Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination

by Richard Belzer

  Unlike most Americans during the 1960s, the above reference exemplifies that Jack Ruby clearly knew the vast trail of corruption for which Lyndon Johnson was responsible. That trail included several murders, as we documented in Dead Wrong. The book, A Texan Looks at Lyndon: A Study in Illegitimate Power, was the first to openly address the ruthless and even deadly tactics of the Lyndon Johnson political machine; it had just come out in March of 1964, and Ruby was already familiar with its contents. Of course, Ruby had probably witnessed the ruthlessness of Johnson firsthand, because Ruby was familiar himself with the dark underside of Texas and its melding of Organized Crime and cold-blooded politics. Ruby’s letter to his friend also included the following passage:

  Isn’t it strange that Oswald who hasn’t worked a lick most of his life, should be fortunate enough to get a job at the Book Building two weeks before the president himself didn’t know as to when he was to visit Dallas,

  145 Ibid.

  146 Ibid.

  147 Ibid.

  148 Ibid.

  now where would a jerk like Oswald get the information that the president was coming to Dallas? Only one person could have had that information, and that man was Johnson who knew weeks in advance as to what was going to happen, because he is the one who was going to arrange the trip for the president, this had been planned long before the president himself knew about, so you can figure that one out. The only one who gained by the shooting of the president was Johnson, and he was in a car in the rear and safe when the shooting took place. What would the Russians, Castro or anyone else have to gain by eliminating the president? If Johnson was so heartbroken over Kennedy, why didn’t he do something for Robert Kennedy? All he did was snub him.149

  This is how Ruby’s testimony before the Warren Commission concluded:

  Ruby was eventually given a polygraph examination, but the results were deemed void of interpretation. The results—questions and answers included—can be accessed online.150

  149 Ibid.

  150 Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Appendix 17: Polygraph Examination of Jack Ruby,” page 807.http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/pdf/WR_A17_PolygraphExamRuby.pdf

  Ruby: You have lost me though. You have lost me, Chief Justice Warren.

  Chief Justice Warren: Lost you in what sense?

  Ruby: I won’t be around for you to come and question me again.

  Chief Justice Warren: Well, it is very hard for me to believe that. I am sure that everybody would want to protect you to the very limit.

  Ruby: All I want is a lie detector test, and you refuse to give it to me.

  Because as it stands now—and the truth serum, and any other—Pentothal—how do you pronounce it, whatever it is. And they will not give it to me, because I want to tell the truth.

  And then I want to leave this world. But I don’t want my people to be blamed for something that is untrue, that they claim has happened.

  Chief Justice Warren: Mr. Ruby, I promise you that you will be able to take such a test.

  As the document notes, Ruby himself refers to the process of “brainwashing” which some think he was also victim to:

  I would like to be able to get a lie detector test or truth serum, of what motivated me to do what I did at that particular time, and it seems as you get further into something, even though you know what you did, it operates against you somehow, brain washes you, that you are weak in what you want to tell the truth about and what you want to say which is the truth.151

  The efforts of Ruby and his attorneys then focused on legally establishing Ruby’s basis for a new trial:

  Eventually, the appellate court agreed with Ruby’s lawyers for a new trial, and on October 5, 1966, ruled that his motion for a change of venue before the original trial court should have been granted. Ruby’s conviction and death sentence were overturned. Arrangements were underway for a new trial to be held in February 1967, in Wichita Falls, Texas, when on December 9, 1966, Ruby was admitted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, suffering from pneumonia. A day later, doctors realized he had cancer in his liver, lungs, and brain. Three weeks later, he died.152

  Gee, wasn’t that convenient!

  And so Jack Ruby, on December 9, 1966, exactly one day after he had learned that his new trial was going to be held in February or March of 1967, at Wichita Falls, about 140 miles from Dallas, was stricken with a mysterious disease first diagnosed as a common cold, then as pneumonia and finally as generalized cancer.

  For more than three years, with a death sentence hanging over his head for most of the time, Ruby had been as fit as a fiddle in the custody of Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker. At no time before December 9 had the prison ­doctor who visited him regularly detected any flaw in Ruby’s splendid health. But now, with a new trial in prospect in a different place, death quickly overtook the man who knew perhaps more than any other living person (with the possible exception of David Ferrie, then still totally unknown to the public at large) about the real background to the assassination. He passed away in the morning of January 3, 1967—and another inconvenient trial was happily averted.153

  Put it all together, folks, and the one thing that it clearly does not spell out is a man who silenced a key witness for personal reasons, as the official version would have us believe.

  And Jack Ruby knew what he was talking about. He was the man to whom all the dots connected:

  151 Ibid.

  152 Wikipedia, “Jack Ruby,” accessed 22 Nov. 2012: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Ruby

  153 Joachim Joesten, How Kennedy Was Killed (Tandem-Daynay: 1968): http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKSruby.htm

  • He was hooked up big-time with the Chicago and New Orleans Mob and, specifically, with the three top Mafia bosses linked to the assassination: Santo Trafficante, Sam “The Man” Giancana, and Carlos Marcello.

