RUBY: A RADICAL REAPPRAISAL: Part one

IS THIS JACK RUBY?

According to the received chronology, sometime in the morning of 11/24/63 [precise time undetermined], Jack Ruby left his apartment and parked downtown, in order to wire money to Carousel club stripper Karen Bennett Carlin, aka Little Lynn. The imprecise timing of Rubys departure from his apartment to complete this task is a function, in part, of two conflicting evidence streams received by the Commission. On the one hand, the Commission was given to understand that a call was placed from the phone of Little Lynns husband Bruce Carlin to Rubys home phone on the morning of 11/24, the purpose being to plead for money. Sunday was usually payday for the Carousel club strippers and Little Lynn had been out of work since the previous Thursday night, due to Rubys uncharacteristic (according to several witnesses) election to close both his clubs. Waiting until ones traditional payday may not seem a hardship, but one must recall that a stripper also receives tips from patrons. It was not unusual for Little Lynn to be habitually short of money, so perhaps this sudden cessation of her cash flow proved critical. [Two Fridays prior to the assassination, Ruby gave Lynn a $75 draw against the salary she was to be paid two days later.] Without meaning any disrespect to Karen Bennett Carlin, it was also alleged that at least some of Rubys strippers turned tricks on the side, and that Ruby himself pandered on their behalf, in return for a portion of the money. We also have the statement to DPD of at least one person that Ruby had been pandering the sexual services of New Orleans stripper Jada not long before the assassination. If Little Lynn indulged in this practice, the closure of the Carousel on the weeks two busiest nights robbed her of more than chump change, perhaps compounding her traditional financial plight. In fact, she had already asked her boss for money prior to the Sunday morning phone call. Only the previous night, Ruby had arranged for the parking attendant at the Nichols garage to give her $5, on Rubys promise to repay this. As the garage was owned by his Carousel club landlord, Houston Nichols, this wouldnt have been an unusual request from Ruby, nor would granting it have been a major favor. When Ruby received the Sunday morning phone call to which he, George Senator and Little Lynn all testified - Ruby drove downtown to

wire the money to Little Lynn. His Western Union transaction receipt was time-stamped 11:16 AM, and the wire itself was time-stamped 11:17 AM, giving us a reasonably precise time for his departure from Western Union to the basement of the DPDs nearby City Hall HQ, and his nationally-broadcast murder of Oswald committed four minutes later. However, those familiar with the case know that a number of newsmen and camera crew personnel, and even a preacher, volunteered that Ruby had been on DPD premises far earlier in the morning than the Commission would ultimately concede. Obviously, he couldnt have been at Police HQ and at home to receive Little Lynns begging phone call at the same time. The Commission gave credence to the chronology recited by Little Lynn, George Senator and Ruby himself. In the process it had to ignore the otherwise undocumented report by Lt. Jack Revill of a preacher who insisted that hed been in a DPD elevator with Ruby early that same morning. It should have been an easy discrepancy to reconcile. It was a long distance toll call from Little Lynns Fort Worth home to Rubys Dallas apartment. Reference to Bruce Carlins phone bills should have resolved the issue by stipulating the time at which Little Lynns begging phone call was placed. Yet, any attempt to determine the precise time of the Little Lynn phone call is frustrated by the peculiar fashion in which FBI provided the data from phone records, illustrated by reference to CE 2313. A March 10, 1964 FBI report on long distance calls placed from the Carlins phone began on September 26 and ceased on November 21. The starting point was likely not arbitrary, for it appears FBIs start date was the commencement for the coming months phone bill. If so, the calls reflected on the November 63 phone bill should have ended on November 25, not the 21st. For the 54 calls made in this two month period, the records included the time of the call being placed on all but four occasions. Similarly, in the vast majority of instances, the telephone company data also noted the duration of the call, the person placing it, and the person called. Whats more, the Bureau should have been equally able in March 64 to procure the phone data pertinent to the period after November 21, to wit: the assassination day and thereafter. Yet FBI, feeling the peculiar necessity to arbitrarily segregate phone data, left it until September 11, 1964 the cusp of the Commission Reports issuance - to supply a non-report regarding the use of the Carlins phone in the pertinent period. This consisted of two phone

calls, on 11/24 and 11/25. Unlike the previous records, this report reflects neither the time of the call, the person making the call, nor the person receiving it. This disparity between the two sets of records strikes one as peculiar, as does the inexplicable six month delay in providing the Commission with what it presumably wanted from the get-go, the timing of Little Lynns begging phone call. Why did FBIs March report inexplicably stop the night prior to the assassination? Why did it not include the single call on which rested the Commissions conclusions about Rubys motive, or lack thereof, for killing Oswald? Why the stark difference in the Bureaus treatment of these two sets of calls so expository about the presumably mundane prior phone calls, so wholly unhelpful on the two calls in which the Commission would have had the greatest interest? This anomaly is emphasized and compounded further by a third FBI report about the Carlins phone records, which clearly illustrates the hanky-panky at work. This report, dated April 21, 1964, covers a mere two calls placed from the Carlins phone on November 26 and 27. Again in contradiction to FBIs first, thorough report, the time of the calls placement, the callers and recipients are not included. [One of these calls was to the District Office of the Good Luck Oil Company GLOCO at 2219 Pittman in Dallas. Considering the now-conceded presence of Patrolman J.D. Tippit at a GLOCO station just prior to his death, this detail might have commanded a bit more investigative interest from the intrepid Bureau, though no such effort is contained in the known record.] Taken in the chronological aggregate, we have: #1 - a fairly thorough March 10 FBI report that stops on the night before the assassination; # 2 - a nearly sanitized April 21 FBI report that picks up two days after Oswalds murder; and, #3 - an inexplicably tardy and sterilely incomplete September 11 report rendered too late to either help the Commission or be investigated by it on the five pertinent days in between. The obvious presumption is that the Bureau knew in March it had to stop the chronology before the pertinent time, in April safely resumed the chronology after the pertinent period, and suppressed the data about the pertinent interim until it was too late to matter. Clearly, one cannot escape several inferences: that key critical evidence which the

