Latest / The Lone Gunman Podcast : JFK Assassination / JFK Assassination - Ep. 283 - The Many Faces of Jack Ruby w/ Guest Danny Fingeroth

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JFK Assassination - Ep. 283 - The Many Faces of Jack Ruby w/ Guest Danny Fingeroth · The Lone Gunman Podcast : JFK Assassination

• 0:07
  And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you,
• 0:15
  ask what you can do for your country. Cheers on Jewry and Joby,
• 0:21
  Jimmy and the trumble Bee Bama Joby Sen, Joby Rock, Donye job
• 0:27
  trimble By Sen Joby show me and Jimmy Bamage. Jobby said, Joby Rock,
• 0:34
  Donky shop wady Chummy. I was thinking the trip. The fun chef
• 0:48
  jam is Anno and you we go, and here we go. What's up
• 1:04
  everybody? And welcome to the show. This is episode number two hundred and
• 1:08
  eighty three of the Longuma Podcast. And I am but one of your hosts,
• 1:12
  Rob Clark. Along with me is the Frozen Beast from the Northeast Joe
• 1:19
  Borelli. And this week we have a very special guest author, Danny finger
• 1:26
  Raft is joining us. He is the author of this book entitled Jack Ruby
• 1:30
  The Many Faces, Well, the Many Faces of Jack Ruby, and we
• 1:34
  are pleased to have him on the show. Welcome Danny. How are you
• 1:38
  doing, sir, The Many Faces of Oswald's Assassins? Yes, but I'm
• 1:44
  doing well. But then you know you've done two hundred eighty three shows,
• 1:47
  he said, Yes, this is number two hundred and eighty three. Yes,
• 1:52
  okay, I got a lot of catching up to do, I guess.
• 1:57
  Yeah, there is a vast, vast catalog out there. I also
• 2:02
  do another JFK show with another buddy of mine, and we've got fifty fifty
• 2:07
  some episodes of that as well. It's called Quick Hits. So yeah,
• 2:13
  very busy the past ten years, I guess you could say, yeah,
• 2:15
  I think so. Wow. Well, thank you for inviting me on.
• 2:20
  Well, thank you for going on. Yeah, it's truly a pleasure.
• 2:23
  And for those of you don't know, what intrigued me most about reading a
• 2:29
  little bit about your bio is that you were a writer from Marvel at some
• 2:32
  point. That is very cool. Can you tell us a little bit about
• 2:36
  that. Well, for eighteen years, I wrote. I was a writer
• 2:43
  and editor at Marvel Comics. I'm best known probably as the editor of the
• 2:52
  Spider Man line, which at a certain point grew to really be a company
• 2:58
  within a company. They were like, you know, seventeen or eighteen different
• 3:02
  comic books every month dealing either either with Spider Man or some spin off character.
• 3:08
  So that was you know, and I wrote a lot of Spider Man
• 3:13
  stories. I wrote a character called dark Hawk. Some of your listeners may
• 3:16
  have heard of wrote a character called Keysler. But yeah, for for a
• 3:22
  long long time, I was involved in making up stories, many of which
• 3:28
  involved worldwide conspiracies and things done in darkness. So, you know, in
• 3:35
  some weird way, writing about Jack Ruby, it wasn't all that different,
• 3:42
  but that, ye, And then I've written in the year since Marvel,
• 3:46
  I've done a lot of things, but I've written about a half a dozen
• 3:49
  books, and the most recent one before Ruby, was a book called The
• 3:53
  Marvelous Life The Amazing Story of Stan Lee his biography right right, his biography,
• 4:01
  Yeah, yeah, you know it was it was I don't know if
• 4:08
  I had the very last because Stan did, you know, get interviewed a
• 4:12
  lot, but I had some of the some of the last interviews that really
• 4:16
  went into depth before he died, and you know, I thought I brought
• 4:21
  something different to that book as someone who knew how how the sausage was made
• 4:27
  and the comic book business. You know. So there's other biographies of Stan
• 4:30
  and you know, read them. All is fine with me, but but
• 4:33
  I think I'm the only one who've written a book about him that you know,
• 4:39
  had a job comparable to what he did for many years. I'm not
• 4:43
  saying I did it as well as he did or as famously as he did,
• 4:46
  but but sort of I think there are controversies surrounding him that maybe I
• 4:53
  had a little insight into that somebody who didn't have that background would have had.
• 4:58
  The weird thing is if any if you're I don't know if you're involved
• 5:02
  at all with any kind of fandom, but but there is sort of similar
• 5:10
  passions surrounding who created Spider Man and who created the Fantastic Four as there is
• 5:15
  around you know, who really did whatever in the Kennedy assassination. I mean,
• 5:20
  I don't want to trivialize the assassination or Oswald's murder or any of that,
• 5:26
  but but it's especially online where you know, people have anonymity and you're
• 5:30
  not close enough to punch them in the mouth. Then I have found a
• 5:36
  strange similarity between you know, you know, people who believe whatever. It's
• 5:43
  kind of like Loane Nutters versus conspiracy theorists, right something like that. Yeah,
• 5:47
  yeah, So how did your interest turn from stan Lee to Jack Ruby?
• 5:56
  Well, you know, there are more connections than you would think.
• 6:00
  The most interesting and interesting connection. You know, Stanley was famous for co
• 6:06
  creating many of the Marvel characters with Jack Kirby, who was a famous artist
• 6:12
  and co plotter and genius himself. And there's actually a three page Jack Ruby
• 6:21
  biography drawn by Jack Kirby that appeared in Esquire magazine shortly after Ruby died in
• 6:29
  sixty seven. You know. So there there are all sorts of you know,
• 6:33
  odd connections, But for me it was im I was ten years old.
• 6:42
  You know. He can do the math and figure out how old am.
• 6:44
  I don't like to think about that, but I was ten years old
• 6:46
  when when Kennedy and Osa were murdered. You know, I think your readers
• 6:53
  your I think your viewers can probably do the math themselves, you know.
• 6:56
  So, so it was always a part of my life. You know,
• 7:00
  it was this big traumatic thing that in the way, it was so big
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  that I couldn't I couldn't wrap my brain around the theories. I just didn't,
• 7:11
  you know. I mean, if you look at the calendar, I
• 7:13
  mean, and it's true of the Beatles showed up, you know, two
• 7:17
  or three months later, and sort of everybody was relieved to not have to
• 7:21
  think about this thing. That was overwhelming. So yeah, about twelve years
• 7:27
  ago, so I didn't I get know, But but then again, it
• 7:30
  was sort of just part of the subtetle. And anytime you would talk to
• 7:31
  anybody of my of my generation, it was just you know, I'm sure
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  helf, I'm sure day didn't go by when somebody didn't make some kind of
• 7:39
  humorous or serious reference to the Kennedy's as nation. Anyway, So I write
• 7:46
  comics, and you know, and and graphic novels, which are comics.
• 7:49
  And I was looking for a project to do around twelve years ago, and
• 7:58
  and I said, she looked the fiftieth Anniversity of the Kenny Assassinations coming up.
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  I bet there's a lot of people doing graphic novels. I did a
• 8:05
  Google search. Nobody was doing a graphic novel. Turn out a friend of
• 8:09
  mine, I got him, Dan Michigan did one called the Warrant Commission Report.
• 8:13
  He and Ernie Cologne. But I thought, okay, let me do
• 8:16
  some research. And the more I researched it, you know, the Danny
• 8:26
  Finger oath angle on it. Since I was not obsessed with it, was
• 8:30
  clearly Jack Ruby. You know, I come from a fairly traditional Jewish background,
• 8:37
  you know, Jack Ruby, and the things I write about, you
• 8:41
  know, starting or not starting with Stanley, but including Stanley, are sort
• 8:46
  of you know, interesting American Jews of Eastern European background who profoundly affected the
• 8:56
  culture. That's what I write about, and that's what I'm obsessed about.
• 9:00
  And Ruby just with his show business connections and his moth connections, and you
• 9:05
  know, just and then it, and then I discovered this really strange thing
• 9:13
  where Ruby's Jack, where we belonged to a synagogue, like you know,
• 9:18
  with a lot of people do. He wasn't especially religious, but he wanted
• 9:22
  a for numerous reasons. He belonged to a synagogue in Dallas, and his
• 9:28
  rabbi had written a memoir, and his rabbi turned out to be a fairly
• 9:31
  prominent in the Jewish world, and his and his son is the actor Jonathan
• 9:37
  Silverman, you may know from Weekend at Bernie's. And then it turned out
• 9:43
  I knew somebody who knew Silverman, who was still alive. He just died
• 9:46
  just about a year ago at age ninety nine. So I just thought,
• 9:50
  okay, that's my angle. Here's a really you know, all everybody knows
• 9:56
  is that one photo of you know, all most people know that one phot
• 10:00
  photo of Ruby killing Oswald, and he just gets neglected by history. I
• 10:05
  think there are reasons for that, but whatever reason, Ruby has become just
• 10:11
  this one photo. And the more I read about him and his you know,
• 10:16
  his crazy and meshed Jewish family. You know, he's one of like
• 10:20
  eight brothers and sisters, one crazier than the next. You know, huh
• 10:28
  was he the fifth of eighth? I believe the fifth of eight really fifth
• 10:33
  of nine really, but one died as an inti. And that's some of
• 10:39
  the things I found really interesting about the book was learning about his backstory and
• 10:46
  how his mother was institutionalized when he was two years old. His dad was
• 10:52
  an alcoholic, correct me from wrong and kind of him to the quote street
• 11:01
  life if for lack of a better term, yeah, let me let me
• 11:05
  just quickly finish. You know, then I understand you want to get anyway,
• 11:09
  I was gonna do it as a graphic novel. I hooked up with
• 11:11
  an artist named Rick Geary, who's worked some of your viewers might know terrific
• 11:15
  artists. There's a lot of true murder and true crime stuff. We couldn't
• 11:20
  find a publisher for it. That would pay enough really for Rick to spend
• 11:24
  two years drawing this to under page graphic novel. So I put on the
• 11:28
  shelf. And then as we were coming closer to the sixtieth anniversary, now
• 11:31
  I had published books, including a biography, and my agent was able to
• 11:33
  sell it as a pros biography. So that's that's the I just wanted to
• 11:39
  connect those dots before I forgot also, but yeah, no, Ruby had
• 11:43
  well, you know, yeah, when a lot of things in history,
• 11:46
  you know, I think Harry Truman said, you know, the only thing
• 11:50
  that's new with the history we didn't know. I mean, you know,
• 11:54
  a lot of history comes to us just in single images or short clips or
• 11:58
  you know, or a quote or two. But of course everybody involved had
• 12:03
  actual lives and families and people who loved them and hated them, and how
• 12:07
  to figure out how to make a living, and you know, and and
• 12:09
  and and to just to survive and and and Ruby, you know, Ruby,
• 12:15
  you know what he has in common with Stanley and what he has in
• 12:18
  common with a lot of the early founders of the comic book business. Uh,
• 12:24
  is that immigrant background? What what what we now come to call the
• 12:28
  Greatest Generation. I sometimes called Ruby's story the Greatest Generation story going horribly wrong,
• 12:35
  you know, just sort of you know, he grew up in you
• 12:37
  know you're saying about in the same neighborhoods called the Maxwell Street ghetto of Chicago.
