Dallas And The Jack Ruby Trial

The question of why Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald was the central issue of his trial by Judge Joe B. Brown, Sr. With compelling immediacy and exhaustive detail, the judge's memoir is a vital contribution to the quintessential murder mystery of the 20th century. Here for the first time, we get to know what really went on in Ruby's trial and in his mind. Judge Brown had access to previously unpublished facts involved in the "trial of the century", as it was called. His memoir has been combined with the Warren Commission interrogation of Ruby and with Ruby' polygraph conducted by the F.B.I., accompanied by enlightening psychological commentary. With a selection of previously unpublished photographs, this is a brilliant, illuminating new view of the event that has dominated the consciousness of the American public as no other ever has.

The question of why Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald was the central issue of his trial by Judge Joe B. Brown, Sr. With compelling immediacy and exhaustive detail, the judge's memoir is a vital contribution to the quintessential murder mystery of the 20th century. Here for the first time, we get to know what really went on in Ruby's trial and in his mind. Judge Brown had access to previously unpublished facts involved in the "trial of the century", as it was called. His memoir has been combined with the Warren Commission interrogation of Ruby and with Ruby' polygraph conducted by the F.B.I., accompanied by enlightening psychological commentary. With a selection of previously unpublished photographs, this is a brilliant, illuminating new view of the event that has dominated the consciousness of the American public as no other ever has.

When Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald, he did more than silence the mysterious young man who had killed the President of the United States.

Rumors of a conspiracy started as soon as Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy and were re-doubled when Jack Ruby murdered Oswald in the heavily guarded basement of Dallas police headquarters. This is a story by a reporter who was in that headquarters basement and then worked on the final formal acts of the assassination chronology -- Rubys murder trial and the investigation by the Warren Commission. Unlike the Commissions tedious, detached and disorganized report, Accidental Assassin: Jack Ruby and 4 minutes in Dallas tells what it was like during those tumultuous times. It follows Ruby on his journey to the murder scene and dismisses the thought that he might have been part of a conspiracy.

"You all know me, I'm Jack Ruby." That's what the killer shouted when police grabbed him a split second after he had pumped a bullet into the stomach of Lee Oswald. Who was Jack Ruby? Madman? Superpatriot? Conspirator? Two top writers achieve a gripping portrait of the complex and contradictory character of Jack Ruby - a man who grew up in an immigrant home with a drunken father and an insane mother, who climbed out of the ghetto to become the owner of a popular Dallas nightclub. The authors let his friends and employees describe the Jack Ruby they knew. He was a punch-happy scrapper who fought before he thought because "I might lose my nerve." Ruby could "cuss straight on like saying his prayers" but didn't allow dirty talk in front of his lady strippers. He could fire an employee seventeen times and pay for her kid's operation. A bachelor, he "respected" his fiancee of twelve years too much to marry her. He sought the company of cops, newsmen, anyone he thought important. Jack Ruby had many acquaintances but his only real friends were his dogs. Living in the fringe-society of hucksters and hustlers, Jack Ruby longed to be a big man in Dallas. Until the day he died he had a childlike awe of "class," respectability, and the law. Wills and Demaris get completely inside the mind of this complex man. They recreate the day Jack Ruby woke, got an SOS call from one of his girls, shaved, dressed, said good-bye to his dogs, drove downtown, parked his car illegally, walked over to the crowd and shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald. The reader understands. He did it "for Jackie and the kids" and because he was Jack Ruby. With the same graphic immediacy the authors describe those first stunned minutes of disbelief after the murder, Ruby's incomprehension of his position, his grotesque camaraderie with his old friends on the Dallas police force ("You all know me..."). The authors move jail to courtroom, catching the carnival atmosphere of Ruby's trial--with brilliant portraits of defense attorney Belli and prosecutor Alexander--and finally to the hospital room where Ruby died. This book reveals Jack Ruby as no other has. It is a story of a marked life, of a man whose precarious sanity was destroyed by the events he created--who spent his last mortal strength trying to persuade the world that he did his duty as an American, a Texan, and a Jew when he killed the man who killed Kennedy.--From jacket flap

"Like getting a pebble out my shoe." New Orleans is the true birthplace of the Sicilian mafia in America. Carlos Marcello controlled organized crime in Louisiana and across the Southeast in the 1950s and '60s. He was untouchable until he met the Kennedy Brothers. Once Robert Kennedy became attorney general, Marcello was deported to Guatemala and swore to seek revenge. It became a duel to the death. Marcello found his "patsy," a former marine with a Russian wife. Lee Harvey Oswald was the perfect fall guy but he never pulled the trigger.