by Jim Marrs
These comments will always intrigue researchers. Was Ruby merely speculating or were his messages born of secret knowledge? Did he know that Johnson and the people behind him wanted war—only mistaking Russia for Asia? And were his warnings of Nazis taking over rooted somewhere in a knowledge of the mentality of the people he knew were behind the assassination? A Nazi connection to the assassination is both well documented and considerable. See The Rise of the Fourth Reich by this author.
Or were his missives only the delusions of a man unhinged by his captivity and the belief that forces were out to destroy him?
The answer may be found in a study of Ruby’s mysterious death.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Ruby’s conviction on October 5, 1966, and ordered a new trial. On December 7, 1966, his new trial was ordered moved from Dallas to Wichita Falls, a small Texas city near the Oklahoma border. There was every likelihood that within another month or two, Ruby would walk free, as his time in jail would be counted against a probable short prison term for murder without malice. He certainly would have been allowed to post bond and become accessible to the public.
On December 9, 1966, two days after his new trial site had been announced, Ruby was moved from the Dallas County Jail to Parkland Hospital after complaining of persistent coughing and nausea.
Doctors initially diagnosed his problem as “pneumonia.” The next day, however, the diagnosis was changed to cancer and within just a few more days, it was announced that Ruby’s cancer was too far advanced to be treated by surgery or radiation.
On the evening of January 2, 1967, doctors suspected that blood clots were forming and they administered oxygen and Ruby seemed to recover. But about 9 a.m. the next day, he suffered a spasm and, despite emergency procedures, he was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. January 3, 1967.
One of his attorneys told newsmen, “His death was a merciful release.”
Shortly before his death, Ruby’s brother Earl smuggled a tape recorder into Parkland and later produced a short record that was sold to Capitol Records. The proceeds from this record, in which Ruby simply reiterated the official account of his actions—including his Cuban travels, which the House Select Committee on Assassinations proved false—was used to pay for his burial expenses. This record also once again put the public off the trail of evidence by repeating the same story reported in 1963–1964.
An autopsy by Dallas County medical examiner Dr. Earl Rose showed the heaviest concentration of cancer cells in Ruby’s right lung. However, Dr. Rose determined the immediate cause of death was pulmonary embolism—a massive blood clot had formed in a leg, passed through the heart, and lodged in Ruby’s lung. Ruby’s doctors had said they believed his cancer had originated in the pancreas, but Dr. Rose found Ruby’s pancreas perfectly normal.
With the announcement of his inoperable cancer, there was immediate and widespread suspicion that Ruby had been maneuvered into killing Oswald knowing he had only a short time to live. Dr. Rose was asked by the House committee if there was any chance that Ruby could have known about his cancer in November 1963. He said no.
Yet questions remain.
In the later summer of 1966, jail doctor Julian Mardock found Ruby was in good health. But several weeks later he was told that he was no longer needed, as a doctor “down from Washington” would take over Ruby’s case.
Deputy sheriff Al Maddox also mentioned the new doctor who arrived to attend Ruby:
We had a phony doctor come in to [the Dallas County Jail] from Chicago, just as phony and as queer as a three-dollar bill. And he worked his way in through—I don’t know, whoever supplied the county at that time with doctors. . . . You could tell he was Ruby’s doctor. He spent half his time up there talking with Ruby. And one day I went in and Ruby told me, he said, “Well, they injected me for a cold.” He said it was cancer cells. That’s what he told me, Ruby did. I said you don’t believe that shit. He said, “I damn sure do!” I never said anything to Decker or anybody. . . . [Then] one day when I started to leave, Ruby shook hands with me and I could feel a piece of paper in his palm. . . . [In this note] he said it was a conspiracy and he said . . . if you will keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, you’re gonna learn a lot. And that was the last letter I ever got from him.
Maddox was not the only law-enforcement officer to suspect that Ruby’s death was not entirely natural. Policeman Tom Tilson told researchers, “It was the opinion of a number of other Dallas police officers that Ruby had received injections of cancer while he was incarcerated in the Dallas County Jail following the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald.”
