Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  The final telephone conversation the HSCA was troubled by was a one-minute call made by Ruby at 9:13 p.m. on October 30, 1963, to the business office of the Tropical Court Tourist Park, a trailer park in New Orleans. The owner of the park and manager of the one-man office was Nofio J. Pecora (alias Joseph Pecorano), an associate of New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, suspected by many in the conspiracy community of being behind Kennedy’s murder. Telephone records showed that four months earlier Marcello had called the same number at the park that Ruby had. This would, indeed, look a little suspicious were it not for the fact that a fairly good friend of Ruby’s, New Orleans nightclub manager Harold Tannenbaum, happened to live at the park. Ruby had visited Tannenbaum’s club, the French Opera House, in June of 1963 to scout for talent, and Tannenbaum had introduced Ruby to a marquee stripper, “Jada” (Janet Adams Conforto), who ended up working for Ruby at the Carousel. Since that time, Ruby and Tannenbaum had been in regular contact by telephone. Pecora told the HSCA that the subject phone call was probably to his office to relay a message to someone who lived at the park, though he said he did not recall talking to Ruby, whom he said he did not know, or relaying any message from Ruby to Tannenbaum. But he obviously must have, since phone records show that Tannenbaum called Ruby one hour after Ruby called Pecora’s park office.329 It is understandable, of course, that Pecora, in 1978, would not recall the Ruby phone call fifteen years earlier, and there can be no reasonable question that the call from Ruby was for Tannenbaum. If the conspiracy theorists want to believe and allege that Ruby’s call was actually to talk to Pecora for one minute (or less) about the murder of JFK, I guess this is a free country and they have that right under the First Amendment.†

  The position of the conspiracy community—that these phone calls by Ruby to mob figures in September, October, and November of 1963 were related to the assassination—necessarily assumes that Ruby not only silenced Oswald for the mob, but also was a party with the mob in a conspiracy to murder the president. Why would the mob have these alleged conversations with Ruby in the months leading up to Kennedy’s murder if he was not? But not too many people, even in the conspiracy community, believe that Ruby was part of the conspiracy to murder Kennedy. Most simply believe that the mob contacted him to kill Oswald once Oswald survived the assassination, the implication being that after Oswald killed Kennedy for the mob, the mob immediately tried to kill him (or hoped law enforcement would) and failed. But the conspiracy theorists offer no evidence that the mob tried to kill Oswald right after he killed Kennedy, and there would be no reason for the mob to feel completely confident that law enforcement would kill Oswald, which, as we know, they did not.

  So in one sense, the conspiracy community believes that Ruby’s calls in the September–November period leading up to the assassination were assassination-related, and then, inconsistently, they believe the mob contacted Ruby only after Oswald survived the assassination. But as author Gerald Posner points out, if the latter is true, then we could expect Ruby’s contacts with mob figures by phone (since the conspiracy community has locked itself into this alleged mode of communication by the mob with Ruby) to have increased after the assassination.330 Yet, all of Ruby’s contacts by phone with unsavory mob figures took place in the many weeks before the assassination. There is no evidence of any taking place between the assassination on November 22 and Ruby’s killing of Oswald on November 24.331

  It could not be clearer from all the direct and circumstantial evidence that the increased number of calls Ruby made in the two months preceding the assassination to those connected to the underworld were related to his effort to seek their help in solving his labor problems with the Weinsteins, and the Warren Commission and HSCA so found. When there is not a speck of evidence pointing in the opposite direction, there’s really nothing more that needs to be said, except that even if we were to accept the premise that Ruby was a part of a conspiracy with organized crime to kill Kennedy and/or Oswald, we can virtually know that the mob would not have been talking to him about it from phones all over the country. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that they didn’t think of the possibility of their telephone conversations being tapped by the FBI, surely they would have to know that Ruby’s phone records would automatically be obtained and would reveal the existence of his contact with them. Obviously, either the mob would summon Ruby out of town to receive instructions, or one of the mob conspirators would be dispatched to Dallas to meet privately with Ruby.

