POISONPATRIARCH
POISONAlso by Mark Shaw
Stations Along the Way
Road to a Miracle
Beneath the Mask of Holiness
Melvin Belli: King of the Courtroom
Miscarriage of Justice: The Jonathan Pollard Story
The Perfect Yankee
Forever Flying
Down for the Count
Bury Me in a Pot Bunker
Dandelions in the Moonlight
Larry Legend
Testament to Courage
POISONHow the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy
Caused the Assassination of JFK
Copyright © 2013 by Mark Shaw
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-62873-524-6
Printed in the United States of America
“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie—deliberate,
contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive,
and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion
without the discomfort of thought.”
President John F. Kennedy
“The mission of the written word is not to buttress high policy,
but to proclaim the truth.”
Arthur Miller
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright
Prologue
Book I
Chapter One–The Dallas Assassinations
Chapter Two–Jack Ruby and Melvin Belli
Chapter Three–Jack Ruby on Trial
Chapter Four–The Doomed Assassin
Book II
Chapter Five–The Government Investigations
Chapter Six–Theories Abound
Chapter Seven–Frank Ragano’s Story
Chapter Eight–Attacking Ragano
Book III
Chapter Nine–A Lighter Shade of Gray
Chapter Ten–Mickey
Chapter Eleven–Melvin Belli and the Mob
Chapter Twelve–Melvin Belli as Jack Ruby’s Lawyer
Book IV
Chapter Thirteen–Belli’s Strange Defense of Ruby
Chapter Fourteen–Belli’s Curious Silence
Book V
Chapter Fifteen–Motive, Motive, Motive
Chapter Sixteen–Enemies Galore
Chapter Seventeen–Bobby’s Remorse
Chapter Eighteen–Ultimate Responsibility
Chapter Nineteen–The Poison Patriarch
Epilogue
Sources
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index
“I have news for you,” the caller said in a high-pitched tone, “The President’s been shot.”
Gazing upward in disbelief, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy attempted to comprehend these words as he listened carefully to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s voice on the telephone. It was an unusually warm, sunny afternoon in McLean, Virginia on November 22, 1963, a few minutes before two o’clock Eastern time. The attorney general had just enjoyed a swim at his Hickory Hill residence pool after spending the morning in Justice Department meetings focused on how best to continue his crusade to destroy organized crime.
Dressed in a white T-shirt and shorts, RFK asked Hoover, “Is it serious?” The answer: “I think it’s serious. I am trying to get more details. I’ll call you back when I find out more.” Bobby covered his mouth with his right hand and returned to his wife, Ethel, and two guests: New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau and his assistant, criminal division chief, Silvio Mollo. RFK lifted his hands to his face and mumbled, “Jack’s been shot. It may be fatal.”
As Ethel comforted him and the others recoiled in shock, RFK began to telephone seeking details. He finally reached Parkland Hospital in Dallas and was told that his brother was unconscious and that a priest had been summoned. Moments later, another telephone call from Hoover confirmed RFK’s worst fears. “The President’s dead,” Hoover said without a hint of sympathy.
A few minutes later, Robert Kennedy, the second most powerful man in the country, slowly walked between the swimming pool and the tennis courts on the six-acre estate. Head down, hands in his pockets, tears welled up in Bobby’s eyes with every step. Trailing at his heels was his favorite dog, Brumus, a black Newfoundland.
Robert F. Kennedy had lost a brother; the nation had lost a president. At 2:38 p.m. Central time, Lyndon Baines Johnson took the oath of office on Air Force One, still on the tarmac in Dallas, and became the thirty-sixth president of the United States.
Attempting to calm himself when he returned to Ethel and his guests, Bobby, his words barely audible, told his press secretary Ed Guthman: “There’s so much bitterness; I thought they would get one of us, but Jack, after all he had been through, [I] never worried about it. . . . . I never thought it would happen. I thought it would be me . . . there’s been so much bitterness and hatred . . . .” Later, Guthman emphasized that he was certain RFK used the word “they” and not “he,” and that Bobby believed “they” might be coming after him next.
Hours later, mob lawyer Frank Ragano, the attorney for Mafia dons Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante and Teamsters boss James Hoffa, shared a restaurant table with his wife, Nancy, and Trafficante at the International Inn, a five-star hotel in Tampa, Florida. As related to this author by Nancy Ragano, the two were “laughing, joking, and raising glasses of champagne high in the air to toast JFK’s assassination.”
Why were these men celebrating? The answer may be traced to RFK’s statement to Ed Guthman that Bobby believed he would be assassinated instead of his brother. But the key to understanding to whom Bobby was referring when he said “they”—as in, “they would get one of us”—is to focus on one cabinet appointment John F. Kennedy made shortly after becoming president. It was a decision JFK was forced to make, and one that meant his ultimate doom.
And the starting point, as unlikely as it may seem, to realizing why this decision cost JFK his life revolves around never-before-revealed information about the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassin, Jack Ruby. His attorney Melvin Belli was the most famous lawyer in America, if not the world, at the time. He is also the missing link in the most scrutinized assassination investigation in five decades.
