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

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

As promised, this is the second half of our play-by-play of Jack Ruby's manic wild ride leading up to his murder of Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV on November 24, 1963. We pick up right where we left off, deep into the night of November 22, with Ruby taking his roommate ("boyfriend"?), George Senator, and his employee-cum-tenant, Curtis Laverne "Larry" Cravard, on a quest to collect evidence of what he perceived to be an antisemitic false flag attempt to blame the Jews for Kennedy's assassination.We trace Jack's bizarre activities over the subsequent 32 hours leading up to the fatal moment at 11:21 AM on Sunday morning in the basement of the Dallas Police building. We get into some light speculation over what really happened, and what was going on in Jack's drug-addled, sleep-deprived, and desperate mind in the most decisive day and a half of his short life.Remember, if you want to hear the full 2+ hour Part 3 in its entirety, head on over to Patron.com/fourthreicharchaeology and sign up. We will be back soon with Max Arvo to cover the somehow-even-stranger events of the final years in Ruby's life, including his "treatment" by a team of spooked-up psychiatrists helmed by none other than Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West himself.

We last left off our narrative from Don DeLillo's novel Libra with Jack Ruby deep in late-night conversation with the composite mafia character Jack Carlinsky. The two were talking about a range of subjects from their shared identity as the children of Jewish immigrants from a Polish village to the need, pressed by the character Carmine who stands in. stands in for New Orleans mafia boss Carlos Marcello to get rid of Lee Harvey Oswald. Jack, I'm sure you hear the same thing in the streets I've been here in almost two days. The man who kills that communist bastard is saving the city of Dallas from world shame. This is what they're saying in the streets. What is Carmine saying? Good point.

Because here you have an ally. Here you have protection and support. Carmine himself brought up the subject of the loan. I think you'll be delighted with the terms. And for this? For this, you undertake to rid the city. In other words... Jack, you'll floater all your life.

This is a chance you put your fist around something solid. You want to end your life selling potato peelers in plain old Texas? field something make a name so what you're saying jack take him off the calendar clip him

turn him into a crowd carlinski said sadly he unwrapped the cigar but didn't light it he looked old and drawn he sat like a patient in a waiting room preoccupied and tense hunched forward

on the sofa Carmine is offering that we completely forgive the loan. We make the loan, then we cancel the debt forever. $40,000 deliverable at first convenience. It's just a question of how soon we expect very soon. We don't expect a major delay here. What about my clubs? We look after them in the meantime.

I have every confidence you'll see a rebirth. Think of the people who will want to say they paid a visit to the carousel. Jack Ruby's Club, who took out Oswald. To see what kind of atmosphere? Out of town is in total droves. You own a gun, Jack? What do you think? Call Mine is getting full cooperation from the boys in Dallas.

They have people they render assistance in the police. The police are going to move, Oz. Oswald out of the building via the basement. It is for some time after 10 a.m. There are two ramps to the street. Main Street and Commerce. I'm saying, Jack, the ramps will be heavily guarded. The building entrances closed off.

The accordion gate between the two parts of the building will be locked. The power will be off in the elevators, except for the jail elevator, which they'll use to bring Oswald down. could probably walk right down a ramp. Wait, I'm saying. I'm a known face in the building. Not tomorrow you can't walk down a ramp. They are letting reporters with press cards, and that's it.

A limited number, mainly picture taken. This transfer is very delicate. They have extra men coming in. They're determined it goes off without a hitch. Then how do I get in? I'm saying, Jack, there's an alley that runs along the east side of the building. You're inconspicuous there Halfway down there's a door

In a new part of the building A municipal annex This door is always locked Except tomorrow we arrange it's open There's no guard on the door You go in the building Once you're inside you see elevators and stairs You take the stairs

They're fire stairs This is how you get in the basement How do they bring him out? Handcuffed to a detective. Another detective on the other side. What kind of gun do you have? Snubb Nose 38. It fits in a pants pocket.

You'll have the heaviest hard on in America. Carlinsky laughed bleakly, a growl down in the throat. Jack sat behind the desk looking blank. The conversation ended there. There. Jack was alone for an hour figuring out how to meet recent wages and bills without the weekend receipts. This kind of petty arithmetic tightened his skull. He looked in his address book for a number. Then he called Russell Shively, his detective friend, at home. It was after 3 a.m. Jack listened to the lonely phone ringing.