• 12:43
  Yeah, and the same neighborhood as Ruby. Benny Goodman, uh Supreme
• 12:50
  you know, you know, jazz legend, Benny Goodman, Supreme Court Justice
• 12:56
  Arthur Goldberg, CBS under william S. Paley, Jack Rubin, you know
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  I mean that, uh, you know, and another guy Ruby grew up
• 13:05
  with, and and someone who was his best friend as a kid. And
• 13:11
  then I think who later testified at Ruby's trial was a guy, a boxer
• 13:16
  named Barney Ross from the days when boxing was a very Jewish sport. And
• 13:20
  and Ross had piled around with Ruby. They you know, supposedly they did
• 13:26
  errands for Al Capone in Chicago, and supposedly Capone steered Ross like away from
• 13:35
  crime and said that, you know, stop hanging around with hoodlums and go
• 13:39
  be a boxer. You know. But you know, he and Ruby,
• 13:43
  uh seemed seemed to be a genuine friendship. And definitely and Barney Ross was
• 13:54
  Jewish as well, and he was a boxer, grew up like in that
• 13:58
  area that you just and ended up being a World War II hero in the
• 14:03
  Pacific, Guada Canal. And I'm a big history buff, so I love
• 14:11
  World War Two. My grandfather was normal D plus ten, and I'm glad
• 14:18
  he wasn't. Let's just say this, I'm glad he was sent to the
• 14:20
  European theater and not the Pacific theater. Also, I probably would be talking
• 14:24
  to you right now. So he was quite a character. And I believe
• 14:33
  in your book there's a comic page about Barney Ross and his military service in
• 14:39
  Guadalcanal. And yeah, and it wasn't the only comic. I mean,
• 14:45
  there were numerous. You know, Barnie Ross was a real hero, you
• 14:48
  know, you boxing hero, war hero. You know. I think the
• 14:52
  Jewish community, you know, took sort of a special pride in him.
• 14:56
  If since since I am talking to history uh scholars here and in your audience,
• 15:03
  there was a movie called Body and Soul, directed by Robert Rosson who
• 15:07
  was famously blacklisted, and starred John Garfield, and and you know it was
• 15:13
  I think they had wanted to make a licensed, an official biopic of Barney
• 15:18
  Ross, but for whatever reason, he didn't want to. So that movie
• 15:22
  was so close that Barney Ross sued them and won. You know, so
• 15:24
  that but have you ever seen that movie Body and Soul. If you haven't,
• 15:28
  I recommend it. Yeah. So Ross, I guess was just the
• 15:33
  first of a bunch of you know, people who went on to be famous
• 15:37
  that that Ruby intersected with him. Ruby himself, you know, it's no
• 15:46
  accident. You know, he owned a strip club, which you know is
• 15:50
  kind of a low on the hierarchy of of show business. But Ruby definitely
• 15:56
  had show business aspirations. He wanted to be fam miss and you know,
• 16:03
  you know, like a lot of people, you know, I think he
• 16:04
  thought that somehow or other getting involved with show business. Even you're talking about
• 16:11
  that. He spent time in San Francisco during the depression. You know,
• 16:15
  there was you know, he spent he spent a lot of time getting into
• 16:18
  fights, especially with uh, you know, with the bud, with the
• 16:22
  Nazi Bund. You know, I mean, he was a violent guy,
• 16:26
  and he would be part of you know, gangs of tough Jewish kids or
• 16:33
  tough Jewish young men who would go and bust up Nazi meetings and and and
• 16:37
  Barney Ross accompanied him. I wouldn't want to face that team, that's for
• 16:44
  sure. Supposedly there's a wonderful book uh that that I am. Of course,
• 16:52
  it's right behind me, you know. It's UHS by Michael Benson Versus
• 17:02
  Nazis, in which he talked about how Ross was sort of afraid that if
• 17:08
  he went into one of these Nazi meetings and beat people up and somebody got
• 17:14
  hurt or killed, that that is a professional boxer, he would, you
• 17:18
  know, sort of be treated more harshly that his that his that his face
• 17:22
  would be considered lethal weapons. So there was there was something right I didn't
• 17:32
  know. Ye, So so they came up with I forget what they did.
• 17:36
  What they put their gloves on him or something. You know, now
• 17:40
  I'm blanking. I'm blanking on this anecdote that I have in the book that
• 17:42
  I quote from Benson's book. But uh, they they somehow I think they
• 17:48
  just put their gloves on him so that if he hits punch somebody, they
• 17:52
  wouldn't necessarily die. You know, Michael, if I misquoted your book,
• 17:57
  I apologize, But yeah, so so Ruby and then he ended up in
• 18:03
  San Francisco. One thing he did in San Francisco. Was he worked as
• 18:07
  a singing waiter, you know, which is not somebody who doesn't have,
• 18:11
  you know, show business aspirations of any kind doesn't do, you know.
• 18:15
  I mean, there's there's a lot of you know, there's a lot of
• 18:19
  gaps in Ruby's life, but there's enough that we know that that they can
• 18:22
  sort of put together a narrative. Well, what's interesting too, Danny,
• 18:29
  is it Larry Crayford spent some time in San Francisco as well, working for
• 18:34
  the local mob boss in San Francisco before this, before he made his way
• 18:40
  down through California and then finally to Texas to be working for Jack Ruby.
• 18:45
  That's interesting. And supposedly he either knocked up the mob boss's daughter or something
• 18:55
  something happened where he had to leave San Francisco in a hurry. But from
• 19:02
  what Larry Crafer's brother said that he was a hit man in San Francisco for
• 19:06
  the mob boss before he eventually got his way to Texas, which is interesting,
• 19:12
  you know. Yeah, I mean was much younger than Ruby, right,
• 19:17
  he was, he was only I think it was just in his twenties
• 19:21
  and early twenties. Yeah, I think it was about the same age as
• 19:22
  Oswald was, right right right, Well, you know there's a way to
• 19:26
  look at Ruby and Oswald is almost the generational thing, you know, because
• 19:30
  Ruby was old enough to be Oswald's father. Yeah. Well, I think
• 19:34
  a lot of the Oswald and Ruby sightings together were or Jack Ruby and Crayford,
• 19:42
  and people just missedok Oswald for Crafer. Yeah. I haven't seen how
• 19:48
  many pictures of Crayford. Did he look enough like it? Was? He
• 19:51
  dark haired like Oswald? Ye, the build, same height, same build,
• 19:56
  same hair, and unless he smiled, he was missing a couple of
• 19:59
  tea. But as long as he didn't smile, yeah, he could pass
• 20:04
  for Oswald at you know, if you're not really paying too much attention,
• 20:08
  you know, well, you know this is I mean, and we'll probably
• 20:11
  get to some of this, but I mean, this is what among the
• 20:15
  many, you know, maddening things about researching the Kennedy and Oswald murders is
• 20:22
  that so many of the people involved gravitate towards that sort of subculture, those
• 20:34
  subcultures of various cities, including Dallas. So you have people who come from
• 20:41
  backgrounds of violence and dysfunction and madness, so it, you know, it
• 20:48
  makes it very hard to sort of pry aside all the different layers of the
• 20:52
  onion because I didn't I did not know that about Proffit. I knew that
• 20:56
  I knew that that Ruby had met him at the state fair. When when
• 21:03
  when? When they had a Texas State Fair. That's that's very interesting.
• 21:11
  Yeah, I could see, Yeah, I could see how, Yes,
• 21:15
  because is a fan of the short Eisenhower type jackets, like like the one
• 21:22
  found, uh that the person who killed Tippett supposedly threw under the car.
• 21:29
  That's interesting. So so Oswald was not wearing a jacket when so that that
• 21:34
  part of the that part of the conundrum that the jacket was under the car,
• 21:38
  but Ozol was wearing a jacket, well, yes, when he was
• 21:45
  wearing a shirt when he was arrested. But his landlady said that he was
• 21:48
  putting on a jacket when he left his rooming house. But she said dark
• 21:53
  colored. And the one that was found is like a real light gray,
• 21:57
  almost white looking jacket and it had California laundry tags in it, dry cleaning
• 22:07
  tags from California. The jacket they found under the yeah, the car.
• 22:14
  Yeah, well, let's there you go. So you know theorizing that if
• 22:18
  you know, if Ruby is involved in all this with Oswald and he gets
• 22:22
  Crayford involved in things for whatever reason, you know that that Crayford could have
• 22:29
  possibly been the person that that shot Tippet and and and kind of fled.
• 22:33
  But it's one of the theories out there anyway. Yeah, well, Craigford
• 22:37
  stuck around and then but then suddenly supposedly Ruby was mean to him on the
• 22:42
  phone and he like grabbed four dollars out of the catcher started hitchhiked to Michigan
• 22:48
  that yeah, the morning after the assassination. Hell yeah, started hitch hiking
• 22:52
  out of Dallas. Yeah. Yeah, Where's the Where's the Lottery Crafford movie?
• 22:56
  That's what I want to know. We have a friend that that that
• 23:03
  might be working on the screenplay in involving him. But Crayford is a very
• 23:11
  interesting character. He did flee and to your point of why Ruby was in
• 23:19
  your book acting so I think this is your word, magnic during those I
• 23:29
  don't know, eight hours, yeah, forty eight hours, fifty hours between
• 23:34
  the slag of Kennedy and the shooting of os Walt, and I am a
• 23:44
  mafia buff I mean, I'm from New York, I'm Italian, although I
• 23:48
  have a Jewish girlfriend, so that I understand that angle too. But you
• 23:55
  know, if if you're assigned a mission, right, and I really do
• 23:59
  believe, leave the uh the mission. The mistake that was made on November
• 24:07
  twenty second was Oswald being captured alive. So now you have a situation and
• 24:15
  mafia culture. If you're assigned a task, it's on you, right.