Based on these fresh disclosures, this book examines the common-sense element of motive—including focusing for the first time in any investigation or book on why Robert F. Kennedy was not killed in 1963 instead of why John Kennedy was murdered. The focus on motive makes apparent the identity of those who were behind the president and Oswald’s death. Instead of conjecture, speculation, and guesswork, close scrutiny of Belli’s conduct before, during, and after the Ruby trial establishes a definite connection between Oswald, Ruby, and the individual who hated the Kennedys most: the desperate man who had no alternative but to order the president’s death so as to protect a multi-million-dollar empire and his very freedom.
Most importantly, for history’s sake, this fresh approach, while debunking any “Oswald Alone” theory, leads to the compelling conclusion that the patriarch of the Kennedy family, Joseph P. Kennedy, bears the ultimate responsibility for the senseless death of his son, the thirty-fifth president of the United States. When the dust settled, the elder Kennedy reaped what he had sown in a scenario tantamount to a Greek tragedy with a complex moral structure where abuses of power and broken promises pervaded at every turn, culminating in betrayals, revenge, and, ultimately, murder.
This book offers a completely new perspective regarding the twin assassinations in Dallas in 1963: the murders of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. The underlying theory is based on close examination of fresh facts never revealed before and provides the most plausible explanation to date as to who killed President Kennedy, and why. For fifty years and counting, the truth about the Kennedy assassination has been hiding in plain sight. Even those with good intentions simply missed facts that would have led them to a simple, logical, common sense scenario regarding the events surrounding President Kennedy’s death.
At times in this narrative, it may seem as if we are straying far afield from the core argument: that Joseph Kennedy bears ultimate responsibility for JFK’s death. Patience is thus required in the same way that jurors must attend to details as a prosecutor progressively attempts to prove a circumstantial case. To this end, information will be presented beginning with what was known about the assassinations at the time, what was learned over the years through investigative commissions and publications, what new facts this author uncovered through substantive research, and finally what conclusions may be reached based on the body of work.
Missing links must be accounted for and explained. And in the case of the Kennedy assassination, an essential link—one connecting the man who masterminded the assassinations with those who caused them to occur through their actions—was always missing. Until now.
This said, and as unlikely as it may seem at first glance, the circuitous trail to exposing the truth about the assassinations of JFK and Oswald begins at the trial of Jack Ruby, Oswald’s killer. This trial commenced at the Dallas County Courthouse in March 1964, less than four months after the twin murders. An eight-story building, constructed in 1913 by architect H. A. Overbeck in the classic neocolonial style, the courthouse stood at the corner of Houston and Main Streets in downtown Dallas. Here, a jury of Ruby’s peers would decide if he was guilty of the first-degree murder of Oswald, JFK’s alleged assassin, or not guilty by reason of insanity. If the former was decided based on the only live television broadcast of a murder in history, death by electrocution was the penalty.
As fifty-seven-year-old Melvin Belli stood beside Ruby in the packed courtroom, observers noted the stark differences between the two men. Though short in stature and noticeably bulky, Belli was a commanding figure with distinctive black horn-rimmed glasses and a pronounced square chin. His swept-back, wavy, silver hair exposed bushy eyebrows and a furrowed brow, belying a man oozing with confidence. When he made a point, the bombastic barrister cradled his glasses in his right hand and thrust them forward as if to say, “Now, listen closely or you’ll miss something important.” An Associated Press headline described Ruby’s attorney as “Candid, Controversial, and Clever . . . .” He was a headline-maker who had been the subject of a Los Angeles Times article by Jack Smith bearing the banner, “L.A. Watching New Court Idol Emerge.”
Time magazine published an article on Belli’s representation of Ruby in its December 20, 1963, issue. The byline read, “Belli For The Defense.” In part, the article read, “The visitor flew in with a flourish. His pink face and silver hair gleamed above polished cowboy boots and a grand, fur-collared overcoat. San Francisco lawyer Melvin Mouron Belli had come to Dallas to defend Jack Ruby, the only man ever to ever commit a murder while the whole nation watched.”
Melvin Belli (right) and Jack Ruby during Ruby Trial—March 1964. Despite the availability of several nationally-known criminal defense lawyers, San Francisco personal-injury attorney Belli became Ruby’s trial lawyer. Credit: Corbis Images.
In contrast to his attorney, the fifty-one-year-old Ruby (conflicting records noted his age as fifty-two) had a receding hairline and bore a smaller frame: five-foot nine and one hundred and seventy-five pounds. To viewers in the courtroom, he seemed to have shrunk in size since his arrest four months earlier. His face was nondescript, his expression vacant, like that of a retired uncle whose life had passed him by. He spoke in a high-pitched tone with a slight lisp, a trait that had led some to call him a “sissy.” His jailer, Al Maddox, told this author that Ruby was “a used to be.”
If Lee Harvey Oswald’s otherwise nondescript killer possessed any distinguishing characteristic, it was his eyes. They appeared hollow, like killer’s eyes. Belli, whose green eyes sparkled when he became excited, observed, “There was something about [Ruby’s] eyes. They shone like a beagle’s.”
Time profiled the Ruby case in its January 31, 1964, issue. It featured articles previewing Teamsters union boss James Hoffa’s jury-tampering trial and the designation of JFK’s Profiles in Courage as the country’s best-selling book. Included in the magazine was a description of the evidence presented during Ruby’s bail hearing. It pointed out that Ruby’s IQ score of 109 meant that “he tests higher in intelligence than 73% of the population.”