Commission should have considered in reaching its verdict was deliberately withheld from it; that the report on the pertinent period was neutered of any possibly controversial data; and that the report was then submitted only once it was too late for the Bureaus shortcomings to be investigated, or to matter. The Commissions resulting confusion about the timing of Little Lynns begging call is evident in the numerous questions asked of Lynn and George Senator. In the case of Rubys roommate, the counsels inquiry on this point alone runs on for pages, trying to ascertain a reasonably specific time for the phone call, to no avail. While giving every appearance of wishing to be helpful, Senator repeatedly averred that he couldnt remember whether Ruby got Lynns call before or after Ruby made himself breakfast. Eventually, Senator finally hit upon a calculation that seemed correct to him: Ruby had received the call before making breakfast or washing up that morning, and hence left his apartment at least three quarters of an hour after receiving Lynns call. This was echoed by Little Lynn, who said that Ruby had warned her it might be a while before he could do it, since he had to get dressed and eat first. By the Commissions stopwatch, this was untenable, for it had arbitrarily somehow fixed the time of Lynns call at about 10:19 AM. The Commission also knew that Ruby didnt drive directly from his apartment to Western Union, but stopped at least once en route, making it even less likely that the Commissions 10:19 timing for Little Lynns begging was accurate. If Senator was correct, either the call came earlier than 10:19 AM, or Ruby wasnt downtown by 11:16 AM to wire the money to Little Lynn. Since the latter was demonstrable, the former must be wrong. Little Lynns April 64 testimony was no more convincing than Senators, and should be considered suspect for another reason entirely. Little Lynn had expressed the greatest reluctance to cooperate with authorities, initially stating to Secret Service her belief that if she told what she knew, the assassination conspirators would kill her too. This, from an 11/24 SS interview with SA Roger Warner: She stated to me that she was under the impression that Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and other individuals unknown to her, were involved in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy and that she would be killed if she gave any information to the authorities. For a woman whose only ostensible connection to the assassination was her innocent provision of an alibi for Rubys presence downtown

near DPD HQ, this was an unsettling assumption on Lynns part. One might conclude that this was an entirely natural fear in the immediate aftermath of the Kennedy, Tippit and Oswald murders. Despite the nearly-instant assurances of DPD and the local DAs office that all three Dallas murders had been lone-nut efforts, the possibility of a larger conspiracy was inescapable to the average person. Yet Little Lynn wasnt an average person, for she knew one of those lone nuts and even she didnt believe he acted alone. Little Lynn was the central player in providing a non-conspiratorial alibi to Ruby, the same man she obviously suspected of being part of the conspiracy which would now rear upon her and kill her. If this fear were merely, for example, drug-induced hysteria, it should have passed with time. However, that fear never seemed to leave Little Lynn. More than three months later while Lynn was sitting in the courthouse hallway waiting to testify at Rubys trial, an attempted jail-break took place in which seven DPD prisoners tried to escape, using a carved soap pistol covered in bootblack. Little Lynn repeatedly screamed, Hes after me! before dropping to the floor in a dead faint before being revived by a Sheriffs Deputy. Whether the cause for her fear was real or imagined, there was no doubting her sincerity in anticipating her own murder for providing information. Little Lynn subsequently took to carrying a gun, as the Commission learned. Whats more, she told the Commission in a second round of testimony in August 64 that she didnt think her life was being threatened by just anybody, but specifically by a personal friend and professional colleague of Rubys, though for reasons she claimed were unrelated to the assassination: Mr. Hubert: Do you recall that during the course of the Ruby trial when you were waiting to testify that there was a jail break there and some people got out of the jail, and I think they passed right nearby you, I believe? Mrs. Carlin: Yes. Mr. Hubert: Do you remember what you screamed or said? Mrs. Carlin: "Oh, my God, they're after me." Mr. Hubert: Yes, what made you believe that "they" were after you? Mrs. Carlin: Because I was scared I was going to get killed before I ever got to court. Mr. Hubert: Who do you think was going to kill you? Mrs. Carlin: I don't know exactly who or why. I just felt that I was going to get killed.

Mr. Hubert: Well, who did you mean by "they," when you said "they" were after you? Mrs. Carlin: Well, there was a man that was running after me there was two of them, and I saw some kind of little weapon, it looked like, but I don't remember very much. Mr. Hubert: So, when you used the word "they," you meant those people there who were escaping? Mrs. Carlin: Yes. Mr. Hubert: You didn't have in mind some other group of people who were after you? Mrs. Carlin: No---well, it all goes back to where I used to work. I had already been threatened by Pat Kirkwood and I didn't know they were escaping from the jail when I saw them. Mr. Hubert: Who is Pat Kirkwood? Mrs. Carlin: He owns the Cellar and I had already been threatened by him. My life had been threatened by him. Mr. Hubert: Why did he do that? Mrs. Carlin: Well, it was--he had some publicity people down there--- television and cameras and so on, and we never got along too well because I told the police, the vice squad about him and identified some policemen that were being paid off by him and everything, and of course, he had so many friends he got out of it real easy, but then he hated me for what I had done. Mr. Hubert: Was that before the President was shot? Mrs. Carlin: Yes, that was before, and so after the President was shot, he found out what was going on and he called me on the telephone, and he says, "I want you down here in about 20 minutes," and I said, "Kirkwood, I don't want to have anything to do with you or your plans, just leave me alone." Mr. Hubert: That was after Oswald was shot? Mrs. Carlin: Yes; after I went to court that first time, the bond hearing, I believe. Mr. Hubert: Yes. Mrs. Carlin. After I went to court, he says, "I want you down here" and I said, "Well, I'm not coming down." He called me back in about 20 minutes and he said, "Why aren't you down here?" He said, "I'll send a cab up after you." Mr. Hubert: Where were you? Mrs. Carlin: I was at home in bed, I wasn't feeling too good, and my husband was out working. So, right after he called me---I was still on the telephone, and my husband walked in, and he had just finished saying, "If you're not

