by Jim Marrs
Another story regarding Jack Ruby’s possible presence in Dealey Plaza comes from Phil Willis, an amateur photographer and assassination witness. Willis, who knew Jack Ruby by sight at the time of the assassination, still claims to have seen and photographed Ruby minutes after the shooting, standing near the front of the Texas School Book Depository.
In publishing Willis’s series of assassination photos, the Warren Commission cropped the face of the Ruby figure out of the picture.
Was Jack Ruby at the scene of the assassination?
The Warren Commission established that Ruby was in the offices of the Dallas Morning News at the time of the shooting. The Commission stated that Ruby arrived at the newspaper between 11 and 11:30 a.m., some thirty minutes after the incident at the Triple Underpass involving Julia Ann Mercer.
The Commission also determined that Ruby was with newspaper advertising employee Don Campbell until Campbell left for lunch about 12:25 p.m. About 12:45 p.m. another advertising employee, John Newnam, reportedly saw Ruby in the same spot Campbell had left him. However, Newnam and other newspaper employees said once word came that Kennedy had been shot (probably no sooner than 12:40 p.m., from employees who had been in Dealey Plaza returning to work), “confusion reigned” in the newspaper offices.
Years later employee Wanda Walker still recalled vividly how Ruby sat quietly in the near-empty newspaper office that noontime. Walker told researchers in 1986:
The other secretary had gone to lunch and the ad salesmen were all gone and it was just me and Ruby up there. He was waiting for his regular ad man. He did an odd thing. I knew who he was, but we had never talked. But he got up and came over and sat by the desk where I was. It was like he didn’t want to be alone. He said some things but I can’t tell you what they were. Then some people started coming back in and they said the President had been shot. Jack Ruby got white as a sheet. I mean he was really shaken up.
Despite Walker’s certainty that Ruby remained at the newspaper office during the time of the assassination, it is possible that Ruby could have slipped away for a few minutes.
No one was keeping exact times, and the Dallas Morning News offices are only two short blocks from Dealey Plaza. It is conceivable that Ruby could have left the newspaper offices, been in Dealey Plaza, and returned unnoticed within the space of ten or fifteen minutes.
Ruby certainly was at Parkland Hospital after the assassination. In his 1978 book, Who Was Jack Ruby?, newsman Seth Kantor reported meeting and talking with Ruby at Parkland Hospital about 1:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963. This was supported by radio newsman Roy Stamps, also an acquaintance of Ruby’s, who told this author he saw Ruby enter Parkland about 1:30 p.m. carrying some equipment for a television crew.
According to the Warren Commission, Ruby “firmly denied going to Parkland” and “video tapes of the scene at Parkland do not show Ruby there,” and so the Commission concluded “Kantor probably did not see Ruby at Parkland Hospital.” They failed to mention a photograph published by Penn Jones that appears to depict Ruby strolling through the crowd at Parkland Hospital.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations reversed this conclusion, stating that after reviewing the evidence concerning Ruby at Parkland Hospital an hour or so after the assassination, the panel decided, “While the Warren Commission concluded Kantor was mistaken, the Committee determined he probably was not.”
If Ruby lied and the Warren Commission erred by denying Ruby’s presence at Parkland, it could explain the sudden and unexplained appearance of Commission Exhibit 399—the intact bullet slug found at Parkland—that led to the single-bullet theory. It is entirely possible that Ruby planted the bullet. And it is possible that Ruby may have made his way—no matter how briefly—to the scene of the assassination.
Jean Hill said she recognized the man who shot Oswald as being the same man she saw “walking briskly” in front of the Texas School Book Depository seconds after the assassination. The man she saw was almost running west toward the Triple Underpass. She lost sight of the man after reaching the top of the Grassy Knoll.
This story may play a part in the account of one Dallas policeman who chased a man leaving the area of the Triple Underpass.