Belli and Ruby were also profiled in the February 21, 1964, issue of Life magazine. Featuring the infamous and controversial photograph of Oswald brandishing his rifle on the cover, the magazine touted headlines reading, “Exclusive—Oswald Armed for Murder, In Full and Extra Ordinary Detail, The Life Of The Assassin.” Below the caption, the blurb read, “As Jack Ruby Goes to Trial, Cast of Characters: How the Law Applies.”
Belli, having already decided on an insanity defense, must have been pleased by the two-page vertical photograph of his client. Ruby stood, with his hands clasped in handcuffs, wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. His eyes stared blankly at the reader in an eerie fashion. The photograph caption read, “As Ruby goes to trial, the question before the court: Was This Man Sane?” Readers were informed that “this extraordinary picture of Jack Ruby was taken as he was leaving jail for pretrial tests by doctors to examine the physical and mental condition of the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Belli was described as “a Californian with a fantastic record of courtroom victories.” His counterpart, District Attorney Henry Wade, when asked about the insanity defense was quoted as saying, “We think it is a case of cold-blooded, calculated murder.”
Photographs of Ruby included one with his sister Eva, another when he approached Oswald with murder on his mind, and a final one with two of his Carousel nightclub strippers. Scantily clad, they were positioned on both sides facing Ruby, legs and bikini bottoms in full view. A portion of the caption read: “Ruby basking in the attention of two of his strippers.”
A few pages later, the “Cast of the Courtroom Drama” was presented. Belli, captured standing in his San Francisco office, was flanked by photos of the Ruby trial mainstays: D. A. Henry Wade, Assistant D. A. Bill Alexander, and presiding Judge Joe Brown. Appearing puffy-faced and wearing black horn-rimmed glasses, Wade tugged at a cigar stuffed into the right corner of his mouth. The caption mentioned that Wade’s office staff had won 189 felony trials and lost only thirteen in 1963.
The photograph of Judge Brown indicated an appearance similar to that of Henry Wade except for a more bulbous nose. Jailer Al Maddox told this author the judge was “a good old country boy. Sheriff Decker liked him and if the one-eyed sheriff liked someone, then he had to be alright.”
The article read in part:
. . . Melvin Belli, chief defense counsel,
dominates the cast of attorneys in the Ruby
trial. Belli is known as the ‘King of Torts’
for his success in personal injury suits . . .
Chief prosecutor Henry Wade . . . conceals
a steel trap mind behind a cornball manner.
Bill Alexander is a soft-spoken, but
relentless prosecutor and cross-examiner
in the courtroom-style of Texas-born Gregory
Peck. The judge, Joe Brown, has 29 years’
experience, runs a court with an easy
Texas-style loosed rein. But he can be tough.
As jury selection approached, Belli and co-counsel Joe Tonahill, a Texan described by Bill Alexander to this author as “a big, bullfrog of a guy, a bullshit artist who liked to overpower people with his size and his voice,” knew they faced a tall order. Their client had committed murder not in front of one, two, ten or even a thousand witnesses, but millions who had tuned in hoping to catch a glimpse of the alleged killer of their beloved president on national television as he was being transferred from one Dallas jail to another. Instead, they had recoiled in horror as Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald at point-blank range.
Oswald’s death had shocked those who witnessed it, but the killing of John Fitzgerald Kennedy had shaken the world, shaken the very core of those who worshipped the handsome, charismatic president.
‡
The basic facts regarding the shooting of John F. Kennedy are well-known and undisputed as is the road he took to the presidency. In 1960, by the slimmest of margins (112,827 votes out of 68 million-plus—0.16%—303 electoral votes to 219), JFK had defeated Vice President Richard Nixon to become president. Masterminding the election of his son from the shadows had been the Kennedy patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. Critics alleged that he had manipulated the result, some used stronger language such as “fixed,” and “stolen,” but, despite cries of protest from the Republicans, no investigation of the election occurred. On inauguration day, January 20, 1961, Joe Kennedy beamed with pride, his dream of seeing a son become president fulfilled.
Two years, ten months, and six days later, during a trip to Texas on November 22, 1963, the president was assassinated as his limousine passed by the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas. Arrested shortly thereafter was twenty-four-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald. Prosecutors alleged that he had crouched in a sniper’s nest he made from book cartons on the sixth floor of the depository and aimed a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-millimeter rifle out the top-floor window. When Kennedy’s limousine drove past at precisely twelve thirty in the afternoon police said, Oswald squeezed the trigger three times in six-and-a-half seconds, hitting the president twice and inflicting a fatal head wound. Oswald supposedly fled the building and was captured hours later in a movie theater after allegedly shooting and killing a Dallas police officer, J. D. Tippit. Less than 48 hours later, Oswald himself was fatally shot by Jack Ruby as he was being transferred from police headquarters to the county jail.
‡
While Lee Harvey Oswald’s motives for shooting John Kennedy and Jack Ruby’s for shooting Oswald have been discussed and debated for years, there is little debate regarding Oswald’s denial of guilt.