down here, you won't be around too long," and then my husband walked in and let him have the telephone and they talked then. Mr. Hubert: What did your husband say? Mrs. Carlin: My husband told him I wasn't coming down and if he gave me any trouble he would tell the police about it, and he said, "Well, I'll see her on the way to the club and I'll see that she never makes it inside the door." We moved from the apartments that we were in that Kirkwood knew we were living in--we moved from there and Kirkwood didn't know anything about it, and he went looking for me over there and asked my landlord about me and where to find me, and then he was supposed to meet me up at the Carousel Club and knock me out so I couldn't get in--he was going to see that I never made it, and he never did show up. He called the colored man that took care of the place. He called him and told him to tell me that he had called, and I don't remember what all he said to the colored man, but he called him.[WC H XV page 656 on] On the night before the assassination, Pat Kirkwoods Cellar Club in Fort Worth played late-night host to a large contingent of Secret Service men assigned to the Presidential detail. Once the local press club closed for the night, Pat Kirkwood was prevailed upon to remain open to accommodate the thirsty SS men, many of whom giggled like schoolgirls that the President was being guarded by two unarmed Fort Worth firemen. Many stayed until 3 AM, with the last straggler departing about 5 AM. Any drinking is strictly prohibited for SS Presidential Detail personnel while in travel mode. There is something seriously askew about the chronology of events related by Little Lynn. According to her Commission testimony, she had incurred Kirkwoods wrath by snitching on his close relations with Fort Worth PD well before the assassination, yet Kirkwood inexplicably took his time before threatening to kill Little Lynn in retaliation. The assassination, it would seem, was just an unrelated event that happened to fall between Little Lynns purported snitching and Kirkwoods alleged threat. Is it not somewhat odd that Kirkwood, who served Secret Service drinks in the wee hours before the assassination, would wish to kill Little Lynn - Rubys sole solid alibi witness for going downtown only after she had told the Secret Service someone would kill her? The allegations that in return for payoffs to the Fort Worth Police Kirkwood received preferential treatment from them [he had so many friends he got out of it real easy] is a mirror image reflection

of Rubys relationship with DPD, according to several witnesses who knew Ruby well. A licensed pilot and reputed soldier of fortune, Kirkwood allegedly flew his twin engine plane to Mexico not long after Kennedys death. Little Lynn was perhaps more innocently helpful than she should have been in other regards as well. Speaking about Rubys demeanor during a Saturday night [11/23] phone call: Mrs. Carlin: Yes; I reached him at home. He answered the telephone. And I asked Jack if we were going to be open, and he got very angry and was very short with me. He said, " Don't you have any respect for the President? Don't you know the President is dead? " And I said, "Jack, I am sorry. Andrew said that perhaps we would be open, and I don't have any money, and you know I am supposed to get paid. " And I wanted some money on my pay to get back home. And he said, " I don't know when I will open. I don't know if I will ever open back up. And he was very hateful. And he said something he had to come down to the club in about an hour and for me to wait and he would see me then. And I hung up and told my husband what had happened. And we waited and waited and he didn't show up. That is when my husband and I went down to the garage and Tammi had to go see some friend there at the Theatre Lounge. [ibid - emphasis added] What caused Rubys sudden uncertainty that the Carousel club would ever again open for business? This phone call took place, after all, more than 12 hours before Rubys killed Oswald on a spontaneous impulse. Little Lynn also threw a spanner into the works with her chronology of events after the purported time of her begging call: Mr. Hubert: Now when did you first hear about Oswald's shooting? Mrs. Carlin: Well, I heard that right after I talked to Jack. It wasn't very long after that on the television, and my husband was watching the television and I was washing dishes, and my husband said, "Karen, isn't that Jack?" And I said, I thought he was joking. I told him to shut up and I started laughing, and sure enough it came out that it was Jack. Mr. Hubert: You mean you saw pictures of Jack Ruby? Mrs. Carlin: After that on the news. Mr. Hubert: Rerun, you mean? Mrs. Carlin: Yes.

Mr. Hubert: You are talking about that famous picture that shows Jack coming through? Mrs. Carlin: Yes. Mr. Hubert: It shows really the back of him, doesn't it? Mrs. Carlin: Yes. Mr. Hubert: Were you able to recognize him? Mrs. Carlin: They knew his name. They had already broadcast his name. Mr. Hubert: So that when you saw, you recognized him? You mean you recognized his name before you saw any picture? Mrs. Carlin: Yes. My husband was the one that first saw him. I didn't see it. It was a rerun, I think that I saw, because they already had his name and that he had the Carousel Club. Though Little Lynn may just have misremembered events, something here doesnt add up. Oswald was shot about an hour after the purported time of her phone call with Ruby [right after I talked to Jack], but Ruby apparently wasnt identified as the killer until well after 1 PM, nearly three hours after the phone call. We can deduce the timing involved by referring to the press statement made by a morose DPD Chief Jesse Curry in which the suspect in Oswalds murder was first identified: Oswald expired at 1:07 P.M. He died at 1:07 P.M. We have arrested the man. The man will be charged with murder The suspect's name is Jack Rubenstein, I believe. He goes by the name Jack Ruby. That's all I have to say. I have no other statement to make at this time." Consequently, Little Lynn could have seen the TV coverage pretty much right after I talked to Jack, within an hour or so of the phone call. Yet, it could not also be true that they already had his name and that he had the Carousel Club when she saw that same coverage right after I talked to Jack. If Little Lynn heard about Oswalds shooting right after I talked to Jack, we should consider that her begging call came substantially later than 10:19 AM. This can neither be proved nor disproved, due to FBIs inexplicable handling of the phone record evidence, which provided no time for the call being placed. Something else, however, can be proved. It is quite apparent that somebody on the Commissions payroll presumably wondered if the begging phone call was a fraudulent construct, designed to provide the very alibi it later became.

Somebody within the Commission seems to have suspected that Ruby already at the DPD building early that Sunday morning, according to numerous witnesses interviewed by FBI called Little Lynn to tip her off that she was to place a phone call to Rubys apartment, thereby creating the alibi. We know this because somebody within the Commission gave the Bureau a very specific task: CE 2317 is a comprehensive FBI report of August 6/64 which itemized all the phones in the DPD building by location, and reported long distance toll calls to Fort Worth and Arlington, Texas, during the period from 10:00 PM Saturday, November 23, 1963, through Sunday November 24, 1963. The specificity of the time period and the two locales indicates precisely what was being sought. Somebody suspected Ruby, or someone inside DPD who was connected with Ruby, had called Little Lynn and/or Ralph Paul from the DPD building. Moreover, the same report disclosed several other salient details. In the pertinent period, there were calls to Fort Worth, three of them, all originating from a single phone. On 11/23, two calls were placed to the Fort Worth Police Department, a reasonable and not unexpected occurrence. On 11/24, a call was placed to a Fort Worth attorney cited only as JOE Mc_______. The phone numbers called are listed in the FBI report, but the times of the calls are not. Nor is there a corollary report identifying the subscribers who held the recipient phone numbers, so we know only what the phone company presumably reported to the Bureau. Consequently, attorney Joe Mc_______ remains unidentified, as does the number at which he was called. The call was made from RI 8-9711 which, according to Will Fritz, was a general number used by the City of Dallas - which may explain its absence from the FBIs list of DPD numbers and there locations. Fritz however did add that the number was on the dial of the phone used by Oswald and other prisoners. The two main possibilities that present themselves here are that those calls were in fact, made by prisoners in the normal course of events - or that phone was used by an officer or someone else with access specifically because the call could not be traced back to any one individual. Of the 73 phones included in the report designated CE 3817, other long distance calls were placed from three other phones, all located on the 2nd and 3rd floors. However, since the destinations for the calls werent Fort Worth or Arlington, they were not specifically itemized. We are thereby deprived of knowing what those other calls may mean. It