Russell. Yes, who's this? Jack paused. They're going to kill that bastard Oswald on the police basement tomorrow during the transfer to the county jail. But who the hell is this? He paused again, then put down the phone. 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. It's one huge complex or combine. 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 conspiracy, foreign or domestic. The Warren Commission was science. 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 on. His job, he said, was to protect the Western way of life. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders the more easy victims of a big lie than a small. For example, we're the CIA. See there's so long this is... It usually takes a national crisis. Freedom can never be secure. Pearl Harbor.

A lot of killers. We've got a lot of killers. Why you think our country's so innocent? No, he has a model. The CIA. This is coming. This is forthrightish is coming. Archaeology.

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. This is side B of part three of our series on Rupee. That means that this is a split episode, the entirety of which is available at patreon.com

slash forthrightic archaeology. If you are willing and able to drop us a little donation, please feel free to head on over there. But if not, we still love you. We still want to give you that great content that you have come to expect from Fourth Reich Archaeology and the upcoming denouement of Jack Ruby's manic episode kicked off into high gear on November 22, 1963, ought not to disappoint. Before we get back into it, the obligatory thank you to everyone for tuning in and invitation to drop us a line at 4th Reichpod at gmail.com or on Twitter or Instagram

at Fourth Reich Pod. We love to hear from you, and we hope that you will help us to spread the word about this project of ours as we come up on our one-year anniversary. Recall that at the end of Part A, we had followed Jack Ruby through his activities on the day of the president's assassination. Remember, he went to Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy's body had been taken, and then, then spent a good deal of time between the Dallas Police Department, the media buildings, the Dallas Morning News and the Dallas Times Herald, as well as radio station KLIF, and the local

nightclub scene to make sure that they, like his carousel club, were closing down to respect the tragedy that had happened in the city of Dallas that day. Jack was also experiencing wild mood swings on the 22nd, from the tearful sadness he showed Seth Cantor at Parkland to the almost giddy mania that he showed at KLIF conducting a demonstration of his patented twist board. He left the station around 3 a.m., and that's where we'll catch up with him now. his night is still long from over because at 3 a.m., he rustles up the homies, and is time for another quest. Right, they go out to find Weissman, right? Yep.

Now it's like 3 in the morning, and they're driving around town trying to find this Weissman guy. Yeah, the they here is George Senator, who is Jack Ruby's roommate and a guy who constantly referred to Jack Ruby as my boyfriend, but then when asked if they were gay, said, no, I just call everybody my boyfriend. Make of that what you will. And the other homie in the car, the guy, Behind the wheel is a fellow by the name of Larry Crayfard, who we'll talk a little bit more about later. For now, suffice it to say that he was the bartender at the carousel, who was at the time living at the carousel on a cot in Jack Ruby's office there.

But you could picture the scene. Jack and George, these are two paunchy, middle-aged guys. and Larry Crayfard is a guy in his 20s who's Scroni. He is literally a carny. He's missing his two front teeth. Scrony may not be the right word. Wiery is a better word for him. Former military guy.

And the three of them driving around, middle of the night, looking for Bernard Weissman. And rather than find Bernard Weissman, they come upon a billboard that has gone up on the side of a building in Dallas. And Dick, you better tell the listeners what this billboard says. The billboard says impeach Earl Warren. And I think Jack even takes a picture of it, right? Oh, yeah. He takes several pictures of the same billboard.

with Larry Crayfard's Polaroid camera. And what stood out about this billboard to Jack Ruby is that, like the ad in the Dallas Times Herald, it also had a black border around it. And so, according to George Senator, Ruby said, This is the work of the John Birch Society, or the Communist Party, or maybe both. at 3 a.m. all hopped up on am. Yep.

It's pretty safe to say that from the beginning, Ruby had this sort of black op false flag idea floating around in his head, right? He was willing to think that. Right. And that's pretty important, I think, that it was within his mental landscape to consider conspiracy. with all that we know about Jack Ruby and his connections, just think about why that might be. You could think about his mental projector, his racing mind must have been playing back all these scenes from his involvement with these guys, right? Gun running in Cuba,

working with people who had been with Castro before they were against him. It was all a part of his thinking that there was something going on that was bigger than himself and he wasn't quite sure what that is. This is the foundation of what Warren Commission staffer, Bert Griffin, who went on to really defend hardcore the commission's findings used to describe Jack Ruby. He called Jack Ruby the very first conspiracy theorist of the Kennedy assassination. So he's positing a world where Jack Ruby's conspiracy theorizing is not indicative of some involvement or some reflection on his own mafia experiences that, as we discussed in the last,