At police headquarters after his arrest, the handcuffed Oswald was told he could cover his face with his hands if he wished. To that suggestion, he told reporters, “Why should I hide my face? I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of.” Later, Oswald stated, “I didn’t kill the President, I didn’t kill nobody,” at a midnight news conference at police headquarters.
District Attorney Henry Wade believed otherwise, telling reporters Oswald’s fingerprints had been found on boxes in the depository where the shots were fired and on the murder weapon. Presumably to sew up the case, Wade provided details about a witness who told the authorities that after Oswald boarded a bus following the shooting, he “laughed” when told that the president had been shot. “There is no question that Oswald was JFK’s murderer,” Wade boasted.
When Jack Ruby had first learned the news of JFK’s shooting, police said he was sitting by the desk of John Newnan, a likable advertising salesman for the Dallas Morning News. Ruby, a regular visitor to the newspaper who sought to impress editors and columnists with his “inside ideas for stories,” discussed the appropriate copy to be included in advertisements for the Carousel and a second nightclub he owned, the Vegas Club. Satisfied with the advertisement, he wrote a check for $1.87 on his Merchants State Bank account to pay for the ads.
Moments later, at half past noon or so, a CBS News bulletin blared from a nearby television set: “Three shots were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade today in downtown Dallas.” A short time later, Ruby heard Walter Cronkite, his voice quivering, announce, “President Kennedy died at 1:00 P.M. Central Standard time, two o’clock Eastern Standard time, some thirty-eight minutes ago.” According to authorities, Jack Ruby then drove to his nightclub, the Carousel. Several hours later, at around midnight, Ruby headed for police headquarters where a news conference was anticipated. Ruby, packing his nickel-plated .38 pistol, was within ten feet or so of Oswald when Wade presented him to the world. An Associated Press photograph captured Ruby scribbling notes in the back of the room.
Questions surfaced later regarding how Ruby ended up in the Dallas Police Department basement where Oswald appeared the next morning, Sunday, November 24th. Ruby told police he drove downtown to send money to one of the strippers who worked for him via the Western Union office and then walked to police headquarters a block away. Left behind in the back seat of his white 1960 Oldsmobile was a red Dachshund named Sheba as well as a set of brass knuckles, a transistor radio, and, most interesting in view of later developments, a copy of a two-month-old New York Sunday Mirror article chronicling mobster Joseph Valachi’s appearance before Senator John L. McClellan’s Subcommittee on Investigations in early October.1 Also discovered were copies of Dallas and Fort Worth newspapers depicting the intended route of President Kennedy’s motorcade.
Wearing a dark suit, white shirt, and a silk necktie with a gold-plated tie clasp—rather formal attire for a Sunday morning trip to Western Union—Ruby had stuffed a roll of bills into one pocket totaling $2015.33. He had sixty dollars in traveler’s thecks as well. In his right front trousers’ pocket, he carried the loaded pistol.
At 11:15 am, Dallas homicide detectives escorted a dour-faced Oswald out of Captain Will Fritz’s office door. As bright lights showered him, Oswald, arguably the most hated man in the world, smirked at three journalists who shouted questions. He was snarly and silent; beads of perspiration pockmarked his shiny forehead in the stuffy hallway. The plan, according to police, was to transport Oswald in an armored car to the more secure county jail a few blocks away. That car was stationed in front of a ramp where policeman E. R. Vaughn stood guard.
Five minutes later, a black car driven by Lt. Rio Pierce drove up the narrow ramp as Vaughn stepped aside. Ruby later told police that this allowed him to inch his way undetected down the narrow ramp that was eight to nine feet wide. This was barely enough to permit a car to enter.
As Oswald emerged from an elevator flanked by two detectives, one journalist shouted, “Here he comes.” As this point, WBAP television director Jimmy Turner swore he saw Ruby at the end of the ramp.
Oswald was handcuffed to the left wrist of detective J. R. “James” Leavelle, who wore a white suit and a gleaming white Stetson hat. Detective L.C. Graves held Oswald’s left arm, but there were no officers directly in front of him. Behind Oswald’s entourage, several police looked on. Eager to display the alleged killer of JFK and Dallas policeman Tippit to the world, police welcomed the swarm of reporters and photographers gathered for the photo-op.
A pivotal character in the ensuing scenario was Icarus “Ike” Pappas, one of many journalists who became well-known for their reporting of the JFK assassination. (Another was Dan Rather, whose first-rate, fast-breaking accounts of the shooting electrified the world. His sterling performance would culminate in a reporter position with CBS where he would become the network’s longtime prime time news anchor.)
Pappas, later a noted reporter for CBS, but then working for WNEW in New York, pushed his way to a spot nearly kiss-close to the most infamous man in the world. Intent on gaining a noteworthy quote from Oswald despite the presence of more than seventy reporters and one hundred police, Pappas shoved his microphone near the accused killer. Oswald sneered as flashbulbs popped and floodlights glared in the background.
At exactly 11:21 AM, Pappas asked a question just as Jack Ruby angled in beside Pappas, just to the right of Oswald. The prisoner’s bruised, unshaven face reflected his struggle with police when he was arrested. Television cameramen focused on the scene as millions of viewers glimpsed the face of the accused. They heard Pappas ask, “Lee, do you have anything to say in your defense?” It was a question Oswald never answered.
