RUBY, JACK

RUBY, JACK (Jacob Rubenstein; 1911–1967), slayer of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged murderer of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Ruby was born in Chicago. The shooting of Oswald   on November 24, 1963, took place in the basement of the Dallas, Texas, police headquarters in full view of television cameras and millions of viewers. Ruby, a nightclub operator, was subsequently tried, convicted of murder and sentenced to death. The case was carried through various courts, and finally on October 5, 1966, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the murder conviction on the grounds that the trial should have been removed from Dallas because of the prejudice there, and because certain police statements were improperly admitted into evidence. While preparations for a retrial were going on, Ruby died. Prior to his involvement in the Oswald killing, Ruby ran nightclubs and dance halls during the 16 years he spent in Dallas. In regard to Oswald, the controversy continues as to whether Ruby acted alone and spontaneously as a loyal U.S. citizen outraged that his president had been assassinated or whether he was part of a larger conspiracy, assigned to silence Oswald – and then perhaps silenced himself. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1964), index; M.M. Belli, Dallas Justice: The Real Story of Jack Ruby and His Trial (1964); J. Kaplan and J.R. Waltz, The Trial of Jack Ruby (1965); M. Lane, Rush to Judgment (1966); E. Gertz, Moment of Madness (1968); G. Wills and O. Demaris, Jack Ruby: The Man Who Killed the Man Who Killed Kennedy (1968). ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: D. Hunter and A. Anderson, Jack Ruby's Girls (1970); R. Pabst, Plodding toward Terror (1974); R. Hartogs and L. Freeman, The Two Assassins (1976); S. Kantor, Who Was Jack Ruby? (1978); A. Adelson, The Ruby-Oswald Affair (1988); B. Oliver and C. Buchanan, Nightmare in Dallas: The Babushka Lady (1994). (Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)