last episode, also intersect with the CIA's assassination attempts against Castro in Cuba? Burke Griffin doesn't clock that piece of it. He just believes, like any good defender of the official narrative, that, oh, he's the first conspiracy theorist, therefore he's a crazy nut and is totally illogical and susceptible to do just about anything without any cogent explanation, therefore. I think that is an extremely narrow-minded way to look at all this that shuts out a massive amount of the evidentiary record that we've put forward, and I really think Burke Griffin is, if not knowingly, lying about this stuff,

just so deeply personally invested in the official narrative about which he's written like three books, I think, and gotten plenty of cash from speaking gigs and all the way down the line. Yeah, and I mean, at the same time, though, like, Jack Ruby is sort of the perfect person to be attuned to this on a sort of sensory level to be able to pick up that maybe there's something else at play. Right. He's been steeped in the mob world for so long. He knows how they work. And, you know, quite frankly, the intelligence agencies work in a very similar way. And his antenna are out. And he's really trying to pick up the signal. Yeah. And in fact, it bears mentioning that one of the Ruby brothers, his brother Sam, who we mentioned, but I don't think

talked too much about, his brother Sam Ruby, was in Army Intelligence during World War II. And his role in Army Intelligence was infiltration ops, sciops, to infiltrate both the communist allies of the Americans and Nazi saboteurs who were active in the U.S. And he communicated his reports to his superior officers to letter through letters to his brother Jack. So he would write these letters to Jack Ruby that were deliberately coded and meant for a military audience. And it's never really clear whether Jack Ruby ever received these letters or if it was just a total pretense. But the fact that Jack Ruby was even as a very young

man being used as a foil, as a basically a straw man, a front for intelligence. operations and psychological operations is another one of these pile of facts that are part of the evidence that stack up a mile high and draw extreme suspicion. Yeah. Almost to the point of non-belief, of unbelievability. Yeah. You can draw from them. I mean, a pretty strong inference can be drawn. hot. But now it's 6.30 in the morning. The sun is going to be up any minute. The birds are chirping.

He's been up, what, 24 hours at least? Yep. What does he do? Well, he drops Larry Crayfard back off at the Carousel Club, and he goes back home with George Senator to their shared apartment, although they did sleep in separate rooms, or they at least had separate rooms. and he gets a little bit of shut-eye. A very little bit of shut-eye, because at 8 a.m., after, like, at most an hour of sleep,

Larry Crayfard wakes Jack Ruby up with a phone call because the dogs are barking, and Crayfart has run out of dog food. And Jack is not happy to be woken up. So he chews Larry out over the phone, really gives it to him, real tongue-lashing. And according to Crayfard, the lack of respect was so great that it influenced Larry to pack up his few belongings and piece the fuck out of town. He leaves Dallas right at that time, 8 a.m., 8.30 a.m. on Saturday, November 23rd, so that by the time it all pops off with Jack the next day,

Larry Crayfard is out of Texas. He is on his way to another one of his very many stops on his very zigzaggy path in the journey of life. Now, maybe this is a good time to give a little bit more color. on old Laverne Crafart? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Crayfard, you sort of hit it. He was a real rambling man, you know, on the road, a beatnik of sorts, right? Well, he was a carny.

There's no, let's not mince words. He was a traveling man, and he was a stuntman. And he went all around the country doing. the things that Carnies do. He had many different children by many different women. He did not have two front teeth. And he was in the U.S. Army, not the Marines, the U.S. Army in his younger days. He told an amateur researcher named Peter Whitney in the 80s or 90s

that he had done some special forces work. in the Southeast Asia area while station in Germany in the late 1950s he apparently told Whitney that he had also worked as a mob hitman in San Francisco for a spell so that's this guy he has also been a subject of some disinformation you want to talk about the the disinformation yeah so Larry Craffard has kind of been floated around as everything from one of the guys on the grassy knoll or maybe in one of the other buildings, the depository or the Daltex building. Essentially, some people have pinned him as one of the shooters on November 22nd. I don't think that there's a ton of solid evidence.