A second later, Ruby, wearing a nap-brimmed gray fedora, edged closer to Oswald. As Ruby approached, Oswald’s face seemed to register a glimmer of recognition. Conspiracy buffs later alleged that Oswald, a white colored shirt peeking from under his dark crew neck sweater, recognized Ruby. Others maintained that Oswald’s expression was an acknowledgment of Ruby’s pistol.
Raising the weapon, Ruby extended his right arm, thrust the gun toward Oswald’s stomach, and, from a distance of about fifteen inches, pulled the trigger. The gunshot caused Detective Leavelle, his eyes reflecting disbelief, to recoil in horror. Robert Jackson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph was taken at this moment.
Oswald moaned in anguish as his eyes looked upward, and crumpled to the ground. As the television image of the assassination spread across the planet, the black-and-white footage was accompanied by KRLD-TV reporter Bob Huffaker’s commentary, “He’s been shot! He’s been shot! Lee Oswald has been shot by a man with a gun. There’s absolute panic here in the basement of Dallas police headquarters. Detectives have their guns drawn. Oswald has been shot. No question, he has been shot.”
Detective Graves freed his hand from Oswald’s arm, grabbed the burly shooter, and wrestled him to the ground like a defensive lineman tackling a fullback. Graves grasped the revolver so Ruby could fire no more. By then, Lee Harvey Oswald was in cardiac arrest, with wounds to his kidneys, spleen, and aorta. The main suspect in the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy died a short time later at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
Handcuffed, Ruby was booked into jail by Al Maddox, a deputy sheriff for seven months. “I knew Jack,” Maddox told this author. “When I first saw him in jail, he was barefoot and crying. He said, ‘I didn’t kill that man.’ I said, ‘Jack, we were all watching television and saw it.’”
On two days in November 1963, three men—the president of the United States, Dallas policeman Tippit, and Lee Harvey Oswald—had been murdered. One man, Jack Ruby, was left to stand in judgment regarding his responsibility for the assassination of the president’s alleged assassin. When closely examined, the events surrounding Ruby’s trial and the trial itself should have been an eye-opener for anyone truly interested in the truth about the Dallas killings. But it hasn’t been, until now.
1 Joe Valachi was the first Mafia member to publicly disclose the existence of the underworld organization, coining the phrase “Cosa Nostra” (“our thing”—a euphemism for the Italian Mafia).
In an interview with Time published shortly before Jack Ruby’s trial, Melvin Belli provided some insight into his client: “[Jack] Ruby is an intense, emotional man. Talking to him, the hair rose on the hackles of my neck. I felt horror, revulsion, sadness. I saw myself and millions of fellow Americans [in Ruby].”
The fifth of eight children, Ruby was born Jack Rubenstein in Chicago on March 19, 1911, or March 24, 1912, depending on which story he provided. (Dallas police preferred the latter.)
His Judaism was a source of pride for Ruby. When pro-Hitler/Nazi German Americans staged a rally in support of the Führer in Chicago, Ruby joined several friends from the Lawndale Poolroom and Restaurant who attacked the Nazi sympathizers. Later, author William Manchester wrote of Oswald’s killer, “All his life Jack regarded himself as an avenger—an anti-Semitic remark set him off—and his vengeance had always expressed itself through violence. He was a direct, simple, stunted man, with a childlike inability to foresee the consequences of strenuous physical protest.”
Following World War II, Ruby journeyed to Dallas to be near his sister Eva, who operated a nightclub called the Singapore Supper Club. Deciding on a future that included bright lights and dancing girls, he joined her in the business and changed the club’s name to The Silver Spur Club. The nightspot gained a reputation as a “roughneck haunt”—Dallas police called it “bucket of blood”—and it eventually failed. According to Eva, who had a history of psychiatric care, her brother was so devastated that he locked himself in a motel room and threatened to commit suicide.
Strip joints became Jack Ruby’s salvation, but they didn’t flourish until after Ruby had tried, and failed, at several other occupations. His life changed for the better with the opening of the Carousel Club, previously known as the Sovereign. Located midway between the county jail and the police station on Commerce Street in downtown Dallas, the club was sandwiched between a parking garage and a short-order restaurant. Across the street stood the ritzy Adolphus Hotel, built by the Busch family of St. Louis.
Ruby was proud of the rectangular, lighted sign he purchased with carousel and burlesque imprinted on it. Smaller print noted girls and bar-b-q. To the left, letters spelled out the names of the featured dancers. On the Carousel’s business card, the words “Sophisticated, Risqué, and Provocative” appeared in bold.
“It was a classy place,” Malcolm Summers, a witness to the assassination from a location in Dealey Plaza, told a Dallas Morning News reporter. “Big-titty girls, all of that . . . everybody went there including [Dallas financier] Billie Sol Estes.”
At times, Ruby, ever the showman, was master of ceremonies for the strip show. Entertainment columnist Tony Zoppi recalled seeing Ruby standing on stage in a large white cowboy outfit complete with a huge white hat. Zoppi later wrote that Ruby was “a born loser, a real level loser who didn’t have twenty cents to his name.”