The Black Car Chase
On November 22, 1963, Dallas policeman Tom G. Tilson Jr. had taken the day off. A friend and fellow policeman, J. D. Tippit, was covering Tilson’s regular beat that day. Three days later Tilson was a pallbearer at Tippit’s funeral.
Tilson told Dallas news reporters of chasing a black car from the scene of the assassination that day and claims the man in the car bore a striking resemblance to Jack Ruby.
Tilson and his daughter Judy were going downtown to pick up another daughter who had been watching the presidential motorcade. As Tilson was turning east on Commerce from Industrial just west of the Triple Underpass, he said he learned from a police radio monitor he had in his car that Kennedy had been shot.
Tilson stated:
I saw all these people running to the scene of the shooting. By that time I had come across under Stemmons. Everybody was jumping out of their cars and pulling up on the median strip. My daughter Judy noticed the [presidential] limousine come under the Underpass. They took a right turn onto Stemmons toward Parkland Hospital. Well, the limousine just sped past [this] car parked on the grass on the north side of Elm Street near the west side of the underpass. Here’s one guy coming from the railroad tracks. He came down that grassy slope on the west side of the Triple Underpass, on the Elm Street side. He had [this] car parked there, a black car. And, he threw something in the back seat and went around the front hurriedly and got in the car and took off. I was on Commerce Street right there across from [the car], fixing to go under the Triple Underpass going into town. I saw all this and I said, “That doesn’t make sense, everybody running to the scene and one person running from it. That’s suspicious as hell.” So, I speeded up and went through the Triple Underpass up to Houston . . . made a left . . . [came] back on Main . . . and caught up with him because he got caught on a light. He made a left turn and I made a left turn, going south on Industrial. I told my daughter to get a pencil and some paper and write down what I tell you. By this time, we had gotten to the toll road [formerly the Dallas–Fort Worth Turnpike, now Interstate 30] going toward Fort Worth. I got the license number and description of the car and I saw what the man looked like. He was stocky, about five-foot-nine, weighing 185 to 195 pounds and wearing a dark suit. He looked a hell of a lot more than just a pattern of Jack Ruby. If that wasn’t Jack Ruby, it was someone who was his twin brother. Or pretty close. You know how Jack wore an old dark suit all the time? He always wore that old suit. He had that same old suit on. Anyway, I got the license number and all and exited off the turnpike and came back and picked up my other daughter down there at Commerce and Houston. Then I went to a phone and called in the information on the license number and what I had seen.
Tilson’s story is corroborated by his daughter Judy Ladner, although photos taken west of the Triple Underpass at the time do not show the black car. Also, Dallas police radio logs for the day do not indicate any alert for the car Tilson described.
Tilson maintained that he gave the license number and man’s description to the police homicide bureau, “but they never contacted me or did anything about it.” Believing he had done his duty, Tilson threw away the scrap of paper with the license number on it. It was only much later that he discovered that his information had been ignored.
It would appear that someone in Washington also simply wanted to clear the case, as Tilson was never contacted by either the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
Back in Dealey Plaza, while Sam Holland and other railroad workers were finding evidence of someone waiting behind the picket fence and Jean Hill was being taken by men in suits to the sheriff’s office, deputy sheriff Roger Craig thought he saw a suspect flee the scene in a station wagon.
The Account of Roger Craig
In 1963, Roger Dean Craig was an ambitious young deputy sheriff who was going places.
Having run away from his Wisconsin home at age twelve, Craig had received a high school diploma on his own and had served honorably in the US Army. By 1959 he had married and taken a job as a sheriff’s deputy in Dallas. Craig already had received four promotions within the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department and in 1960 had been named Officer of the Year by the Dallas Traffic Commission.
But then came November 22, 1963.
Craig’s account of his experiences that day caused considerable problems for the official version of the assassination’s aftermath.
He recalled that about 10:30 that morning, sheriff Bill Decker called plainclothes men, detectives, and warrant men into his office and told them that President Kennedy was coming to Dallas and that the motorcade would come down Main Street. According to Craig, Washington had advised Decker to stand down and he told his employees to stand out in front of the building but to take no part whatsoever in the motorcade security.