to back that up, and the main piece of evidence that's often cited to deduce some guilty sensation around Larry Crayfard is this anecdote that holds that Larry left Dallas and said something like, they're not going to pin this on me at the time that he left. and there were also reports that Crayfard had been a master sniper in the Marines as part of his military service. He was not a Marine at all, and there's really nothing to suggest that he was a master sniper. There's just these much later stories told by this guy Peter Whitney, who apparently caught up with Larry Crayfard and was able to ask him some questions. But even if those stories are true, they don't really match perfectly this quote

that was once attributed to Gaten Fonzie that, you know, Crayfard was some kind of an assassin. All that being said, it's not impossible that Crayfard was telling the truth, that he had done some special forces work, that he was a hitman. I mean, you just can't put anything past a carney, you know, to any of our carney listeners out there, I hope you won't take offense, but you know your co-workers there in the carnival, you know what they get up to in the off time and in between carnivals. It's a lifestyle. So you couldn't really put anything past Larry Crayfard. But what you can say, is that it's certainly unusual that Jack Ruby trusted Krayfar to the extent that he did.

Because not only did Ruby let Krayfard crash at the carousel unsupervised, this is a cash business, remember, that Krayfard could have walked away, you walk away with the night's takings from the carousel club. And the already deeply indebted Jack Ruby goes that much further into the hole. So it's odd to me that he entrusted Crafard with the keys to the place. They had only met a few months earlier than November. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

Like, Crayfard shows up in Dallas in, like, mid to late 63. I think it was September. It seemed like he had a lot of trust in him, knew them for much longer than that. Hey, where'd they meet anyways? Oh, they met at a carnival, of course. Introduced by Eva Grant, Jack Ruby's sister, who, as we all know, had her own mob connections as well. And this is what makes me think that it's certainly not unlikely that Krayfard came with some kind of a recommendation, some kind of of a connection, which would tend to corroborate his story that he had mob ties out on the West Coast.

So that's possible that, you know, Larry Crafart doesn't just come with the shirt on his back, but he comes with some sort of a vouch from somebody in the organization. And it's even speculated that Crayfard was one of the Oswald. impersonators who, you know, there's all these stories about people who are not Lee Oswald in the Dallas area, in the lead up to November 22nd, who are, for example, taking these test drives of cars and driving really crazy and saying, my name's Lee Oswald and I'm about to get some money and then I'm going to drive so that I can know how to drive when I move back to Russia and you know going to gun ranges and shooting at other people's targets and saying

I'm Lee Oswald and I wish I could shoot at John Kennedy with this gun and just like saying the most red flag shit imaginable and using the name of Oswald and the reason why people believe that Krayfart could have been one of these guys is largely because Ruth Payne remember the woman with whom Marina Oswald was living in Irving, Texas, at the time of the assassination, she saw a picture of Crayfard and remarked the uncanny similarity between him and Oswald, at least when they both had their mouth closed, right, because Oswald did not have the missing teeth. And another eyewitness, one of the witnesses who called the police and said that she saw Oswald and Ruby in her diner where she worked, that woman probably saw Ruby with Crayfard because she described Oswald as having a certain scar on his face that Oswald didn't have, but Crayfard did. So there's some reason to think that at least his body type and, you know, maybe his hair and general appearance resembled Oswald enough that he could have been an Oswald impersonator.

But again, this is not something I would stake a hard claim on. I don't think it's backed up with real solid proof. I don't know. Do you have a take dick? No, not really. It doesn't seem like it goes anywhere either way. But at this point, Crayfart is out of the picture, though, right? And he, well, now he's dead, so we'll really never know the story. But as of, I should say, November 23rd that Saturday, he decides to skip town, right?

Yep. Yeah. So he's gone, and a very grumpy, sleep-deprived Jack Ruby is rolling out of bed in his apartment, Saturday morning. And he goes around town. He hits it early, right? He's zipping around between restaurants, goes to Dealey Plaza, goes to the police station, and he is seen, reported seen by multiple eyewitnesses. And here again, his sister Eva has an alibi form, said that Jack was with her at her apartment all afternoon.

Of course, there are those eyewitnesses that contradicted Eva's testimony. And it's here that we should just note that Oswald was scheduled to be transferred from Dallas on Saturday, but there was just too much traffic. A reporter said Ruby offered to call in a tip from the police building when the transfer happened. Yeah, so here again, doing the same thing that he did with KLIF from the police station the night before

trying to hook up the reporters that he was considered himself to be friends with with the cops. who he also considered himself to be friends with. So he's doing the same thing on Saturday. He's keeping an eye out for the Oswald transfer and is, again, the word to use to describe this is stalking. It's not a nice way to put it. He's hanging around to see what's going to happen.

