February 1, 2009
(rev. 03/27/09)
Did Jack Ruby Know Lee Harvey
Oswald?
by
Don Fulsom
Jack Ruby (born Jacob
Rubenstein) was a vulgar, violent, lowlife. But a proud one. He had risen from
the Mob-dominated slums of Chicago—where, growing up, he'd run errands for Al
Capone. Now, in 1963, Ruby ran his own striptease club in Dallas—seedy to
some, but to Jack "a f----ing classy joint."
The Carousel was a run-down walkup on Commerce Street
where Jack (or "Sparky," as the easily ignitable owner was known) oversaw a
master of ceremonies, four strippers and a five-piece bump-and-grind band. On
Commerce, flashing neon signs and scores of eight-by-ten glossy stock photos
of near-nude gals beckoned horny guys to ascend the stairs and enjoy "Dallas's
only nonstop burlesque."
Soon after Ruby murdered JFK assassination suspect Lee
Harvey Oswald, Carousel emcee Bill Demar (Bill Crowe in real life) publicly
identified Oswald as a recent patron. The magician-ventriloquist said he
distinctly recalled Oswald because, as an audience member, Oswald had actually
taken part in Demar's "memory act."
"I have 20 customers call out various objects in rapid
order," Demar told the Associated Press. "Then I tell them at random what they
called out. I am positive Oswald was one of the men that called out an object
about nine days ago."1
Carousel patron Harvey Wade supported the entertainer's
story, according to Facts on File.
Comedian Wally Weston—who preceded Demar as an emcee
earlier in November 1963—claimed Oswald was at the Carousel "at least twice"
before the assassination. Weston made the revelation in exclusive July 19,
1976 interview with the New York Daily News.
The same article reported that "Dallas lawyer Carroll
Jarnigan told FBI agents he saw Oswald and Ruby together in the Carousel on
the night of October 4, 1963, and overheard them discussing plans for Oswald
to assassinate Texas Governor John Connally, who was wounded in the fusillade
that killed Kennedy."
These people weren't the only Carousel employees or
customers to have linked President Kennedy's reputed assassin with Jack Ruby.
At 20, "Little Lynn" (in private life, Karen Carlin) was
Jack's youngest stripper. With long locks of artificially colored gray hair,
Lynn had the body of swimsuit contestant—but, on stage, wore little other than
a big smile, pink heels and a matching G-string.
2
On November 24, 1963, Little Lynn told U.S. Secret
Service agent Roger Warner that she, in his words, "was under the impression
that Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and other individuals unknown to her, were
involved in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy and that she would be
killed if she gave any information to authorities." Lynn reportedly died of a
gunshot wound in Houston in 1964, according to the Encyclopedia of the JFK
Assassination.3
By some accounts, even before her boss murdered Oswald,
Jack's featured stripper, 27-year-old "Jada" (real name, Janet Conforto) told
reporters that Ruby and Oswald were acquainted. Described by Ruby biographer
Seth Kantor as "supercharged with animalism," the orange-haired Jada had been
recruited by Ruby from a club in New Orleans. According to the Encyclopedia
of the JFK Assassination, that joint was partly owned by
the underworld's biggest bigwig in Louisiana and Texas, prime JFK
assassination suspect Carlos Marcello. 4
In Dallas, even offstage, Jada acted the part of a star
… and of a wild exhibitionist. Usually wearing only a mink coat and
high-heeled shoes, she spun around town in a new gold Cadillac convertible
with "JADA" embossed on the door. After one notable visit to Mexico, the
brazen stripper returned with 200 pounds of marijuana in the Caddy's trunk,
according to Dallas sports reporter Gary Cartwright.
5 She got
through customs by diverting the attention of border agents. Jada pretended to
fall out of her car, and then fell out of her coat—purposely exposing herself
to border officers.
Beverly Oliver sang at the Colony Club, a parking lot
away from the Carousel. Years later, Oliver said that about two weeks before
the assassination, when visiting the Carousel, she spotted Jada at a table
with Ruby and another man. "Ruby introduced me: 'Beverly, this is my friend,
Lee.'" That man, she later realized, was President Kennedy's accused murderer.
But Beverly kept mum on her Ruby-Oswald sighting at
first, she said, because she feared for her life. Oliver did not want to end
up like Jada, who she implied had died a mysterious death.