does, however, signify the extent to which calls to Fort Worth and Arlington were specifically considered suspect. The timing may also be of some interest. The FBI report was dictated on August 6, 1964 and generated on August 11, two weeks prior to Little Lynns second round of testimony. At this point, the Commission had reason to wonder about phone calls to Little Lynn from the DPD, and from RI 8-9711 specifically. As the Commission learned from the initial, incomplete itemization of the Carlins phone bills five months before this Bureau report, somebody calling himself Detective Mote had placed a 3 minute collect phone call to Little Lynns phone number on October 19, 1963 at 2:31 P.M. This call too, was made from the Dallas City number RI 8-9711 set aside for the use of prisoners, the very same number the only of 73 DPD phones from which originated a single phone call on 11/24 to an unidentified person whom the phone company told FBI was a Fort Worth attorney. Yet the Bureau failed to identify the calls recipient, so we have no way to verify whether the number called belonged to a Fort Worth attorney, let alone that his name was, in fact, Joe Mc_____ . This prior FBI report on the Carlins phone bills did contain a corollary report identifying all the subscribers with phone numbers reflected on the Carlins long distance record. In it, RI 8-9711 was identified only as Dallas City Hall and Police Building, Dallas, Texas which would seem to confirm Fritz statement that it belonged to the City of Dallas. Consequently, we know that a month prior to Oswalds murder, the Carlins had already received a phone call from the DPD phone number from which was made the only known call to Fort Worth on the date of Oswalds death. A call from somebody who called himself Detective Mote. This was Frank Mote who in February the following year, would find himself investigating a putative botched assassination attempt in the Dallas air terminal on Gordon McLendon, a candidate for US senator in the Texas Democratic primary coming up in May. The female would-be assassin was a Fort Worth native who accused McLendon of being head of the Mafia and a communist. Detective Mote was quoted as saying that the woman, Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Stone had been upset since President Kennedys assassination . The woman had fired a shot at a person she mistook for McLendon who was not at the airport at the time. McLendon when interviewed, declared he wanted RFK to fully investigate Mrs. Stones background to see if she was a member of the FPCC and like Lee Harvey Oswald, is not a part of the Ultra Left-wing element

But I digress, the Bureau had elsewhere already demonstrated a peculiar interest in the same phone number, RI 8-9711. Reporter Seth Kantor made a series of phone calls to Washington and Miami from that number, one of which was suppressed from June 1964 until 1975 by the Bureau because public disclosure might reveal the identity of confidential sources of information. This may also explain the highly specific time and geographical parameters cited in FBIs August 6/11 64 report Fort Worth or Arlington, between 10 PM on 11/23 and 11/24. By employing such specificity, FBI thus avoided repetition of the single phone call made by Kantor which was already suppressed elsewhere. It is self-evident that the Commissions timing of 10:19 for Little Lynns begging call was immaculately conceived, in the absence of any hard evidence for it. If there existed a single phone company record documenting that, or any, specific time for the phone call, it would have been entirely unnecessary for Commission counsel to spend literally hours of testimony time badgering three witnesses into fixing a time for the incoming call from Little Lynn. It would have known that detail, obviating any need to attack the same question from so many different directions with witnesses Ruby, Senator and Little Lynn. Counsel Hubert inadvertently referred to this: Mr. Hubert: Do you remember what time you called him? Mrs. Carlin: It was 10. I think it was around 10 or 10:05 or 10:15, something like that. It was between that time. Mr. Hubert: Would you be able to say with any degree of accuracy that it could not have been earlier than 10? Mrs. Carlin: It could have been. I am not going to say for sure. Mr. Hubert: Well, the fact of the matter is, the phone records show--I don't have them before me, but the phone records show it was about that time. Could you just tell us the gist of the conversation with Jack on that occasion. [WC XIII page 205 onward - emphasis added] But then, how could Hubert cite her a time from phone records that didnt include the call placement time, and wouldnt be in his hands for a further five months in any case? Given this void where clear evidence should be, we have little reason to invest our faith in the Commissions presumption that Ruby was home to receive Little Lynns phone call. Even the Commission, it seems, suspected Little Lynn had been called from the DPD building not long prior to Oswalds murder. And had good reason to do so, for Ruby was not at home to receive Little Lynns call at 10:19 AM.

In fact, a close reading of the evidence provided by another caller that Sunday morning Rubys cleaning lady Elnora Pitts suggests just the opposite: that Ruby wasnt present that morning at all, but that whomever answered the phone and pretended to be Ruby expected a call from a woman wanting money. In other words, somebody other than Ruby expected a call from Little Lynn: Mr. Hubert: Did you recognize his voice? Mrs. Pitts: Well, Ill tell you how he talked to me, then I said, What do I want? I says, This is Elnora. He says, Yes, well, what do you need some money? And I says, No; I was coming to clean today Mr. Hubert: In other words, when you told him that you were coming to clean he seemed to express some surprise, is that it? Mrs. Pitts: Yes, sir; like he didnt know that I was going to come and clean. Mr. Hubert: Did he recognize you? Mrs. Pitts: I dont know if he did or not. And I says to him again, I says, This is Elnora. And he says, Well, what do you want? And I said, Well, I was coming to clean today .. I says, You seem funny to me. And I says, Do you want me to come today? And he says, Well, yes; you can come, but you call me. And I says, Thats what Im doing now, calling you so I wont have to call you again... He sounded so strange to me and I said, Who am I talking to? Is this Jack Ruby? And he said, Yes. Why? And I said, Oh, nothing. But he just sounded terrible strange to me [WC H XIII page 231] Despite thereafter telling the Commission It was him. Im sure of that, Mrs. Pitts preceding confusion her self-admitted necessity to ask Is this Jack Ruby? suggests otherwise. But if Ruby wasnt there to take the phone call from Elnora Pitts at some time after 8 A.M., what guarantee do we have he was there two hours later to receive the begging call from Little Lynn? And who might have spoken to the confused Elnora Pitts that morning? Those who think it unlikely Rubys cleaning lady whose habit it was to call each Sunday before arriving to clean the apartment could be so easily fooled by a Ruby-impersonator should consult George Senators own Commission testimony, in which he volunteered that both he and Ruby had a lisp. Whats more, the above recitation makes clear not only that Mrs. Pitts had her doubts whether it was Ruby on the phone with her, but also that Ruby himself displayed a peculiar lack of