  Before moving on, I should ask the rhetorical question that if Ruby was a member of the mob or was as well connected with organized crime as so very many conspiracy theorists insist, and particularly if he was involved with it in a plot to murder Kennedy and/or silence Kennedy’s killer, how come he wasn’t able to get the mob to help him in such a small matter as getting AGVA on his side in his dispute with the Weinsteins? Particularly when the FBI found that AGVA was frequently used by members of organized crime as a front for their criminal activities, and was described by others as having “racketeer” links and being “completely corrupt.” Instead, Bobby Faye, the person who ran AGVA at the time, didn’t even show Ruby the courtesy of meeting with him when Ruby flew to New York City in August of 1963 seeking the union’s help.332 Can there really be too much doubt that if the Mafia were in Ruby’s corner, just one phone call to the Weinsteins would probably have solved the problem for Ruby? And yet as late as two days before the assassination, Ruby made a long-distance call to Chicago for the purpose of getting AGVA support.333

  There are essentially two periods to Ruby’s life, the Chicago and the Dallas years. With respect to the Chicago years, the Warren Commission concluded that “Ruby was unquestionably familiar, if not friendly, with some Chicago criminals, but there is no evidence that he ever participated in organized criminal activity.” The Commission went on to say that those who knew Ruby in Chicago did not connect him to organized crime.334 As Dave Yaras, who along with Lenny Patrick was another alleged mob hit man in Chicago who knew Ruby well enough to refer to him by his nickname, Sparky, and by all accounts was a leading member of the Chicago Syndicate, told the FBI in 1963, Ruby was “positively not Outfit [the name of the mob in Chicago] connected.”335

  Well-known Chicago mobster Lenny Patrick, Ruby’s neighborhood chum, said he lost track of Ruby after grammar school, and the next time he became aware of him was when he learned Ruby was selling items such as salt shakers with one of his brothers. He said he was “certain” that Ruby had nothing to do with the rackets in Chicago. He told the FBI the day after Ruby shot Oswald, “No matter how much you investigate, you’ll never learn nothing, as he [Ruby] had nothing to do with nothing.”336 And James Allegretti, reputed to be a top organized-crime figure in Chicago at the time, told the FBI that he had never even heard of Jack Ruby’s name before he killed Oswald, having no knowledge of him in the Chicago area.337 Other Chicago mobsters and associates told the FBI the same thing.338* In other words, although Ruby may have drifted around the edges of the Chicago underworld, he never entered and became a part of it.

  The HSCA came to the same conclusion—that Ruby was not a member of organized crime in Chicago.339

  Former FBI agent Bill Roemer, who investigated the mob in Chicago, told author Gerald Posner in 1992, “Ruby was absolutely nothing in terms of the Chicago mob. We had thousands and thousands of hours of tape recordings of the top mobsters in Chicago, including Sam Giancana, and Ruby just didn’t exist as far as they were concerned. We talked to every hoodlum in Chicago after the assassination, and some of the top guys in the mob, my informants. I had close relationships with them—they didn’t even know who Ruby was.”340

  With respect to Dallas, the Warren Commission stated that its evaluation of the record revealed no evidence connecting Ruby to organized crime in Dallas, and went on to say that both state and federal law enforcement officials came to the conclusion that Ruby “was not affiliated with organized crime activity.”341 As Dallas assistant district
attorney Bill Alexander, who prosecuted Ruby, put it, “If there was any connection between Ruby and the syndicate, Mafia, or other hoodlums, it would have come to the attention of our office through various gamblers and hoodlum informants of his office, and no such information has come to our attention.”342

