Fourth Reich Archaeology - You Don't Know Jack (Ruby) Pt. 3 -- Side A

Episode Date: June 29, 2025

We are back with Part 3 of our deep dive into the life and times of Jack Ruby. Recall that in Part 1, we focused on Ruby’s early years in Chicago’s southwest side during America’s  Prohibition era. Ruby’s rough and tumble upbringing put him in the mix with kids who grew up to be well-connected guys in some of the most powerful and notorious mob families of the 20th Century.  We discussed how Ruby’s ties to the mob influenced his eventual move to Dallas and his decision to set up clubs in the city. In Part 2, we put Chicago in the broader context of postwar America and traced the mob’s westward and southerly expansion from hubs in Chicago and New York to towns like Las Vegas and Dallas. We further fleshed out the connections between Ruby and the mafia and set the scene for the tragic events of November 1963. In this episode, we jump into the action and focus on the timeline of events immediately leading up to the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald. At the time Ruby was, to say the least, a little stressed.  He had a massive debt with the IRS and faced serious problems with local unions and competitors in Dallas. But in the days leading up to JFK’s assassination, Ruby made a flurry of calls to his mob pals, some of whom he hadn’t spoken to in years. On November 17, he traveled to Las Vegas to see Lewis McWillie–a man with ties to Meyer Lansky and Santos Trafficante. When he returned from that trip, Ruby told his tax attorney that a “friend” (whom Ruby never identified) would cover his tax debts. Perhaps a sign of relief, Ruby spent the night of November 21st out on the town, dining at the famed Dallas restaurant, Campisi’s.  That brings us to November 22, 1963. When news of the assassination broke, Ruby closed his clubs and spent the day roving around town.  He famously visited both Parkland Hospital (where Kennedy’s body was taken) and the Dallas police station (where Oswald was being held).  In proper Jack Ruby form, he made a splash wherever he went. He cried on journalist Seth Kantor’s shoulder while at Parkland. He corrected another journalist during a presser at the Dallas police station. For two days and nights, Ruby roamed the streets of Dallas and wound himself up. And on the morning of November 24, he let himself loose on Lee Harvey Oswald.This one is another two-parter, with Side A available for free this week and Side B coming to you next week. But if you can't wait for next week, you can hear the entire episode (Sides A & B) right now by subscribing to our Patreon. So head on over to patreon.com/fourthreicharchaeology and make a donation to listen to the whole thing today!

The following passage from Don DeLillo's 1988 novel Libra imagines Jack Ruby's activities and his conversations with composite characters based on Ruby's mafia contacts on the morning of November 24, 1963. Jack went to bed. He stared at the ceiling in the dark. Every time a truck passed on Thornton Freeway, it made a noise like paper ripping. The phone rang, and he went into the living room and picked it up. He listened about 20 seconds.

Then he put on his clothes. and drove to the carousel. He went up the narrow stairs and turned on the lights. The dog started barking in the back room. He sat in his office, running his hand through his hair. He needed a scalp treatment, fast. He heard the footsteps. Then Jack Karlinski walked into the office.

He looked a little tired. He wore an open collar shirt and his neck was stretched and ridged. He looked old at this hour, unprepared. He brushed some dog hair off the sofa and sat down. It's terrible what's happening to the city, Jack. Every hour brings new words of grief abroad and wonderment how this could happen. Already the Europeans are talking about this conspiracy. What do we expect? They have their centuries of daggers in the back frame-ups and poisons. This adverse thinking, it builds up a pressure which is bad for the city, bad for us all. When I think of my father coming out of some Polish village. Polish village, exactly.

To the Carpenters Union in Chicago. To raise a boy grows up, owning a business, Jack. This is what we want to defend. What is the first thing people say about this tragedy? What does my mother say? 88 years old in a nursing home? She calls me on the phone. Do I have to tell you what she says? Thank God this Oswald isn't a Jew. Thank God. Am I right? How many people are saying the exact same thing these last two days? Thank God this Oswald isn't a Jew. Whatever he is, at least we know he's not a Jew. I right? These are the things people say. When I think of my father. Of course, this is what I say. Always drinking, drinking, out of work for years. My mother talked Yiddish till the day she died. She couldn't write her name in English. This is exactly the situation we find ourselves today.

I'm saying there are things that need protection. I'm a great believer and you have to stand up for your natural values. Hide who you are. Don't hide, don't run. This is a subject I talk to Carmine only today. I've been talking to Carmine direct. He made reference to he was anxious about Oswald. It makes the whole country look bad.

All this talk on a level of conspiracy. I'll tell you what the people want. They want this Oswald to vanish. That's how you close the book on. loose talk. People want him off the map, Jack. He's a nuisance to behold. It's a tide of emotion where anything can happen. It's a wave. You feel it in the streets. It carries everyone along. We're involved one way or another, whether we like it or not. Look at the ad that ran in the paper with the thick black border, signed with the Jewish name.

people notice things like that they file it away there's a lot of extreme feelings that attach themselves to the jews i personally feel i've been dropped in a pool of shit jack karlinsky nodded let me tell you something right straight out the man who gets oswald people will say that's the bravest man in america and it's just a matter of time before somebody clips him They're saying reports of the mob action anytime. The people want a blank space where he's standing. This act, they'll build a monument. Whoever does it. It's the shortest road to hero I ever saw.