• 24:22
  And maybe that's why Larah Craiford left. He's like, I'm not doing the
• 24:26
  suicide mission. This is crazy, and it was left to Jack Ruby.
• 24:33
  And you know, we can get into some of his mafia connections, but
• 24:36
  but that's how it worked. If you were assigned delegated something, you were
• 24:41
  responsible for it. And you know they they didn't like it, cleans type
• 24:47
  thing. Yeah, they didn't like excuses. So who do you think was
• 24:51
  supposed to kill Oswald? The police when they when they found him in the
• 24:53
  theater. I personally, I think because and only because tipp It was parked
• 25:04
  at this Global Global gas station Gloco or whatever it was called, right across
• 25:11
  from the Houston Street Viaduct. I don't think. I think Oswald threw people
• 25:17
  a curveball by taking a bus and a taxi to his rooming house. And
• 25:23
  that's kind of what tipp It was supposed to supposed to do, is to
• 25:27
  capture him or kill him or take him somewhere or something. And of course
• 25:33
  that didn't happen. That's why you have tipp It kind of manic looking looking
• 25:37
  for somebody searching cars plume. Where do you think Oswald was supposed to be
• 25:45
  going? Well, but I mean do you think that was you know,
• 25:51
  that was part of the planet. I'd go to the table. I think
• 25:52
  the end goal was probably to get to Cuba, you know, and him
• 25:59
  be wrecked. Nis is you know this this great great uh you know Castro
• 26:03
  supporter, you know, kill killed Kennedy. I mean, I don't I
• 26:07
  don't know what his plan was ultimately. I know, in the months prior
• 26:12
  to the assassinate, with the year prior to the assassination, he'd been writing
• 26:17
  letters to the embassy trying to get Marina uh to be able to go back
• 26:22
  to Russia. And then of course you have the whole Mexico City thing,
• 26:26
  you know, a couple of months before the assassination, where he's trying to
• 26:30
  get a visa to Cuba and then ultimately to Russia. Well, when you
• 26:34
  say, too he threw a curveball by by taking the bus and then a
• 26:37
  taxi, what was what? What was the curveball? What was he supposed
• 26:42
  to be doing? Do you think I think he was supposed to be walking
• 26:45
  or you know, on foot or picked up? Maybe? Yeah, I
• 26:49
  don't know. Yeah, we know, we don't know. But uh,
• 26:55
  and you know, with this case and with Oswald and Ruby, everything is
• 27:00
  I think you said in your book, even if definite evidence came out,
• 27:06
  people would doubt it. I think that was part in the beginning, right,
• 27:11
  And it's kind of true because the waters have been money so much that
• 27:17
  even if verifiable evidence came out, not that I think there's a smoking gun
• 27:22
  document, but uh, it wouldn't it wouldn't matter. Well that's you know,
• 27:32
  look I found and I think I even say it in the book.
• 27:34
  The more I researched, the less sure. I mean. I'm so glad.
• 27:38
  At one point I was thinking of doing like a group biography of Ruby
• 27:44
  and Oswald, or maybe Ruby, Oswald and Kennedy, although not you know,
• 27:48
  mostly and I'm so glad that I just focused it on Ruby b you
• 27:52
  know, I mean the well, of course, they're inextricably tied in certain
• 27:56
  ways. The thing about both those guys, you know, you talk about
• 28:03
  about Ruby's mother being institutionalized, and we talked about that he had an infant
• 28:08
  sister who died in a scolding accident. I mean, Ruby himself both you
• 28:15
  know, both on the record in terms of hospitals, I think, but
• 28:18
  just anecdotally was quote unquote you know, hid in the head, you know,
• 28:23
  in various fights and accidents. I have to think that given the nature
• 28:27
  of his parents, you know that probably his parents hit him in the head.
• 28:32
  And you know, you know, I mean, he was from really
• 28:36
  crazy. So when you get two guys, you know, that's what he
• 28:42
  said. I mean, you know, that's what I'm saying. You know,
• 28:48
  maybe he was dropped, maybe he was thrown maybe, I mean,
• 28:52
  you know, uh, who knows. I mean, so both those guys
• 28:59
  were crazy, right, Whether you know there were nuts, whether they were
• 29:02
  lone nuts is of course the question, you know, the question that that
• 29:06
  everybody as you know, I certainly I have to say that, you know,
• 29:11
  I I It's been a very interesting ride. Now. Part of me
• 29:15
  writing this book just was to see, could I write a book about something
• 29:19
  that's not strictly about comics, you know, I mean, could I could
• 29:22
  I take the research skills I've learned and sort of the narrative skills I've learned
• 29:27
  and write something else. And I think, you know, a lot of
• 29:30
  people seem to think that that that I succeeded, you know, And but
• 29:37
  part of it is I lost my thoughts here. What the hell was I
• 29:48
  saying? I think you brought like a more human perspective on a person of
• 29:56
  Jack Ruby, you know, and right in the way the style you right,
• 30:00
  and the narrative and and you know, there's a lot of stuff in
• 30:03
  there that me is a researcher of thirty five years, I didn't even know,
• 30:07
  well can I you know, thank you? And I mean I figured
• 30:12
  out right away that I wasn't going to solve the case, right, And
• 30:17
  so that's so the more I researched, the more I saw, Oh my
• 30:21
  god, I am so much not going to solve the case. But let
• 30:25
  me see, you know, I dug myself, you know, halfway into
• 30:27
  the into the ditch. Let me right, let me see what I can
• 30:33
  bring to some insights into this guy. So, you know, so thank
• 30:37
  you that because I really, oh, I know, I was going to
• 30:40
  say, it's because I I you know, certainly, I speak to a
• 30:42
  lot of people who, you know, who believe there was some kind of
• 30:48
  conspiracy at play. I've also been speaking with a guy named Bert Griffin,
• 30:52
  who was the lawyer on the Warren Commission tasked with investigating Jack Ruby. And
• 31:00
  he's, you know, he was, he's a retired judge in Cleveland and
• 31:03
  he's you know, he he actually put a book out recently and he,
• 31:07
  you know, he believes very much in the Warrant Commission report. So it's
• 31:11
  funny. I talked to people from all sides, and I call myself agnostic,
• 31:18
  you know, and I'm not willing to close the door on a possible
• 31:21
  conspiracy, but nothing that I have seen, you know, I think almost
• 31:26
  like you guys, where you're you feel like something's not right, but you're
• 31:30
  not sure what you know. But that's about the case, like twenty times
• 31:33
  now, you know, you know, when you think, when you think
• 31:38
  you've got to figure it out, something else comes along and it's like Nope,
• 31:42
  Nope, that's not it. Nope, No, that's not it.
• 31:45
  Okay, you know, here was an interesting turning point for me. You
• 31:49
  know, although I maybe didn't even realize it at the time. I interviewed
• 31:55
  Rabbi Silverman, you know, and I still was thinking of doing it a
• 31:57
  graphic novel, you know, ten or twelve years ago, and I'm on
• 32:01
  the phone with the guy. And at that point he was eighty nine.
• 32:06
  You know, he lived another ten years, he said. He said to
• 32:07
  me, I mean, you know, and as you guys know, everybody
• 32:12
  in that courtroom was writing a book in the Ruby courtroom. Oh yeah,
• 32:15
  even he said to me. He said to me, oh, including the
• 32:19
  jurors for sure, including you know. And he said to me, I'm
• 32:22
  eighty nine years old. I can't see that. Well, I'm not writing
• 32:27
  my book anymore. Would you like to see my notes that I took when
• 32:30
  I visited Jack in prison every other day for four months? I said,
• 32:35
  yeah, I wouldn't mind. Yeah that. So I get a package and
• 32:43
  I said, but look, you know, why don't you just make photo
• 32:45
  copies or scan them? My favorite photocopies for an eighty nine year old guy
• 32:50
  would probably make more sense. Now, make copies send it to me,
• 32:52
  you know. That way I won't have the responsibility. But two days later
• 32:58
  I get a FedEx package of the original documents with like the rusty paper clips
• 33:04
  from fifty years ago. Wow, you know, and you kind of think
• 33:07
  you get something like that, especially was just the beginning of my research,
• 33:12
  and you get some of them, you think it's a good idea for me
• 33:15
  to have original documents related to the Kennedy assassination in my house. So I
• 33:20
  scanned them, sent them right back to the Rabbi. But I mean that,
• 33:23
  and it took me a while to realize. I don't know if I'm
• 33:27
  the only person who ever saw them, but I you know, because I've
• 33:30
  seen them quoted in one or two other places. But I think the most
• 33:32
  I think I made the most use of them where I intercut his notes that
• 33:37
  he took, you know, like I said, three or four times a
• 33:38
  week, being very involved with the family and with Belli and with the whole
• 33:44
  defense, and intercutting that with the transcript of the of the trial and what's
• 33:49
  going on in the newspapers and other books and other you know, and other
• 33:52
  resources I had of it. You know, it really cast a whole other
• 34:00
  active on it, because he really, the Rabbi became very involved. He
• 34:04
  didn't just visit Ruby, you know, he really took a deep interest.
• 34:09
  I think he came to like rupe. Well like is a weird word.
• 34:14
  I don't think. I think he came to be involved in mostly with Ruby
• 34:16
  and his family. And I think the Rabbi really felt, here's this Jewish
• 34:22
  guy that just killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Do I have some responsibility to sort
• 34:29
  of try to stem some kind of anti semitic tell you jefter, you know,
• 34:37
  I mean I think that I think he felt some responsibility, uh the
• 34:40
  history really to take an interest in Jack Ruby. And and he has a
• 34:46
  very interesting history as well, uh, Rabbi Silverman. He was a Yale
• 34:54
  graduate. Uh he I guess tried his hand at baseball, was good enough,
• 35:00
  right, Well, let's face then and uh broadcast here and then joined
• 35:13
  the Marines and I believe Israel and the Israel Independence War, and then switch
• 35:21
  switched to the Korean War and to the Navy and was in the Mediterranean sixth
• 35:27
  Fleet risk a lot, yeah, yeah, and and and spent time in
• 35:34
  Spain, Greece and other parts of Europe. So this is a very interesting
• 35:40
  character to me because access to Ruby. Oh and he's from Connecticut, like
• 35:46
  you too. Really, Oh my god, I used to try to contact
• 35:51
  some of his answer, all right, thanks you yeah, you got me
• 35:53
  a new lead here. Uh and uh yeah. It's just it's very interesting
• 36:00
  that he was the one that had I don't would you say, the most
• 36:08
  access to Ruby, the most frequent access you said three times a week visiting.
