Reclaiming History (256 page)

M
uch has been made in the biographies of Ruby about his sexuality. It would appear that for many of the FBI agents who interviewed acquaintances of Ruby starting immediately after Ruby shot Oswald and continuing for many months afterward, part of the standard list of questions included one that asked, either directly or indirectly, whether or not Jack Ruby was homosexual. The responses ran the gamut of opinion from “definitely not homosexual”
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to “Ruby attempted to get…an ex-prize fighter,…a bouncer at the Vegas Club, to go to bed with him.”
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One thing is clear: there is plenty of evidence that Ruby availed himself of the company of women and did engage in sexual relationships with them.
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In fact, Larry Crafard, the handyman at the club, said that Ruby had once told him he had had a sexual relationship “with every one of the girls who worked for him.”
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One acquaintance noted though that Ruby “was peculiar in that after he had gone to bed with a woman, he was scornful of her and would not go out with her again.”
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Indeed, one girl at the Carousel said that the girls at the club who had sex with Jack usually lasted “no more than a week…All you had to do was hold out against him to stay with him.”
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Two of Jack’s former employees stated that he went to bed with various girls at the Carousel, usually those who were applying for jobs, but his affairs were brief and seldom deep.
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But then there was Tawny Angel, the raven-haired Carousel stripper with a stunning figure, even for a stripper, whom Jack fell head over heels for from almost the first moment he laid eyes on her. It was obvious to all the other girls that Jack heard violins whenever Tawny approached. He got downright nasty with Tawny’s boyfriend when he came to the club, and soon told him he’d have to wait outside for her. Tawny had one big problem that temporarily worked to Jack’s advantage. She couldn’t stay away from the bottle, so much so that her boyfriend left her because of it, and Jack was there to catch her, nursing her wounds and giving her whatever she wanted. Tawny eventually moved in with Jack, and he was never happier. He told her he loved her and proposed marriage, but Tawny had no feelings for Jack and walked out on him in the middle of the night. Jack carried a real torch for Tawny for some time. “I loved that miserable little broad,” Jack told Alice (not Ruby’s girlfriend, Alice Nichols), a stripper who was kind of a mother hen to the other girls, “and now it hurts. I wanted to marry her. She had a lot of class. I miss her.” In due time, Jack got over Tawny, Alice convincing him that she was just a selfish lush who had used him.
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Evidence does indicate that Jack gave the impression he had homosexual tendencies. And apparently Jack himself thought that people thought he was homosexual. Karen “Little Lynn” Carlin, one of Jack’s strippers, said that although Ruby never said he was homosexual and, indeed, had once propositioned her, “he was always asking the question, ‘Do you think I am a queer? Do you think I look like a queer?’ Or ‘have you ever known a queer to look like me?’”
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And according to Earl Norman, one of Jack’s emcees, one time Jack remarked to Earl, after putting a cigar in his mouth and lighting it, “I don’t look gay now, do I?”
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Here, from various FBI reports, are references to some of the statements acquaintances made with regard to Ruby’s sexuality: “did not have homosexual tendencies to his knowledge but did have some slightly effeminate characteristics”;
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“heard…that Ruby dated both men and women”;
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“Ruby was a very aggressive ‘wolf’” with women;
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“heard…‘gossip’…that Ruby was a homosexual”;
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“was sure he went out with quite a number [of girls]”;
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“of the opinion that Ruby preferred ‘gay company’”;
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“a normal male…with no effeminate actions”;
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“his main pastime was ‘chasing the girls’”;
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“the man might be somewhat queer…Just the way he talked and mostly the way he walked.”
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Jack actually did have a slight speech impediment, “sort of a lisp,” and was conscious of it.
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Under a U.S. Treasury Department letterhead there was this from an assistant regional commissioner: “There is a strong indication that Jack Ruby is either a homosexual or a bisexual, although there is no concrete evidence to support this contention.”
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Jack’s good friend and Carousel emcee Wally Weston chuckled when he recalled being asked by people about whether or not Jack was homosexual. He said he would simply say, “Go ask Jack. I’m sure he’ll tell you.”