The new physician has been identified as none other than Dr. Louis Joyon “Jolly” West, professor and director of the Neuropsychiatric Institute at the University of California–Los Angeles. He also was a government expert on torture and brainwashing who also turned up in the cases of Sirhan Sirhan and Patty Hearst. West’s name has cropped up in many reports and documents pertaining to the government’s MK-ULTRA mind-control experiments and may also have been connected to covert cancer research.
According to a January 7, 1999, Reuters report, “After examining Ruby, the killer of President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, West concluded Ruby was suffering from ‘major mental illness precipitated by the stress of [his] trial.’”
Many researchers believe that Ruby’s cancer was induced, either by ingestion or injection. At least one former Dallas law-enforcement officer offered a more mundane explanation for Ruby’s sudden and rampant cancer. He told this author, “Hell, it wasn’t any big deal. They just took Ruby in for X-rays and had him wait in the X-ray room. While he sat there for fifteen or twenty minutes or more, they just left the X-ray machine on him.”
Bruce McCarty operated an electron microscope at Southwest Medical School near Parkland. He told this author that he was called back to work during the holidays in 1966 to study Ruby’s cancer cells. McCarty explained that there are two types of cancer cells—cilia, which indicate an origin in the respiratory system, and microvilli, indicating an origin in the digestive system. These cells are difficult to differentiate with a regular microscope, hence the need for his electron microscope.
McCarty confirmed that Ruby’s cells were microvilli, indicating his cancer originated in the digestive system. He was shocked when it was announced that Ruby died from lung cancer.
Could Ruby have been injected with live cancer cells, which could account for the presence of the microvilli? Traditional medical science has claimed this is impossible but recall the account of just such a process as described by Judyth Vary Baker, who claimed to have met Ruby in New Orleans while working in David Ferrie’s covert cancer lab.
While none of this information establishes beyond doubt that Jack Ruby was somehow eliminated through cancer, it certainly shows there is cause enough for researchers to be highly suspicious of his sudden and convenient death.
With the death of the two men who might have shed light on the lines of communication within a plot to kill the president—Oswald and Ruby—researchers were left only with a vast amount of evidence, much of which seems substantial until studied closely.
The Evidence
There has never been a lack of evidence in the assassination of President Kennedy. In addition to the several hundred witnesses in Dealey Plaza, there was an abundance of film and still pictures as well as documentation and a great deal of physical evidence.
In the hours following the assassination, this evidence grew to include a rifle, empty shell cases, a “sniper’s nest” and even a convincing—if belated—palm print on the suspected murder weapon.
The rapid accumulation of evidence prompted Dallas County district attorney Henry Wade to proclaim to the media he had an open-and-shut case against Lee Harvey Oswald the day after the shooting.
However, a long and thoughtful look at most of the evidence reveals just as many questions and as much confusion as the medical evidence.
The Warren Commission
questioned 126 of the 266 known witnesses either by testimony or affidavit. Regarding the source of the shots, thirty-eight gave no opinion—most were not asked—thirty-two indicated the Texas School Book Depository, and fifty-one placed the shots in the vicinity of the Grassy Knoll. Several believed shots were fired from locations other than those two.
Even veteran law-enforcement officers, who should have been expected to provide expert opinions as to the source of the shots, were divided in their beliefs. Of the twenty sheriff’s deputies watching the motorcade from in front of the sheriff’s office, sixteen placed the origin of the shots near the Triple Underpass, three gave no opinion, and only one implied the Depository. Of twelve Dallas policemen stationed in the plaza interviewed, four placed shots from the Grassy Knoll, four said shots came from the Depository, and four gave no opinion.
While it is understood that eyewitness testimony cannot be relied on for absolute truth, statements of otherwise ordinary citizens regarding second gunmen, muzzle flashes, and smoke on the Grassy Knoll must be considered in any impartial desire to learn the truth.