Diana Hunter and Alice Anderson possessed kinder memories of the nightclub owner. They dedicated their book, Jack Ruby’s Girls “In loving memory of JACK RUBY, Our Raging Boss, Our Faithful Friend, The Kindest-Hearted Sonuvabitch We Ever Knew.” Describing Ruby, the authors wrote, “We suppose you’d have to say he looked like a night club operator, or maybe like a gangster.”
Bill Alexander, Ruby’s chief trial prosecutor told this author, “I knew Ruby for ten or twelve years. He tried to keep his place clean from trouble that could cause him to lose his liquor license. Those were quite valuable in those days and Ruby sometimes called the police to have them get rid of people who were drunk or causing trouble.”
From 1949 until 1963, Ruby, despite an explosive disposition, was arrested for non-violent offenses such as carrying a concealed weapon, selling liquor and permitting dancing after hours, simple assault, and ignoring traffic summons. Regardless, to prosecutors Ruby was simply a cold-blooded killer who wanted to be a big shot. After shooting JFK’s alleged assassin, he certainly was.
‡
Melvin Belli was, by most accounts, an eccentric with an affection for blending fiction with fact. To many, it will be a surprise that the loquacious lawyer is considered a person of interest, a central figure in determining who was ultimately responsible for the assassination of JFK. But probing Belli’s behavior before, during, and after the Ruby case is essential to any search for the truth. Clues abounded but were discarded as unimportant during the Ruby trial and in the years following the Dallas murders.
A self-styled dandy, Belli wore red silk-lined suits and calf-high black snakeskin cowboy boots at his San Francisco office. “I have a penchant for all things bright and beautiful, kinky and flawed,” he told the Los Angeles Times, “and for good wines, great tables, wide travels, and beautiful women.”
Belli celebrated his many civil court victories by raising a skull-and-crossbones pirate flag on the roof of his Montgomery Street office in downtown San Francisco. Two booming blasts from a rooftop antique ship’s cannon signaled a champagne and caviar party catered for the famed attorney. A must-see stop on the Gray Line bus tour, Belli’s office was a lair straight from a Dickens novel. It featured a gallimaufry of exotica including an enormous Bengal tiger-skin rug purchased from Elizabeth Taylor, a seventeenth-century globe, Nepalese tapestries, hundreds of rare books, a case of aged French Burgundy, and an eighteenth-century mahogany bar. The brick walls were dotted with signed photographs of celebrity pals Joe DiMaggio, Hubert Humphrey, Mae West, and Frank Sinatra. A life-sized self-portrait with a distinctly Napoleonic air greeted clients and party guests.
In his prime, the lawyer who defended Jack Ruby was a larger-than-life character straight out of a Damon Runyon novel. A ladies’ man extraordinaire, he married and divorced five times before his final marriage to Nancy Ho Belli. Monikered the “King of Torts” by Life magazine, he plied his trade and honed his lofty reputation as a plaintiff’s lawyer in civil cases by being the ultimate self-promoter. Along the way, he irritated and confounded nearly every lawyer he opposed with his courtroom savvy, drew critical comments from judges for his irreverence, and alienated large corporations by winning large monetary awards against them. As a tribute to his courtroom prowess as a personal injury specialist, he named his yacht, Adequate Award.
Belli’s client list read like a Who’s Who of twentieth-century celebrities. During the decades he practiced law, Belli represented famous personalities such as actors Errol Flynn and Lana Turner; boxers George Foreman and Muhammad Ali; The Rolling Stones (Belli is prominent in the film Gimme Shelter which depicted the Stones disastrous 1969 concert at Altamont Speedway); evangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker; comedian Lenny Bruce; Washington socialite and former wife of the attorney general, Martha Mitchell; stuntman Evel Knievel; and infamous stripper Carol Doda.
A reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle was puzzled by the loquacious attorney, observing, “He allows a burning ego to eclipse a first-class legal mind.” Perhaps the reporter knew that when Belli entered a hotel, the first thing he did was to have himself paged (“Calling Melvin Belli, Calling Melvin Belli, Calling Melvin Belli!”) on the house telephone so everyone knew he had arrived.
Without doubt, Ruby’s attorney was an international personality. In later years, he appeared at White House dinners accompanied by glamorous models and as a regular on the popular Johnny Carson Show. This prompted one pundit to observe, “Mel [is] the real thing, a Barnum and Bailey original.”
This may have been true, but one fact was certain when Jack Ruby’s trial rolled around: Oswald’s killer was not represented by a competent criminal defense attorney. Instead, by all accounts, Belli had no significant criminal trial experience of any kind, let alone experience with first-degree murder/death penalty cases or with trials where the defense of insanity was employed. This was true even through many lawyers with such experience, as we shall see, were available to represent Ruby.
To be certain, Belli’s expertise at the time, as revealed to the world and all of the media covering the Ruby case in the February 21st, 1964, Life magazine profile (published just a month before the Ruby trial) was civil law, specifically personal injury litigation where his reputation as a plaintiff’s attorney was enhanced with multi-million dollar jury verdicts. By his own admission in My Life On Trial, Belli chronicled landmark civil cases he filed against robust companies such as Coca-Cola (1944), Cutter Laboratories (1955), and Reynolds Tobacco (1960s) with no mention of any criminal trials, high-profile or otherwise, before the Ruby case. There were none, due to Belli’s concentration on a civil practice.