You talk to Carmine. Carmine mentions your name from Tony Push. They know about you, Jack, in New Orleans. I did some things in the Cuba days. In other words, this Oswald is an activation. He knows some little iffy things He has some names he's playing around in his mind Carmine wants to clear the air

I was over at headquarters dropping in this afternoon There's talk they're moving him to the county jail I was about to say It's a procedure they have to follow in a felony case This city is screwy the way certain affairs are handled In the legal arena Commit a violent crime There's a good chance

your walk. This is a feature of the local climate. You know as well as I. Murder is easier to get exonerated than breaking and entering, Jack. It's considered how people behave. Am I right? It's considered settling things, old west style. They have it ingrained in the way they think. You get a schvatser kill another schvatser in a gunfight. The case won't even go. to trial. Nobody cares enough to try a case like that. This is what I say. I'm saying popping a guy like Oswald, this is the same approach.

Can you project a heavy sentence to take this guy out? People want to lose him. You'll see total rejoice. As things now stand, Jack, what are you worth to the city of Dallas? You're a Chicago guy. You're an operator from the north. Worse, a Jew. a Jew in the heart of the Gentile machine. Who are we kidding here? You're a strip joint owner. Asses and

tits. That's what you mean to Dallas. Who are we kidding here? When I think of my mother... Exactly what I'm saying. My mother went crazy in a big way. I can't describe the horror. I used to look in her eyes and there was nothing there that you could call a person. She screamed and raged. life. My father hit her. He hit us. She hit us. She thought we were all stooping each other, brothers and sisters, having constant sex. I never went to school. I fought. I delivered envelopes for Al Capone. I'm saying, this is my point. It builds up a pressure that's bad for us all. There was a short, heavy silence. Thank God he's not a Jew. Thank God, whatever he is, at least he's not a Jew.

Colonialism or imperialism, as the slave system of the West is called, is not something that's just confined to England or France or the United States. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. And this international power structure is used to suppress the masses of dark-skinned people all over the world and exploit them of their natural resources. We found no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic. The Warren Commission was silence. I'll never apologize for the United States of America.

Ever, I don't care what the facts are. In 1945, we began to require information, which showed that there were two wars going. His job, he said, was to protect the Weston way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small law. For example, we're the CIA. He has a mile.

He knows so long as a die. I'm afraid of we'd never be secure. It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor. A lot of killers. You get a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent?

Not a more than the CIA. This is Fourth Reich Archaeology. I'm Dick. And I'm Don. Welcome back. We are back for another installment of our series within a series within a series. You don't know Jack, Ruby. That is, of course, nested within the larger series within a series, the Warren Commission decided.

And that, in turn, is nested within, where this all still. started in Jerry World, which later this summer, folks, we're getting back to it. So sit tight. But enjoy this ruby excavation because it truly is some insane mind-blowing stuff, if I do say so myself. And before we dive into it, I'd like to thank every one of you for tuning in. and would like to once again appeal to you to like, subscribe, and talk about our pod. And if you are willing, and if you are able, to please join us over at patreon.com slash forthrightic archaeology and contribute so that we may remain fully listener-funded, ad-free and growing, gaining steam, picking up momentum, and looking to complete our one-year

anniversary, hard to believe, in just a couple of months. And if you can't donate or offer up any money, that's fine too. Just keep listening. We are very excited about it. what we have coming up in the next year of this project so before we get into this week's episode I think it makes sense to do a little bit of a recap you'll recall that in the previous episodes what we were doing is giving a lot of context a lot of background into the world of Jack Ruby we started out by really talking

about his origin story. Remember, Ruby grew up in Chicago land, Capone's Chicago. He grew up with many of the mobsters that we came to know ran the middle of the 20th century mob industry. These are the people that organized, organized crime into these national syndicates. And though he was never in the mob, he certainly hung out with the mobsters. Right, it's not so much that he was a card-carrying member as a Jewish guy, right? He would not have been welcomed into the Sicilian's only inner circle of the mafia. but he like many other immigrant kids growing up in those main streets of Chicago was certainly in the mafia orbit and as the mafia was really the engine of the local economy

that of course became a major force in his life in his life's trajectory we talked in our last episode with Max Arvo about how Ruby was intimately involved in this migration of the National Syndicate from Chicago and New York out to the south and west as it branched out to places like Dallas, places like Vegas, places like L.A. And Jack Ruby was a real covered wagon-style pioneer along with these oaky mobsters. And the other part of this is also how Jack was an eccentric, right?

Just as you said, he was never really part of the mob because he was an outsider. He wasn't really part of any solid community other than his family. He was very close with his sister. who he called his wife, but Jack Ruby was very much a sort of on the fringes of society. Yeah, and as a man on the fringes, he was nevertheless a man with plenty to lose. He never really made it in life, but he always strove to climb that ladder.

and I think that's a good place for us to give a quick preview of where we're picking up today. Today we're going to pick up right in fall of 1963 where all the action happens. And in this episode, it will just be Dick and I. Max is out doing some field research there. into the Jolly West Papers, and will be rejoining us with his findings and with all of the bizarre tales of the post-trial life of Jack Ruby and his adventures in psychiatry. But this time it's narrative time, baby. this is an action-packed episode

wherein we will recount to you the listener the entirety of Jack Ruby's manic episode that lasted for months and that culminated in his murder of Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24th, 1963. So with that, Dick, what do you say? Well, I think it's about time to get started. But before I say the magic words, I just want to say that this will be another two-parter.

Listeners who are members of our Patreon, of course, will get the full episode and indeed have already gotten the full episode. So please sign up on Patreon if you want to listen to the whole thing. but for now here is part one of this two-parter and with that let's get digging madness and hate erupt anew in Dallas as President Kennedy's accused assassin is shot down himself during a jail transfer there's an ominous symbol in Lee Harvey Oswald's murder weapon

as he is taken to the city jail basement where an armored car is to move him to a maximum security cell Oswald walks his last mile. His assailant moves in from the right. There is Lee. He's been shot. He's been shot. Hey Oswell has been shot.