6
In 2007, sports reporter Gary Cartwright confirmed key
elements of the accounts of both Jada and Beverly: "After the assassination,
Jada told us Ruby once introduced her to Lee Oswald at the Carousel. While
they were having drinks, Beverly Oliver, a singer from the Colony Club next
door, stopped by and was also introduced … Jada is dead now, but I phoned
Beverly not long ago and asked if she remembered. "Sure do," she said. Ruby
introduced him as 'my friend Lee from the CIA.'"7
Jada, however, did not die mysteriously. She was killed,
at 44, in a 1980 highway accident in New Mexico when a school bus ran over her
motorcycle, according to researcher Mark Colgan. Jada is buried under the name
"JADA" in a cemetery in New Orleans.8
And how about Beverly Oliver's tale? Highly suspicious
say many assassination experts. Renowned researcher John McAdams concludes,
"No account of (Jada) saying she saw Ruby and Oswald together appeared in any
newspapers, nor anywhere else. And (Jada) explicitly told the FBI that she had
never seen them together."9
Curator Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey
Plaza in Dallas also thinks Beverly Oliver's claim is dubious. As for a
Ruby-Oswald connection, Mack told this writer in an email dated Jan. 10, 2009,
“…there's no hard evidence they were
acquainted and it's hard to imagine either man linked to the other. Oswald
didn't drink, he was never out at clubs, he wasn't cheating on his wife, and
Oswald certainly offered nothing of significance for Ruby to advance either
himself or his club."10
Mack is correct: There is no hard evidence—like a
photograph or a letter—linking these two disturbed loners history has forever
joined at the hips.
In the end, however, it doesn't really matter whether
Ruby knew Oswald.
What if there were a plot to murder President Kennedy
that included two men who did not know each other? Ruby and Oswald could well
have been part of this conspiracy; and Ruby could have been activated to kill
Oswald after Oswald's arrest. This could be what Oswald was indicating when he
insisted, "I'm a patsy." And it could have been what Ruby was referring to
when he declared, "I have been used for a purpose."
There is a high stack of circumstantial evidence that
both Ruby and Oswald were connected to New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello.
And many JFK assassination experts believe Marcello played some role in the
President's murder.
In a new book, Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of
the JFK Assassination, Lamar Waldron argues that the New Orleans godfather
actually engineered the JFK slaying. He cites startling newly released 1985
FBI prison files in which Marcello admitted, "Yeah, I had the son of a bitch
killed. I'm glad I did. I'm sorry I couldn't have done it myself!"
In the FBI files—based on bugs secretly placed in
Marcello's cell—the mobster confessed that he used an associate, Jack Ruby, to
kill Oswald. Marcello also admitted that he had set up Ruby "in the bar
business in Dallas."
Marcello, according to the New York Post, said he'd brought Oswald into the JFK
assassination plot via David Ferrie, a Marcello operative who had known Oswald
in New Orleans. 11
The godfather had a major beef against the Kennedy
brothers because Bobby Kennedy—organized crime's biggest enemy in the
government—once had him forcibly deported to Guatemala.
The disclosure about Marcello in the newly released FBI
files supports the conclusions of the most qualified expert on the JFK
assassination—G. Robert Blakey, who was chief counsel and staff director to
the mid-1970's House Select Committee on Assassinations. In The Plot to
Kill the President in 1981, Blakey found that Marcello and two other
godfathers—Santos Trafficante of Florida and Chicago Outfit boss Sam "Mooney"
Giancana—were complicit in planning Kennedy's slaying in Dallas.
Oswald had Mob ties in New Orleans through his uncle,
Charles "Dutz" Murret, who was a bookie for Sam Saia, a gambling kingpin and
Marcello sidekick. In 1963, when Oswald was living in New Orleans, he worked
for Saia as a runner at Felix Oyster House—one of Saia's French Quarter
bookmaking parlors—according to Blakey. In a Nov. 7, 1993 Washington Post
article, Blakey also pointed out that John H. Davis interviewed Joseph Hauser,
a witness in a federal criminal investigation of Marcello, for his Marcello
biography, Mafia Kingfish. Hauser reconstructed for Davis a statement
Marcello made to him:
Oswald? I used to know his [expletive] family. His uncle he work for me.
The kid work for me to. He worked for Sam outta his place downtown ... The
feds came ... askin' about him, but my people didn't tell 'em nothing.' Like
we never heard of the guy...
As for Jack Ruby's ties to the boss of America's oldest
crime family, back in the '70s Blakey's panel established links between the
nightclub owner "and several individuals affiliated with the underworld
activities of Carlos Marcello. Ruby was a personal acquaintance of Joseph
Civello, the Marcello associate who allegedly headed organized crime
activities in Dallas … (and) a New Orleans nightclub figure, Harold Tannenbaum,
with whom Ruby was considering going into partnership in the fall of 1963."
