he would generally describe Jack Ruby as a "psychotic depressive." In view of the serious question raised as to Ruby's
mental condition, no significance should be placed on the polygraph
examination and it should be considered nonconclusive as the charts
cannot be relied upon.

Apparently unwilling or unable to see that Ruby was desperately trying
to tell them something outside the surveillance of Dallas authorities, the
Warren Commission entourage prepared to leave Ruby's interview. Failing
to fully question Jack Ruby was one of the commission's greatest mistakes-if
it was a mistake.

A resigned Ruby told them: "Well, you won't ever see me again. I tell
you that . . . A whole new form of government is going to take over the
country, and I know I won't live to see you another time."

He didn't.

In the days following his trial and interview by the Warren Commission,
Jack Ruby's moods went from confident highs to suicidal lows. A prisoner
with few opportunities to communicate with the outside, Ruby nevertheless was given the freedom of Sheriff Bill Decker's jail. He reportedly was
able to roam freely, occasionally use the telephone, and even sleep in a
corridor. But at all times he was under close guard, especially after several
inept suicide attempts.

On one occasion he tried to hang himself but there was not enough time
to rip his clothing and fashion a knot before a guard got to him. Another
time, Ruby became so despondent he tried to split his skull by running
headlong into a wall. This attempt merely left him with a large knot on his
head.

His most pathetic attempt took place when a guard went off for a drink
of water. Quickly Ruby unscrewed an overhead light bulb, then threw
water from his own glass onto his feet as a conduit. However, he couldn't
reach the light socket with his finger while standing in the water. His
guard, Deputy Sheriff Jess Stevenson found him ineffectually jumping up
and down trying to complete the circuit. The attempt was "something
nearly comical," Stevenson told newsman Seth Kantor.

As time dragged on and his isolation began to take its toll, Ruby became
more despondent. His mood worsened after he came to believe that
Stevenson, who had chatted at length with the prisoner after preaching the
Bible to him, actually was passing information gleaned through the conversations back to Dallas authorities.