• 36:15
  I mean, well, I mean I think Ruby's jailers had the most
• 36:17
  access to him. I think the guards. And that was a whole,
• 36:22
  that was a very those relationships that were fascinating Ruby's sister and brother, his
• 36:29
  sister, He had a sister and a brother. At least two of his
• 36:32
  siblings lived in Dallas, and he was very close, especially with his sister.
• 36:37
  Ruby never married, but he had this very neurotic, crazy relationship with
• 36:43
  his sister Eva, you know, because that's again that's the and and well
• 36:50
  the rabbi went on to it's funny, and the rabbi was from a very
• 36:53
  prominent raddical family. His father wrote a lot of like standard prayer books in
• 37:01
  in conservative Judaism, and and the the you know and say, you're right,
• 37:07
  the rabbi, it's incredible history and background and putting himself in Harm's way
• 37:13
  and then and then he burns out, you know, after like four months
• 37:16
  of visiting Jack Ruby, he just burns out. And his next job sort
• 37:21
  of on his career ladder is in l A. And I used to joke
• 37:25
  he went on to become Buddy Hackett's rabbi, But it turns out he became
• 37:30
  Buddy Hackett's rabbi. You know, So he was so suddenly he went from
• 37:35
  you know, so I think he's you know, I guess sort of explains
• 37:37
  how his son became a movie star, and you know, he became very
• 37:42
  much a show business guy, and so you know, and and uh,
• 37:45
  I think I think Sandy Kofax was in his car. You know, it's
• 37:49
  all these you know, so it's a it's a I think he was so
• 37:52
  burned out in Dallas that he just like went, I'm gonna be a comedian
• 37:55
  for men. Just uh, I've watched on the timeline if you don't mind.
• 38:05
  So when exactly was Silverman visiting Ruby multiple times a week? Was this
• 38:14
  before or after the Jolly West visit or visits that's interesting? Probably probably before
• 38:24
  Silverman started visiting less than a week, probably two or three days after Ruby
• 38:30
  killed Oswald. When did Jolly West show up? I believe you said April,
• 38:37
  but I don't know if you said the year. I think it was
• 38:39
  sixty four. But if it was April, I think really I think it
• 38:45
  was before April, because Silverman visited from like right after, you know,
• 38:51
  late November till like May till early May. So maybe so maybe they overlapped
• 38:55
  a little. Yeah, I know that what the Jolly West thing, I
• 39:00
  couldn't. I mean, it's tempting to say this is the guy you know
• 39:06
  from the Ultra, the MK ultra. I mean it was, Yeah,
• 39:14
  that's verified. Uh and it it is uh suspicious or as the young'ins like
• 39:22
  they call suss. But I was just wondering whether the Rabbi got tired of
• 39:31
  Jack Ruby, if you know, I think you mentioned some a point at
• 39:37
  which he visited him and Ruby was hiding under his bed and said there you
• 39:43
  know, the coming to kill us all. You know, obviously with his
• 39:49
  uh paranoia with with Ruby regularly, look, Ruby be displayed very crazy behavior
• 40:00
  in prison, including like hiding under the table, claiming that he could hear
• 40:07
  the screams of Jews being tortured. That he'd started the second Holocaust, that
• 40:10
  he was worse than Hitler, and some of the people, some of his
• 40:15
  guards thought Ruby was faking and they was just trying to set himself up for
• 40:19
  an insanity plea, which is what bell I was trying to do. Seems
• 40:24
  to me that behavior was too consistent and too ongoing to have been acting.
• 40:32
  He can't never rule anything out completely, but it does. And there were
• 40:36
  three suicide attempts, you know. I mean, look, you could certainly
• 40:42
  there's a point of view that is not without some credibility that Ruby was on
• 40:49
  assignment or maybe was one of ten people assigned, that he was lucky enough
• 40:52
  to be the guy in the room, and that the threat was not so
• 40:58
  much that they would hurt him, but that they would kill his family or
• 41:00
  hurt his family. And so he was, you know, doing whatever,
• 41:06
  he was taking little or figure to be taking the bullet for his family.
• 41:12
  And and and yet again his behavior is so inconsistent, and including his behavior
• 41:17
  on that manic weekend. You know, there's certainly theories that Okay, he
• 41:22
  was acting crazy that weekend because he wanted to be stopped. He didn't want
• 41:25
  to you know, he was not a jack. Ruby was never indicted much
• 41:30
  less convicted for killing anybody. He had no background. He was violent,
• 41:36
  certainly, he was a guy capable of killing people, but he was never
• 41:40
  you know, there was one time he was accused for like an hour in
• 41:43
  the in the in the Martin case, you know, and you know he
• 41:47
  was questioned in that because he was arrested a lot of times and interestingly never,
• 41:53
  He's certain the only time he served the only time he served time was
• 41:57
  I think thirty days on the West Coast for ticket scalping when he was living
• 42:00
  in San Francisco or La. So he's hi, who is not you know,
• 42:06
  for a lot of reasons. He's not a guy who will be your
• 42:10
  first choice to rub somebody out, you know, even though he might be
• 42:15
  your first choss to beat somebody up the jet that murder kind of indirectly led
• 42:22
  to the rise of of Hofa, you know, which is a whole other
• 42:28
  thing. Right, But just to back up a little bit, I wanted
• 42:31
  to talk to you a little bit about Jack Ruby's nightclub Endeavors okay there in
• 42:37
  Dallas, because there was many more of them than I actually realized. And
• 42:42
  one uh funny occurrence, if you could touch on it too, is the
• 42:45
  Gabe Kaplan story. I thought that was hilarious. I have no idea about
• 42:51
  that, you know, the Gabe Caplin story. And then we should talk
• 42:53
  about Hank Williams too, you know Jack too, Yes, yes, because
• 42:58
  Jack Ruby was hankling his best friend, you know, Gabe Kaplin. Oh
• 43:04
  yeah, you know if you remember gil the Lake, Gilbert Godfrey, the
• 43:07
  comedian who had a podcast Santa Padre and one night, I guess that maybe
• 43:14
  four years ago, Gabe Kaplan from Welcome Back Cotter was on the show and
• 43:19
  he was telling a story about Yeah, he started as comedian very young.
• 43:24
  You know, he didn't go to college. Well maybe briefly went to college,
• 43:28
  I forget, but he was nineteen. He's in Buffalo, you know,
• 43:31
  and there were no comedy clubs then. So he's performing at strip clubs
• 43:35
  and somebody hears the work in Dallas. You know, there's like dancing in
• 43:38
  comedy, stripping and comedy work. So he and a bunch of strippers get
• 43:43
  in a car and they drive like two days straight to Dallas. They end
• 43:47
  up at Joe Campezi's restaurant, you know, alleged mob boss Joe Campeazy,
• 43:52
  and Campeze said I know this guy, Jack Ruby, he's looking for entertainers
• 43:57
  for his club. And and and again it's Gabe Kaplin story. You know,
• 44:02
  this is me remembering and jotting down and recomping in the book gave Caplin.
• 44:07
  So Kaplin, Oh, I don't know if you guys know the whole
• 44:13
  gay Caplin story, because oh there's a you know, the coda to the
• 44:16
  gay Caplain story. Oh you're gonna love this. This is no please.
• 44:22
  So gay Caplin goes to audition for Ruby, and Kaplin is telling a joke
• 44:25
  about Dracula, and it's about the premises that if Dracula sees a beautiful woman,
• 44:32
  he's more interested in her neck than in her tits. And Caplin uses
• 44:37
  the word tits, and Ruby hits the ceiling. What do you think,
• 44:42
  I'm running a toilet here? You want to get me closed down? Get
• 44:45
  out of here, you you know, you amateurs, you're gonna get me
• 44:49
  closed And then and Caplin goes, I'm sorry, but you know I've worked
• 44:52
  in a lot of strip clubs, and you know that's a really pretty mild
• 44:57
  uh you know, quote unquote upsent and Ruby calms down. And then the
• 45:01
  next day they're at a They're at a poker game, and Ruby knew that
• 45:07
  that Capitol will be there, and he brings him a Dracula mask and he
• 45:12
  says, here, next time you do that routine, wear this mask.
• 45:15
  It'll be hilarious. And you know, Capital puts it on, almost suffocates.
• 45:19
  There's no breathing or you know, and and and you know, and
• 45:22
  Ruby says, okay, you know, I'll be in touch. I'll definitely
• 45:24
  call you. Never hear from him again. So that's that. And that's
• 45:30
  a story that he told on the Gilbert Show. I transfer, you know,
• 45:32
  I quoted from it. Cut to this past November. I'm in Dallas
• 45:38
  on November twentieth, speaking at a combined event of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society
• 45:45
  and the sixth Floor Museum. And the audience, of course, you know,
• 45:52
  I haven't even the audience is filled with old dudes who had been kids
• 45:57
  when Ruby killed Oswald. So everybody in the room looks looks like my relatives,
• 46:01
  right, and I'm just looking at them. And there's one guy who
• 46:05
  looks familiar, but everybody, you know, there's a lot of people,
• 46:07
  this one. You know what, I'm telling the story, and I have
• 46:09
  a PowerPoint. I have a picture of Gabe Kaplan from when he was when
• 46:14
  he was mister Cotter up on up on the screen, and you know,
• 46:16
  it goes very well and well attended, so a lot of books. I'm
• 46:20
  sitting there signing books and a guy comes up. That guy and I say
• 46:25
  to him, so, who would you like me to make it out to?
• 46:29
  And he says, oh, make it out the Gabe, and I
• 46:30
  go, you're Gabekaplin, aren't you. Turns out he lives part. You
• 46:40
  know, he's pretty much you know, for the most part, he's given
• 46:45
  up show business. But he's a he's a professional poker player and he's on
• 46:50
  celebrity poker tournament. So that's what he's been doing for the past forty years
• 46:52
  for the most part. Is so I think he so he splits his time
• 46:57
  between Dallas and Vegas. Maybe Vegas too, but I think and uh yeah.
