JFK Assassination: Oswald-Ruby Transcript Found in Dallas Courthouse

If the controversies and conspiracies that still surround the JFK assassination were a jigsaw puzzle it would contain thousands of pieces, all identically shaped, the same picture on both sides. Now new pieces have been added to the puzzle, courtesy of the Dallas County Courthouse, where boxes of artifacts that have been hidden away for decades have finally been revealed to the public.

November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby shoots and kills Lee Harvey Oswald

Friday, November 22, 1963, at approximately 12:30 p.m., shots rang out in Dallas, Texas, a president was assassinated and the largest conspiracy in United States history began.

Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins reveals JFK Assassination Memorabilia

Almost 45 years later, in Dallas, Texas, District Attorney Craig Watkins revealed 15 boxes of "memorabilia". Items that belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby that have been locked away for decades. Items that may add a long awaited spark to the mystery of who was involved on that fateful day in Dallas, the end of "Camelot" and the second mystery, the mystery of the involvement of Jack Ruby, aka Jacob Rubenstein.

The second mystery of Ruby, a businessman and nightclub owner, and some claim, "mob guy", who took it upon himself to gun down Oswald in front of a gaggle of cops and live camera crews two days after JFK was assassinated and well before Oswald was given an opportunity to prove his innocence.

According to the NYTimes, the items have been stored away on the 10th floor of the Dallas County Courthouse in a walk-in safe. Incredibly the items include the clothing of Lee Harvey Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby. Also Ruby's tooled leather holster used to carry the gun that Ruby used to shoot Oswald. There's also two sets of brass knuckles found on Ruby and a movie contract former Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade signed. But the most interesting find, one that some maintain is a "fake" is a purported transcript of a conversation that Oswald and Ruby had at Ruby's Carousel Club on Commerce Street, weeks before the president was assassinated.

The Transcript

In Part II of the two page transcript Ruby and Oswald discuss killing the president on October 4, 1963, at Ruby's Carousel Club but only as a way to get the President's brother, the then Attorney General, Bobby Kennedy:

Lee: You said the boys in Chicago want to get rid of the Attorney General.
Ruby: Yes, but it can't be done ... it would get the Feds into everything.

Lee: There is a way to get rid of him without killing him.

Ruby: How's that?

Lee: I can shoot his brother.

...

Ruby: But that wouldn't be patriotic.

Lee: What's the difference between shooting the Governor and in shooting the President?

Ruby: It would get the FBI into it.

Lee: I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have to have some money to live on while I do the planning." Source - WFAA

District Attorney Watkin's assistant, Terri Moore, says she believes the transcript is a fake, that it was part of a movie the late District Attorney Wade was working on with producers. Letters written by Wade about the movie, Countdown in Dallas, were also found in the safe. Ms. Wilson said "It's not real. Crooks don't talk like that," in relation to the transcript.

District Attorney Watkins also believes the transcript was part of the late District Attorney's Wade talks with movie producers but Watkins also said he never believed Oswald acted alone in killing the president, something quite a few Americans also believe.

On March 14th, 1964, Jack Ruby was sentenced to death for the shooting of Oswald. A jury of 8 men and 4 women deliberated 2 hours and 19 minutes. Ruby's attorney, Melvin Belli, told the room, "This was a kangaroo court, a railroad court and everyone knew it." He also added it was a "victory for bigotry".

According to the BBC, Ruby's conviction was overturned after his attorneys appealed on the basis that the trial being held in Dallas was unfair and that he should have also had a sanity hearing. While awaiting a new trial Ruby died in jail from a pulmonary embolism on January 3rd, 1967.

Numerous theories abound as to the reason why Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. One theory was Ruby's alleged ties to Cuba and Castro and organized crime in Chicago. Another theory was that Ruby was just acting the "Average Joe" outraged over the president's murder, taking justice into his own hands.

It has been charged that Ruby met with Santos Trafficante in Cuba sometime in 1959. Trafficante, regarded as one of the Nation's most powerful organized crime figures, was to become a key participant in Castro assassination attempts by the Mafia and the CIA from 1960 to 1963. The committee developed circumstantial evidence that makes a meeting between Ruby and Trafficante a distinct possibility. . .