The best evidence would have been the medical reports. With a competent autopsy, it should have been well established how many bullets struck Kennedy and from which direction. However, as discussed earlier, the medical evidence in this case continues to be a source of controversy—filled with inconsistencies, errors, missing items, and phony photographs and X-rays. About all one can say for certain based on the medical evidence is that Kennedy was shot at least twice.
So it remains for other pieces of evidence—ballistic and physical evidence—to prove the official version of the assassination. Unfortunately, this area, too, is filled with doubts, questions, deceit, and ambiguity.
Some of the first physical evidence to be found was in the Texas School Book Depository. Many of the press accounts at the time mentioned fingerprints traced to Lee Harvey Oswald being found on boxes on the Depository’s sixth floor, the shield of boxes around a “sniper’s nest” in the southeast corner of that floor, and the remains of a chicken lunch discovered nearby.
The presence of Oswald’s fingerprints on the sixth floor means nothing, since he was a Depository employee and by all accounts had worked on the sixth floor that day. Furthermore, it is clear that the Dallas police failed to follow even the most rudimentary methods of handling evidence. Of the nine fingerprints and four palm prints found on book boxes from the sixth floor, only one fingerprint and palm print could be traced to Oswald. All remaining prints belonged to Dallas policeman R. L. Studebaker, FBI clerk Forest L. Lucy, or others, with a few unidentified. In other words, the forensics evidence was a mess.
The stacking of book boxes both around the sixth-floor window and on the windowsill cannot be used as proof of Oswald’s guilt since there is no proof he placed them and since it is now known that the entire “sniper’s nest” scene was later staged for the official photographs.
At least three Warren Commission photographs of the scene—Commission Exhibits 509, 724, and 733—show three versions of the boxes stacked near the sixth-floor window. R. L. Studebaker, Dallas police photographer, told the Warren Commission that some of his photos were taken as late as the Monday following the assassination.
Jack Beers, a photographer for the Dallas Morning News, took pictures of the “sniper’s nest” less than three hours after the assassination. His photos show yet a different configuration of boxes from that shown in the Commission photos.
Dallas police lieutenant J. C. Day of the Crime Scene Search Unit admitted to the Warren Commission that the boxes had been moved around. In Commission testimony, the following exchange took place between Day and Commission attorney David Belin:
BELIN: Were those boxes in the window the way you saw them, or had they been replaced in the window to reconstruct it?
DAY: They had simply been moved in the processing for prints. They weren’t put back in any particular order.
BELIN: So [the “sniper’s nest” photograph] does not represent, so far as the boxes are concerned, the crime scene when you first came to the sixth floor, is that correct?
DAY: That is correct.
So the evidence of the “sniper’s nest” is virtually useless since even the Dallas police crime scene official stated the boxes had been moved about.
Unfortunately, it was the same story with the three cartridge hulls reportedly found on the sixth floor. Day said he took two photographs of the three hulls lying near the sixth-floor window. Two hulls can been seen lying near to each other on the floor beneath the windowsill while a third is some distance away. It has been assumed that this was the position of the hulls. However, today there is evidence that this evidence also was staged.
Gary Mack, based on a 1985 interview with WFAA-TV cameraman Tom Alyea, wrote:
[Alyea] managed to get inside the Texas School Book Depository before it was sealed by police. As he entered the building, Alyea heard someone shout, “Don’t let anyone in or out!” Alyea reached the sixth floor and filmed Dallas police searching for evidence. He said the federal authorities there were “bent on getting me out of the place” and did not want him taking any film but his friendly local police contacts allowed him to stay. Alyea said he noticed shells lying on the floor but couldn’t film them because of book boxes in the way. Noting Alyea’s predicament, Captain Will Fritz scooped up the shells and held them in his hand for Alyea’s camera—then threw the hulls down on the floor. All of this occurred before the crime scene search unit arrived. Alyea said film of the shells lying in their original positions on the floor was apparently thrown out with other unused news film on orders of his WFAA news director.