Now, from another camera, the motion is slowed. The murderer moves in, and here is the shame of all America as Jack Rubenstein takes the law unto himself. The dying Oswald has rushed to the same. Oswald has rushed to the same hospital where President Kennedy died. Doctors work to save his life. But 48 hours and seven minutes after the president's death, his accused Slayer is dead. So to get us started, let's talk a little bit about what Ruby was doing in the months leading up to November 22nd, 1963.

Well, first of all, he was in massive debt, both to the IRS and based on loans secured by his clubs. He owed $42,000 in back taxes and another $3 to $5,000 in new taxes. And that we're talking about $1963 there. So what does that translate to Don? today's dollars. We're talking about approximately $440,000, so almost half a million bucks. Yeah, so he is got that collar around his neck. He is leveraged to say the least. In fact, by the time he died years later, his estate was $85,000 in debt. And what is that in today's dollars? That is in the neighborhood of 825K, nearly a million bucks in the hole.

And that's only what's on the books and excludes any off-book debts that he might have owed to say the mafia. So this is a guy who is heavily leveraged to say the least, right? and I'm sure he is feeling hot under that collar because of it. Oh, yeah, he'd a monkey on his back, all right. And of course, when anyone who's in massive amounts of debt knows, you know, you mostly deal in cash. And Jack, really, he never kept more than a couple hundred dollars of cash in his bank accounts. And instead, he just walked around with the money that he needed to do his business.

He kept most of his business off the books, of course. Remember, he's a nightclub owner, right? This is the type of business that is so useful for the mob. It's cash business. You can use it as an avenue to launder your money. You can use it as a way to sort of give your operations a legitimate front. And most importantly, the assets are easily accessible, very liquid. So while on the books, Jack is heavily in debt, his lifeblood is coming from this cash business,

which is closely intertwined with the underbelly of Dallas organized crime. Right. It's cash that you use to bribe officials. It's cash that you collect if you are, for example, selling drugs, running gambling rackets, selling pornography, and these are all illicit activities that we discussed in the last episode that Ruby was involved in while in Dallas. And not only were his debts giving him a pain in the neck, he was also in danger of reducing his cash flow because at this time in fall of

1963, his competitors who also happened to be Jewish, who were by all accounts a little bit more above board businessmen, and they had a couple of clubs in Dallas that were considered to be much classier than the Carousel Club. They had more high-class acts and charged a higher cover. But they were almost going to put Ruby out of business. Certainly he took the view that they were going to put him out of business because they innovated something called amateur night at their clubs. And basically, when I was in pig tails, my mama and told me, and basically what that means is, you get girls off of the street who will dance for free or sing for free or whatever the case is, and thereby skirt the union.

and I was actually pretty tickled and surprised to see that the strippers of the day, the burlesque dancers, as they were called, were all mandatory union members in the American Guild of Variety Artists, known by its acronym Agva. And so Ruby was, among his other manic activities, he was extremely concerned with complaining to the union and getting his competitors on the right side of the regulations so that they would be on equal footing

because for whatever reason he didn't think that the Carousel Club could get away with the same sort of dirty tactics Or maybe he was just a true blue union man from his days with the junk handlers. And geez, having issues with the local union, the obvious follow-up question is, who did he turn to to help him navigate that? Exactly. A man is a two-face, a worrisome thing who'll leave you to sing the blues. exactly and this is where you know to give a preview the lone nut theory believers around jack ruby

will believe him at his word when he says that all of the suspicious phone calls that he was making throughout the fall of 1963 to these mobsters including known killers and hitmen all those calls were just to solicit assistance in dealing with the union and in dealing with his competitors for purely business reasons related to his operation of the carousel. And money problems weren't the only problems that Jack Ruby had, although I suppose that this other problem that he was dealing with was not unrelated.

talking of course about psychiatric problems right on and he was taking preluden at this time which i think it's a stimulant oh yeah sort of in the category of anphetamines right and it sort of explains his demeanor because for lack of a better word he really does come off as being incredibly keyed up, keyed out. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was prescribed as a diet pill, an appetite suppressant, and was, I think, largely discontinued, withdrawn from the market back in the 1980s. Kind of like what the similar drug from, maybe from our listeners will remember better,

ephedra or fen-fen that a lot of people were taking for dietary reasons and creates heart problems it creates anxiety problems so jack ruby was suffering from some of those side effects and was therefore also prescribed anxiety medication so he was taking simultaneously uppers and downers and only good things, I think, could happen as a result of that. That's how you end up, you take uppers and downers, you end up sideways. Yeah. And so this sort of, I think, sheds a lot of light on his manic behavior. And even more so in the month leading up to the Kennedy assassination, right?

There is this 25 times increase in phone calls. that he's making to his mobster connections. And this is the anecdote where RFK eventually asked for a list of Ruby's call logs, as soon as the news broke about who Ruby was and what had happened. When he sees the logs, he basically cross-references them and it's like, you know, these are the same guys I have been prosecuting in my clampdown on the mob. Yeah, it's pretty unconsensual. controversial at this point to say that Jack Ruby was hitting the phones hard. And I don't think

it's really doubtful that he was also seeking assistance with his money problems and with his union problems. I don't think that that is in any way mutually exclusive to him arranging for some deeper activities with whomever was on the other end of these calls. We have this piece of evidence. We have the evidence of the calls, and we know who he was talking to. And it's funny, I'll just read a little passage of where he testified to the Warren Commission about this. And he was not asked, incidentally, by the Warren Commission about these calls.

He was brought this up completely unprompted and out of the blue. And this was after RFK had identified them, right? Like, these are weird. This is a weird connection. Yeah, I mean, he probably was aware or had been asked by the FBI about these calls or something. So it's not like the government didn't know about it. And he would have known that the government knew about it, but he wasn't asked about it. He's, in other words, he is testifying in this way to, in his mind, perhaps clear the record.

