Episode 336 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 12

Friday, November 22, 1963. While the nation was shattered by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jack Ruby's day began in a remarkably ordinary way. Sitting at a free desk in the second-floor retail advertising department of the Dallas Morning News, the 52-year-old nightclub owner spent his morning writing out longhand copy for his weekend advertisements, completely oblivious to the fateful motorcade scheduled to pass just blocks away. When employees from the newspaper  burst into the room with the devastating news that shots had been fired, Ruby sat holding the morning paper in stunned disbelief. He was pale, ashen, and speechless—the loudest man in Dallas suddenly rendered completely silent as his city descended into chaos.

As the afternoon unfolded, a mysterious gap of nearly forty minutes emerged between his departure from the newspaper office and his arrival back at the Carousel Club. This segment of his day remains one of the most hotly contested chapters in assassination lore. A respected national reporter who knew Ruby well, Seth Kantor, swore under oath that he spoke with Ruby at Parkland Hospital at 1:30 PM, where a frantic Ruby asked him whether he should close his clubs in mourning. While the Warren Commission brushed this encounter aside to protect their narrow timeline, years later the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and even the Commission's own staff attorneys would admit their skepticism was likely misplaced. This gap is further complicated by the claims of a local housewife who also reported seeing Ruby at Parkland, only to receive chilling, anonymous telephone calls warning her to keep her mouth shut.

Simultaneously, Ruby became obsessively hyper-focused on a full-page, black-bordered advertisement in that morning's paper. Signed by "Bernard Weissman" of the "American Fact-Finding Committee," the ad welcomed the president while launching highly critical accusations against his administration. Convinced this ad was a sinister anti-Semitic plot designed to blame the assassination on the Jewish community, a frantic Ruby spent his afternoon staking out Post Office Box 1792, desperately waiting to see who would arrive to collect Weissman's mail. This obsessive sensitivity to his heritage eventually drove him that evening to slip into the back of Temple Shearith Israel for a solemn memorial service, standing afterward awkwardly  while making small talk over coffee with members of the congregation.

But the day was far from over. Determined to position himself at the center of the action, Ruby shut down his clubs and headed to the Dallas Police Headquarters, carrying sandwiches for the officers and blending in with reporters by carrying a notebook. Just before midnight, he managed to slip unnoticed into the basement assembly room for a packed press conference showing Lee Harvey Oswald to the world. It was there, standing at the back of the room, that Jack Ruby stepped into history by speaking up to correct District Attorney Henry Wade on the exact name of Oswald's political group: the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Hour by hour, from writing advertising copy to standing inches away from the accused assassin, we trace the well  documented and deeply haunting footsteps of Jack Ruby on the longest day of his life.