Craig later said the crowd of deputies was hostile. “The men about me felt they were being forced to acknowledge Kennedy’s presence,” he said, adding the deputies voiced “bitter verbal attacks on President Kennedy,” Craig said. “They spoke very strongly against his policies concerning the Bay of Pigs incident and the Cuban Missile Crisis and they seemed to resent very much the fact that Kennedy was a Catholic.”
Craig said just after the motorcade turned on Elm Street, he heard a shot and began running toward Dealey Plaza. He ran down the grassy incline between Main and Elm Street and saw a Dallas police officer run up the Grassy Knoll and go behind the picket fence near the railroad yards. Craig followed, noting “complete confusion and hysteria” behind the fence. He began to question people when he noticed a woman in her early thirties attempting to drive out of the parking lot. Craig recalled:
I stopped her, identified myself, and placed her under arrest. . . . This parking lot was leased by Dallas deputy sheriff B. D. Gossett. He, in turn, rented parking space by the month to the deputies who worked in the courthouse, except for official vehicles. I rented one of these spaces. . . . I paid Gossett three dollars a month and was given a key to the lot. An interesting point is that . . . the only people having access to it were deputies with keys. . . . How did this woman gain access and, what is more important, who was she and why did she have to leave? I turned her over to deputy sheriff C. L. “Lummie” Lewis and . . . [he] told me that he would take her to Sheriff Decker and take care of her car. . . . I had no way of knowing that an officer with whom I had worked for four years was capable of losing a thirty-year-old woman and a three-thousand-pound automobile. To this day, Officer Lewis does not know who she was, where she came from, or what happened to her. Strange!
Meanwhile, Craig questioned people who were standing at the top of the Grassy Knoll, including Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Rowland. Craig said by approximately 12:40 p.m. he had turned the Rowlands over to Lummie Lewis and met E. R. Walthers back on the south side of Elm Street where “several officers and bystanders were looking at the curb on Elm Street where a nick caused by a bullet was reported to have hit.”
He said his attention was attracted by a shrill whistle. In his report of November 23, 1963, Craig wrote:
I turned around and saw a white male running down the hill from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository Building and I saw what I think was a light-colored Rambler station wagon with luggage rack on top pull over to the curb and this subject who had come running down the hill get into this car. The man driving this station wagon was a dark-complected white male. I tried to get across Elm Street to stop the car and talk with subjects, but the traffic was so heavy I could not make it. I reported this incident at once to a Secret Service officer, whose name I do not know, then I left this area and went at once to the [Depository] building and assisted in the search of the building. Later that afternoon, I heard that the city had a suspect in custody and I called and reported the information about the suspect running down the hill and getting into a car to Captain [Will] Fritz and was required to come at once to City Hall. I went to City Hall and identified the subject they had in custody as being the same person I saw running down this hill and get into the station wagon and leave the scene.
Craig later described the driver of the station wagon as a “very dark-complected” man with short, dark hair wearing a white windbreaker-type short jacket. Recall the witnesses who told of a dark man or a black man on the sixth floor of the Depository just before Kennedy’s arrival.
Craig said since the two men were the only ones he saw trying to flee the scene, he believed the incident “important enough to bring to the attention of the authorities at a command post which had been set up in front of the Texas School Book Depository.”
Here Craig may have had a brush with one of the bogus Secret Service men. Craig later said as he approached the Depository and asked for someone involved in the investigation, a man in a gray suit told him, “I’m with the Secret Service,” and listened to Craig’s report on assassination witnesses. Craig later recalled, “He showed little interest in the persons leaving [the scene]. However, he seemed extremely interested in the description of the Rambler [station wagon]. This was the only part of my statement which he wrote down in his little pad he was holding.”