And what he says is, I had to make so many numerous calls that I'm sure you know of. Am I right? Because of trying to survive in my business, my unfair competition had been running certain shows that we were restricted to run by regulation of the union. and they violated all the rules of the union, and I didn't violate it. And consequently, I was becoming insolvent because of it. And all those calls were made with only, in relation to seeing if they can help out with the American Guild of Variety Artists. Does that confirm a lot of things you've heard?

Every person I have, every person I have called, and sometimes you may not even know a person intimately. You sort of tell them, well, you are stranded down here and you want some help if they know any official of the American Guilt, a variety artists, to help me because my competitors were putting me out of business. He's got his story straight on it. Yeah, I'm wondering, like, do you think Earl Warren knew what he was talking about at that point? Do you think the Warren Commission interrogators, they understood what he was saying? Well, it's funny because, and this is something we're going to get deeper into in a future episode, but when Earl Warren and Jerry Ford went down to interrogate Jack Ruby,

they explicitly excluded the two-man staff team who had been working on the Ruby case since day one of Leon Hubert and Bert Griffin. So Bert Griffin and Leon Hubert definitely would have known about it, but the question of whether Earl Warren would have gotten the memo on it, I think there's some doubt about that for sure. You want to talk about some of those phone calls and the guys on the other end of them? A lot of these will now be familiar names

since we laid out with Max, the cast of character, thoroughly in the last episode. Right. Yeah. So let's talk about who Jack Ruby was on the line with before the weekend of November 22nd to 24th. And sort of assess whether his rationale for sketchy phone calls and so many of them it holds up. So he called Barney Barker in Chicago on November 11th. Now Barker was a Hoffa enforcer who weighed 370 pounds.

So this is a big boy. That's a big boy. And Barker talked to Dave Yaris on November 21st. Remember Dave Yaris, he was another one. of Ruby's old Chicago friends who had some real violent crimes under his belt on that same day November 11th ruby called professional gambler Frank Goldstein now he hadn't spoken to Goldstein for 20 years before that yeah wonder what he's doing there And it's not only phone calls through which Ruby is networking and liaising with his old contacts from the Chicago mob scene.

So remember Paul Roland Jones, the guy who came up with all kinds of fascinating ways to ship opium, including in metal pipes in a joint venture with a couple of the ruby siblings and also in dehydrated eggs through his poultry farms. Well, it just so happened that Paul Roland Jones made a trip to Dallas out the blue on that same day, November 11th, and he was not alone on that trip. Another fellow who I don't think we've talked about, Alexander Gruber, also made a trip to Dallas at the same time. So as I understand it, the first to arrive was Gruber on November 11th, and Ruby described Gruber in his testimony, said,

I had known him in the days back in Chicago when we were very young, in a real tough part of Chicago. His name is Al Gruber. He was a bad kid in those days, but he is quite reformed. He is married and has a family, and I'm sure he makes a very legitimate livelihood at this time. What do you say, Dick?

What do you think about that? That's a, I would say, Mission Burrito amount of bullshit. Gruber, of course, at that point, had this long rap sheet involving false aliases, theft. His official story was that he's part of the scrap metal trade, which that sounds a lot like the old junk handler's union under the Teamster's umbrella. It's called Relevant Experience. and his business partner was a guy called Frank Matula and Matula served a stint in the federal pen on perjury charges

I'm presuming that it was for not snitching and he was rewarded upon release by a handpicked seat in the Teamsters organization arranged by Jimmy Hoffa himself yeah I would say that Al Gruber if he is business partners in scrap metal with a fella who is personally placed by Hoffa in a leadership position in the Teamsters after doing a stint, I would say that Jack Ruby's statement that Gruber is fully reformed and legitimate, three Pinocchio's Doesn't pass. Yeah, it's a big old lie.

And the reason why Ruby states that Gruber came to Dallas is again interesting in its questionable veracity. So what Ruby says is that Gruber happened to come through a couple nights prior to November 22nd to try to interest me or for, or five days prior to that to interest me in a new kind. You know, you follow the story as I tell it. It is important, very important. It is on a new kind of machine that washes cars. You pay with tokens. It is a new thing.

I don't know if it faded out or not, but he left and went to California. But before he went to California, I promised him, my dashing dog. And, okay, this is an important little side story, the dog, right? Wasn't he breeding dogs where he had like a fixation on these dogs? He did, yeah. He had his little dog, Shiba, the Dash End, who he would breed with other dashins and give these pups away to people as favors or as presents. So he gave, or he promised to send Al Gruber a dog, and there's another Ruby associate who also gets a couple of dogs that we'll talk about in a minute.

And then, of course, Shiba, the dog, is part of his alibi on November 24th, but that would be getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. Right. So sticking with Al Gruber, Dick, you want to tell. why Al Gruber testified that he was in Dallas. Yeah, so the Warren Commission, of course, had followed up with Gruber. This was through the FBI. The commission didn't interview Gruber directly. Gruber told them that he just happened to stop through Dallas

as it was close to Joplin, Missouri, where he had some business. The only problem with that story is that Joplin is some 400 miles from Dallas. at least six hours drive each way. So I'm not buying it. Yeah, it's goofy as hell to say that you're just going to make a quick stop in Dallas from Joplin. And in fact, what is even more telling is that Gruber changed his story from November 1963 when he said he only stayed in Dallas for one night and part of the next day to his second interview in 1964 when more accurately he said he stayed there for several days these guys

hadn't seen each other in a long time and you know we can deduce what we will from this meetup because interestingly, Jones' explanation for why he was in Dallas was pretty similar. What Jones said was that he was in Alabama. And that was nearby to Dallas, so he came on down as well to go and meet up with his very old buddy.