Shortly after the assassination, Jack Ruby's headliner,
Jada—rightly, it turns out—threw cold water on Ruby's initial excuse for
killing Oswald. Ruby claimed he was a super-patriot who loved President
Kennedy, and that his action was politically motivated. Not so fast, said the
orange-haired stripper during an interview with ABC’s Paul Good on YouTube: "I believe he disliked Bobby Kennedy … I didn't think
he loved (President) Kennedy that much" to kill Oswald.
12
A pre-assassination indication that Ruby might be part
of a conspiracy to kill the President came at around noon on November 21,
1963.
A number of Dallas police officers were meeting in the
office of Assistant District Attorney Ben Ellis when Ruby entered and passed
out business cards advertising Jada's gig at the Carousel. According to Lt. W. F. Dyson, Ruby introduced himself to
Ellis and added: "You probably don't know me now, but you will."
13
Before Ruby pulled the trigger on his 38-caliber Colt
Cobra in the basement of the Dallas Police Department, did he get cold feet or
have second thoughts? Or did he want to get caught before he actually carried
out his mission?
Billy Grammer, a Dallas Police dispatcher, says he
received a telephone threat against Oswald's life the night before Oswald's
murder. He said the tipster did not identify himself, but did greet the
officer by name. The caller advised police to change their plans for Oswald's
transfer to another jail the next day. The voice on the other end was
urgent—asserting, "We are going to kill him!"
Only after Jack Ruby murdered Oswald did Grammer
realize he had been talking to a local striptease club operator he knew well.
"It had to be Ruby," he later disclosed. Grammer says that phone call
convinced him the Oswald slaying was "not spontaneous," but rather a "planned
event." 14
While Ruby's stunning crime was witnessed by baffled
millions on live TV, Reuters's Ralph Harris was one of the first reporters in
the basement to grab a phone and dictate a bulletin to his wire service's
editors: "The fatal shot, fired by Jack Ruby into Oswald's abdomen at
point-blank range, in the presence of armed police and reporters, had such a
stunning impact that the scene froze into a moment of paralyzed amazement,
then pandemonium as Oswald dropped to the concrete floor."15
Shortly before his death from cancer in 1967, Ruby
secretly slipped a note to Dallas Deputy Sheriff Al Maddox. In a July, 1996 TV
interview, Maddox revealed that, in that note, Ruby confessed there "was a
conspiracy" to murder JFK, and that Ruby's motive in killing the alleged
presidential assassin was not patriotism, but rather to "silence Oswald."16
As soon as he saw the slaying of Oswald on TV, Attorney
General Robert Kennedy drew that very same conclusion. Ruby, he felt, had Mob
written all over him—so he immediately dispatched his top Justice Department
investigator, Walt Sheridan to Dallas to look into Ruby's background. Within
only hours, Sheridan "turned up evidence that Ruby had been paid off in
Chicago" by a close associate of Mobbed-up Teamsters Union president Jimmy
Hoffa, a mortal enemy of the Kennedy brothers. Sheridan said Ruby "picked up a
bundle of money from Allen M. Dorfman," a chief Hoffa henchman.
When the attorney general examined Jack Ruby's many
pre-assassination phone calls to key Mafia figures, the organized crime
expert declared, "The list was almost a duplicate of the people I called
before the (Senate) Rackets Committee,” he told David Talbot, author of
Brothers.17
Perhaps partly out of fear for his own life, Bobby
Kennedy kept his investigation into his beloved brother's murder to himself.
And he refused to cooperate with the Warren Commission's probe. In his book
Brothers, David Talbot says Bobby intended to reopen the investigation if
he became president. Talbot speculates that, in Los Angeles, in 1968, White
House hopeful Robert Kennedy may have been gunned down by the same conspirators who
killed his brother Jack in Dallas.
Footnotes
1 Los Angeles Times, November 26, 1963.
2 New York
Times, November 30,1963
3
Encyclopedia of the JFK Assassination, 122.
4
Encyclopedia, 122
5 Texas
Monthly, November, 1975
6 "The Men Who
Killed Kennedy," The History Channel.
7
Coverthistory.blog.spot.com, September 19, 2007.
8 http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/Jada_mark.pdf
9 http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/oliver.htm
10 E-mail
correspondence, Mack with author, 1-10-09
11 New York
Post, January 10, 2009, as well as various book reviews.
12 Jada
interview with ABC's Paul Good on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa32CTHA8xw
13
November 25, 1963 letter to Police Chief J. H. Curry from Lt. Dyson. http://whokilledjfk.net/JackRuby.htm
14 "The
Men Who Killed Kennedy."
15
Liverpool Daily Post, obituary of Harris,
Jan. 21, 2009
16
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUiZBmm9xUA
17
Brothers, David Talbot, 21.
