He shot the man who allegedly shot President Kennedy, shocking an already stunned and
grieving nation. So what ultimately happened to the assassin's assassin?
On the morning of November 24, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald slipped a black sweater over his collared
shirt just before Dallas police officers began moving him from the city lockup to
the county jail. The police were holding Oswald on murder charges for assassinating President
John F. Kennedy two days before, as well as for the shooting death of a Dallas police officer.
Municipal Court Building, a stocky man in a dark suit and gray fedora pushed past the reporters,
shoved a .38 caliber pistol into Oswald's abdomen, and fired once.
In the ensuing chaos, eight officers tackled the shooter, a Dallas nightclub owner named Jack Ruby.
"Was that the man who shot the man, or do you know?" "That is the man that shot the man."
But it was too late. A few hours later Oswald died in Parkland Memorial hospital
from a chest wound. And with his death arose a million JFK assassination conspiracy theories,
helped along by the mysterious man who murdered Kennedy's killer.
Jack Ruby was born Jacob Rubenstein in Chicago in 1911. His parents,
Polish Jews, immigrated to the U.S. in 1903. An unstable home life marked his childhood,
and the county placed Ruby in foster care for a short stint.
He left school early, became a ticket scalper, sold novelties from a pushcart,
and often brawled with other young men in the mean streets of Chicago.
He later worked as a union organizer and door-to-door salesman, among other work,
and served stateside as a mechanic in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II.
By the late 1940s, he was living in Dallas, Texas, had changed his name to Jack Ruby,
and operated a string of nightclubs, including strip joints. He racked up eight arrests for
carrying a concealed weapon, simple assault, and disturbing the peace, among other violations.
He counted Dallas police officers, gamblers, and various underworld figures as friends.
In addition, sources suggested that Ruby's permission was required for
the initiation of illegal activities in the region. The Warren Commission,
established to look into Kennedy's assassination, wrote in their report,
"Two persons of questionable reliability have reported that Ruby's consent was
necessary before gambling or narcotics operations could be launched in Dallas."
Even so, the commission determined Ruby
wasn't actively involved in mob-related business, writing,
"Based on its evaluation of the record ... the Commission believes that the
evidence does not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime."
After Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald, the Dallas County state's attorney,
Henry Wade, took the case to a grand jury that same week. Wade told the Chicago Tribune,
"I am going to seek the death penalty because I
think his case is an aggravated one. This was a second assassination. The murder of
a man under arrest and manacled and I feel that it is an extreme case."
Ruby sat in jail for more than three months,
awaiting trial on murder charges. During this time, he repeatedly asked to speak
to the Warren Commission so he could prove his innocence. The commission stated in its report,
"Jack Ruby expressed his desire to be examined with a polygraph,
truth serum, or any other scientific device which would test his veracity."
Per the FBI, the interpretation of the results,
"...depends on whether or not Ruby suffered from psychosis. A psychotic
subject may not be able to distinguish true answers from false answers and may
be convinced he is telling the truth, even though he is not."
As reported by the New York Times, during his 1964 trial,
psychiatrist Manfred Guttmacher testified that Ruby "experienced a psychotic episode" after
encountering Oswald and was legally insane at the time of the murder.
Jack Ruby said he shot Oswald to spare Jackie Kennedy from having to come back
to Dallas to attend the inevitable trial of her husband's assassin. To this day,
many believe Ruby's motives involved some larger conspiracy involved in Kennedy's assassination,
with some pointing to the Mafia and others to Fidel Castro,
among a multitude of theories. The Warren Commission concluded that,
"...on the basis of the evidence available to it,
that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The
Committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy."
On March 14, 1964, a Dallas jury found Ruby guilty of murder with malice and sentenced him
to death in the electric chair. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the
conviction two years later. But like Oswald, whose death prevented his murder trial, Ruby
cheated the executioner. He died of a pulmonary embolism on January 3, 1967, before his retrial.