And so the three of them are together on the 12th. I think that Jones arrives on the 12th of November. And they all get together on the 12th. And then they all get together again on the 13th. And sure enough, it was the first time that these guys had all been together since way back in 47 when Ruby and Jones were in Dallas. trying to bribe the sheriff and set the mob up for an easy life in North Texas. So just to put a fine point on it, right?

Like, these are mob enforcers, potential mob hitmen, old-time friends of Jacks, and they're all in Dallas, what, a little more than a week before the assassination of, of President Kennedy. It's a interesting time for a reunion. Okay, you want to talk about candy? Candy bar.

Well, I'd call my baby Candy bar because she's the sweetest thing you ever saw by far but you ain't saying nothing till you see my candy bar. Twist! So on that same day,

November 12th, Amidst these meetings with Gruber and Jones, Jack Ruby makes another call to another mob associate. This one is a lovely lady by the name of Candy Bar. He calls her at her home in Edna, Texas. You see, Candy Bar had been on the club circuit since the early 50s, in which capacity she had come into contact with Ruby. And as one does, when one meets with success on that circuit, she became a mob girlfriend.

She specifically got romantically involved with L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen, who is another one of these Jewish businessmen who is out there on the West Coast, connected back to the Italians in the big cities, Chicago and New York, right? I think we've mentioned Mickey Cohen in the previous parts of this series. And Candy Bar got really unlucky in the 1950s because she was prosecuted for marijuana a possession. And notwithstanding the best efforts of her high-profile attorney, she was sentenced to three years in prison which she served and was thereafter barred from dancing in the clubs because of her parole conditions. And that's why she found herself in Edna, Texas, where her

family was from originally. Dick, you want to say who her lawyer was, her high-profile attorney? Oh, yeah. None other than Melvin Belli, who would of course go on to lead Ruby's trial defense team. Small world. Oh, yeah. I think it's pronounced Beli. I've heard it more pronounced beli than belly b e l-l-i if the listener wants to look him up known as the king of torts and we'll have a ton more to say about him later so not going to bog down there now candy bar incidentally she was the other recipient of dashed puppies from jack ruby that he had personally driven two puppies down to her in Edna and left them with her as a gift to keep her company in her laying low at the family farm. And so I don't know that this phone call to candy

is necessarily mob related or if it's showing a nicer, kinder side of Jack Ruby, you know, checking in on this woman who he felt bad for and had kind of helped out. But the next couple of calls that he makes are almost certainly connected to nefarious deeds. Yeah, well, there's Leonard Patrick, who he called on 1114. This guy is another Chicago guy. His real name is Leonard Levine. And yet again. a Chicago enforcer, hitman, and sort of a boss in the gambling scene in Chicago.

He did time in the pen for covering up protection rackets. So back to sort of business with this one. Oh, yeah. We talked a good deal about Lenny Patrick in the last episode, and yeah, this guy was. most definitely a violent guy, no doubt about it. And another violent guy was Jack Ruby himself and his violence I got the better of him on the very same day, November 14th, that he had spoken with Lenny Patrick. He got into a fight with a patron at the carousel and pulled a gun on him. But

even at that time, thanks to Jack Ruby's deep connections with the Dallas police, there was nothing that came of that. The fight got broken up. I do believe the police were called to the scene, but of course, Ruby was not met with any sort of consequence. And what's even more interesting is that the Warren report does note that Ruby, got into an argument on the 14th, but it does not mention that he pulled a gun, which is kind of a head scratcher. But anyways, after the 14th, he's clearly, his temperature is rising, the heat is

turning up on him, and the phone calls are not doing the trick. So what does Jack Ruby do? He gets behind the wheel of his car which according to people that had ridden in that car was stank of dog shit and the seats were ripped up by the doggies and it was dog food on the floor and it was just a disgusting place to be but nevertheless jack ruby felt comfortable tucking in for the long Hall. Where did our boy go? Sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. And he landed there on the 17th of November. And he went right to the Thunderbird, which of course is a hotel and casino, I think. Yeah, the Thunderbird was a hotel and casino. It was one of the very first resorts to open on the Vegas strip.

It was known for its Navajo-themed decor, very fitting for the new wave of Western expansion and settler colonialism out in that direction by the mob. And it was fronted at the time that it opened by none other than the lieutenant governor of Nevada, Clifford Jones, who, evidently, right, served as a front for the mob money behind it. Most notably, the most famous Jewish mobster of all time, Meyer Lansky.

And there was a whole investigation into it in the Tax Commission in Nevada. But this is where Jack Ruby went. And who was he visiting at The Thunderbird? Oh, that was Lewis McWilley, of course. The listener may recall, I hope the listener will recall that Lewis McWillie was Jack Ruby's friend who invited him to Cuba in 1959, where McWilli had been running the casino at the Tropicana down there, another Lansky property, and, of course, was forcibly relocated to the U.S., where he was set up with a plum gig in

Vegas by the mobsters that he worked for. McWillie and Ruby, you'll recall, visited Santos Traficante in prison in Cuba, and shortly thereafter Traficante was released and repatriated back to the United States, just in time to meet with the CIA and become one of the plotters alongside the CIA for the assassination of I get a real kick out of the way that Ruby characterized McWillie in his Warren

Commission testimony and he says I idolized McWillie he's a pretty nice boy and I happen to be idolizing him yeah he's such a weird guy you know very eccentric

He mentioned that only in connection with the Cuba business. The November 17th Las Vegas trip was never brought up by the Warren Commission interrogators, and Ruby didn't bring it up either. So it's just totally absent from the Warren report. And that's a pretty big blank spot on the map, especially in light of the good, good. good news that Ruby brings home with him to Dallas just two days later. Right. He goes to his tax attorney and says that a friend, he doesn't say who, was going to handle his substantial tax debts. On November 21st, Ruby goes to Joe Campesie's restaurant.