During a December 12, 1963, speech by Edward Kuhn, president-elect of the American Bar Association, he made his opinion and that of the ABA crystal clear. He told reporters, “Belli is not a criminal [defense] lawyer. He will make a circus out of this case.” Such a bold statement along with the Life magazine revelations and other similar reports should have raised red flags as to Belli’s competence to handle the high profile Ruby case causing the question to be asked: Why, with all of the experienced criminal defense attorneys available to represent Ruby, facing death in the electric chair for the cold-blooded killing of the president’s alleged assassin, did Ruby end up with a plaintiff’s lawyer in civil cases? But no one at the time, or since, asked the question or even surface-probed this aspect of the Ruby case and its potential connection to those who masterminded the assassinations.
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Initially, Melvin Belli hadn’t even been mentioned as possible counsel for Jack Ruby in the aftermath of Oswald’s murder. Most in the Dallas legal community believed that Tom Howard, a prominent local criminal defense attorney, would represent Oswald’s killer. Howard was considered a slick lawyer with more brawn than brains who had once been jailed for fighting in the courtroom. Shortly after Ruby’s arrest, he visited his prospective client. Prosecutors later alleged that he suggested to Oswald’s killer that he confess his guilt and say he killed Oswald “for Jackie and the kids so they wouldn’t have to come to Dallas for a trial.” Howard claimed that story was pure bunk.
Belli explained his link to the Ruby case in two different publications. In his 1976 bestselling autobiography, My Life On Trial, he alleged that Earl Ruby, to raise money for his brother’s defense, agreed to syndicate Jack’s life story. The promoters were Hollywood writer Billy Woodfield and the entrepreneurial businessman Lawrence Schiller, later known for penning books about O. J. Simpson and JonBenét Ramsey. Regarding the deal, Belli wrote, “They [Woodfield and Schiller] told him [Earl Ruby] that the story would be easier to sell and make more money if he [Jack] had a colorful lawyer. They suggested me.”
The barrister then recounted how “in a private meeting in the kitchen of my home in Los Angeles, I told Earl my fee would be between $50,000 and $75,000.” When Earl said Woodfield and Schiller were offering only $25,000 for Jack’s story, Belli said, “I agreed to that figure.”
Twelve years before authoring his autobiography, Belli told a different story. In Dallas Justice: The Real Story of Jack Ruby, written with Maurice C. Carroll, Belli wrote, “Three days after his brother shot Lee Harvey Oswald while a nation watched on television, Earl Ruby slipped unobtrusively into a California courtroom and watched me sum up a murder case. As soon as the session ended, a pointy-nosed, solidly-built man, his face a bit fuller than his brother Jack, walked up to me, introduced himself, and asked if I would represent Jack.”
Regarding Jack Ruby’s part in the hiring, Belli wrote, “It turned out that I was Jack’s own choice. He had lived in San Francisco for a time, and he knew of my experience with medical cases.” Regarding the fee for representation, Belli said, “Earl said he thought the case would cost $100,000 to defend. I agreed and we shook hands.”
Belli swore that Earl surprised him when he informed the attorney that Jack Ruby’s life story was going to be syndicated. “These plans touched off a violent argument,” Belli wrote. After a shouting match, Belli added, “The upshot is that I walked out. But later Earl came to the place where we were staying in Los Angeles and we agreed to go ahead with the trial.”
Two stories, two completely different explanations, each packed with contradictions triggering the question: “What is the truth?” Were Woodfield and Schiller instrumental in Belli being introduced to Earl Ruby? Could Jack Ruby’s syndication rights have been more lucrative if Belli became Ruby’s attorney, or was this even discussed? Was Earl Ruby’s first contact with Belli in a California courtroom where Belli was summing up a murder case, if indeed there was one proceeding since Belli was specializing in civil law at the time? Did Belli really meet with Earl Ruby in the kitchen of Belli’s home, argue and then make up later so Belli could go forward? Or did Belli simply make up stories as he went along, fearful someone would learn the truth about how he became Ruby’s attorney?
Perhaps more importantly, how did Belli’s telling conflicting stories regarding his initial representation of Ruby relate to the secret he knew about the Ruby case but would never divulge to anyone? This, unfortunately, included Oswald’s assassin.
Because there were millions of eyewitnesses to the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, Melvin Belli had to carefully weigh his options regarding the defense of Jack Ruby. Pleading Jack Ruby not guilty wasn’t one of them. The other obvious choices were: (1) a possible plea bargain with prosecutors or (2) pleading Ruby guilty and throwing him on the mercy of the court, hoping for sympathy.
The latter strategy certainly had merit. The letters of praise Ruby received shortly after he killed Oswald, jailer Al Maddox told this author, seemed to reflect the mood of the country. Perhaps the judge would feel the same way. But Belli discarded this alternative, believing Judge Brown would show no leniency.
Any possible plea bargain was discarded, Belli later wrote, because District Attorney Henry Wade had decided that he would prosecute Ruby to the full extent of the law. In an interview with this author, Bill Alexander, Wade’s chief deputy, disputed Belli’s account. Alexander said that there were possible plea bargain options open but that Belli “wasn’t interested.”