• 47:05
  So we went out to dinner. It was it was completely surreal and
• 47:08
  I and I said, you know, I said, so you were sitting
• 47:12
  there, Well, I was telling your story, which thank god I gave
• 47:14
  full credit for. You know, I'm telling your story and showing your picture.
• 47:19
  You're sitting there, he said, how do you think I feel.
• 47:21
  I was sitting in the audience all you showed a picture of me and told
• 47:23
  my story. That's funny. Wow. So that's the gay Caplin story.
• 47:32
  And I think that's actually a really good segue because you mentioned casinos, and
• 47:39
  I wanted to talk and ask you about a character named Louis McWillie h who
• 47:51
  will be considered one of his closest friends, who hosted him on a trip
• 47:59
  to Cuba, I believe in nineteen fifty nine. Rumors are alleged to have
• 48:09
  gone back and forth a few times during that August September period, and this
• 48:19
  is from Larry Hancock's someone Worth talked. And I think he was a lot
• 48:29
  more political than then possibly we think and Ruby or McWillie Ruby, Ruby,
• 48:44
  he did not like Bobby Kennedy at allong correct. I don't know if he
• 48:49
  had a you know, I don't know if Ruby had a particular take on
• 48:53
  Bobby Kennedy. And I mean Kennedy was going after the mob. I don't
• 49:00
  think Kennedy very much admired John Kennedy. I'm sorry Ruby very much admya John
• 49:05
  Kennedy. I don't. I mean, maybe you believe me I'm sure there's
• 49:13
  things I don't know. I don't I don't recall Ruby ever going on a
• 49:15
  rant or anything about Bobby, you know that have you found you know,
• 49:22
  have you found anything like that? The Mob in general obviously did not like
• 49:28
  Bobby because Bobby was targeting the mob. You know, after after they may
• 49:31
  may not have helped Kennedy get elected in Illinois. Yeah, questions always,
• 49:36
  you know, how how much was Ruby a part of the mob or mafia
• 49:40
  syndicate? You know that that's always a question that's up in the air.
• 49:45
  You know that nobody really knows the the true answer to that. You know,
• 49:50
  we know he had a lot of connections with people throughout the years,
• 49:54
  you know, like like Joe mentioned with McWillie, I mean he went to
• 49:58
  Vegas to visit with him for a couple of days before the assassination Vegas,
• 50:01
  Vegas, Cuba to Vegas. Yeah, he visited Ruby at the child was
• 50:07
  five days before something. He visited Cuba, he did, But he also
• 50:14
  visited mcwilly the Thunderbird in Las Vegas, like the week before the assassination,
• 50:21
  because he visited a guy who owned another lounge something called the French something lounge
• 50:25
  in uh In in New Orleans. There was that guy. So he visited
• 50:32
  mcwilly in Vegas. That's interesting, well mcwilly, Yeah, mcwilly was his
• 50:39
  gateway to traffic Canty, I think, right. I mean that was you
• 50:44
  know as far as Ruby being political, wasn't he selling jeeps and guns to
• 50:50
  both sides in the Cuban Revolution? Yeah, Well a lot of people were
• 50:54
  playing both sides because no one knew who was going to come out, and
• 50:59
  uh Astro had not you know, become communist and aligned with the USSR yet,
• 51:08
  and a lot of people were playing both sides, including the CIA.
• 51:14
  And Ruby definitely made a trip down there in nineteen fifty nine, and that
• 51:21
  was when Trafficante was in jail, and it's alleged that he was trusted enough
• 51:30
  to go back and forth and bring money or whatever he had to do to
• 51:38
  possibly get Trafficanti out. That really was mcweally supposed to be the middleman there
• 51:45
  or somehow easing Ruby's entrance and exits from Yes, he was in Cuba in
• 51:53
  nineteen fifty nine. He was not actually well, he was arrested, but
• 52:00
  he wasn't put in jail. He was actually deported, which is really uh
• 52:07
  an outlier with other mobsters that were caught in Cuba under the Batista regime,
• 52:15
  talking about like John Martino and UH and Lauren Hall and and other connected guys
• 52:24
  that that ended up and sound Trump Conte Jr. Ended up in in the
• 52:30
  trip in the prison for different various periods of time. But mc willie was
• 52:39
  was not. He was apparently allegedly deported immediately. Soh so maybe somebody was
• 52:46
  bribed or threatened or something. Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, Rob.
• 52:53
  I don't know much about the visit or the reasons for the visit,
• 52:58
  And supposedly Ruby made a lot of undocumented or on recorded visits to Cuba,
• 53:02
  right, Yeah, Yeah, I don't do you guys think he met or
• 53:07
  knew or was friendly with g and Conna. You know, I've heard people
• 53:10
  say that I've never seen any proof that he and gan Conna really that that
• 53:15
  Ruby ever gotten up in the hierarchy to meet that guy. I don't think
• 53:20
  so. I mean, I think he was pretty much trying to trying to
• 53:23
  tag along with like Lewis mcwilly, and that Louis mcwilly wasn't a real big
• 53:28
  shot guy, you know, in terms of them you know that West Coast
• 53:32
  mafia structure. Yeah, he was definitely well. When they interviewed mcwilly during
• 53:39
  the HSCA in the seventies, you know, he was kind of kind of
• 53:45
  disting Jack Ruby's kind of calling him annoying, a tag along. You know,
• 53:50
  I want to be guy. That's my impression of Ruby. And you
• 53:55
  know, I mean, it's it. It's funny, right. I mean,
• 53:59
  then again, I if anybody knows this stuff, it's you guys.
• 54:07
  And I think those are the extremes. That's one of the fascinating things about
• 54:09
  Ruby and even Oswald, right, is that here's this guy who really was
• 54:15
  kind of annoying and a tag along, and and and and and and not
• 54:20
  that, right, and somebody who wouldn't trust with a really responsible thing.
• 54:25
  And yet nonetheless he walked up and shot the guy who should have been the
• 54:30
  most heavily guarded person in the world at point blank range, right, I
• 54:34
  mean, somehow that and then if you at the very last second that he
• 54:37
  possibly could have done it right, and then and then he's the guy.
• 54:45
  You know, I was reading Arl Inspectors to two people who you would think
• 54:49
  would and and who were on total opposite side of the political spectrum Arl Inspector
• 54:53
  and William Kuntler. Inspector's book, he describes Ruby as taking you know,
• 55:04
  when Ruby finally did testify for the warrant Commission, he describes Ruby as basically
• 55:07
  taking it over that like Ruby is running the show. Well, let me
• 55:13
  stop you there, sir. Did the warrant Commission? They came to Dallas.
• 55:17
  Correct, he did not go to d C. You requested to go
• 55:21
  to d C. He did not accommodate that request. He was very scared
• 55:25
  of I guess the minutemen and other forces in Dallas, and I believe he
• 55:34
  hinted at that, although he meane a lot of contradictory statements, as you
• 55:39
  point out in his book. But yeah, why why do you think that
• 55:45
  they wouldn't bring him to d C. I mean, it's I mean,
• 55:52
  that's the most I mean, I don't it seems well, he wasn't in
• 55:59
  federal custody. That was a problem. That was part of it. I
• 56:01
  think also the idea of I mean, look, I know what you're you
• 56:06
  know, be not that subtle subtext of your question is somebody didn't want him
• 56:09
  to come to DC, that there was some ulterior motive. I think Earl
• 56:15
  Warren. I think his family and his lawyers did not want him to testify
• 56:21
  the Warren Commission before his trial was over. But I think they were afraid
• 56:23
  he would say something to incriminate himself, which he probably would have. You
• 56:31
  know, let me, I will get to your question. Let me just
• 56:36
  finish, you know, sort of the whatever digression I was on before,
• 56:38
  and then we'll get to you. But you know, because you have Inspector
• 56:45
  describing Ruby is taking over the room despite being outnumbered, and literally, I'm
• 56:49
  sure at least one or two people in that room had a gun, and
• 56:52
  he literally takes over, including like bossing around Earl Warren, like borrowing Earl
• 56:55
  Warren's glasses to help him read like something. And then the other person is
• 57:01
  William Kunstler, you know, the famous Chicago eight or seven lawyer who really
• 57:07
  believed and he's the one who got Ruby's verdict overturned pretty much. You know,
• 57:14
  you know, we can talk about that. But he he didn't,
• 57:16
  you know, he seemed to believe that that Ruby would be the last guy
• 57:21
  anybody would enlist in a conspiracy. So even Counselor who says, even then,
• 57:24
  I believe the CIA sends sends people out to assess the people all the
• 57:29
  time. But I don't think Jack Ruby was part of anything like that,
• 57:31
  simply because he's not somebody anybody would pick anyway, say the question, let
• 57:37
  me get back to your question about right, remind me is an important question,
• 57:45
  Joe was Uh you lost me in your not not Jolian West, it
• 57:55
  was something else it was? Or is that why they picked Jack Ruby?
• 58:00
  Because he would be the last person anybody would think, you know, that's
• 58:04
  you know, that's possible. But you had a really good question. I
• 58:09
  just wanted to finish the point I was making before. I think it was
• 58:14
  because, uh, like would he be trusted with something like going to Cuba
• 58:20
  and possibly my boss? Uh, you know like co Star and Nostra.
• 58:27
  Uh, he would have never been able to join because of his background,
• 58:31
  right, so and associates what he could have been, yeah, you know,
• 58:40
  right? Or or part of the Jewish mafia, which which I think
• 58:46
  you would agree would be plausible that he could be somewhat associated with that side
• 58:53
  of it being I think I think there was a degree to which he and
• 58:59
  May and one or two of his siblings were you know, I mean you
• 59:02
  know, I you know, could you ask about him being in the nightclub
• 59:06
  business sometimes we started talking about that. I think he and I think his
• 59:09
  sister. I wouldn't want to speak for the other siblings, you know,
• 59:15
  I think he and his sister and maybe one of his brothers. You know,
• 59:20
  I think I think they were It was just part of doing business,
• 59:24
  was dealing with the mob. And you know, I mean what Ruby was
• 59:28
  Woul Ruby's siblings were brought in for questioning and him were for narcotic smuggling.