Campesies in Dallas for dinner. Now this is a restaurant that is I would say like famous in Dallas now but at the time was a famous mob hangout I believe and Joe he said to have known Ruby since 1948 a statement he later retracted Joe was also Ruby's first visitor in jail. But I think for me, this seems like, you know, it's November 21st, and having solved his tax debts, Ruby wants to have a night out on the town. Yeah, I think that that's right. But Jack doesn't go home after Campesies.

Instead, he stays out and heads on over to another club in town. He meets up with his friend Lawrence Myers at the cabana. It's a lounge in Dallas at a hotel. And I don't think there's that much to say about this. Lawrence Myers seems like a businessman of sorts not necessarily mobbed up. Some researchers have speculated that in fact at the cabana that jack ruby may have been meeting with this other guy who was staying at the cabana who's another kind of name that gets thrown around as a potential assassin a guy by the name

of eugene hale brading aka jim brayden who was arrested but released without charge in the Daltex building, which is another tall building right next to the school book depository on Dealey Plaza on the 22nd. But all that's really known is that he was arrested there, that he was a longtime convict. The British author Anthony Summers has linked Braden to Carlos Marcello, Santos Traficante, and David Ferry from the New Orleans, organized crime, milieu. And so Brayden was staying on the night of the 21st in the Cavana Motel, the same place where Jack Ruby was with his buddy Larry Myers.

And the main thing that's suspicious to me about this whole affair is that Jack Ruby never mentioned going out with Larry Myers on the night of the 21st. However, Larry Myers testified under oath that this meeting did take place. So it's just another weird divergence in the narratives. So just to recap, because now we're about to get in to the day of the Kennedy assassination. And just to tie up what we've covered so far, building on the foundation that we laid in the last two episodes, ruby is going out of his mind with his debts with his business problems he's getting on the phone he's taken visitors from scraping the bottom of the barrel of all of his mafia rolydecks right he is trying to involve anyone and everyone who will give him the time of day to help him solve his

problems and he appears to have met with success at latest by the time that he visits Lou McWilley in Las Vegas, comes back, tells his lawyer, our problems are solved, and don't forget his problem here, the tax problem, we're talking about in the neighborhood of half a million dollars. And so it's pretty indicative that he has worked out some kind of a deal. And while it's not, direct evidence and we probably never will have a sure fire smoking gun i think there's a very reasonable case to be made that ruby agrees to do some favor in return for this promised payday windfall that he is heralding to his lawyer and to his mobbed-up buddy Joe Campesie in Dallas.

Let's just talk about what happens on November 22nd because I think this informs, or I should say illustrates a real eerie statement that Ruby gives to the Warren Commission. at the time of the assassination Jack is at the Dallas Morning News the newspaper for Dallas and he's placing an ad in the paper

Right he as I understand it would do this from time to time just in the ordinary course of business to promote his club and also just like money is changing hands constantly between Ruby and the police for a wide variety of purposes and solidifying and cementing his

friendship to the Dallas Police Department, the same goes for the local reporters. So even though Ruby was not a fixture in the media by any means, he nevertheless made it a priority to be on good paper with the local reporters. and be known to them. So this appearance was likewise noted by many impresence there. And once he gets news of the assassination, he goes ahead and he closes his club for the whole weekend and spends the weekend driving around to see who was open,

what clubs were open, establishments were doing business, just to basically harangue them, chide them for staying open when the president has just been killed. He then goes on to visit Parkland Hospital. That's where Kennedy went to after he was shot. And he goes to Parkland where he sees and he speaks with Seth Cantor minutes before JFK is announced dead. Now, Cantor was a

Dallas reporter for Scripps Howard and Ruby tells him about his plan to close his clubs and he does so with tears in his eyes. At Parkland Hospital, minutes after the tragedy, one member of the press call who knew Jack Ruby well was to have an

extraordinary encounter, reporter, Seth Cantor. I entered, there was a group of nurses and doctors standing around with a lot of concern, and Jack Ruby came up to me. He said something to the effect that isn't this just terrible, and he looked as if he was extremely distressed. I shook hands with him, and I had known him previously, and Ruby asked me what I thought about his closing his places of business. for a day or two out of concern to what had happened

and I told him I thought that was a good idea and to please excuse me I had to go on I guess that encounter with Ruby took maybe 25, 30 seconds of course Ruby later denies having been at Parkland to the Warren Commission and the Warren Commission

never asked him about the conversation he had with Seth Cantor right and to follow on the point about Ruby being known commodity to the Dallas newsman, Seth Cantor knew Jack Ruby. He had familiarized himself with Jack and this discrepancy between his own experience of seeing Ruby at Parkland on November 22nd very shortly after the shooting. And Ruby's official position that he did not. go to Parkland at that time, puts a real spur into Seth Cantor.

It was very clear to me who I had talked to and who I had called by name and who would call me by name and who I had shaken hands with and everything. But when the Warren Commission report came out, they said that probably under the stress of everything that was going on, that I most likely was confused and that I talked to Ruby. at the police station several hours later. Ruby denied he'd been at Parkland and the Warren Commission believed him rather than Seth Cantor. I was dismayed when I picked up my copy

of the Warren Commission report and discovered what they had decided about my testimony. And among other things, I immediately began to wonder who else they had talked to, who they chose not to believe. And Seth Cantor resultantly became really the first, person to dig deeply into the Jack Ruby narrative. His book about Jack Ruby was the first and

one of the best really investigations into Ruby's whole milieu, his whole upbringing, his mafia connections. And it certainly has been a major source, although not the only source of information that we have relied on in this episode and in this series more broadly. And that's not the last we'll hear from Seth Cantor, but just wanted to make that note because Cantor's testimony here about having seen Ruby at Parkland is, I think, extremely credible. and even Warren Commission defender, Bert Griffin, conceded later in his life that, yes, Cantor was telling the truth and Ruby was lying, even though at the time of the Warren report,