familiarity with both his cleaning lady, and her routine phone call prior to arriving each Sunday. The Commission took this as further evidence that Ruby was severely distracted, having worked himself into an emotional state. Hence, while we know that Ruby was in the basement to kill Oswald no later than 11:20 AM, and safely presume he wired Little Lynn money 4 minutes earlier, we can have no conclusive time for Rubys arrival in downtown Dallas that morning. What we can demonstrate, however, is that after leaving his apartment, Ruby did not go directly to Western Union. He purportedly told Little Lynn during the begging call he had to go downtown anyway, to leave his dog Sheba at the Carousel club, a detail he apparently reiterated to George Senator prior to leaving. Leaving Sheba alone at the club raised a whole other issue which the Commission counsel considered, but failed to adequately address. It was Rubys habit to take Sheba virtually everywhere he went. According to his own chronology of his activities that weekend, Ruby said Sheba had been left in the car on Friday night when Ruby was at DPDs midnight press conference. [That may be suspect, however, for that meant Sheba was left alone in the car with an assortment of deli sandwiches, unless Ruby placed the deli tray in the trunk. Or brought them into the DPD building, which may have been the case, as well see.] Yet on the Sunday morning trip downtown, Ruby left Sheba at the Carousel, rather than take her to the DPD HQ again. Why the difference? There is a dispute in this regard. It has generally been accepted that Sheba sat in the car waiting for Ruby to return from Western Union. And yet the first report filed by authorities regarding the impounding of Rubys car makes no mention of finding a dog inside the car, as well soon see. This was a Bureau report, citing information from a Ruby friend, Detective Richard Swain of the Burglary & Theft division, who retrieved Rubys car. We will return to that document shortly for other reasons, but for now it is sufficient to note that Swain reported nothing about having found a dog in the car, a rather odd omission for a trained Detective. Where was Sheba if not in the car? The significance of the dogs whereabouts was not lost on the Commission: Mr. Griffin: But would you say this, that if Jack Ruby had planned, let's assume for the sake of argument that Jack Ruby planned to kill Oswald before he went down to the police station. Now if Jack had that plan in his mind, are

you saying he never would have taken Sheba along with him? Mr. Senator: No; I definitely don't think he would ever take the dog with him. In the absence of a DPD or Bureau report to the contrary, it appears Ruby didnt take Sheba to Western Union at all. Presumably, she was left at the Carousel, just as Ruby told Senator and Little Lynn he planned to do. In any case, it was uncharacteristic for him to strand Sheba at the Carousel club to run a mundane errand like wiring money to Little Lynn from Western Union. It has been suggested in this Forum that Ruby would not have simply left Sheba there or anywhere - without making arrangements for the care of his dog if he knew he were about to be arrested for murder. Ruby may well have thought Sheba was in good hands, for on Sunday morning, Ruby hadnt yet learned that Larry Crafard had decided suddenly to leave without warning the night before. Nor did Crafard leave a note for Ruby to find when he arrived there on Sunday. Hence, Ruby had no idea that Crafard wouldnt be at the Carousel later that day to care for his dog. Whats more, any overt arrangements made for someone else to care for his dogs demonstrated Ruby didnt plan to be around to care for them himself. Ipso facto, Rubys murder of Oswald wasnt a spontaneous act, the necessary basis for Rubys only possible defense in the face of overwhelming evidence of premeditation. The very fact that Sheba was left at the Carousel indicates Ruby planned something more substantial than merely wiring money to Little Lynn, or Sheba would have been waiting in his car. Well soon see other indications of those plans. The Commission knew of several other credible witnesses who claimed to see Ruby hanging around the DPD premises in the early morning hours of that Sunday. In the absence of hard evidence to the contrary, why was the Commission so willing to accept the word of Ruby, by then a convicted murderer, regarding the Little Lynn call, over the testimony of more credible, disinterested parties? Because it was corroborated by a stripper and a homosexual? Unlikely, for those very attributes would have been used to impeach the character of the same witnesses had their testimony to the Commission been deemed hostile to the its predetermined conclusions.

Suddenly, it appears as though the tardiness of, and stunningly incompetent omissions from, the Bureaus report on the Carlins 11/24 phone calls were designed to kill two birds with a single stone: avoid impeaching the accepted story of the begging call from Little Lynn; and ensure the Commissions own counsel would have no time to probe the issue to a satisfactory conclusion, as Hubert and Griffin surely would have done had the data been proffered along with the rest, in March or April of 1964.

Neither the March or April Bureau reports about the Carlins phone records dealt with calls on November 24. In March 64, Ruby was on trial for his life. By April, his lawyers were presenting the court with the first salvos of a lengthy series of filings seeking a new trial for their client, by then convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to be executed. Those filings stretched more than two full years past the date on which the Commissions Report was published. The Report didnt impeach Rubys claims of no premeditation in Oswalds murder. Likewise, the Bureaus final non-report on the subject, delivered too late to allow contradiction, was scrubbed of anything that might call into question Rubys contention that he had killed Oswald on a spontaneous impulse. Why would FBI be so solicitous to Jack Ruby?