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The Warren Commission concluded, “There is no evidence of homosexuality on [Ruby’s] part,” pointing out that many reports to the contrary were “inherently suspect” and “all the allegations were based on hearsay or derive from Ruby’s lisp or a ‘feeling’ that Ruby was a ‘sissy’…and sometimes spoke in a high-pitched voice when angry.”
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Apart from any sexual encounters, one longtime acquaintance, both professional and social, stated that in all the years he had known Jack, he could only recall one instance where Jack had gone out on a date with a woman. He felt Jack’s sole interests were his clubs and his dogs. One wonders how well this person really knew Jack in view of Jack’s relationship with Tawny Angel and the ten-year relationship he had with a dignified and intelligent Dallas secretary and divorcee named Alice Nichols. She told the Warren Commission they’d see each other once a week, sometimes twice, and Jack had even brought up the possibility of getting married and having a family at one point, but the two never wed, and they parted in 1959. Ruby himself said he at one time considered marrying Nichols, and he passed a lie detector test on this point.
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Nichols, who was four years Ruby’s junior, was close enough to Jack that he confided quite a bit in her, as her testimony before the Commission revealed. Ruby thought enough of Nichols to introduce her to Jack’s dad when he came to Dallas on one occasion.
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M
uch has also been said of Ruby’s almost fanatical attachment to his dogs, whom he referred to as “my children” or “babies” or “kids.” A friend of Jack’s who knew him for years said, “I never saw anybody so crazy” about his dogs.
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Ruby owned as many as nine or ten at a time and frequently took a bunch of them with him in his car and to the club. A friend of Jack’s who said something about the “dogs” once got an immediate angry response from Ruby: “I told you not to call these children of mine dogs any more. These are my children, and I respect them just like you respect your kids.” And Jack defended their conduct. A friend visiting Jack’s apartment was stunned to see his couch eaten up, and the backboard all eaten out, and asked, “Jack, what in the world happened?” Jack’s irritated response was, “My children. Anything wrong with that? My children ate it up.” Another said Ruby “cried like a baby when one of his dogs got hurt.” One employee feared Ruby was going to hit her when he became enraged that she had fed some pizza to one of his dogs. Rabbi Silverman, from Ruby’s synagogue, recalled that one time Ruby had seven dachshunds in his car with him. At Ruby’s trial, Silverman related an incident when Ruby came to visit him at his home one day with several of his dogs. “Suddenly, he began to cry,” Silverman told the jury. “He said, ‘I’m unmarried.’ Then, pointing to Sheba, he added, ‘This is my wife, these are my children.’” Sheba was Jack’s favorite and always with him. As roommate George Senator put it, “Jack goes to the club, Sheba goes with him.”
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Jack had just murdered Oswald in front of millions of people, and with the world’s attention on him and while being interrogated by the police, he asked a detective to take care of Sheba, who was still waiting patiently for Jack in the car parked outside.
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Surprisingly, Jack’s love affair with his “children” only started around 1958 or 1959, when Alice Nichols said Jack received his first dog, a dachshund, as a gift, having never owned a dog before then. That dog was killed shortly thereafter and Jack quickly got another dachshund.
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He was so concerned for the welfare of his dogs that even when he gave a close friend a dachshund as a gift for his children, Jack came by once every six months to see how the dog was getting along.
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The dogs probably never minded, but Jack Ruby was a man possessed of some strange and often contradictory traits. He was a health faddist and regularly exercised and lifted weights in his apartment and at the YMCA, where he also swam regularly. He was proud of his physical condition and extremely sensitive about his personal appearance, watching his diet to make sure his sturdy frame (five feet eight inches, 175 pounds) would not get out of hand. One acquaintance stated that Ruby would frequently ask him if he, Ruby, looked all right, if his suit fit, and if he had any offensive body odors.
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Though fastidious in his personal appearance, he apparently lived like a slob. George Senator said, “Jack didn’t live too clean.” The roommate went on to tell investigators, “Though he was very clean about himself, he wasn’t clean around the apartment.”
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Another acquaintance noted that Jack would take two or three showers a day but his car was a dirty “rattletrap.”
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There was no greater contradiction, though, in Ruby’s life than in his own temperament. Nearly everyone who knew Ruby for some time had stories of his many physical altercations, as well as his acts of kindness and generosity. The same man who treated his employees well and would do anything for someone he liked would also “belt someone at the drop of a hat.”