And when that AM class, clock is, not inching, but zooming past midnight, is the extremely, extremely suggestive phone calls that Jack Ruby makes. Yeah, so now it's 2 a.m. Now we're close to, what, 48 hours, and maybe he's gotten three hours of sleep total? Probably less, yeah. Yeah, what, like, yeah, even maybe like 90 minutes. And so now it's 2 in the morning again. and he makes a couple phone calls, a couple of threatening phone calls to the deputy sheriff and to the FBI.

Or I should say, it's now 2 a.m. And the deputy sheriff and the FBI receive threatening phone calls. The FBI believe that there were two men making the call and that the caller purported to represent a committee. According to Lieutenant Billy Grammer, a man called the Dallas Police at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning, indicating that he knew the plan to transfer Oswald and warning were going to kill him. Grammer later identified the caller by voice as Jack Ruby.

I thought I recognized the voice, but at the same time, I could not put a a face or a name with a voice and as we talked he began telling me that uh we needed to change the plans on moving oswald from the basement that uh he knew of the plans to make the move and if we did not make a change he the statement he made precisely was we are going to kill him no senator then i turned it on and they were telling that jack ruby had killed oswald then i suddenly realized you know knowing Jack Ruby the way I did, this was the man I was talking to on the phone last night. At that time, I put the voice with the face, and I knew within myself that Jack Ruby is the one that made that call to me the night before. And I think it was obvious because he knew me,

and I knew him, and he called me by name over the telephone, and seeing this, and knowing what I knew and what he had said, then to me, it had to be Jack Ruby. he made the statement we are going to kill him which leads me to believe that this was not a spontaneous thing that happened on the spur of the moment he was watching Oswald coming out the door and all of a sudden he decided to shoot him I do not believe that I think this was a planned event

with him being the man to do the shooting yeah and the FBI call was so alarming as to have later been reported in a memo written up by director J. Edgar Hoover himself. And that memo reported that the night before Oswald's death, the Dallas FBI received a call from, quote, A man talking in a calm voice and saying he was a member of a committee organized to kill Oswald. The FBI then called the chief of the Dallas police to report

that threat at the time, in the middle of the night, that is, and again the next morning just to ensure that proper precautions were being taken to ensure Oswald's safety. And Hoover adds this little finger-pointing note in the memo, however, this was not done. Classic, classic finger-pointing. from John Edgar and once again it bears fast forwarding a little bit to the way that Ruby talks about these events later on so Ruby himself suggests how his interrogators should ask him about these phone calls for the purpose of his polygraph examination this is after

his Warren Commission testimony. And what he tells them is, Ask me if I made any calls before going to bed. What's wrong with that one, Dick? Yeah, it's like, what about after you go to bed? What about in the middle of the night? What if you have a phone next to your bed? Right?

The other one that gives me a laugh is, ask me if I received any calls between the time I went to bed and got up right yeah well that's not really what we're here for we want to know if you made any outgoing calls yeah exactly he didn't receive a call to make the threat he placed the call so again it's this evidence of consciousness of guilt, perhaps, right? The ways in which he tries to manipulate the evidentiary record that's developing suggests that he has something that he's trying to hide, at least as I look at it. Right.

And we don't really know his activities until Sunday morning, but I think it's safe. to say he didn't get a full night's sleep. Yeah. Come around 8 a.m. Sunday morning, he didn't suddenly decide that it was time to rest. Strict security precautions have been exercised from the very beginning and have been even increased this morning as fear arises and grows stronger that someone may attempt to take the life of the man accused of murdering the president of the United States. Inside the basement here at Dallas Police Headquarters, guards are stationed at points all across the inside of the basement.

All incoming cars throughout the morning have been carefully checked. Even the police vehicles have been searched, and no one who is not a member of the press and not able to show an identification can enter the basement. On Sunday morning, Ruby went to the Western Union office on Main Street. next to the door to the Dallas Municipal Building and police headquarters. Outside the building, a large force of heavily armed police have kept a constant ring around Dallas City Hall. And a comparatively small group of spectators are now gathered across from the basement entrance from which the armored car will depart. Security precautions have been tightened more and more as the morning has been tightened.

has worn on four minutes after the money order was time stand he somehow entered the basement of the police headquarters i was well spent a restful night and got perhaps a good night's sleep tomorrow is the one day i would change for a monday with freezing rains melting and no trains running and sad ice passing it Windows clumsy and my seat rock The next was white matching A passport credit cards are playing And I'm catching Black Sunday calls one day too soon

As Oswald was being led to the awaiting far As the committee has just seen Ruby fired one fatal shot into him The city hall and that's a scuffle On the basement floor It's in Sanford Has been shot Oswald has been shot

Patrick Dean of the Dallas Police Department who was standing beside us Pat you saw the smoke from the gun Yeah And did you see the man? Yes Do you know this subject? Do you know it?

