On this day in 1963 — 57 years ago — at 12:20 p.m. in the basement of the Dallas police station, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, was shot to death by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner.
Two days earlier, on Nov. 22, President Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in an open-car motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas. Less than an hour after the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald killed a policeman who questioned him on the street.
On November 24, Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver.
Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed that rage at Kennedy's murder was the motive for his action. A Dallas jury found Ruby guilty of murdering Oswald, and Ruby later received the death penalty. Later, Ruby appealed his conviction, had it overturned and was granted a new trial.
On January 3, 1967, as the date for his new trial was being set, Ruby became ill in his prison cell and died of a pulmonary embolism from lung cancer. It has been hypothesized that Ruby was part of a conspiracy.
G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, said “the most plausible explanation for the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby was that Ruby had stalked him on behalf of organized crime, trying to reach him on at least three occasions in the forty-eight hours before he silenced him forever."
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Paul Metsa, the Minnesota-based singer-songwriter, revived his song "Jack Ruby" seven years ago for the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination.
Metsa first wrote the song in 1991 about Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who shot and killed Lee Harvey Osward, Kennedy's assassin.
Metsa's video includes archival television footage of Ruby shooting Oswald. The song questions whether Oswald and Ruby were hired guns.
It is featured on Metsa's compilation CD, "Blues, Ballads and Broadsides — Songs from the Blue Guitar Highway."
Here is Metsa performing “Jack Ruby”
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Jack Ruby — A Personal Remembrance
On Sunday, Nov. 24, 1963, at 12:20 p.m., I was lying on a sofa in my home watching the televised coverage of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I was 15-years-old, but it seemed I had grown a couple of years in the two days since the president was shot.
Watching on live television, I was tuned to the basement of the Dallas police station where Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of the president, was to be paraded before television cameras. Moments after Oswald came into view, Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, shot him on live national television.
I must have jumped three-feet off that sofa. I called my mother from the kitchen. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. Two days earlier, President Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in an open-car motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas.
Less than an hour after the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly killed a policeman who questioned him on the street. Thirty minutes after that, he was arrested in a movie theater by police. The Dallas police were taking Oswald to what they said was a more secure county jail.
But the security state — as is today — didn’t really exist back then. It was all theatre for the masses. Ruby just emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded Oswald with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver.
Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed that rage at Kennedy's murder was the motive for his action. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged with first-degree murder.
Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein, operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime. He also had a relationship with a number of Dallas policemen, which amounted to various favors in exchange for leniency in their monitoring of his establishments.
Ruby has been prominent in Kennedy-assassination theories for more than 50 years, and many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy. The public still does not know the truth.
Regardless, the Kennedy and Oswald assassinations were the end of innocence for me. Most of the 1960s were still ahead and it would become the most extraordinary decade of my life.
Me, at 15