  The Warren Commission went on to say that not only law enforcement but also “numerous persons have reported that Ruby was not connected with [organized crime] activity.”343* As his sister Eva said, “Jack himself never had any connection with gangsters for money, for business, for sociability. On the other hand,” she said, “when we saw them we acknowledged them.”344 This observation went far beyond Ruby’s family. A few examples: Reagan Turman, a longtime boxer friend of Ruby’s who also worked for Ruby on many occasions, including managing Ruby’s Vegas Club, said that although Ruby was “acquainted with practically all the known gamblers in the Dallas area, he had no business dealings with them at all.”345 Frank Ferraro, who worked as a handyman for Ruby at the Carousel, said that “‘there were no illegal activities’ that Ruby was involved in.”346 Johnnie Hayden got to know Ruby well as the business representative of the American Federation of Musicians, and said that Ruby “talked and dressed like a Chicago hoodlum, but had no known hoodlum connections.”347 And so on. In fact, even those few who did not like Ruby rejected out of hand the notion he was connected to organized crime. As mentioned earlier, Sam Lasser was a concessionaire at Ruby’s Vegas Club before a business dispute ended their relationship. He said he had no use for Ruby, characterizing him as a man of high temper, a show-off, and a “real tough guy,” but said he felt “certain Ruby had no connection with any hoodlum element.”348 Janet Conforto, Ruby’s head stripper, “Jada,” at the Carousel Club until late October of 1963 when the relationship degenerated into accusations, recriminations, and a dispute over wages and Conforto sought a restraining order against Ruby, said that although Ruby would tell people he “knew all the boys,” she did not know of any association he had with the underworld.349 The Warren Commission summarized the situation by saying that its “investigation disclosed no one in either Chicago or Dallas who had any knowledge that Ruby was associated with organized criminal activity.”350†

  The Commission further concluded that its investigation of Ruby did not “produce any grounds for believing that Ruby’s killing of Oswald was part of a conspiracy.”351

  The HSCA reached the same conclusion about Ruby not being a member of organized crime “in Dallas or elsewhere.”352 However, the HSCA Report went on to say that although there was no evidence available to the committee that Ruby was a member of organized crime, he “had a significant number of associations and direct and indirect contacts with underworld figures, a number of whom were connected to the most powerful La Cosa Nostra leaders. Additionally, Ruby had numerous associations with the Dallas criminal element.”353 This was either innocently sloppy language or deliberately misleading, allowing conspiracy theorists to cite this language, which unquestionably suggests that Ruby was connected to the Mafia. If this wasn’t just terrible writing, then shame on the HSCA for making a statement that implies what its own thorough investigation clearly disproves. Shame on the HSCA for writing this about someone whom its own investigation showed to be no more than a buffoon, someone who had far less connection to the Mafia than Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.* And shame on the HSCA staff, most of whom were lawyers and investigators, for not knowing that when they make an assertion like this, they have at a minimum a moral, if not a legal burden to prove it. They failed miserably in their effort to prove this allegation, unless one is naive enough to believe that Ruby’s association with the likes of Joe Campisi and Joe Civello satisfied the HSCA’s burden of proof, a burden so low that an ant would have difficulty crawling under it.

  Also, although I believe the Warren Commission and FBI could have gone into more depth than they did on Ruby’s possible connection with organized crime, I also believe that the HSCA’s position that the FBI “was seriously delinquent in investigating the Ruby-underworld connection” was seriously overstated.354

  Ruby’s travels outside of Dallas have proved to be fodder for conspiracy theorists, who allege the trips were probably for some clandestine purpose. But it is Ruby’s trip (or, as some believe, trips) to Cuba that has garnered the most attention. Jack went to Cuba around Labor Day of 1959 as the guest of his friend, Lewis McWillie, a gambler Jack met in Dallas around 1947 or 1948. McWillie worked at the Top of the Hill Club between Dallas and Fort Worth. He and Ruby became fast friends and, according to McWillie’s mother, visited with each other on an almost daily basis.355 McWillie went to Cuba in September of 1958 and became manager of the gambling casino at the Tropicana Night Club.356 He told the HSCA that the Fox brothers, the owners of the Tropicana, which had the premier cabaret in Latin America, were trying to stir up business for the casino, so McWillie suggested he call his friend Jack Ruby and ask if he could bring Tony Zoppi, the entertainment columnist for the Dallas Morning News who was a friend of Jack’s, down to Havana to see the Tropicana. The idea was to have Zoppi write a great column that would induce Dallasites to visit Havana, and the Foxes thought it was a good idea. When Ruby called Zoppi, Zoppi agreed and McWillie sent two tickets, one for Zoppi and one for Ruby, but as Zoppi said in a 1976 letter, “Jack Ruby and I were supposed to visit [McWillie] in Havana but I got sidetracked. Jack went on ahead…The quick buck artists [conspiracy theorists] are saying Jack went down there to plan the assassination. He couldn’t have planned a gas station holdup…All of a sudden he’s a CIA agent, a Mafia don, etcetera, etcetera, [it’s] sickening.”357