he was unwilling to advocate for inclusion of that version of events in the report. And so the official narrative, as told by the Warren Commission, does not place Ruby at Parkland at that time. But I think Fourth Reich archaeology following Seth Cantor does. I mean, he's a busy boy. What else does he do? Well, he gets back on the horn, gets back on them phones real quick. So Kennedy's pronounced dead around like one o'clock or so by 237, Jack Ruby is back on the phone and he is calling up his buddy Al Gruber who had visited him

just about 10 days prior and remember before that visit they had not seen each other in like 15 years and now not only are they spending a couple of days together in Dallas but Gruber is if not the one of the first calls that Ruby makes after the assassination. Now, a local TV news reporter, Vic Robertson and a news editor, Ronald Jenkins, said they saw Ruby at the police station around five or six in the afternoon. There's some confusion on the time. It might have been a little bit earlier, a little bit later, and these reporters, these news guys, they see him just loitering about in a happy mood and trying to get in the room that Oswald was being interrogated in, but obviously he was unsuccessful.

And that listener, you might recall a couple of minutes ago when we're talking about Ruby's prescriptions. It's like when he's crying to Seth Cantor, maybe the downers had the better of him and then pops a couple of prelodin and his back in his manic mode and itching to get close to the alleged

assassin right there in the police station and there's more reason besides those two news guys to believe that indeed Ruby was at the Dallas police building on Friday evening

because a Another Dallas cop who had known Jack Ruby for at least five years also testified that he was at the station that same evening. Now Ruby's official version is a little bit different. He certainly does not say that he went to the police building on Friday night. What does he say, Dick? this is his alibi is that what he was at eva's having dinner and then he went to the synagogue yep and so the story is that he goes to the synagogue and talks to rabbi hillel silverman and despite being so upset about jfk's assassination all ruby says to the rabbi was thanks for visiting my sister in the hospital yeah and it's

funny because both of these components of his alibi for Friday night are pretty sus. So with respect to going to Eva's house, Eva changed the hours in various interviews. I think there was a difference between the time she said he came over when she was first interviewed by the FBI versus what she later told the Warren Commission. was effectively trying to carve out a large window of time to account for Jack's presence on Friday night. And as a good sister, it's not hard to attribute to her a motive to insist that Jack was with her because, of course, for his murder trial, the big point of contention was premeditation, the element of premeditation.

So the more that Ruby is stalking Oswald, and the more that he's hanging around the police building, and the more that he is indicating some premeditated intent to kill Oswald, the less of a chance he has to beat the capital murder one charge. And so Eva, understandably, is trying to be a good sister and vouch for him. And then at the synagogue, the rabbi himself said that Ruby didn't show up until near the end of services. And he, you know, saw him walk in halfway through the sermon. It wasn't there at the starting gun.

And so, again, you've got to wonder, is Ruby trying to manufacture? an alibi for himself by sneaking into temple so that he can account for more of his time on that Friday night. It's also interesting, as you noted, Dick, that Ruby does not express to the rabbi this emotional anguish that he apparently had been showing earlier in the day when he was at parkland right and that goes to the point about trying to beat that murder one charge right you didn't want to show any distress about the kennedy assassination anything that would lead him down that road of premeditated murder now we do know that around 11 that night ruby did go to the police precinct where oswald was being held and he

milled around a bit. This is the story where he brings the cops a bunch of sandwiches. Yep. Yeah, he always loved to bring sandwiches to people. That was his great olive branch of Jack Ruby to the world. So he picked up a bunch of sandwiches and that was his excuse for going to the police building that he wanted to take the sandwiches. But when he got there, he, he, didn't end up distributing the sandwiches. I guess the cops told him that they already ate. And so he hangs around and kind of poses as a journalist among the press pool. And we'll play the clip, but this is the famous scene where Henry Wade, the district

attorney and police chief Jesse Curry are giving their first. big press conference about Oswald. And this is where one of them says that Oswald was part of the free Cuba committee, and Jack Ruby from the back of the room chimes in and corrects them to say that, no, it was the fair play for Cuba committee. If some of you will recall, he asked a question from out here in the audience or answered a question. You're standing right back here, and I didn't know who he was.

I thought he was a member of the press, and he told me as we walked out of here that he was a nightclub operator here. What question did he ask? What question did he ask? I don't remember, but he... Maybe it was an answer, but he said something. Now, the Free Cuba Committee, of course,

was an anti-Castro right-wing organization, whereas, as we all know, the fair play for Cuba Committee was ostensibly a pro-Castro. organization, the one that Oswald was leafleting for in New Orleans in the summer of 63. He didn't give any motive since he denies them both. I don't know whether he has or not. His mother has been here and his brother has been here all afternoon. Yes, he does.

Is he a member of any Communist front organization? That I can't say at the present time. Any other organizations that he belongs to that you know of? Well, the only one I mentioned was the Free Cuba Movement or whatever that. Fair play for Cuba, I believe it was that. Why do you think he would want to kill the president? The only thing I do is take the evidence presented to jury and I'm I don't pass on why he did it or anything else.

We're just asking to prove that he did it, which I think we have. That night, he apparently had told the cops and the FBI that he had his gun with him, right? He's in the same room as Oswald, and he turns and he tells them that he had a gun on him. And later on, when he's testifying before the Warren Commission, he says he lied about that because he thought it made it seem like he didn't plot to kill Oswald. And that's like, it's funny reasoning. It's funny logic. Yeah.

