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Jacob Leon Rubenstein, later changed his name and was known as Jack Leon Ruby (March 25?, 1911 - January 3, 1967), a Dallas nightclub owner, shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, two days after Oswald was arrested for the assassination of President Kennedy.
Jack Ruby was born to Polish immigrant, Orthodox Jewish parents in Chicago in 1911. Various conflicting birth dates, from March to June of that year, are quoted in various sources and were given by Ruby at various times. The fifth of his parents' eight living children, he had a troubled childhood and adolescence, marked by juvenile deliquency and times in foster homes. Young Ruby worked selling horse-racing tip sheets, then for a scrap-iron collectors union. He also had links to organized crime while working for the Al Capone mafia organization. He served in the United States Army during World War II without seeing combat. After being discharged he moved to Dallas and worked managing nightclubs, strip clubs, and dance halls, and also working as manager for entertainers and prostitutes. Ruby went to Cuba in 1959 on one of his gun-running ventures and to visit a mafia friend, Lewis McWillie, whom Castro had put in prison. McWillie was also connected to leading mafia "Godfather's" Meyer Lansky and Santos Trafficante.
Ruby (a.k.a. "Sparky") often carried a handgun and witnesses saw him with a hand gun in the halls of the Dallas police department on several occassions after November 22, 1963. Ruby came to national attention when he murdered Oswald on November 24, 1963 at 11:21 AM CST while Lee Harvey Oswald was being transferred via car to a nearly next door jail.
Ruby later claimed he shot Oswald at the spur of the moment taken when the opportunity presented itself, even though, when Ruby was first arrested, he stated to several witnesses that killing Oswald would show the world that "Jews have guts" and Oswald's murder would spare Jaqueline Kennedy the ordeal of appearing at Oswald's court trial. Millions watched the silencing of Lee Harvey Oswald on television. It was the first time in tv history that a murder was captured live. The gun used by Ruby was a Colt Cobra revolver of .38 Special caliber, serial number 2744 LW.
The route that Ruby took to get down into the basement of the Dallas jail has been disputed. Some routes would have suggested that Ruby had to have had help from authorities inside the building. His precise route is not, and may never be, known. Ruby stated he entered the jail that day via the entrance ramp.
In a later polygraph test Ruby insisted on taking (documented in a Warren report appendix) one of several questions Ruby showed signs of lying about (despite the polygraph operator having turned-down the sensitivity mechanism of the polygraph machine) was when Ruby answered "no" to if he ever knew Oswald.
There has been debate about Ruby's motives. Some people believe that Ruby carried out mafia orders with a mafia "hit" (there is some evidence to support his having strong crime syndicate links), and/or that he was part of the conspiracy to assassinate the president and so Ruby silenced Oswald to prevent Oswald from testifying. Much suspicion was aroused by the fact that he was able to freely enter a supposedly secure area, armed with a pistol, one minute prior to Oswald being escorted by Ruby. Other persons have pointed out that Ruby was a Democrat but was also an unstable man who revered Kennedy and was seeking vengeance on his own. They point to the fact that Ruby had only just arrived at the police station, having wired money to an employee at 11:17 AM, while Oswald's movement had been delayed, due to his last Dallas police/secret service interrogation and his putting on a black sweater.
Ruby was tried, and on March 14, 1964 he was convicted of "murder with malice."
Ruby asked, verbally, and in writing several times over the 6 months following the Kennedy assassination to speak to the Warren Commission. Only after Ruby's sister wrote letters to the Warren Commission (and after her writing the letters to the commission became publicly reported) did the commission agree to talk to Ruby. In mid-1964 Earl Warren, Gerald R. Ford and others finally came to Dallas. While there they also met with Ruby. Ruby begged Warren several times to take Ruby to Washington D.C. because he feared for his, and his family members, lives. Warren refused, saying the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court could not do that.
After Ruby's conviction, in an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, it was successfully argued that Ruby could not have gotten a fair trial in the city of Dallas due to the excessive publicity surrounding the case. The appellate court agreed and ruled that his motion for a change of venue before the original trial court should have been granted, and so Ruby's conviction and death sentence was overturned. While awaiting a new trial, Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism in Parkland Hospital on January 3, 1967. He is buried in the "Westlawn Cemetery" in Chicago, Illinois.