ITS THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE, IN CARS

Another possible means of determining Rubys time of arrival was suggested by the first document regarding the impounding of Rubys car. This was the 11/25/63 Bureau report [CE 1322, page 732] quoting information volunteered by Detective Richard Swain: shortly after the shootinghe had been instructed to proceed to a parking lot located on the north-west corner of Main and Pearl Streets where Ruby had parked his vehiclea 1960 white, two door Oldsmobile This parking lot was directly across the street from DPD HQ. Ordinarily, a parking lot charges money based upon the length of time the car is parked there, making it imperative to know when it arrived. Hence, the driver is issued a stub of some type with the time of the cars entry noted. No such time-stub was located among the effects in Rubys car or on his person at time of arrest.

The car park attendant was Theodore Jackson. He testified that he did not commence work until noon each day and that, as the car park was never chained off, anyone could park before he arrived, and if they also left prior to his arrival, then no charge could be applied. However he would place a ticket on any cars he found there upon arrival. He stated that he did this with Rubys car, but also testified that Swain and another detective who arrived to search the vehicle, simply allowed Jackson to pocket this evidence. Jackson also testified that yes there was a dog in the car. Jacksons testimony is literally incredible. He worked for a private car park with apparently little interest in making money from anyone needing to park and go prior to noon. In that same vein, the Dallas City Hall/DPD HQ complex had for two days been under virtual siege by hundreds of visiting reporters, with attendant broadcast trucks parked around its perimeter. Is it not counter-intuitive to suppose the parking lot owners neglected such an unprecedented opportunity to squeeze maximum profit from the parking lot directly across the street from the scene of all that activity? Yet according to Jackson, there were only around 6 cars in the lot when he arrived, so not only did the owners eschew profit, reporters, often known to seek out anything they can get for free, also eschewed the opportunity for free parking in a lot directly across the street from all the action. He claimed that there was a dog in the car and that the detectives wanted to take it to the pound yet the dog is not mentioned in Swains report. But even more alarming is the prospect that Dallas reached a high of 71.1 that day. At that temperature, the interior of a car can reach over 100 degrees within 60 minutes and according to Jackson, Sheba would have been in the car for over one and a half hours. Sheba should have been one sick dog. In the process of trying to resolve this, one must peruse the personal effects retrieved from the car impounded by Detective Swain. Among these were items seized by Swain himself, . a paper sack which contained $837.50. In addition, there were located in the trunk two pair of aluminum knuckles and various items of advertising and SWAIN advised such items were brought to the Homicide and Robbery Division No mention of a dog, however. And no mention of a parking lot stub.

Before moving on to subsequent documents regarding Rubys car and its contents, it is also helpful to note the peculiar way in which Ruby left his vehicle. Again, from the Bureaus brief report of Swains information: SWAIN and other detectives proceeded to examine the vehicle and located the key to the trunk in the glove compartment., and on opening the trunk found the ignition key It is self-evident that this was a highly peculiar way for Ruby to leave his car. The discovery of the ignition key in the trunk compels one to pore over all the items taken by DPD from Rubys person upon arrest. One will search in vain for any mention of a car key. If the Commission accepted that Ruby was only downtown to wire money to Little Lynn, and murdered Oswald merely as an unplanned psychotic afterthought, surely he would have taken his car keys with him. He had, after all, expected to drive away from there. And yet, the fashion in which Ruby left his car suggested instead that he wished to leave his options open. If he had chickened out, or been denied an opportunity to murder Oswald due to airtight DPD security arrangements, Ruby could have retrieved the ignition key from the trunk, as the Police had, and driven away. But, in the interim the car was left unlocked, and yet relatively secure from car thieves by the secretion of the ignition key in the trunk. Why didnt Ruby take his car keys with him? Did he expect Larry Crafard unknown to Ruby, newly embarked on an unannounced visit to his sister out-of-state (or somebody else) to come and retrieve his car after his arrest? In fact, is that why Crafard really left Dallas without so much as a goodbye note; that hed been asked to do something so odd he thought it worthy of fleeing? The Commission expressed some interest in the subject of Rubys car keys, and how many he had: Mr. Griffin: Did he keep any keys in the car? Mr. Crafard: I believe he had some in a box in the back. Mr. Griffin: What kind of keys were they? Mr. Crafard: From what I could tell more or less house keys, keys for doors. Mr. Griffin: Were they loose or in a key chain? Mr. Crafard: I believe there was a bunch of them on a keyring. Mr. Griffin: You say he kept them in a box of some sort? Mr. Crafard: Yes. Mr. Griffin: What kind of a box did he keep them in? Mr. Crafard: Just a cardboard box he had in the back of his car.

Mr. Griffin: Did he keep anything else in that cardboard box? Mr. Crafard: There was vitamin pills he was taking, and some of his diet stuff he kept in that box. He always had a bunch of soap in the car, bar soap. Mr. Griffin: Did he travel out of town or something that would cause him to need that stuff? Mr. Crafard: Not to my knowledge. Mr. Griffin: Why would he have kept those things in the trunk of the car? Mr. Crafard: I don't know. Mr. Griffin: Did he keep clothes in the car? Mr. Crafard: He sometimes would have clothes in the car. Maybe he would put clothes in the car that he would take to the cleaner and they would be in there 2 or 3 days before he would take them in the cleaners. Mr. Griffin: Where would they be in the trunk? Mr. Crafard: Right in the trunk of the car. Mr. Griffin: How about in the glove compartment of the car, did you ever have any occasion to go into the glove compartment? Mr. Crafard: No. Mr. Griffin: Did he keep the trunk of his car locked? Mr. Crafard: Yes. Mr. Griffin: And the times that you went into the trunk of the car, how did you get into the trunk? Mr. Crafard: With the key. Mr. Griffin: Where would you get the key? Mr. Crafard: He would give it to me. Mr. Griffin: Did he keep this key loose in his pocket or did he have it on a key chain? Mr. Crafard: He had it on a key chain. Mr. Griffin: What else did he keep on that key chain? Mr. Crafard: The keys for the car. Mr. Griffin: Anything else? Mr. Crafard: I believe he had his apartment house key and the key to both clubs. Mr. Griffin: Was this actually a chain or a ring or what? Mr. Crafard: A keyring. Mr. Griffin: To your knowledge did he keep---did he have any separate set of car keys that he kept on a separate ring or on a holder of any kind? Mr. Crafard: Not to my knowledge. In any event, the very volume of items retrieved from Rubys car indicates the sloppiness of his lifestyle, and is daunting to catalogue in