I wasn't planning to kill him because I had a gun with me and I could have killed him. And the fact that I didn't means that I wasn't plotting to kill him. That's the logic. Right. If you're, yeah. If I was plotting to kill him, I would have killed him the first time I was in the room with him. And again, on this point. point, Seth Cantor provides some helpful clarity because he was also in the room, of course,

and what he says is Ruby didn't have anything like a clean shot at Oswald in that first instance. And sure, he could have bum rushed him from the back of the room, but it was very crowded. He was actually standing up on a table, Ruby was, and way in the back, to get a good line of sight. And so, you know, it's a toss-up. Maybe he could have killed him, but either way, it's consistent with him plotting a course here and maybe even plotting a course in hopes that somebody else will get to Oswald before he does because anything could have been happening at that time. Yeah, it's also funny.

he's like on Friday night he's like sort of feeling the room out he's like talking to the cops and if he's like you know I got a gun right now just see what their reactions are like maybe they're down with it yeah exactly exactly because at the end of the day remember Oswald was alleged to have also killed officer JD Tippett and as we all know about cops when you kill one of their own, that is a pretty big no-no in the law enforcement community. And it's just as good of odds as any that one of the Dallas cops would find a way to essentially Jeffrey Epstein, Lee Harvey Oswald, in the Dallas jail. so where does ruby go after this press conference the night is young it's like what a little after midnight

but ruby is loaded up on uppers and he is not calling it a night not even close right yeah no he so he takes the sandwiches that were rejected by the cops and he takes them to k l i f um and that's the radio local radio and on jack's way from the police station to klif to drop the sandwiches he meets in the parking lot with a Dallas policeman who was well known to him and that cop was well known to him because he was married to one of the strippers that worked at the carousel club and the testimony differs a little bit on how long the conversation lasted, but what they all agree on is that Ruby got into the car with them, they sat in a parking lot, and spoke for somewhere between one to two hours in the car. And in this conversation, the cop is fuming about Oswald having

killed Tippett and is telling Ruby that he thinks somebody ought to cut Oswald to ribbons and all this while Ruby is sitting here captive audience letting these uppers perk his ears blast his pupils wide open and he's taken it all in then he drops the sandwiches quick at KLIF. His buddy, The Weird Beard, was one of the big DJs over there, and I guess he had actually spoken with KLIF reporters at the police station during the press conference. In fact, he suggested to The Weird Beard that he asked Henry Wade if Oswald was insane. He also helped a New York radio newsmen get on the phone with Henry Wade and he goes and brings Henry Wade over to talk to this reporter on the phone like underscores just how bold Jack Ruby was during this period

in inserting himself into the action. Remember what Friday night when I asked you to do a interview with me on the phone and you had another call and Ruby was hanging around in the background. You were on the phone, and I said, and then you had to go away, and I asked Ruby, because he seemed to me like a detective, he seemed to be all over this place. I said, would you see if you could get him on the phone over to him here or now? He went around, and he got you, and he brought you over my telephone. It might have been where he told me who he was. I didn't know who he was either when he...

It looked to me like your good friend, I don't know. It kind of could cut both ways. People that insist that he was a lone nut will say, well, look at how irrational. at how strange his behavior is that he's doing this weird stuff. But on the other hand, it's like, well, look at how involved he is and how keen he is to shape the narrative in certain ways. So there's a wide array of implications that you could draw from any one of these pieces of evidence that we're putting out there.

and later on we're going to do a little speculating in our own right but for now we really want to get this out in narrative and of course we can't help ourselves from commenting a little bit along the way and this is when he makes his way to yet another media outlet all right so now it's two in the morning and he has finished his work at KLIF. He goes back to the Times Herald to inquire about the anti-Kennedy black border ad in the paper that was signed by Bernard Weissman, chairman of the American Fact Finding Committee. This paranoid delusion of the persecution by anti-Semites begins. What is the American Fact Finding Committee? Apparently not really much of a thing.

I guess it's some front for basically Texas oil money. This was the famous ad. It says, Welcome to Dallas, Mr. Kennedy, and has a bunch of John Birch Society talking points. And Ruby perceived that ad, and especially the black border around it, as signifying a threat against,

President Kennedy's life. So it becomes central to this delusion that Jack Ruby entertains that the assassination of President Kennedy is some set up to blame the Jews and to initiate a pogrom in America against Jewish Americans. And he believes that Bernard Weissman is a fake name and it's one that was made up by John Bircher right-wingers to carry out this false flag plan. But nevertheless, again, he's all over the map emotionally

because even as he goes to the Times Herald and he's concerned about getting to the bottom of who's responsible for this ad, this is one of my favorite scenes of the entire Jack Ruby narrative because it's just too comical almost to believe. So Jack Ruby, in addition to his clubs, had some side hustles from time to time, and one of the side hustles was a little exercise devolved, called the twist board where you basically stand on it it's like a stationary device and you do the twist

and so you can like move your hips and your legs and balance at the same time and jack ruby while he's there on very serious business at the dallas times harold brings in a twist board and starts demonstrating it to the reporters and the secretaries and the typists and everyone assembled he's like dancing the twist you could imagine this guy sweating fucking bullets he's been up at this point like for you know it's 3 o'clock in the morning yeah and it yeah president kennedy just died it's incredible it's it's such a wild scene and his night is still long from over because at 3 a.m., he rustles up the homies and is time for another quest. But we're going to catch up with Jack Ruby and his posse as they embark on their next quest next week.

That's right. That does it for this week's episode on the free feed. If you want to listen to the full episode, it's available right now on patreon.com. So please do mosey on over to patreon.com slash fourth rike archaeology. Make a donation and you can have access to the entirety of You Don't Know Jack, Ruby, Part 3, today. Otherwise, until next week, on behalf of Dawn, I'm Dick, saying farewell and keep digging. Thank you. Thank you.