• 59:32
  You know that that that seems like a more likely uh perfect business for you
• 59:39
  know, well yeah, but then someime they got involved his his sister was
• 59:46
  dating a guy who was involved in like metal in the in the in the
• 59:52
  in the metal forming business and I'm making pipes and gaskets and whatever. And
• 59:59
  uh there was a guy named Guthrie who was a Dallas trooper who was who
• 1:00:06
  claimed that, oh, I know, we're talked about White didn't go to
• 1:00:10
  Washington. That's it. White didn't go to Washington. You know, I
• 1:00:16
  don't know I think what okay, right, one extreme is because I mean
• 1:00:22
  one thing that I think one thing that's really important to note, just to
• 1:00:27
  like to throw a monkey wrench and everything. Ruby lived for three years.
• 1:00:30
  Nobody lifted a finger to hurt him in three years when he was a very
• 1:00:34
  soft target that prison. If somebody really wanted to get in and kill Jack
• 1:00:38
  Ruby, it wouldn't have been that hard, you know. So three years
• 1:00:40
  he sat in that prison and nobody so much does like, you know,
• 1:00:45
  tried to like scratch him, you know, because he was kept apart from
• 1:00:47
  the general population. I think Ruby had in his mind the Jovalacci testimony,
• 1:00:52
  which was very recently before that, and they and they brought Jovalacci was the
• 1:00:59
  first made mob guy to go on the record and testify and what and uh
• 1:01:08
  publicly say, I believe a year before Jack Ruby, Right, So I
• 1:01:16
  think Ruby had that in his mind. I'm you know, I mean you
• 1:01:22
  could say, why didn't they do what he wanted? Well, I mean
• 1:01:24
  he was an imprisoned murderer, you know, I mean, you don't have
• 1:01:30
  to do everything a suspect. Well, I mean, what would have been
• 1:01:34
  gained? He was saying. On the one hand, he was saying Lyndon
• 1:01:39
  Johnson was behind it all. One day he say Lindon Johnson was behind it.
• 1:01:44
  And the next day he said, I can't talk to anybody but Lyndon
• 1:01:46
  Johnson, Right, Which is it? Jack? You know? So I
• 1:01:52
  think Earl Warren wanted to be done with it. I think, uh,
• 1:02:00
  you know, because they had taken the bulk of the testimony before they spoke
• 1:02:05
  to Ruby. I think they'd spoken to pretty much everybody else they were going
• 1:02:08
  to speak to. And Ruby's Ruby's family and lawyers couldn't agree on whether he
• 1:02:15
  should testify or not. There was actually all sorts of infighting among them to
• 1:02:20
  get him to testify at all. Now, he himself insisted on taking a
• 1:02:25
  lie detective test, even though lie detectors are notoriously not dependable. Uh.
• 1:02:34
  And then they and he got he managed to get Earl Warren to commit on
• 1:02:37
  the record, we will give you a lie detective test if that's what you
• 1:02:40
  want. I don't remember. How did do you remember? How did Warren
• 1:02:45
  when Ruby said I have to get to Washington. How did Warren deal with
• 1:02:47
  that? Do you remember exactly? Because he certainly evaded the question, But
• 1:02:52
  I don't know what it would have get told him. You know, look,
• 1:02:55
  you know we don't need to do that. We're here, Yeah,
• 1:02:59
  you know, don't you can tell us what you want here, you know,
• 1:03:01
  And and I mean I think so, look, I don't I've never
• 1:03:07
  understood when people say he had to get to Washington to be safer. I
• 1:03:10
  mean, you know, for instance, Abraham Lincoln would not think that coming
• 1:03:15
  to Washington would make you safer then, you know, But I mean,
• 1:03:17
  I don't know how that would have been a guarantee of him being any safer
• 1:03:22
  than he was in Dallas. And just because he was requesting it, I
• 1:03:28
  know, people think there's something and and and John Birch society related and far
• 1:03:35
  yeah first yeah, yeah, well but I mean somebody to Washington also,
• 1:03:40
  I mean, why would they Right, well, I think it would be
• 1:03:45
  harder in Washington to do that if if you didn't need to do that,
• 1:03:50
  but taking out Ruby after Ruby took out Oswalt would be even more suspicious.
• 1:04:00
  In my opinion, he may have he'd be safer in like federal custody instead
• 1:04:03
  of like, you know, the county jail, you know what I mean,
• 1:04:06
  that's certainly possible, but it turned out, uh, you know,
• 1:04:11
  And and again I know there's all these theories. Well a lot of the
• 1:04:14
  stuff that he said back then didn't He didn't even make it public until after
• 1:04:16
  his death. Like that video that you see where he's talking and he says
• 1:04:20
  all that stuff, but that that didn't even come out until after long after
• 1:04:25
  he was dead. Now, which which video where he says that people in
• 1:04:28
  high places. Yeah, that was a price conference. There were one hundred
• 1:04:31
  reporters listening to him and recording him. It was not a secret, right,
• 1:04:35
  But it wasn't like it wasn't like now, you had to be watching
• 1:04:39
  it right then and there in the room. I mean that that was the
• 1:04:43
  thing that drove That drove a lot of people crazy. Yeah. Sorry,
• 1:04:48
  there are just some things, a lot of like the video. It wasn't
• 1:04:51
  like video on demand, like we can watch it. We can watch it
• 1:04:54
  right now if we want to. But back then you had to catch it
• 1:04:57
  live when it happened, to see it with your eye. Oh, you
• 1:05:00
  out to trust. One hundred reporters in the room. He had a pressed.
• 1:05:02
  It drove his It drove everybody crazy. He drove his lawyers, and
• 1:05:05
  it drove the security people. They're crazy that here was a guy who was
• 1:05:12
  not going to testify. They figured out he's not. But at every recess
• 1:05:16
  he had an impromptu press confidence where like reporters would crowd in on him,
• 1:05:21
  you know, any I mean talk about a soft target. You know,
• 1:05:26
  it made sorry. There are a lot of things I admit I don't know
• 1:05:29
  and that are ambiguous, but that is like you know, you know,
• 1:05:32
  I mean, like Dorothy Kill Gallan. I don't know if Drothy Kill Gallen
• 1:05:35
  got a secret interview with him. I'm betting she did not, you know,
• 1:05:42
  because if she did, she had her own column. She had her
• 1:05:46
  own column, and I know she was going to tell her all. I
• 1:05:51
  don't know. It just seems, you know, And I know she had
• 1:05:54
  a quote unquote suspicious death, but this is not one of those things.
• 1:05:58
  Even if she was murdered, she might have been murdered by somebody for some
• 1:06:01
  other reason than having to do with the Kennedy you know. But the my
• 1:06:08
  impression is that Ruby would talk to anybody and did talk to anybody and wouldn't
• 1:06:13
  shut up, and anything he might have told her in the five minutes they
• 1:06:15
  had alone, you know, there's well, it's funny his relationship with Dorothy
• 1:06:20
  Hill Gallan. And I guess I'm the one who brought up Darthy Hill Gallen.
• 1:06:23
  So I don't know if you were planning to Oh, you don't know
• 1:06:28
  Dorothy hill Gallen. No, no, no. Gallen was a famous columnist,
• 1:06:31
  and you know, my memory of her as a child is seeing her
• 1:06:34
  on that TV show What's My Line? You know, yeah, which which
• 1:06:41
  John Daly was. Now this to me is John Daly was the host of
• 1:06:45
  that show, and he was married to Earl Warren's daughter, So you know,
• 1:06:53
  I'll take that connections. So you know, Dorothy hill Allen, supposedly
• 1:07:01
  Dugan hill Gallen was Ruby's favorite newspaper columnist. Ruby was not an intellectual or
• 1:07:08
  a scholar, but like you know, there was no internet, you know,
• 1:07:12
  Ruby read. Ruby was a voracious newspaper reader for numerous reasons. I
• 1:07:16
  think a lot of them having to do with keeping up with what was going
• 1:07:19
  on in Dallas that might have or in the world that might affect his business.
• 1:07:24
  So I think before kill, Gallan interviewed him allegedly, but she wrote
• 1:07:30
  about him and described him as a gangster, and he did not like that.
• 1:07:33
  He took personal offense to being described by his favorite columnist as a gangster.
• 1:07:43
  But I mean, but I mean, to me, that's an important
• 1:07:45
  because when people say stuff like at the press conference on Friday night and people's
• 1:07:49
  you know, I think the DA refers to Oswald's having been a member,
• 1:07:58
  and he names it, he names the committee, it's the Free Cuba.
• 1:08:04
  And everybody makes a big thing of the fact that Ruby corrected him. But
• 1:08:10
  if you look at the video, you know, half a dozen people corrected
• 1:08:14
  him. So I mean, it is interesting that Ruby knew that all there.
• 1:08:16
  It was a voracious newspaper reader, you know, not that, but
• 1:08:20
  I mean, certainly, it's not like in a room full of reporters only
• 1:08:24
  Jack Ruby correctly. Well again, what the nightclub owner doing. They're impersonating
• 1:08:29
  a member of the press. Well again, that that's enough, Okay,
• 1:08:32
  let me chow, let me push back on that. Okay, it would
• 1:08:36
  be it's it's Jack Ruby was wearing his glasses and he was trying to look
• 1:08:45
  important. I don't deny that, But everybody in town knew Jack Ruby.
• 1:08:51
  To say that he was impersonating somebody is kind of a stretch. I mean,
• 1:08:56
  I guess the out of town reporters wouldn't have known who he was.
• 1:08:59
  But it's all most like he was in a school play. It's like I'm
• 1:09:01
  gonna put on my glasses, you know. The Japanese reporter and because what
• 1:09:09
  I'm doing is I'm I'm sneaking, right, And I mean I actually believe
• 1:09:13
  it's I believes quite possible he was trying handles and trying to get into the
• 1:09:16
  room with Well to kill him that night. I think that's that's plausible.
• 1:09:20
  But it's like, Okay, I'm going to try door handles and sneak in,
• 1:09:26
  but I'm also going to stand on a table, you know, behind
• 1:09:30
  these these real reporters and you know, so, I mean, I get
• 1:09:36
  what you're saying, but I think he was. That's the weird thing about
• 1:09:41
  Ruby, And maybe that gives makes you think maybe he was trying to get
• 1:09:44
  caught because he was so he made it his business to be known by everybody.
