6. Why did Jack Ruby assassinate Oswald?
There is no conspiracy surrounding the guilt of Jack Ruby, the most famous assassin of the assassin, who had “reached the point of insanity” suddenly compelling him to walk up the police ramp that Sunday morning to fatally shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television.
Ozwald would tantalized the press and the public with his claim that ‘I am just a patsy’, only to be silenced by a man who would openly admit his guilt and the motivations behind the execution of the believed lone gunman.
Ruby would claim to several witnesses that he had been distraught over President Kennedy’s death and wanted to not only ‘redeem’ the city of Texas in the eyes of the public, by killing Ozwald, Ruby would be “saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial”
Despite Ruby’s assertion that he had committed this murder spontaneously and without premeditation, evidence given by White House correspondent Seth Kantor, who was a passenger in President Kennedy’s motorcade, would suggest otherwise.
Kantor claims to have met and spoken with Ruby in the Parkland Hospital while doctors were trying to save the President’s life. According to Kantor, Ruby asked him if he thought that it would be a good idea for him to close his nightclubs for the next three nights because of the tragedy and Kantor responded with thinking that doing so would be a good idea.
The Warren Commission would dismiss Kantor’s claims instead believing he “may have been mistaken about both the time and the place that he saw Ruby”. The House Select Committee on Assassinations, in its 1979 Final Report, would reexamined Kantor’s testimony and stated, “While the Warren Commission concluded that Kantor was mistaken [about his Parkland encounter with Ruby], the Committee determined he probably was not.”
Ruby’s clear mafia connections would also cast doubt on his ‘lone gunman’ status, with some believing that the mob used their man, who was most likely doing it to pay off a debt, to silence Ozwald, so the hand of the Mafia would remain hidden.
G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, went as far as to say “The most plausible explanation for the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby was that Ruby had stalked him on behalf of organized crime, trying to reach him on at least three occasions in the forty-eight hours before he silenced him forever.”
The House Select Committee on Assassinations, in its 1979 Final Report, opined:
‘Ruby’s shooting of Oswald was not a spontaneous act, in that it involved at least some premeditation. Similarly, the committee believed it was less likely that Ruby entered the police basement without assistance, even though the assistance may have been provided with no knowledge of Ruby’s intentions’
They continued, ‘The committee was troubled by the apparently unlocked doors along the stairway route and the removal of security guards from the area of the garage nearest the stairway shortly before the shooting. There is also evidence that the Dallas Police Department withheld relevant information from the Warren Commission concerning Ruby’s entry to the scene of the Oswald transfer.’