  • Ruby had established links to the CIA and was involved extensively in the CIA’s anti-Castro “covert operations.”154

  • Senator Richard Schweiker, who investigated the assassination, acknowledged that Ruby must have—at the very least—been working with the CIA during his gun-running activities to Cuba.155

  • The FBI admitted he was one of their informants.156

  • He was the Mob’s connection to the Dallas Police Department and knew the entire Department very well.

  • He was also connected to the covert New Orleans research project on creating a new fast-acting “super cancer” to be used as a secret bioweapon against Fidel Castro.

  On the Trail of the JFK Assassins by Dick Russell examines the many links between the Mob, the intelligence community, Ruby, Oswald, David Ferrie, Guy Banister, and Clay Shaw. Ruby was deeply entrenched in the anti-Castro efforts in Cuba. He was a frequent visitor of Florida Godfather Santo Trafficante while Trafficante was imprisoned in Cuba. Ruby was not only deeply involved in the Mob’s gambling operations, but also in extensive gunrunning to Cuba, which was done in conjunction with U.S. intelligence.157

  Where Ruby is concerned, as with Oswald, a lot of people may have had a lot of secrets to protect. He had been, the FBI admitted in 1975, a bureau informant. He was no stranger to labor, the mob, and Cuban affairs. He was a most convenient fellow, for anyone who wanted a quick “case closed.”158

  Furthermore, Jack Ruby is the common denominator with dozens of deaths related to the assassination. Many of the witness deaths early on were people who had been in some form of contact with Jack Ruby.

  It seems the one thing they had in common was that they knew Ruby. Oswald and Ferrie knew him, the Dallas cops and sheriffs knew him, the reporters who were killed all knew him. As JFK researcher Tom Scully observed:

  Too many who approached Jack Ruby’s role in an inquisitive way. . . . Kupcinet, through his daughter, Karyn, Kilgallen, and the 11/24/63 “guests” of George Senator at Jack Ruby’s apartment, Hunter, Koethe and Howard…met a soon and untimely death.159

  154 Dick Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassin
s: A Groundbreaking Look at America’s Most Infamous Conspiracy (Skyhorse Publishing, 2008) 92-93, 106.

  155 Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, 45.

  156 Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, 84.

  157 Ibid.

  158 Ibid.

  159 Tom Scully, “Deaths of Witnesses,’ 3 Jan 2009, The Education Forum: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=603&st=105

  To convey the extent to which these folks did not fully investigate these matters, consider that the official version and interpretation of events is still that Jack Ruby did not have links to organized crime; which is a totally indefensible claim from all standpoints of knowledge, logic, and anything else you may care to throw in. Historian John Simkin quite humorously alludes to that point here:

  In October 1964, the Warren Commission reported that it “found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy.” It also stated that there was “no significant link between Ruby and organized crime.” This information came from friends of Ruby, including Dave Yaras, a Mafia hitman.160

  That pretty much sums up the credibility of the Warren Commission right there, folks. Maybe if someone a bit more astute, like Bobby Kennedy, had been asking the questions. You think? It sounds as if Chief Justice Earl Warren was almost as intent on denying the existence of the Mafia as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was. No wonder organized crime has been so effective in this country. Just take a good look at the people who’ve been entrusted with fighting it—we can’t even get them to admit that it exists!

  But we digress.

  Here’s how author James DiEugenio described the fiasco, commenting on a so-called “documentary” that failed to include some very basic facts which he detailed in his review:

  All one needs to know about the latest Gary Mack fiasco is this: Almost none of the above is included in the hour. Nothing about the involvement of Ruby and Oswald in the Cuban conflict through the CIA and the Mafia; virtually none of the plentiful and multi-leveled connections of Ruby to the DPD; and none of the witnesses who indicate Oswald and Ruby knew each other.

  This, of course, is ridiculous. For if a program is trying to explore whether or not Ruby shot Oswald to conceal a plot to kill Kennedy, then it is fundamentally dishonest not to tell the viewer about the above. Because clearly those three areas of evidence would suggest the following:

  1. Ruby and Oswald shared connections to the CIA and the Mafia

  2. Ruby and Oswald knew each other through their experience in the Cuban crisis as extended into the USA

  3. Ruby used his police contacts to enter the basement of City Hall and kill Oswald161

  As has been reported, Ruby did indeed request to be sent to Washington, D.C. for his own safety, so that he could testify without fear for his life—which he quite apparently feared for while in Texas—and he made that request directly and personally

  160 John Simkin, “Jack Ruby: Biography,” Spartacus Educational: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKruby.htm

  161 James DiEugenio, “JFK: The Ruby Connection, Gary Mack’s Follies-Part One,” Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination, accessed 12 Nov. 21012: http://www.ctka.net/2009/ruby_mack.html

  to former Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, no less. And guess what?—Request Denied.

  During the six months following the Kennedy assassination, Ruby repeatedly asked, orally and in writing, to speak to the members of the Warren

  Commission, the commission initially showed no interest. Only after

  Ruby’s sister Eileen wrote letters to the commission (and her letters became public) did the Warren Commission agree to talk to Ruby. In June 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan and other commission members went to Dallas to see Ruby.