  The understanding had been that Zoppi and Ruby could stay at any hotel they wanted during their trip to Havana, all expenses paid by the Foxes, but when Ruby showed up sometime around Labor Day Weekend—September 4, 5, and 6, 1959*—alone, the Foxes, understandably upset, didn’t pay for any of Ruby’s expenses, and he ended up staying at a small hotel.358

  Along the lines of the “guilt by association” thinking of most assassination conspiracy believers, since McWillie knew Florida mob boss Santo Trafficante, who had operated the Sans Souci Hotel in Havana before Castro took power in early January of 1959, it follows that Ruby, while in Cuba, must have met Trafficante, who the conspiracy theorists claim was a prisoner at the time in Trescornia, a Cuban detention camp on the outskirts of Havana. Trafficante, however, denied under oath that he ever met Ruby, telling the HSCA, when asked if he knew Ruby, “No, sir, I never remember meeting Jack Ruby.”

  Question: “Are you aware it has been alleged that Jack Ruby visited with you while you were at Trescornia; have you heard that?”

  Answer: “I’ve heard that but I don’t remember him visiting me…There was no reason for this man to visit me…I have never seen this man before. I have never been to Dallas. I never had no contact with him. I don’t see why he was going to come and visit me.”359 Indeed, not only is there no credible evidence that Ruby ever met Trafficante in Havana (or elsewhere), but such a meeting would have been impossible since Trafficante was released from Trescornia on August 18, 1959, and left for Miami that same day.360 So Trafficante was no longer in Havana when Ruby arrived there around Labor Day. Even if Trafficante had been there, such a meeting between Ruby and Trafficante would have been difficult since McWillie himself wasn’t close to Trafficante. “He knew who I was,” McWillie said about Trafficante, “and he shook hands with me when he saw me, but that was it.” McWillie told the HSCA that he did not visit Trafficante in Trescornia, although he visited two other inmates there, one twice, while Trafficante was there, and may have simply said hello to Trafficante on the second visit. He said Ruby did not know Trafficante, and he did not believe (though he said it was possible) that Ruby was visiting him in Havana at the time he went to Trescornia, and accompanied him there.361

  The HSCA, which looked very hard for a Ruby-Trafficante connection, admitted it was relying “mainly” on the fact that McWillie knew Tra
fficante, but this, of course, was no evidence at all, particularly with McWillie saying he was the most casual of acquaintances with Trafficante, and the HSCA failing to prove otherwise.

  The only other thread the HSCA had to go on was that a British journalist, John Wilson Hudson, who was allegedly detained in the same prison in Havana as Trafficante in 1959, told the American embassy in London shortly after Kennedy’s assassination that a man named “Santos” (presumably Trafficante) was “visited frequently” by a man named Ruby.362 But why would Ruby visit Trafficante “frequently” or at all? To plan Kennedy’s assassination, though Kennedy hadn’t yet been elected? If not, for what other reason? The story is completely uncorroborated and sounds ridiculous on its face. Rather than visiting Trafficante “frequently,” McWillie says that during Ruby’s visit to Cuba, “he was right out there where I worked. Every morning when I got up he was there. When I left the place, he went with me to eat and went to bed…I don’t remember a darn thing he did but bug me all week.”363 Yet during a six-day visit to Havana, Ruby, according to Hudson, visited “frequently” with Trafficante.