While allegations of a Ruby link to Trafficante had previously been raised, mainly due to McWillie's alleged close connections to the Mafia leader, it was not until recent years that they received serious attention. Trafficante had long been recognized by law enforcement officials as a leading member of the La Cosa Nostra, but he did not become the object of significant public attention in connection with the assassination of the President until his participation in the assassination plots against Castro was disclosed in 1975. Source - Ourworld

Lee Harvey Oswald was only 24 years old when he purportedly shot the President. According to Edward J. Epstein, Oswald had connections to communists which the CIA and FBI were well aware of, as they should, in 1959, just five years before he "shot" the president, Oswald became the first enlisted Marine to defect to the Soviet Union:

While still in the early stages of his flirtation with political causes,0swald joined the Marine Corps . In October 1959, after a two-year stint as a radar operator, Oswald became the first Marine to defect to the Soviet Union, In Moscow, he delivered a letter stating. "I affirm that my allegiance is to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."

Not only did he publicly renounce his American citizenship but he told the U.S. consul that he intended to turn over to the Soviet Union military secrets that he had acquired while serving in the Marines, adding that he had data of "Special interest" to the Russians. Since he indeed had exposure to military secrets such as the U-2 spy plane and radar identification system, and since he may have collected data while on active duty, his defection had serious espionage implications.

As an aside, why was Oswald allowed to return to the States back in 1962 and not immediately arrested by the Marines as a defector?

Oswald brought back a Russian wife and settled in Dallas where he purchased a rifle with a telescopic site and a mail-order pistol. He had his wife take a photo of him dressed in black and holding weapons just before he set off in April of 1963 to assassinate General Edwin A. Walker, an "extreme" Conservative and "notorious anti-communist." The authorities were later to find evidence that matched Oswald to the hit on Walker.

While Walker was on tour, Oswald cased Walker's home on the weekend of March 9–10, taking pictures of the house and nearby railroad tracks which were later found among Oswald's belongings at the Paine home when they were searched after the Kennedy assassination (these photos were later matched to the same camera Marina used to take the backyard photos). Though he did not leave specifics of his plans in writing, Oswald did leave a note in Russian for Marina with instructions for her to follow — should he be jailed in Dallas, or otherwise disappear. Source - Wiki

The questions about Ruby's involvement was why did Ruby kill Oswald? Was Ruby, indeed a distraught citizen taking the law into his own hands? Why would a seedy nightclub owner with reported ties to the underworld decide Oswald needed to die, well before any trial? This was in the days before crime scene investigations techniques had evolved. Why was Ruby so sure Oswald was indeed, the person who killed the President only two days after the assassination?

This is just one a hundreds of questions mulled over by conspiracy theorists since that fateful day in 1964. Then in 2006, the fire was fed again by one Madeleine Duncan Brown, ex-mistress of then Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

According to Brown it was oil tycoon H. L. Hunt and LBJ who hatched the plan to kill LBJ:

Brown said that the plan to kill JFK had its origins in the 1960 Democratic Convention, at which John F. Kennedy was elected as presidential candidate with Johnson as his running mate, where H.L. Hunt, an American oil tycoon, and Lyndon Johnson hatched the assassination plot.

"When they met in California Joe Kennedy, John Kennedy's father, and H.L. Hunt met met three days prior to the election - they finally cut a deal according to John Currington (an aide to H.L. Hunt) and H.L. finally agreed that Lyndon would go as the vice president....this came from the horse's mouth way back in 1960 - when H.L. came back to Dallas I was walking....with him....and he made the remark, 'we may have lost a battle but we're going to win a war,' and then the day of the assassination he said 'well, we won the war'," said Brown.

Brown said that in the immediate aftermath of the convention Hunt and Johnson mapped out a strategy to kill Kennedy. Source - Prison Planet

And how was Ruby involved? According to Ms. Brown:

"We were playing poker at the Carousel Club and Jack Ruby came over and he said 'you know what this is?' and I looked up....he had this motorcade route....it stung me that he would be this involved in knowing where the President of the United States was....at that time in my life I thought they were untouchable," said Brown.

Brown described Ruby as the "in man" in Texas who could be trusted to arrange call girls, drugs, gambling fixes and even contract killings.

The group met for a party in Dallas hosted by Clint Murchison, another business tycoon with close links to the Genovese mafia, on November 21st 1963, the night before the assassination. Those present at the event included J. Edgar Hoover, Clyde Tolson, John J. McCloy, Jack Ruby, George Brown (of Brown and Root), numerous mafia kingpins, several newspaper and TV reporters, and Richard Nixon.

We doubt the mystery of what really happened to the President other than he was assassinated will ever be solved to everyone's satisfaction. Nor will the mystery of why Ruby killed Oswald. But the discovery of boxes of artifacts containing such personal items belonging to the participants squirreled away for decades in the Dallas County Courthouse is indeed, like finding a treasure trove with yet another piece to the controversial puzzle of the almost 45 year old mystery that surrounds the JFK assassination.

By LBG
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