November 24, 1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald is Killed by Jack Ruby

You think the USA is crazy in 2020; here’s a look at 1963! If it was a film, this story would be dismissed as too improbable.

Jack Ruby (1911 -1969) was a Dallas nightclub owner who fatally shot Oswald 56 years ago today, while Oswald was in police custody.

Ruby was in the second-floor advertising offices of the Dallas Morning News, five blocks away from the Texas School Book Depository, placing weekly advertisements for his nightclubs when he learned of the assassination of John F. Kennedy at 12:45 pm. Then Ruby made a phone call to his assistant at his nightclub, the Carousel Club. According to the Warren Commission, Ruby arrived back at the Carousel Club shortly before 1:45 pm to notify employees that the club would be closed that evening.

Ruby was seen in the halls of the Dallas Police Headquarters on several occasions after Oswald’s arrest on November 22, 1963. Newsreel footage from the local station WFAA-TV and NBC show that Ruby impersonated a newspaper reporter during a press conference at police headquarters on the night of Kennedy’s death. District Attorney Henry Wade briefed reporters at the press conference telling them that Lee Oswald was a member of the anti-Castro Free Cuba Committee. Ruby spoke up to correct Wade, saying: “Henry, that’s the Fair Play for Cuba Committee”, a pro-Castro organization. Ruby told the FBI, a month after his arrest for killing Oswald, that he had loaded his loaded revolver in his right pocket during the press conference.

On November 24, Ruby drove into town and sent an emergency money order at the Western Union to one of his employees. Ruby then walked one half block to the police headquarters, where he made his way into the basement via ramp next to the Dallas Municipal Building. At 11:21 am, while authorities were escorting Oswald through the police basement to an armored car that was to take him to the nearby county jail, Ruby stepped out from a crowd of reporters and fired a single round into Oswald’s stomach, fatally wounding him. Ruby was immediately subdued by agents and police. The shooting was broadcast live nationally, and millions of television viewers witnessed it, including me.

Oswald was taken by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital, the same hospital where doctors tried to save Kennedy’s life two days earlier. Oswald died at 1:07 p.m.

The assassin had been assassinated.

Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963) was an American Marxist and former US Marine who allegedly assassinated Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

Like all marines, Oswald was trained and tested in shooting. In 1956, he scored 212, which was slightly above the requirements for the designation of sharpshooter.

Oswald was court-martialed after he accidentally shot himself in the elbow with an unauthorized handgun. He was court-martialed a second time for fighting with a sergeant who he thought was responsible for his punishment in the shooting matter. He was demoted and briefly imprisoned in the brig. Oswald was later punished for a third incident: while he was on a night-time sentry duty in the Philippines, he inexplicably fired his rifle into the jungle.

Slightly built, Oswald was nicknamed Oswaldskovich because of his pro-Soviet sentiments. While Oswald was in the Marines, he made an effort to teach himself rudimentary Russian. Although this was an unusual endeavor, in 1959, he was invited to take a Marine proficiency exam in written and spoken Russian. Later he received a hardship discharge from active service, claiming his mother needed care. He was placed on the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

Oswald was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps and defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959. He lived in Minsk until summer 1962, when he returned to the USA with his Russian wife, Marina Nikolayevna Prusakova and they settled in Dallas.

Five government investigations concluded that Oswald shot and killed Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository as Kennedy, his wife and Texas Governor John Connally and his wife traveled by motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Connally was seriously injured in the shooting; he must have been because he headed an organization called Democrats for Nixon and served as Richard Nixon‘s Treasury Secretary.

About 45 minutes after Oswald allegedly assassinated Kennedy, he shot and killed Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit on a Dallas street. Oswald then slipped into a movie theater, where he was arrested for Tippit’s murder. Oswald was then charged with the murder of Kennedy; he denied the accusations and stated that he was a “patsy”.

In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone when he assassinated Kennedy by firing three shots from the Texas School Book Depository. This conclusion, still controversial, was supported by previous investigations from the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Dallas Police Department. Despite forensic, ballistic, and eyewitness evidence that supports the official findings, most Americans do not believe the official version of the events. The assassination and the Oswald murder have spawned hundreds of conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy junkies specialize in finding suspicious happenings in the life of Oswald, happenings that supposedly reveal some sinister connection with a government agency or other group of possible assassination conspirators.

Oswald was interrogated several times during his two days at Dallas Police Headquarters. He admitted that he went to his rooming house after leaving the book depository. He also admitted that he changed his clothes and armed himself with a .38 revolver before leaving his house to go to the theater. However, Oswald denied killing Kennedy and Tippit, denied owning a rifle, and said two photographs of him holding a rifle and a pistol were fakes.

A Dallas jury found Ruby guilty of murdering Oswald, and he was sentenced to death. Ruby’s conviction was later appealed, and he was granted a new trial. However, on January 3, 1967, as the date for his new trial was about to start, Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism while in his prison cell.

In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald. Many people believe Ruby was involved with major figures in organized crime and that he killed Oswald as part of an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.