• 1:09:48
  He was not a guy skulking around. He was he he loved to
• 1:09:55
  be the center of attention, you know. He you know, he was
• 1:09:59
  photo bombing, like interviews with with they were doing with Henry Way, you
• 1:10:03
  know, you know some you know, I think a reporter from wherever New
• 1:10:06
  York or ELI was trying to do you Henry Wade and Ruby's in there like
• 1:10:14
  before photo bombing existed. As gotta give him credit for that. One literally
• 1:10:20
  hitting his his chin on Henry Wade's shoulder. Well, well, they were,
• 1:10:28
  I believe close. Correct me if I'm wrong. Rob and Gambled together
• 1:10:32
  played. They definitely knew each other. Ruby knew a lot of the cops.
• 1:10:36
  You know, did he know what? Do you think he knew?
• 1:10:42
  What? I mean that I contradictory thing though, whether or not he actually
• 1:10:45
  knew Wade? I mean he knew who Wade was. Wade claimed to not
• 1:10:47
  know who. Do you think they actually had a relationship? I think so,
• 1:10:54
  I'm not, I'm not. I don't know. I don't know either
• 1:10:56
  way. Would I'm not sure. I think who he was just from casual
• 1:11:01
  meetings here or there. But as far as I'm hanging out together, I
• 1:11:04
  don't think I haven't seen anything like that. Yeah, I mean on Thursday
• 1:11:11
  nights together or something like that. One thing that I found interesting, you
• 1:11:15
  know, and and sort of when you're studying something way back in history,
• 1:11:20
  you know, I was trying to figure out who goes who went to strip
• 1:11:25
  clubs in Dallas? You know what was? You know what I mean?
• 1:11:28
  And and I think a lot of I think a lot of kind of middle
• 1:11:33
  class straight people went just for a goof or you know, there were comedians
• 1:11:38
  and singers as well as the strippers. But I think, you know,
• 1:11:41
  I think it was sort of a more acceptable thing. I mean, other
• 1:11:45
  people I interviewed actually were the children of the Weinstein brothers who were Ruby's competitors.
• 1:11:51
  They and they looked at, you know, they looked down on Ruby's
• 1:11:55
  place as kind of a low class place. They they believe that they family
• 1:12:00
  had much higher class strip drawings or paparat and his what was. You know.
• 1:12:06
  I think I think, you know, I think they were right.
• 1:12:10
  He was seen pictures of of of the of his place compared to the others.
• 1:12:15
  But I think I think it was sort of you know, I think
• 1:12:18
  students would go, uh, you know, I think, like, you
• 1:12:21
  know, the big campus of the University of Texas there. So I think
• 1:12:25
  the clientele was not as like CD or or marginal. You know, I
• 1:12:30
  think I think it attracted a lot of CD marginal characters. I think that's
• 1:12:33
  who who Ruby himself attracted. But but just sort of, you know,
• 1:12:39
  I think it was a more you know, kind of weren't the clubs a
• 1:12:44
  little different in Dallas back then as far as alcohol can go, like versus
• 1:12:48
  a just a random bar versus a club, you know, the club or
• 1:12:56
  the you know, the college club, the gay nineties club. Yeah,
• 1:13:00
  there was there was only I think, you can only get maybe I don't
• 1:13:02
  even know he get beer there. But they would sell setups and then people
• 1:13:06
  would bring their own hard liquor, and then they could sell champagne, which
• 1:13:12
  was then a big There were women who were not strippers, but whose job
• 1:13:15
  was sort of like, you know, sit and talk guys up and make
• 1:13:17
  them think they were going to go to bed with them, but really just
• 1:13:19
  make them, you know, pay like twenty five dollars for a bottle champagne
• 1:13:25
  that costs the fifty cents you know. You know, I have to say,
• 1:13:30
  in researching this book, one of the I think going into it,
• 1:13:36
  I thought that maybe in some way jack Ruby was like a slightly more violent
• 1:13:41
  Ralph Cramton, you know, I thought, you know, sort of Jackie
• 1:13:45
  Leason from The Honeymooners. I just thought, well, but there's one particular
• 1:13:48
  book that I realized, you know, I learned a lot more about than
• 1:13:56
  I wanted to about the trafficking business, the human trafficking business in Dallas of
• 1:14:00
  the nineteen fifties and sixties that I wanted to because you know, while it
• 1:14:06
  wasn't necessarily uh that a stripper would be forced or coerced into prostitution or doing
• 1:14:15
  favors, I think I think it happened, you know, just I think
• 1:14:19
  those businesses, you know, there was Ruby Ruby Dwntown, Dallas, the
• 1:14:25
  neighborhood with Ruby's clubs were, which is right across the street from some of
• 1:14:30
  the most fancy hotels in town, the Adolphus Hotel and the Magnolia. But
• 1:14:35
  I you know, I think side by side with that was just this really
• 1:14:42
  sleazy underworld where the police kept thing. The police and the city fathers sort
• 1:14:47
  of said okay, within this zone, anything goes, you know, and
• 1:14:53
  sort of you know, men could go to cheat on their wives and you
• 1:14:57
  know, you know, and people could drink within a certain you know,
• 1:15:00
  there's gam anything went on in this vice zone. But it was it was
• 1:15:05
  really very There were a lot of unspoken rules about who could participate and who
• 1:15:13
  couldn't, and you know, so so Ruby I think was more sinister,
• 1:15:18
  you know, whether you know, whether he was literally in the mob or
• 1:15:23
  just a fellow traveler, but he was with a lot of stuff that you
• 1:15:30
  know that. Well, even the way he treated his dancers and the girls.
• 1:15:33
  You know, they would kind of trade him, like meet from city
• 1:15:36
  to city, you know, down there, back and forth, you know,
• 1:15:41
  from New Orleans to Dallas. And yet some of them, some of
• 1:15:45
  the bigger stars seemed to have some clouds, you know, I don't know,
• 1:15:49
  you know, like like Jada and and but you're right, you know,
• 1:15:56
  his even though one he he was really seemed to wasn't their connection with
• 1:16:00
  like Candy Bar and Mickey Cohen, Well, Mickey Cohen was for a time
• 1:16:04
  Candy Bar's boyfriend. You know. Candy Bar was you know, basically trafficked
• 1:16:10
  into being in what's supposedly the first thing that they call the first porn movie.
• 1:16:15
  And then and through that she became a famous dancer all over the country.
• 1:16:21
  And yet she would not dance for Jack Rug. You know, she
• 1:16:25
  would informally dance. Jack owned. Jack and his sister owned a lot of
• 1:16:29
  different clubs, including a couple of country western clubs and the Jack Ruby the
• 1:16:32
  last person to give Hank Williams steady work. When Hank Williams became totally unreliable
• 1:16:36
  and undependable, you know, he played this kind of cat and mask game
• 1:16:41
  where I don't think he really liked Ruby, but he needed him, and
• 1:16:45
  so he was check into hotels and under assume names and try to hide from
• 1:16:48
  Ruby. But but then Ruby need you know, then he come out to
• 1:16:53
  perform, but then he would black out. He would black out on stage.
• 1:16:56
  But then Ruby would charge the fans like money to come backstage and take
• 1:17:00
  pictures of blackedout Hank Williams. You know, it was a you know,
• 1:17:04
  but but but uh but so yes, so that was a really ugly towardry
• 1:17:12
  side. But it did there did seem to be It's a book called Jack
• 1:17:16
  Ruby's Girls that's written by and and you know, there were maybe it was
• 1:17:23
  a comparative thing, you know. I mean, I think, you know,
• 1:17:25
  from what I can tell, the Weinstein's treated their people pretty well.
• 1:17:30
  But I'm sure in that business, I think by comparison, maybe Jack Ruby
• 1:17:34
  wasn't so bad, even though he would arrange parties and send strippers to them,
• 1:17:40
  with the subtext being that they would treat, you know, would somehow
• 1:17:44
  engage in some kind of prostitution. But but it seems like there will be
• 1:17:47
  people that would quit. He would fire people and then they then even be
• 1:17:51
  hire them. People would quit in a huf and then then come back and
• 1:17:55
  he did, you know, he did have the most interesting one most interesting.
• 1:18:01
  Uh. There's a woman named Joel Brown who was an African American jazz
• 1:18:05
  singer who played for years with Lewis Armstrong. But I think before she got
• 1:18:12
  working with Armstrong, she would sing for Jack Ruby and then she would also
• 1:18:16
  sing across the street at the Adolphus Hotel at like the sophisticated nightclub. You
• 1:18:21
  know, I think it was just the so it was. I'm still trying
• 1:18:25
  to wrap my brain around what it must have been like to walk around in
• 1:18:30
  downtown Dallas because if you've ever been to that Adolphus Hotel, man, oh
• 1:18:34
  man, that I mean that's the hotel with Lyndon Johnson stayed when he came
• 1:18:38
  to town with the Adolphus Hotel. Yeah no he didn't, right, But
• 1:18:47
  I mean, so the downtown is is. I guess it was just the
• 1:18:53
  like opulence and wealth right up against sort of the skeeviee stuff and pawn shops
• 1:18:59
  and you know, I get I guess maybe like Tom Square used to be
• 1:19:00
  in New York or maybe still as to some degree, they'd be you know,
• 1:19:04
  this kind of family friendly, you know, and rich person's uh accommodations
• 1:19:11
  and entertainment and then like kind of low down, uh sleazy clubs. But
• 1:19:16
  Ruby did think he ran a class joint. He was really you know,
• 1:19:20
  he kept telling you know, and he liked to perform in his own MC.
• 1:19:24
  Also, he thought he was a stand up comic. H Yeah,
• 1:19:29
  I can see that for sure, because he got he would get he would
• 1:19:32
  get mad at some of the mcs and and kick him off stays and then
• 1:19:34
  go up himself. Yeah, he'd say that. We would say to people,
• 1:19:40
  I'm colorful and I'm a character, ain't I you know? Yeah,
• 1:19:45
  I know Bill Bill Damar had some pretty scathing comments about about Jack Ruby.
• 1:19:54
  Huh did you talk to Bill DeMar? No, No, I've just seen
• 1:19:58
  what he's put out there. I don't. It must have looked something that
• 1:20:05
  the people kept coming back to work for him though. There must have been
• 1:20:10
  something about him. I mean, so this Jewel Brown who was who was
• 1:20:14
  the famous jazz singer, she tells the story. You know, I didn't
• 1:20:19
  get I think I think she's still a lot, but I didn't get interviewer.