Whatever the truth, Belli surprised both his opposition and the media at large by choosing what he called a “psychomotor epilepsy” insanity defense, alleging that Ruby, had, in effect, experienced a seizure spell at the time of the shooting of Oswald. Also called temporal lobe epilepsy, psychomotor epilepsy was characterized by the occurrence of any of a variety of auras followed by a brief loss of consciousness with accompanying repetitive, automatic movements. To Belli, who wrote later that he had learned about psychomotor epilepsy in a medical journal, this disorder apparently described Ruby’s conduct, excusable, he believed, under the law. Whether a jury would agree remained to be seen.
Belli had little respect for Joe Brown. Belli believed the judge “ . . . was weak and he let the District Attorney make his decisions for him, because he knew he was too ignorant of the law to make many decisions on his own.” Bolstering his point about Judge Brown’s lack of competence, Belli pointed out that the judge had never graduated from high school, that he attended what the barrister called “a third rate law school, practiced law for one year, became a justice of the peace, and two decades later was appointed to the criminal court.” Ironically, Brown had actually supported Jack Ruby’s application for membership to the Dallas Chamber of Commerce in 1959. The judge, successful in signing up one hundred new members to earn a lifetime membership, told reporters, “[I] hadn’t really known him [Ruby] then.”
While he regarded the presiding judge as incompetent, Belli had grudging respect for the three veteran prosecutors he would be facing. District Attorney Wade, an aspirant to a federal judgeship, led the prosecution but chief deputy Bill Alexander was lead trial counsel. Backing them up was a competent attorney sporting a recognizable name in Texas history, Jim Bowie. On occasion, when the lawyers sparred, Belli and company pronounced his name, “boy.” The prosecution team returned the favor by pronouncing Belli, “Belly.”
Despite facing a high-powered prosecutorial team, Belli was keen for the legal challenge. A California roughrider, he thought, could whip Texas longhorns anytime. Jack Ruby’s life depended on it.
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“Our obligations in the Jack Ruby case were multiple,” Belli later wrote. “To [our client] we owed a defense waged sincerely and strongly. To the community, we owed a disciplined, sober, complete presentation, to bare the facts, to lay to rest the rumors, and, not incidentally, to show the watching world how a defendant’s rights were protected under the American legal system.” This passage, written years after the Ruby trial, suggests that Belli had a sincere commitment to serving his client in a responsible, ethical, and professional manner. Evaluation of his performance after the trial raised questions as to whether he had done so.
Seymour Ellison, Belli’s law partner in San Francisco, had doubts about the defense as the trial neared. He told this author: “I asked Mel what he was doing and he said, ‘Cy, what greater accomplishment could there be in law than to have a man found not guilty when so many millions of people saw him do it? If I can walk the guy out, I’d be bigger than Clarence Darrow [the celebrated American attorney] ever was.’”
From that moment on, Ellison, albeit puzzled by Belli’s choice of defense, believed his partner was on a mission. “It was his new Holy Grail,” the lawyer said, “to get Ruby off.”
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In an attempt to minimize the media frenzy surrounding the trial, Judge Brown and his public relations expert, Sam Bloom, maintained tight control over the granting of media credentials. Newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, and New York Herald Tribune were not permitted courtroom entry; they were forced to be part of a “coverage pool.” Those reporters who were granted seats in the drab second-floor courtroom represented The National Observer, Life, Time, and the Saturday Evening Post, among other newspapers and magazines. This meant that the crème de la crème of the media were present to closely scrutinize every aspect of the Ruby trial. Did they do so, or did reporters at the time, and later, miss several important aspects of the case, especially those regarding Belli’s representation of Ruby?
The pool of nine hundred possible jurors included a diversity of candidates. But Belli, ever the plaintiff’s lawyer in civil cases despite being involved in a criminal case, was still disappointed, believing, “The whole jury [pool] looked like they came out of insurance companies. I decided if I couldn’t get warm people—waitresses, etc.—and I had to have cold fish, at least I wanted to have intelligent cold fish.”
The final jury included an administrative engineer, a mother of six who was a member of the Assembly of God, a Braniff Airline mechanic, a United States postal worker who later grew a Santa Claus beard, the vice president of a chemical company who swore he hadn’t seen the Oswald killing on television, and a bookkeeper who swore allegiance to the television character played by Raymond Burr, Perry Mason. With these jurors in place, the prosecution proceeded with evidence against Jack Ruby. Highlights included several Dallas police officers who swore Ruby had killed Oswald with premeditation. Crucial among them was Don Ray Archer. His testimony was particularly damaging; he spoke of Ruby’s anger prior to his shooting Oswald. Archer testified, according to court records, that he was standing nearby when Ruby reached out toward the manacled presidential assassin. The police officer said of Ruby, “I saw his face momentarily . . . a split second before the shot was fired . . . I heard a phrase . . . I did make out the words . . . ‘son of a bitch.’”
Worse for the defense, Archer testified that he exchanged words with Ruby in the elevator shortly after the shooting. “I said, ‘I think you killed him,’” Archer said, “And he replied, ‘I intended to shoot him three times.’”