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Breck Wall, a friend of Ruby’s, said that Ruby “was a wonderful man. He was a lot of fun and had a great personality…but he had a violent temper. He hit my partner, Joe Peterson, and knocked him down the stairs and knocked out a tooth…We had no idea it was even coming.”
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The many brawls Ruby was involved in resulted from the most salient trait in Ruby’s makeup, one that people like Breck mentioned more than any other: his hot and explosive temper. FBI agents may have interviewed close to one hundred people who
knew Ruby well
, and in their published reports in the Warren Commission volumes the reader would be hard-pressed to find one interviewee who did not mention Ruby’s temper, or at least how “very emotional” he was, if the question of Ruby’s temperament was discussed. It is noteworthy that not one said he was
not
hot tempered. The following types of comments about Ruby were mentioned over and over again in the FBI reports and elsewhere: “He is hot-tempered”;
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Ruby had an “uncontrollable temper”;
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“an extremely emotional and excitable individual”;
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“I’m impressed that Ruby has lived as long as he has due to his extremely short and high temper”;
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“impulsive, violent…erratic”;
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he “is a man with a violent temper”;
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Ruby was “totally unpredictable. One minute he is nice, and the next minute he goes berserk”;
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he had a “peculiar personality and violent temper”;
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“highly emotional person who has no control over his emotions”;
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“could explode in a moment’s notice…without provocation”;
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“very high-strung, very excitable person”;
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“had a very bad temper”;
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was “a very emotional man”;
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had “a very nasty temper”;
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“erratic and hot-headed…sometimes he would get so mad he would just shake”;
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and on and on and on.

But Ruby’s anger was about as permanent as a breath upon a mirror. A comedian who worked for him said Ruby was remarkable in that he could “change moods in an instant.”
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His friend for years, William Serur, said Ruby “explodes and gets mad…quicker than any person I ever saw, but he can cool off quicker than any person I ever saw,”
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an extreme volatility that would certainly be ideal, would it not, for a cold and experienced mob hit man. Almost laughably, after flying into a rage over something and just as quickly cooling down, Ruby would often completely forget what he had been so angry about.
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The fights (mostly beatings Ruby administered) that resulted from Ruby’s uncontrollable temper were legendary at his clubs. A waitress from the B & B Restaurant, visiting the Carousel Club, saw Ruby approach a couple in their fifties who were arguing, grab the woman by the arm, lead her to the flight of approximately twenty stairs, and then give her a shove down. He then knocked the short, slender, gray-haired male companion of hers to the floor and repeatedly kicked him.
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Once Ruby struck a cabdriver who came into the club looking to collect a fare.
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Another time he knocked a man down inside the club, then threw him down the flight of stairs and did not even attempt to determine if the man had been injured.
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One patron watched Ruby and another individual he believed to be an off-duty policeman throw a customer down the stairs who had gotten into an argument at the bar.
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But one time Ruby had to retreat behind the bar, grab his gun, and fire a warning shot into the ceiling to stop a fight he was unsuccessful in breaking up.
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Another time, when a patron who was about six foot three and 230 pounds slapped a woman during an argument, Ruby beat him to the floor, threw him out the Vegas Club door, and then forced him to crawl down the street. “If you are that type of man, crawl away,” Ruby ordered.
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Ruby’s choice of weapons in beating people who angered him was eclectic and included his feet,
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knees,
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brass knuckles,
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and pistol, as in “pistol whipping.”
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But since he liked to fight, his fists were definitely his favorite. Indeed, one night at the Vegas Club, when an unidentified man pulled his pistol on Ruby, who was behind the bar, Ruby, though his own pistol was within easy reach beneath the bar, chose to jump over the bar, slap the pistol from the man’s hand, and almost beat him to death with his fists, after which he put the man’s pistol in the man’s pocket and threw him out.
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“Sherri Linn,” one of Ruby’s strippers, said that Ruby “liked to use his fists” and would fight “for no reason at all.”
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Using fists not only is validating, but gives a man bragging rights, something feet, knees, brass knuckles, and pistols don’t do. And Ruby would claim to people that he had once beaten up a prize fighter in his club,
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though this was never attested to by a third party.