Have you seen him before? Yes, I did. Is he from Dallas? Yes. Do you know what kind of business he happens to be in? Bob, I wouldn't want to say. Right.

Right, yeah. Sunday morning, you know, the Saturday transfer of Ozzy, obviously did not take place and Jack Ruby is up and Adam ready to greet the day. Although once again there is conflicting testimony about the timeline. So according to three employees of WBAP TV of Dallas, they observed. reserved Jack Ruby around the police building as early as 8 a.m. on Sunday. Now, the Warren Commission discounted their testimony because of a conflicting testimony that placed Ruby at home around that time.

And that competing, conflicting testimony was from Ruby's cleaning. woman, El Nora Pitts, who testified that she called Ruby and spoke to a man who didn't sound like Ruby, telling her in a grumpy voice to call back later because he was going out. Right. And this again, it matters because it goes into the, it goes to the official story, right? that he didn't go down until after 10.30. And it matters because that supports this theory, the defense theory, that Jack Ruby didn't pre-plan to kill Oswald. And it all just sort of happened.

And it happened when he was at the Western Union nearby the police station and therefore happened to be at the right place at the right time to impulsively kill Oswald. Both Ruby and his roommate, George Senator, both they testified that Ruby didn't leave until the later time as well. Yeah, and again, it's tricky. I don't know if I would fully cast my lot

in with these TV guys because maybe they misplaced the time that they saw Ruby, but nevertheless, I think the evidence does suggest that you mentioned Western Union, I think here it's worth getting into Ruby's official story, which supports his defense theory that he just happened to be there, and it was. was a confluence of factors, many of which were outside of his control that gave him the opportunity to shoot Oswald at exactly the time that he did. So according to Ruby, the stripper by the name of Little Lynn, who was working in the Carousel Club, had called Ruby the day

before because she needed money and would be unable to collect it at the normal time given that Ruby closed down the club. And so he arranged for somebody that live nearby her to give her five bucks and then promised to send her an additional 25 bucks on Sunday morning. And he did do that He went to the Western Union, which was located just a two-minute walk to the police building. We're talking about within spitting distance practically, and the receipt for the money order was marked 11.17 AM, and he was already in the basement of the police building. waiting for the ambush by 11.19 a.m. But to just double back a little bit, before he gets there, there's reason to suspect that this whole Western Union story is just a smokescreen. It's a deliberate, fabricated alibi that was more or less carefully planned out so that this story,

of a last-minute impulsive shooting would hold water. And again, the additional detail comes from Seth Cantor. You want to get into that, Dick? Yeah, so Cantor reports that a couple of Dallas cops, L.D. Miller and Blackie Harrison. Blackie was white, obviously. So, Cantor reports that these cops probably tipped Ruby off as to the transfer plan sometimes shortly after 9 in the morning. They were hanging out at a diner, got a call from the station, and then had the opportunity to call Ruby. This explains, or would explain, Ruby's tone with Elnora Pitts.

He was waiting for another call. George Senator, at the same time, was doing laundry, and so he wouldn't have been at the apartment and wasn't able to witness any of these calls. Now, Miller and Harrison acted extremely suspicious in their testimony. For one, Miller refused to be sworn in, so his testimony wasn't under oath. and Harrison reportedly took a bunch of tranquilizers before taking his polygraph and it still turned out to be indeterminate even though it was administered by his friend and colleague Paul Bentley one of the very cops who arrested Oswald and took a punch in the scuffle yeah yeah so this would essentially mean that these TV employees, the TV camera crew were a little bit early when they said it could have been 8 a.m. when they saw Jack Ruby, and it would allow that, in fact, the man who didn't sound like Jack Ruby to Elnora Pitts was, in fact, Jack Ruby, that he took her call, got her off the phone

real quick because remember this is before call waiting if the line is occupied it will be busy so if you're waiting for a call you got to wrap that shit up with the unwanted caller very quickly so that your desired caller can get through to you and it would have ruby getting this call some time around nine and making his way down perhaps to mill about before making ways to the Western Union enough time to poke his head into the TV truck and ask the guys inside what's going on with the transfer and basically keep tabs so that everything will time out just right. And when Jack finally does leave home, he is acting consistently with, if you are Burke Griffin, consistently with a guy who's just going to Western Union to pay his stripper.