its entirety. The car contained everything from toothpicks to suits to jewelry to brass knuckles to non-dairy coffee creamer, and hundreds of scraps of paper containing the ephemera of his daily life. Trying to make sense of the several hundred various items culled from the car seems too tedious, too unlikely to yield anything of significance. Which is perhaps why it has never been undertaken by a researcher, and why certain anomalies in the FBI documents about that process have remained unplumbed for 36 years. We have Detective Swain on record on 11/25/63 describing how he was instructed to impound the car on the previous day. Sadly, either Swain neglected to impart or the Bureau failed to record critical data about the car, such as its license plate number, or its VIN [vehicle identification number]. This fault is attributable to SAs Harrison and Weir, the reports authors, for in the event that Swain wasnt forthcoming with the information, it would have been standard Bureau practice to solicit same. Presumably simply repeating what hed been told by superiors, Swain attributed ownership of the car to Ruby, but without a license plate or VIN this is anything but certain. Use of a car and ownership are not the same thing. Next up in chronological order is an 11/25 FBI report [CE 1322, page 733] citing a list of contents provided to SAs Harrison and Weir for examination and cataloguing by Detective Gus Rose on the previous day. This is a 19-page compendium of several hundred items, including individual phone numbers. Rose and the Bureau must be complimented on having done so thorough a job of itemizing. It is disappointing to note that this report, too, fails to mention either a license plate number or a VIN, settling for only a description of a 1960 Oldsmobile, the ownership of same again attributed to Ruby without proof. The blame for this oversight again falls to SAs Harrison and Weir. Equally unfortunate, the search itself appears to have been less than thorough. That fact is demonstrated by subsequent FBI documents. Perhaps noting the failure of the previous documents, on 11/25, SAs O'Maley and Larson noted: Visual observation of 1960 Oldsmobile 88 two door, cream in color, was made at Dallas Police Department Auto Pound bore 1963 Texas License [sic] plates PD 768 and has VIN 607T07748. Finally, the Bureau got it right. In a report which mentions nothing but that data. The report included nearly everything that a visual inspection should reveal. There is no indication that OMaley and Larson took the extra step of determining for certain that ownership of the car resided with Jack Ruby.

An undated report from SA OMaley stipulated that in Dallas: On November 24, 1963 Lieutenant R. LEE MAY advised the Dallas Police Department has in their Auto Pound a 1960 Oldsmobile, two-door, VIN 607T07749, bearing 1963 Texas license [sic] PD 768. This vehicle is the property of Jack Ruby, 3929 Oak Lawn Dallas, Texas. This vehicle was impounded at 1:30 p.m. from the 2000 block of Main Street, Dallas, Texas. Gone completely was Swains claim he retrieved the car from a specified parking lot, replaced by the more amorphous 2000 block of Main Street. Was this wording designed to negate interest in Jack Rubys parking lot stub? One supposes that this brief report merely recited data culled over the telephone from Lt. May, but because it is undated, one must infer what should have been specified. If so, it likely chronologically preceded the previously-cited document by OMaley and Larson, which reported what they saw of the car, rather than that which the Bureau had been advised by DPDs Lt. May. A sharp-eyed reader will have already noticed a discrepancy in the final digit of the VIN supplied by Lt. May, and that seen by the Bureaus own men. It will prove a recurring discrepancy. While no individual document we have encountered thus far has contained everything that Hoover would have required of one of his field men, in the aggregate the documents each slowly contributed to an evolving depiction of events, and the critical data one would expect the Bureau to obtain. How, then, does one explain the 11/25 report [CE 1322, page 757] of four Bureau SAs Albert, OMaley, Harrison and Weir in which a further three pages of items were taken from the interior of the automobile and the trunk of the automobile? After the 19 pages of items already retrieved, it is somewhat odd to encounter yet more, recovered from the same car on the same day. One can only suppose that this search the first undertaken by FBI was more thorough than those already conducted by DPD. But this little 3-pager pales in significance when compared to an 11/28 FBI report [CE 1322, page 752] from SAs Larson and Lester itemizing an additional four pages of items retrieved from the cars glove compartment, ashtray, dashboard, and trunk. It is self-evident that a car impounded on 11/24, and thoroughly searched on that day and again on the next, should not have yielded up anything further four days later. And yet, FBI claims that it did, after it had already been searched at least once each by DPD and FBI. Either this bespeaks an inexplicable sloppiness on the part of DPD and the Bureau, or the existence of a second car.

While the former possibility cannot be conclusively discounted DPD and FBI were unaccountably slack in some respects did one really need to graduate from Quantico at the top of the class in order to execute something as fundamental as the properly conducted search of a car? The SAs involved had not overlooked something as easily missed as hair and fiber evidence. Instead, they had somehow ignored or missed retrieving: keys, business cards, can openers, a jar of CoffeeMate, a jar of Larsons Dietary Food, a Twist-Board novelty item being hawked by Ruby at the time, newspapers, a wallet, several items of suit clothing, an extension cord, a microphone, an adding machine, a box of stationery, spot light gels, a black plastic raincoat, a can of varnish stain, etc., etc. We are left to accept that six separate FBI Special Agents, working in several combinations, could not - in five separate attempts - construct a single document that included: the date of the report; the license and/or VIN numbers for the car; a reasonably well executed description of the cars color, make and model; the cars legal ownership; and a full accounting of what was discovered therein. Is this really the result of mere sloppiness? Is it too meticulously picky to expect to find all the critical data in a single document? How does one explain the inability of a half dozen Bureau men, and assorted DPD personnel, to between them conduct a single comprehensive search of the vehicle, a car that was apparently combed no fewer than three times, each time offering up more contents? Which raises the latter possibility: the series of searches was conducted on more than one vehicle. The lack of specificity about the car initially impounded described only as a 1960 white two door Oldsmobile, with no license plate or VIN provided by either DPD or FBI at least leaves open that possibility. Without that specific identifying data, the reports could have been describing any 1960 white two door Olds. Equally intriguing is what appears to be the Bureaus diminishing certainty regarding the cars ownership. On 11/25, the Bureaus own reports cited as fact that the car was owned by Jack Ruby and This car is the property of one JACK LEON RUBY, expressed unambiguously and without doubt or reservation. Yet by the final report, of 11/28, the Bureau now reported: Detective H.H. Stidham, Automobile Theft Bureau, made available the automobile stored in the Dallas Police Automobile Pound which is believed to be owned by JACK LEON RUBY. Why the sudden switch from stated fact to mere belief? Had the Bureau not had sufficient time in the intervening four days to conclusively determine the cars true owner?