• 1:20:23
  But I but but she there's some very She's done some very interesting interviews
• 1:20:28
  and one there was one time. Look, imagine, you know, it
• 1:20:31
  was no picnic being black in Dallas in those days. Based on my research,
• 1:20:35
  you know, it was really so Ruby. Actually, when Ruby owned
• 1:20:42
  one of the biggest country Western clubs, the Longhorn Ballroom, it had a
• 1:20:46
  different name, maybe it's now called the Long Harm. When he owned like
• 1:20:50
  one of the when he ran one of the biggest country western clubs in Dallas,
• 1:20:58
  he was the first person to bring in performers, you know, I
• 1:21:00
  mean that was you know, in some weird way, Jack Ruby was fighting
• 1:21:05
  the good progressive like some little five year old, all year old black kid
• 1:21:15
  named little Daddy Nelson. Yeah, there's gonna be Ruby's ticket to fame and
• 1:21:19
  fortune. There's this thing, right, kind of turned out somebody, you
• 1:21:23
  know, Ruby had made a deal with the kids, who we thought with
• 1:21:26
  the kid's parents, and somebody else showed up and claimed to be the kid's
• 1:21:29
  mother, and you know, you know, all I've read says that Ruby
• 1:21:32
  just sort of walked away. I don't know if it was that clean,
• 1:21:34
  and you know, but somehow that he lost his state. But yeah,
• 1:21:38
  that was But Juel Brown tells a story where she got a traffic she had
• 1:21:42
  a speeding ticket. She thought, really it was unfair and maybe because she
• 1:21:45
  was targeted for being black, I don't remember, but she got this ticket
• 1:21:49
  and Ruby said I'll take care of that, and he tore it up,
• 1:21:53
  and she was really scared, what are you doing? You know, I'm
• 1:21:55
  going to get in big trouble. And he said, don't worry, I'll
• 1:21:57
  handle it, you know, right, And they never work any repercussions.
• 1:22:00
  So Ruby Ruby, you know, it's funny what some people say to me,
• 1:22:04
  how did Jack Ruby get in that in the police station to kill Oswald
• 1:22:09
  to begin with? And and I know this controversy, but it just seemed
• 1:22:14
  it just seems to me that Jack Ruby everybody knew the guy. He made
• 1:22:18
  it his business that everybody knew him, especially the police. And so you
• 1:22:25
  know, I don't I don't think anybody would have stopped him or even you
• 1:22:30
  know. So to me, that's it's a mystery, but not a mystery,
• 1:22:33
  you know, because I know the controversy. He said different things and
• 1:22:36
  did the cops let him in? You know, I have to have the
• 1:22:41
  battle is too a looking like you belong and acting like you belong. So
• 1:22:46
  if you look the part and you act the part of a member of the
• 1:22:48
  press or somebody important, and that's how you carry yourself, it's real easy
• 1:22:55
  to be that chameleon who can just walk right into things and nobody questions the
• 1:22:59
  thing. And I think a lot of people, but I think he made
• 1:23:01
  it his business to be known. I mean that that he was. You
• 1:23:05
  know, I refer to him as the unofficial mayor of downtown Dallas, you
• 1:23:10
  know, Albert bell I called him the village idiot, you know. I
• 1:23:14
  mean, maybe that's two sides of the same coin, you know, but
• 1:23:16
  people, people knew to who he was, and he was, Yeah,
• 1:23:21
  he was just back. But but he did own multiple businesses, like in
• 1:23:29
  Dallas, being one of eight children, coming from a family that provided no
• 1:23:39
  support or opportunity, opportunity he if you take that whole situation in context,
• 1:23:49
  he was pretty successful. Yes, however, his businesses were or the reason
• 1:24:00
  he promised the Weinstein brothers that he would not open a strip club, you
• 1:24:04
  know, because they did not want they the Weinstein brothers were brothers, but
• 1:24:09
  they each owned a separate club, but all within you know, a two
• 1:24:13
  minute walk of Ruby's a less one was literally and Ruby to the barriers something
• 1:24:19
  was it ab Abe and Abe and it'll company. But the more was the
• 1:24:29
  more successful one. But they were they were brothers. Yeah, Barney Avan
• 1:24:35
  Barney and Ruby promised he would not compete with them, that he was just
• 1:24:42
  going to have, you know, a club with comedy and music but not
• 1:24:45
  strippers. And but then the business was failed. When Ruby died, he
• 1:24:49
  owed forty thousand dollars to the I R. S alone, and who knows
• 1:24:55
  what he owed to mobsters or friends. I mean he so he he did.
• 1:25:00
  He had a lot of businesses, but I don't know if any of
• 1:25:02
  them were especially successful. And honestly, I don't know how much of them,
• 1:25:08
  you know. I mean, I don't think it's impossible that maybe the
• 1:25:12
  mob was just draining him. That even if he was to whatever degree mobbed
• 1:25:15
  up, maybe they just saw him as a part of the expression of Patsy,
• 1:25:19
  you know, that somebody they could exploit, you know, tap I
• 1:25:24
  mean at at you know. So, yes, he he had these ongoing
• 1:25:30
  businesses that were open and had a fair amount of clientele, but that he
• 1:25:35
  was in you know, that's there's a theory that I used to subscribe to
• 1:25:41
  more than I do, is that what Ruby Ruby was trying to commit suicide
• 1:25:45
  by cop that he was had he figured once he shot us, and you
• 1:25:49
  know, once he shot Oswold, how could a room full of police not
• 1:25:55
  shoot him? But there was also a room full of reporters and the cops
• 1:25:59
  were gunshots because of what had happened, you know, so nobody you know,
• 1:26:03
  again, if you if if somebody's job there was to then you know,
• 1:26:08
  cut out Ruby and shoot him. They didn't. They didn't do it,
• 1:26:11
  you know, I mean so, but that I think in a way,
• 1:26:15
  you know, there's a theory that that I find some credence. And
• 1:26:17
  that's what he wanted to do. He wanted to be the guy. He
• 1:26:20
  wanted to be the Jewish guy that killed the guy that killed the president.
• 1:26:24
  And then get killed. His problems are over. He dies a hero.
• 1:26:30
  And because for for about the first month, he got fan mail, he
• 1:26:33
  got letters thanking him. You know, you did what you know, nobody
• 1:26:36
  else had the guts to do. You're our hero, you know, you
• 1:26:40
  stepped up when nobody else. And then the weird thing that happened a month
• 1:26:46
  or two in people started almost thinking that he had killed the president. It
• 1:26:53
  was this weird shift in public consciousness. You know that. But but at
• 1:27:00
  first he you know, if you can, you know, And and there's
• 1:27:03
  all sorts of interpretations. Ruby is smiling when they when they you know,
• 1:27:06
  at a certain point when they fingerprint him, he's joking with the guy doing
• 1:27:12
  the fingerprinting, and and and you can't tell if it's if he's just relieved
• 1:27:17
  that he had this mission that now he's you know, fulfilled and it's out
• 1:27:20
  of his control, or you don't, you don't know what you know,
• 1:27:23
  but there's there's some level on which he's relieved and proud, and it's it's
• 1:27:31
  almost like he's a guy who I don't know, want a hot door eating
• 1:27:34
  contest or something. He's just like with the with the cops and with the
• 1:27:41
  fingerprint people. It's a it's really it's a it's he's a fascinating guy and
• 1:27:46
  but I got you know, you know. So that's that's why I wrote
• 1:27:53
  a book about it. And I encourage everybody out there to go grab it.
• 1:27:59
  Danny amazing show. Where can people go to find out more about you
• 1:28:03
  and your other books? And where they can buy this book? Jack Ruby.
• 1:28:09
  Than many phases of Oswald's assassin. Well, they can go to Dannyfingerols
• 1:28:13
  dot com to find out about me. I'm on social medium. Let's tell
• 1:28:16
  you. I'm old. So my main one is Facebook, but I'm I'm
• 1:28:20
  on some other ones too, but Facebook is my main hangout social media wise,
• 1:28:26
  you can buy. It's published by Chicago Review Press. It is,
• 1:28:30
  you know. If you want to go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble,
• 1:28:33
  be my guest. If you want to go to your local indie store,
• 1:28:36
  be my guest. Also, if you enjoyed hearing this past hour and forty
• 1:28:41
  minutes of my voice, imagine fourteen hours of me reading the audiobook into your
• 1:28:45
  ears. I've done the audiobook on this and the Stanley Book and a couple
• 1:28:50
  of my other books. So if this is your idea of a good time,
• 1:28:54
  then then the there's plenty of audio riches for you to to hear it.
• 1:29:00
  But I mean, I think I did you know. I've been told
• 1:29:03
  people enjoy the audio book, and nothing like reading an audiobook to find every
• 1:29:08
  mistake you put in the print book. It's like, oh, hey,
• 1:29:12
  how about that that was but the wrong word? And then the paperback is
• 1:29:15
  coming out in the fall. But the hardcover is still out now and uh,
• 1:29:21
  yeah it's it's but you can get it at all the usual suspects.
• 1:29:26
  Awesome, Well appreciate you, Joy. I found it really fascinating. Uh.
• 1:29:31
  There's a lot of information about Ruby in there that I was previously unaware
• 1:29:35
  of. Sorry to cut you off, Rob, And uh, yeah,
• 1:29:40
  I just want to encourage everyone to to keep it open mind and uh and
• 1:29:47
  and learn a little more about Jack Ruby and I'll let you finish it almost
• 1:29:50
  for Yeah. I was just gonna wish Danny Musch continued success in your professional
• 1:29:58
  life and in your personal life. Yeah. I hope you had a good
• 1:30:00
  time hanging out with us, and let's do it again. Sometimes write another
• 1:30:03
  book. Get busy, Okay, I had a great time. I'm working
• 1:30:06
  on one. I had a great time. Really great question. Guys.
• 1:30:09
  Thank you, and you guys say thank you. Thanks Danny. Hang on,
• 1:30:14
  hang on for us for one second. Here we talk us out.
• 1:30:17
  That's been two episodes of number two hundred and eighty three of the Lone Guming
• 1:30:20
  Podcast. Make sure you follow along on the socials that's at the Lone Gum
• 1:30:25
  and seven pretty much everywhere. Make sure you like, subscribe, and share,
• 1:30:29
  this show if you liked it. Okay ring, that little notification bell
• 1:30:32
  get notified every time we go live. So thank you folks and we'll see
• 1:30:39
  you next time. Thank you again, Danny, Okay bhie, guys, thank