Two lawmen on the sixth floor at the time—deputy sheriffs Roger Craig and Luke Mooney—have told researchers they saw the three hulls lying side by side only inches apart under the window, all pointing in the same direction. Of course this position would be impossible if the shells had been normally ejected from a rifle to the right rear. So the evidence of the empty shell cases became suspect.
Just as a matter of speculation, it seems incredible that the assassin in the Depository would go to the trouble of trying to hide the rifle behind boxes on the opposite side of the sixth floor from the southeast window and then leave incriminating shells lying on the floor—unless, of course, the hulls were deliberately left behind to incriminate Oswald.
There is yet another problem with the empty rifle hulls. Although the Warren Commission published a copy of the Dallas police evidence sheet showing three shell cases were taken from the Depository, in later years a copy of that same evidence sheet was found in the Texas Department of Public Safety files that showed only two cases were found. This is supported by the FBI receipt for assassination evidence from the Dallas police that indicates only two shell cases arrived in Washington just after the assassination.
Reportedly Fritz held on to one of the cases for several days before forwarding it to the FBI. This breach of the chain of evidence causes suspicion to be raised about the legitimacy of the third shell. This suspicion is compounded by the fact that while the FBI crime lab determined that two of the hulls show a small dent, this anomaly was found only on shell cases loaded in the Oswald rifle. The third casing showed no such evidence.
In fact, the third hull—designated Commission Exhibit 543—had an indention on its lip that would have prevented the fitting of a slug. In its present condition, it could not have fired a bullet on that day.
The FBI determined that Commission Exhibit 543 had been loaded and extracted from a weapon “at least three times” but could not specify that the weapon belonged to Oswald. Some researchers speculate this shell may have been the one used to fire the slug from the Oswald rifle that later turned up at Parkland Hospital and has been designated as Commission Exhibit 399—the “magic bullet.” However, FBI experts said Commission Exhibit 543 did show marks from the magazine follower of Oswald’s rifle. What went unexplained was how these marks were made, since the magazine follo
wer marks only the last cartridge in the clip. This position was occupied by a live round found that day, not by Commission Exhibit 543.
Again, too many questions arise to accept the shell cases as legitimate evidence.
The rifle reportedly belonging to Oswald also is surrounded by controversy and inconsistencies. The rifle found behind boxes on the sixth floor of the Depository was initially described as a 7.65 mm bolt-action German Mauser. It was described as such by deputy sheriff E. L. Boone, discoverer of the rifle, in his report of that day. Boone’s report is supported by that of deputy constable Seymour Weitzman. Both lawmen reportedly had more than an average knowledge of weapons.
As late as the day after the assassination, Weitzman wrote in a report:
I was working with Deputy Boone of the Sheriff’s Department and helping in the search. We were in the northwest corner of the sixth floor when Deputy Boone and myself spotted the rifle about the same time. This rifle was a 7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it. The rifle was between some boxes near the stairway. The time the rifle was found was 1:22 p.m.
This account was confirmed by Deputy Craig, who told Texas researchers he actually saw the word “Mauser” stamped on the weapon’s receiver. When asked about the make of rifle shortly after midnight the day of the assassination, Dallas County district attorney Henry Wade replied, “It’s a Mauser, I believe.”
However, by late Friday afternoon the rifle was being identified as a 6.5 mm Italian Carcano.
While a German Mauser and the Carcano do look somewhat similar, anyone vaguely familiar with these weapons—Weitzman, Boone, and Craig should certainly qualify—can distinguish between them. Why the discrepancies? The Warren Commission indicated that Weitzman was simply mistaken in his identification of the rifle and that the others, including Wade, probably repeated this mistaken identification. However, Wade never gave any indication as to the source of his idea that the rifle was a Mauser. And Boone told the Commission he thought it was Captain Fritz who termed it a Mauser.