Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (86 page)

But an even more damning story concerning Ruby and Oswald comes
from a credible, if eccentric, attorney named Carroll Jarnagin. Jarnagin
explained to this author that he visited Ruby's Carousel Club on October
4, 1963, to discuss a legal case with one of Ruby's strippers. While seated
in a booth at the club, Jarnagin overheard Jack Ruby-whom he knew
well-talking with another man. Jarnagin heard the man tell Ruby, "Don't
use my real name. I'm going by the name of O. H. Lee." This, of course,
was the name used by Lee Harvey Oswald to rent a room on North
Beckley in Oak Cliff.

Jarnagin described this meeting:

These men were talking about plans to kill the governor of Texas. Ruby
explained, "He (Governor Connally] won't work with us on paroles.
With a few of the right boys out we could really open up this state, with
a little cooperation from the governor." Then Ruby offered Lee a drug
franchise. Ruby also said that the boys really wanted to kill Robert
Kennedy. Lee offered to go to Washington to do the job. They then
discussed using public lockers and pay telephones as part of hiding their
plot. Ruby assured Lee that he could shoot Connally from a window in
the Carousel Club and then escape out a back door. Lee was asking for
money. He wanted half of the money in advance, but Ruby told him he
would get one lump sum after the job was done.

One thing that sets Jarnagin's story apart from the others is that he
contacted authorities with his information prior to the assassination. The
day after hearing Ruby's conversation, Jarnagin telephoned the Texas
Department of Public Safety. Nothing came of this.

Jarnagin stated:

[After Ruby shot Oswald] I definitely realized that the picture in the
November 23, 1963, Dallas Times Herald of Lee Harvey Oswald was a
picture of the man using the name O. H. Lee, whose conversation with
Jack Ruby I had overheard back on October 4, 1963.

After the assassination, Jarnagin again contacted the authorities, this
time the Dallas police and the FBI. He was interviewed but his startling
account of a Ruby-Oswald plot was buried deep in the volumes of the
Warren Commission and never mentioned in its report.

In fact, the Warren Commission quickly dismissed rumors circulating
throughout Dallas in 1963-64 that Ruby and Oswald knew each other by
stating: "All assertions that Oswald was seen in the company of Ruby or
anyone else at the Carousel Club have been investigated. None of them
merits any credence."

Jarnagin said when he tried to tell the FBI what he knew, agents accused
him of having hallucinations. The attorney said: "It was clearly abuse of a
witness. "

The disparate meeting times given in these reports-Mash said late
spring 1963; Weston indicated about mid-October, while Jarnagin pinpointed October 4, 1963-and the people involved indicate the possibility
that more than one meeting between Ruby and Oswald occurred.

And neither the FBI nor the Warren Commission ever talked to Rose
Cheramie, Beverly Oliver, Ester Mash, Wally Weston, Shari Angel, or
Madeleine Brown.

But there is tantalizing evidence that authorities knew more than they
were telling about a relationship between Oswald and Ruby. In 1976, four
Dallas deputy constables told the Dallas Morning News that shortly after the assassination they had examined a boxful of handwritten notes and
other papers in the Dallas County Courthouse that linked Ruby and Oswald
together.

Deputy Billy Preston said he and Constable Robie Love (now deceased)
handed the box of documents over to Dallas D.A. Henry Wade in late
1963 or early 1964. Wade told the paper he didn't recall receiving the
papers.

Preston, along with deputy constables Mike Callahan and Ben Cash,
said the box of papers came from the apartment of a Dallas woman.
Preston explained: "She was really scared because she had all that stuff.
She wanted me to pick it up for her. And I just wished I had made some
more copies now."

Preston could not recall the woman's name other than "Mary," but then
and now he believes she had some connection with Oswald because most
of the box's contents appeared to have been written by him.

Cash, however, recalled that the box came from the woman's roommate
who had kept it for a Latin American boyfriend. Cash told reporter Earl
Golz:

The impression I got [was that] the papers were from the Latin American because he mentioned Ruby and he mentioned Oswald in the
writings. He didn't mention the third party but he kept referring to a
third party. And the third party would have to be him.

Among the papers in the box, according to the deputies, were newspaper
clippings from Mexico, a photocopy of a press card with the words "Daily
Worker" issued to Ruby, a receipt from a motel near New Orleans dated
several weeks before the assassination with both the names Ruby and
Oswald on it and references to calls to Mexico City, papers pinpointing a
landing strip somewhere in Mexico, and references to meetings with
"agents" in the border towns of McAllen and Laredo. There was also a
church brochure with markings indicating something about going to Cuba.

Preston said one handwritten note referred to a plan to assassinate
President Kennedy during the dedication of a lake or dam in Wisconsin.
(Law officials in Wisconsin had speculated in December 1963 about the
existence of just such a plan after discovering what appeared to be Lee
Harvey Oswald's signature on the registry of a restaurant in Hubertus,
Wisconsin, dated September 16, 1963. Kennedy indeed had made a speech
on September 24, 1963, in Ashland, Wisconsin, as part of a nationwide
conservation tour. The FBI rejected the signature as Oswald's and this
subject received little attention outside Wisconsin.)

Deputy Cash explained why the men had not made this story public earlier:

Because at that time it was a pretty hot issue, you remember. So we
kept quiet and went along with the game. We figured it would be handled on a higher level [than us]. And when it didn't come out, we
thought at that time possibly they [the Warren Commission] thought that
kind of information tying it into the Cubans or Russians couldn't be
released at that time because it might put us in World War III.

Wade finally admitted that the incident with the box of documents
"might well have happened," but added, "but I know that whatever they
had didn't amount to nothing." Whether it did or not may never be known
because as far as any official investigation, the box simply never existed.