And if you are Seth Cantor or Fourth Reich Archaeology, consistent with a guy who's acting, who's putting on a performance to create a elaborate, elaborate alibi, and one that may have even been pre-arranged with Little Lynn, because if you look at her testimony, it's also very sketchy on why she needed this money at this time, and there's a lot of questions raised more than are answered there as well. She later on clearly appears to like and defend Jack Ruby, but also be concerned for her own safety and welfare. You've had a lot of trouble with landladys and landlords lately we understand. What sort of trouble do you have? Well, as soon as they find out who I am and who I was connected with, they always ask us to leave

for some odd little reason. What sort of excuses do they give for asking you to leave? Well, they said that they don't want to be involved in the Jack Rubian anyway, nor do they want any trouble, and they don't want the investigators coming around. Have you been bothered with investigators at all since the Jack Ruby trial? Quite a bit. What sort of questions have they been asking you, and where are the investigators from? The investigators are from Dallas and Fort Worth, also the Warren Commission, and the questions are, I guess, just about the same as they asked anyone. Did you know Jack Ruby and so on his own? What kinds of man was Jack Ruby or is Jack Ruby?

Well, I believe he was a nice employer to me. I believe he's a highly nervous person. I don't really like to give my own opinion of what I really believe. But in any event, what we know is Jack leaves with a fat wad of cash on his person for no reason. he's not sending all this money he's only sending 25 bucks to little lynn but perhaps i think canter speculates that carrying a bunch of cash would be a good justification to conceal a weapon of course in his other pocket there is that cobra revolver at the ready and jack dresses to the nines, puts on a suit, a tie, a hat.

He tells George Senator that he's going to take the dog to the club. So he and Shiba get in the car and head down towards the Dallas Police Building, which, as we know by now, sits right there next to Dealey Plaza. And he goes to do the deed. now there is some disagreement about how Ruby gets into the room where it happens Ruby says he walks down the ramp multiple guards however say he didn't many newsmen were coming down the stairs without being asked to show their credential so that's through the door i guess right there's like the main street ramp is where the

vehicles were coming in and out that was the egress to the street where oswald would have been taken in the car out of the building there was a decoy car that was going to leave ahead of the real car and then around the corner is where the door of the police building was and there's a stairwell nearby that door which was apparently unguarded on the 24th so jack says he just moseyed on down the ramp but again this is another one of these things where you got to zero in on Burke Griffin because Burke Griffin again

totally sold the ramp story but one of the policemen who was posted in a squad car across the street from the ramp to keep an eye on it who was not interviewed

by the Warren Commission but came out with testimony later on he said that he was watching the whole time and nobody let alone jack ruby walked down that ramp and i believe this is another one of the points on which griffin said to canter oh maybe you're right and you know maybe that would change the way that i think about this it's just quite a loose relationship to this document that he took so much pride in and canter just lists off you know fact after fact that griffin is

maybe right maybe you're right doesn't matter doesn't matter but why does it matter well it matters because well first the proximity of the western union and lone nut theorists argue that conspiracy was impossible but i guess if If he used that stairwell door, the timing lines up. And the reason why it lines up is because if you get in through the door, the story is, or the theory is, the hypothesis is that Ruby walks in the door. He has a contact of some sort with whoever is sitting at the front desk there, at the open door, and that person can then give the signal to arrange for the commencement of

Oswald's perp walk. In other words, it's not that the Dallas police was acting completely independently on their own timeline and was just working diligently to move Oswald as expeditiously as they could, but rather that the Dallas police had at least a couple of operators. So rather than the Dallas police operating independently in this way, the hypothesis is that there were enough people within the Dallas PD who were in on the plan to arrange that Oswald would not make it into the transfer point until the shooter, Jack Ruby, was in place. so under this hypothesis ruby walks in the door the signal goes up to the guys who are moving oswald and those guys go through their pre-arranged plan to march oswald down the elevator across the parking lot and into the waiting car for his transfer

And regardless of which one of these scenarios really happened, the rest is captured right there on tape. I'm pretty sure this is the first murder caught on live TV. It began with the fatal shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of John Kennedy by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, in the basement of Dallas police headquarters. Here's how it looked and sounded on live nationwide television. The voice is that of NBC reporter Tom Pettit.