DPD and FBI initially reported with certainty Rubys ownership of the car, but not its two key numerical identifiers, by which ownership could be ascertained. Yet when later providing those self-same numbers, by which ownership could be conclusively determined, the agencies expressed only the belief that it belonged to Ruby. Whats wrong with this picture? Strangely, the possible existence of a second car is suggested by more than just the [in]convenient lapses in FBI documents, for the very items retrieved and dutifully listed by FBI offer clues that this may have been the case. For example, the 11/28 FBI report disclosed that among the items retrieved on that late date was included One parking ticket dated March 15, 1963, 10:40 A.M., place of offense, 2000 Commerce, description of car, Oldsmobile two door, bearing 1962 Texas NL 4783. Presumably this parking ticket was Rubys, since it was found in his car and written for a parking violation committed in an area habituated by Ruby, where he was given other parking tickets for parking illegally. Yet the discerning eye will have noticed the car is not described by color or year of manufacture, and has a different license plate number. This may be resolved by another item found in a prior search: 1963 Texas passenger car license [sic] receipt # PD 768, owner JACK RUBY, 3508 Oak Lawn, Dallas, 1960 Oldsmobile, two door sedan, title # 29155724, 1962 license NL 4783, fee $23.23. VIN # 607T07749, registered April 2, 1963, Deputy Norton. Clearly, it seems Ruby simply had a new license plate number issued to him just over two weeks after the parking ticket was written. Hence, the disparity between the license number on the parking ticket, and the license number on the car Ruby drove at the time of his arrest for killing Oswald. However, there are several problems here. Though it is likely just a numerical transcription error, DPD consistently cited one VIN beginning with one registered by Deputy Norton 7-plus months before Kennedys death while the Bureau reported with equal consistency, in several documents, a VIN separated by a single digit from that cited by DPD. Whether an innocuously repeated error or not, a single digits difference may have spelled out two different cars. Hence, while it cannot be proven, neither can one discount an attempted sleight of hand trick, Two Car Monte. Moreover, in most jurisdictions, fees paid on an annual basis for license plate privileges do not require the issuance of a new license number, as occurred in Rubys case. In most jurisdictions, new plate numbers

are issued only with the transfer of a vehicles ownership, and in some cases not even then. Presumably, in the Dallas of 1963, new license plates were issued each year. In fact, investigating this, threw up a document which indicates Ruby not only bought the plate, but bought it out of some cop fantasy. On December 2, the FBI interviewed John R. Childs, assistant office manager, Records Building. Childs confirmed that tag PD-768 was issued to Ruby on April 2, 1963 and set out the circumstances as to how this was possible. According to Childs, the first 2000 PD prefix tags are reserved for regular and reserve law enforcement officers (PD get it? Police Department!), but after midnight of April 1, all remaining PD tags go on general sale. No doubt Ruby was first in line Another item found during what presumably was the earliest search may provide a clue: 1962 Texas Passenger car license receipt no. PF 7780 for 1956 Oldsmobile, two door sedan, MN 567T8118, 1961 license NP 9675, Title # 20712774, registered April 2, 1962, owner JACK RUBY, 3929 Rawlings, Dallas. Fee $20.59. Comparing these two license registration documents, it becomes clear that in 1962 at least, Jack Ruby presumably exercised ownership over two separate cars, a 1956 two door Olds and a 1960 two door Olds. We have no guarantee that he owned both at the same time, but nor can the notion be discounted without proof. Was this the case in 1962? If so, was it still the case in 1963? What happened to the 1956 Oldsmobile? Did Ruby sell it? To whom? When? To date, I have found no record that the Bureau ever attempted to investigate the matter, and would be grateful to anyone who can provide such a document or any other details about this. The Bureau cannot claim to have had no knowledge of the second car; all of the above data comes to us from its own reports. Little Lynn gave additional reason to suspect Ruby had more than one car, a fact that seemed to intrigue Counsel Hubert: Mrs. Carlin: No. I had seen Jack Ruby one other time before that, but I didn't know who he was. My girlfriend and I, a stripper, at the Theatre Lounge, was walking to the bus stop at the Greyhound bus station to get something to eat during our hour break, and we were walking, and this big Cadillac drove up and tooted the horn and my girlfriend

smiled and it turned out to be Jack Ruby after I met him. I knew who it was. But he left a card on the sidewalk in front of us saying the Carousel Club. Mr. Hubert: How long before you went to work for him, then, did that episode take place? Mrs. Carlin: This was about 2 weeks before, because I went home and told my husband about it. Mr. Hubert: He was driving a Cadillac? Mrs. Carlin: Yes. There was three of them in the car, two men and one woman. I never did see the man or woman, didn't recognize them. Mr. Hubert: Who was driving? Mrs. Carlin: It was Jack. It turned out to be Jack. I asked him if he was the one that was driving the car and threw the card on the sidewalk, and he said, "Yes, I was." Mr. Hubert: Did you ever find out who the other people were in the car? Mrs. Carlin: No; I never did ask him. Mr. Hubert: Did you find out subsequently what kind of car Jack drove? Mrs. Carlin: No. Mr. Hubert: This was definitely a Cadillac? Mrs. Carlin: Yes. It could have been the other person's car he was driving. [WC XIII page 205 on] Interest may also be piqued upon learning that the previous owner of the 1960 Oldsmobile, one William A. Weidenbenner, lived only 1.5 miles from the Paine residence at the time of sale. His address was 513 Robinhood Drive, Irving. The discovery of ever-more items in Rubys car with each search suggests more than one car was fanned. The disparities in FBI documents regarding critical data in the evidence stream may be accidental, but contrarily may prove to be deliberate omissions. The consistency with which DPD and FBI cited two different VIN numbers leaves open the possibility of attempts at official obfuscation. Rubys ownership of two cars in 1962 may also imply he had two automobiles registered under his name in 1963 as well. Little Lynn placed Ruby behind the wheel of a Cadillac. Yet if we hypothesize that this is so, it necessitates that DPD and the Bureau collaborated in the suppression of Rubys second vehicle. There could be no innocuous rationale for such an overt act. So peculiar a collaborative effort must have been undertaken by DPD and FBI for a very compelling reason.

Why?