With the disappearance of any documentation of a Ruby-Oswald link,
researchers are left with only a multiplicity of anecdotes and stories. But
the number and consistency of these stories-coupled with the demonstrable efforts on the part of both Dallas and federal authorities to suppress and
ignore such evidence-leads most researchers to conclude that the stories
that still circulate in Dallas of a Ruby-Oswald relationship may have some
basis in fact.

Even former Dallas police chief Jesse Curry seems to indicate such a
relationship existed in his 1969 book by noting: "Witnesses to the shooting [of Oswald] wondered if there wasn't a gleam of recognition in
Oswald's eye when Ruby stepped out from the newsmen... ."

Whether it can ever be conclusively proven that Ruby and Oswald were
in contact, there is no doubt that Ruby was in touch with associates of mob
and Teamster leaders-and that telephone calls with them markedly increased in the days leading up to the assassination.

In March 1963, Ruby made fewer than ten long-distance calls and from
May to September this number averaged between twenty-five and thirtyfive. But Ruby's toll calls climbed to more than seventy in October and
almost one hundred in November.

This surge in phone traffic also intrigued Warren Commission investigators Hubert and Griffin, who asked the FBI to make a thorough examination of all calls by Ruby, his family, and associates. They also requested
the Bureau to have phone companies in Texas, Nevada, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, New York, Washington, Miami, and
New Orleans freeze all records until they could be studied by the Commission staff.

Apparently this was never done. Griffin later told the House Select
Committee on Assassinations that while the Bureau did compile some
telephone information, it was not the comprehensive check he had asked
for and that "no request to freeze records was made to telephone companies." When the House Committee got around to requesting these same
records, most had been routinely destroyed.

Nevertheless, enough information on Ruby's calls has become available
to paint a portrait of a man frantically touching bases across the nation as
November 22, 1963 approached. Some of Ruby's calls could be dis missed as obviously personal or business communications, although somesuch as frequent calls to Harold Tannenbaum, who ran several New
Orleans nightclubs that were owned at least in part by mob boss Carlos
Marcello-may have served double purposes.

For instance, Ruby made at least seven traceable calls to his "mentor,"
gambler Lewis McWillie, beginning in June 1963. He also was in touch
with Irwin S. Weiner, a bondsman and insurance agent connected with
Santos Trafficante, Sam Giancana, and several other crime-syndicate figures. He also placed a seventeen-minute call in early November to Robert
"Barney" Baker, identified as "Hoffa's ambassador of violence" by
Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

Near the end of October, Ruby placed a call to Nofio Pecora, one of
Marcello's closest associates. The House Committee developed information that Pecora owned the Tropical Court Tourist Park, a New Orleans
trailer court in which Tannenbaum lived.

When questioned by House investigators, all of these telephone contacts
said the Ruby calls were innocuous and pertained only to some union
problems Ruby was having with the American Guild of Variety Artists
(AGVA).

The Committee concluded: "We were no more satisfied with [this]
explanation than we were with McWillie's, Weiner's, or Baker's."

But union disagreements were not the only problem facing Ruby in the
fall of 1963.

According to the Warren Commission:

In 1960, the government filed tax liens for more than $20,000 [against
Ruby]. In November 1962, the government rejected Ruby's offer to pay
$8,000 to compromise the assessed taxes of more than $20,000 because
he had not filed returns for other federal taxes and had not paid these
taxes as they became due. These other taxes . . . amounted to an
additional $20,000.

The House Committee determined that Ruby's tax liability may have
been closer to $60,000 than the $40,000 mentioned by the Warren
Commission.

Testimony from Ruby's friends and acquaintances confirmed that he
was complaining of his tax debts to anyone who would listen.

One June 6, 1963, Ruby's attorney, Graham R. E. Koch, informed the
Internal Revenue Service that his client would settle his debts "as soon as
arrangements can be made to borrow money . . . " However, an FBI check
of more than fifty banking institutions revealed no attempt by Ruby to
borrow money legitimately.

Did Ruby turn to the mob for help? His flurry of phone calls would
seem to indicate this as well as a secret trip to Las Vegas two weekends
prior to the assassination.

Recall that Marguerite Oswald claimed she was fired from her job after
her employers made a trip to Las Vegas. The Warren Commission rejected
the idea that Ruby visited America's gambling capital, but the House
Committee found "credible evidence" that Ruby was there. Both a cashier
and the credit manager of the Stardust Hotel recalled that a man named
Ruby, who claimed to own a club in Dallas, attempted to cash a check one
weekend in mid-November. The FBI confirmed this trip through "confidential information."

Ruby's lawyer later told newsman Seth Kantor that it was right after this
alleged trip that Ruby told him "he had a connection who would supply
him with money to settle his long-standing government tax problems."

Taking the long view, House Committee chief counsel Robert Blakey
noted: "Ruby's business was in deep financial difficulty, complicated by
the dispute with AGVA over `amateur' strippers and serious tax problems."

After pointing out Ruby's union and tax problems as well as his capacity
for violence, his underworld missions to Cuba, and his familiarity with the
Dallas police, Blakey concluded: "Whatever else may be inferred from
Ruby's conduct in the summer and fall of 1963, it at least established that
he was an available means to effect Oswald's elimination."

The Warren Commission-and hence the news media-reported in
1963-64 that the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby was the
spontaneous act of a grief-stricken man who was concerned with the
possibility of Mrs. Kennedy having to return to Dallas to testify against
Oswald. Today that story, still repeated in the news media, has been
shown to be a lie and a legal ploy.