On April 1, 1964, Craig described to the Warren Commission his confrontation with Lee Harvey Oswald at Dallas police headquarters:
I drove up to Fritz’s office about, oh, after five—about 5:30 or something like that—and—uh—talked to Captain Fritz and told him what I had saw. And he took me in his office—I believe it was his office—it was a little office, and had the suspect sitting in a chair behind a desk—beside the desk. . . . And Captain Fritz asked me was this the man I saw—and I said, “Yes” it was. . . . Captain Fritz then asked him about the—uh—he said, “What about this station wagon?” And the suspect [Oswald] interrupted him and said, “That station wagon belongs to Mrs. Paine. . . . Don’t try to tie her into this. She had nothing to do with it.” . . . Captain Fritz then told him . . . “All we’re trying to do is find out what happened and this man saw you leave from the scene.”
Craig said Oswald then interrupted the interview by stating, “Everybody will know who I am now.” In later years Craig explained Oswald was not boastful but made the statement in a dejected and dispirited tone, almost as if “his cover had been blown.” This was all explosive testimony since Oswald officially acted alone and made his way home that day by bus and by taxi. Therefore, the Warren Commission stated it “could not accept important elements of Craig’s testimony.” It went even further, suggesting that the meeting between Craig and Oswald never occurred. According to the Warren Commission Report:
Captain Fritz stated that a deputy sheriff whom he could not identify did ask to see him that afternoon and told him a similar story to Craig’s. Fritz did not bring him into his office to identify Oswald but turned him over to Lieutenant Baker for questioning. If Craig saw Oswald that afternoon, he saw him through the glass windows of the office.
The truth of Craig’s claim to have been in Fritz’s office came in 1969 with the publication of Dallas police chief Jesse Curry’s assassination file. On page 72 is a photograph captioned “The Homicide Bureau Office under guard while Oswald was being interrogated.” In the photograph, well inside the homicide office, stands deputy sheriff Roger Craig.
Craig also pointed out to Warren Commission attorneys that he had learned that Ruth Paine, with whom Oswald’s wife, Marina, was living, indeed owned a light green station wagon. Support for Craig came in 1992 with the public release of Dallas Police files on the case. A December 23, 1963, “Criminal Intelligence” report made by Dallas detective T. T. Wardlaw regarding an attempted visit by Ruth Paine to Marina Oswald stated, “Mrs. Payne [sic] left at 12:20 p.m. She drove a 1955 Chevrolet station wagon, color two-tone green, bearing 1963 Texas license number NK 4041 which is registe
red to her at 2515 West Fifth Street, Irving, Texas.”
His insistence on sticking with his story despite repeated attempts by authorities to have both Craig and Arnold Rowland change their testimony began to cause problems for Craig within the Sheriff’s Department. Initially, Sheriff Decker had backed Craig, calling him “completely honest.” But later, Craig’s credibility began to slip within the department and on July 4, 1967, he was fired by Decker. Some say the cause was laxity and improprieties in his work, while others say it was due to his unyielding position on the assassination.
In recent years there seems to be growing corroboration for Craig’s story. First, a photograph taken in Dealey Plaza minutes after the assassination shows Craig in the exact locations he described. There are even two photos of a station wagon moving west on Elm.
In later years, researchers discovered Warren Commission Document 5, independent corroboration of Craig’s story that was not published in the Commission’s twenty-six volumes. In this document, an FBI report dated the day after the assassination, motorist Marvin C. Robinson reported he had just passed Houston Street driving west on Elm Street in heavy traffic when he saw a station wagon, either gray or green, stop in front of the Texas School Book Depository and a white man walk down the grassy incline and get into the vehicle, which drove west on Elm.
In later years, Roger Craig—though vindicated in the controversy over his assassination testimony—continued to live with hard luck. His wife left him—some say due to pressure over his involvement in the assassination—and his back was injured in a car accident. His original account of his experiences began to grow in detail and complexity as he sought acceptance for his story. He even claimed to have been the object of murder attempts.