There is Lee Oswald. He's been shot. He's been shot. Lee Oswald has been shot. There's a man with a gun. It's absolute panic. Absolute panic here in the base of the Dallas police headquarters. Detectives have their guns drawn.

Oswald has been shot. There is no question about a gun. that Oswald has been shot. This remarkable photograph by Bob Jackson of the Dallas Times Herald was taken a split second after the shot. Oswald, his face contorted, slumped to the floor. He was sped to the same hospital where President Kennedy died. Here's the shooting again in slow motion. Ruby, a well-known police character, burst from the crowd of newsmen and policemen

and fired a single bullet at point-blank range into Oswald. Ruby was quickly subdued and later charged with murder This after Oswald died at the hospital without regaining consciousness It's the first First time this happened So You know our listeners are invited to go watch it It's pretty crazy but it's clear as day

Oswald's being marched out And Ruby just walks right up You see sort of a scuffle but you see the sort of shot to the belly And really the wincing of Oswald's face when he gets shot yeah and there was a still picture taken at the same time that's not part of the film reel but some reporter just captures with a flash that face and it's now you know iconic to see the look on his face the fatal shot was fired at 1121 a.m. So there's two minutes to get Ruby from the Western Union to the police building

and two minutes from Ruby's arrival at the police building to the fatal shot. As he is brought down onto the ground by the rushing policeman and his gun taken out of his hand, Jack says, you all know me it's me jack ruby something else yeah definitely i guess we should point out there is this sort of theory that there are so there are a couple car horns that go off right before oswald is shot and there are some who say that this is a signal to ruby and amidst all the noise and chaos and all of that i mean it's not clear whether there is a signal but i think that's more importantly by this point he wouldn't have needed a signal anyways right he had a clear shot

of oswald right when it was happening so there wasn't really any need for the car horn to be a signal it seems like it would be unnecessary if it was right yeah i mean maybe it had some role i don't think that there was any investigation ever conclusively wrapped up into the horn honk but I think it's not a necessary part of any picture and it could just as well be random and I mean I think that goes for a lot of this stuff you know we have tried to not not dig in on making assumptions of facts that are not proved or that are not strongly suggested by the evidentiary record and instead have set all the cards down on the table for you listener and we have shared our inferences and our analysis of those facts but you know you can

make for yourself what you will of the whole thing i think there's way too many coincidences that would have to be unrelated to string together for this to all be part of just a random, lone nut story, especially where the motive that Ruby expressed repeatedly, namely that he did it to help Mrs. Kennedy avoid the trauma of having to testify and return to Dallas, he told Joe Tonehill, his attorney, in writing, that his first lawyer, Tom Howard made that story up to give him a good motive to beat the charge of first-degree murder. So taken that away, taken all of this into account, it's a very strong case that Ruby, out of desperation had agreed to do a favor for any one of a number of interest groups who wanted Oswald

dead. And you don't even have to pick one to discard the lone nut theory. It could be the Dallas police who wanted to avenge J.D. Tippett, if nothing else. You know, they also potentially could have wanted to cover up their own involvement in pieces of the Kennedy assassination, very well, and of course the mob, who, if they had any interest in getting rid of Kennedy and any involvement therein, well, obviously, they would want. to get rid of anybody with a voice box who could potentially blow the whistle on them. And the biggest voice box in such a position was, of course, the Patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald. Did you kill the president? No, I've not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question.

like some legal representation, these police officers have not allowed me to have any. I, uh, I don't know what this is all about. I killed the president. No, sir, I did. People keep asking the guy. Sir? I work in that building. Are you in the building at a time? Naturally, if I work in that building, yes, sir. Back up, man. Come on, men. No, they're taking me in because of the fact that I I'm just a patsy. Okay, so that does it for our third installment of the series. Within a series, within a series. Join us next time.

And in the meantime, I'm Dick. And I'm done. Saying farewell. And keep digging. American sheds swirling all the world's drains. And every time you flush, somebody is getting paid. All this machinery, you know it wasn't cheaply made. We pulled out the stops, we spared no expense,

perpetuating the system that's built on violence, the control of which is best left up to us. Because we're the only ones who have the tools to keep it up. There is always risk involved, creating problems to be solved. be solved, but we specialize in manufacturing narration, converting tragedy into consolidation. An aberration in the heartland of the reed. Forget your thoughts. Forget your thoughts. We're going to shape the way you feel An aberration in the heartland of the region

Why don't you have a seat? I'd like to make a deal