  If you find that somewhat depressing, well, you might as well cheer up, because it gets even worse:

  “Ruby told Earl Warren that he would ‘come clean’ if he was moved from Dallas and allowed to testify in Washington. He told Warren ‘my life is in danger here.’ He added: ‘I want to tell the truth, and I can’t tell it here.’ Warren refused to have Ruby moved and so he refused to tell what he knew about the assassination of John F. Kennedy.”162

  For the real story, take a good look at the words of a man who ran in the exact same circles at the exact same time—the deathbed statements of Mafia hitman, Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran. Sheeran was very close with some very big-time mobsters of the era, especially Russell Bufalino and Jimmy Hoffa, as well as many in Chicago. Sheeran said that everybody in the Mob knew that Ruby screwed up and didn’t do his job in Dallas when Oswald got away and that’s why he personally had to take care of Oswald. The Giancana family states the same thing in Double Cross.

  Sheeran, true to form, put the matter in some very blunt terms:

  Jack Ruby’s cops were supposed to take care of Oswald, but Ruby bungled it. If he didn’t take care of Oswald, what do you think they would have done to him—put Ruby on a meat hook.

  The meat hook reference was something the Chicago Mob had recently done, quite infamously, to a loan shark named William “Action” Jackson, who was suspected of talking to the FBI. It was a vicious torture killing and one that was supposedly meant to send a message to gangsters across the country of what was waiting for them if they snitched or crossed the big boys. The message was heard loud and clear.

  So, no matter how others may characterize the matter, Jack Ruby was convinced about the fact that he “was being killed” before his new trial: He was absolutely certain that he’d been injected with cancer cells. And when we get to the deaths of David Ferrie and Dr. Mary Sherman, some additional reasons for Ruby’s certainty will become quite apparent: affiliates of Ruby’s were deeply involved in criminally “off-the-charts” cancer

  162 Simkin, “Jack Ruby: Biography”

  research, developing a “bioweapon” of fast-acting cancer, to be used as an assassination device against Fidel Castro. Sound crazy? Just keep reading.

  The “funny business”—with Jack Ruby walking right into the middle of a police station, going straight up to Lee Harvey Oswald, who was surrounded by a bevy of armed officers, pulling out a gun, holding it out in the air and aiming it right at the center of Oswald’s body and firing it, totally unchallenged—stretched even the imagination of observing Dallas police officers. Note the “interesting” testimony of Dallas police Captain Frank M. Martin, testifying before the Warren Commission about the security situation at the Dallas Police Department on the day of Oswald’s murder:

  An attorney in Texas who has researched the matter for decades; Dawn Meredith, highlighted the time sequence of Ruby’s demise:

  December 7, 1966, Ruby’s trial was ordered moved from Dallas to Wichita Falls.

  December 9, Ruby was moved from Dallas County Jail to Parkland Hospital, complaining of persistent coughing and nausea.

  He was dead January 3, 1967.

  Ruby wanted to spare Jackie a trial; someone returned the favor.

  They could ill afford to allow Ruby to have a new trial. He had already said enough.

  Warren Commission: Now, Captain Martin, is there anything else you would like to say concerning any aspect of this matter at all?

  Captain Martin: I—don’t take this down.

  Warren Commission: Well, if you don’t want to say it on the record, you’d better not say it at all.

  Captain Martin: There is a lot to be said, but probably be better if I don’t say it.163

  The Commission was apparently relieved to hear that. They constantly discouraged, ignored or obfuscated real matters of substance; the above is just one example of hundreds.

  163 “Testimony of Capt. Frank M. Martin,” Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. XII, page 284: http://www.jfk-assassination.de/warren/wch/vol12/page284.php

  That he told Earl Warren and Gerry Ford that “a whole new form of gove
rnment” was about to occur following JFK’s assassination must have shaken the conspirators to the bone. Imagine what he could have said in trial. Whatever he knew, Dorthy Kilgallen would lose her life over as well.164

  Here is the whole sordid story “in a nutshell”; summarized succinctly, and leading to a place where none but the brave dare tread:

  Ruby desperately wanted away from the prison in Dallas, and he pleaded with the Warren Commission to have him transferred to Washington. Ruby said he would tell the whole story if they would get him to a safe facility. This was refused. Ruby told Earl Warren, “Well, you won’t see me again. I tell you that a whole new form of government is going to take over the country, and I know I won’t live to see you another time.”

  While awaiting a second trial, Ruby suddenly became ill and was diagnosed with lung cancer. Ruby maintained he had been injected with a cancer bioweapon in prison. He died within one month of the diagnosis, an extremely rapid progression. Ruby was a non-smoker.

  The theme of a cancer bioweapon comes up again in the story of Judyth Baker. She claimed to have worked on developing such a weapon for the CIA in the early 60’s. She also claimed to have been involved with Lee Oswald, who introduced her to CIA contacts in New Orleans.165

  To continue with the story, the development of that bioweapon will be explored in the upcoming chapters on the deaths of David Ferrie and Dr. Mary Sherman whom, it has been established, were intricately involved in the project.