Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

 The Prosecution charged Ruby with premediated murder, and they got him convicted and sentenced to death. The Defense claimed the Ruby shot Oswald involuntarily and unknowingly, that he had no awareness of doing it. Why did they claim that? It’s because that's what Ruby told them, that he had no thought to shoot Oswald and no memory of doing it. He said that all he could remember was going to the garage, standing there, and then being jumped upon by the police. Melvin Belli even put a medical label on Ruby’s condition, calling it “psychomotor epilepsy.” That, I think, was a mistake because it had no credibility.

But, the biggest mistake that Belli made was not putting Ruby on the stand. Ruby would have been a fabulous witness for himself. His childlike personality, his scattered thinking, and his visible decency would have come through loud and clear. There was nothing the Prosecution could have done to trap him up.

It’s ironic that, over time, the Defense case has prevailed. When they made the tv movie Ruby and Oswald in 1978, they made it that Ruby never plotted to kill Oswald, and nobody put him up to do it. He was just there; he got deranged; he shot Oswald without knowing it; then they took him upstairs and told him that he did it. That was the story they sold in 1978.

However, the alternate story became that Ruby was a Mafioso, and the Mafia ordered him to shoot Oswald. That is ridiculous. First, why would the Mafia need to shoot Oswald when they had nothing to do with Oswald? And they had little or nothing to do with the JFK assassination. Were there Mafia shooters? My friend John Hankey doesn’t think so, and he did the greatest piece of investigational research in his analysis of the murder of JFK Jr. I don’t claim to know who the shooters were. But, if the CIA brought in any Mafia shooters into it, it’s not because they had to. If they did it- and again, the operative word is “if”- it was just to paint it as a Mafia operation for looks. But, it was not a Mafia operation; it was a CIA operation. And regardless, even then, the Mafia had no reason to kill Oswald. So, the whole idea that Mafia forced Ruby to shoot Oswald is ridiculous.

And when did they order Ruby to do it? We know every move Ruby made the last 4 days of his life. We know every person he talked to. We know every phone call he made and received. So, when and how did they issue this order to Ruby?

But, shooting Oswald in a crowd of police meant instant capture and certain conviction and the utter and complete destruction of Ruby’s life. It was almost like ordering him to kill himself because it meant him losing everything he lived for. So, why would he do it? What was he afraid was going to happen if he didn’t do it? What was the Mafia going to do to him? Kill him? So what? That wouldn’t have been worse.

Some people claim that the Mafia threatened to kill his sister Eve. How do they know that? There is no evidence for it. So, how did they come up with it? They made it up. That's how they came up with it.

But, even if the Mafia did threaten to kill Ruby's sister, and again, there is no evidence for it, think about what he could have done. He could have immediately sought to get her to safety. And don’t tell me there is no way he could have hidden his sister. He could have gone to his friends in the DPD and told them about the threat. He could have told them who exactly made the threat. And since it’s a crime to make such a threat, the police could have gone and arrested that person.

What if the Mafia ordered you to kill someone and they threatened you or your sister? Are you going to go kill the person?

The story of Ruby killing Oswald for the Mafia makes no sense, neither from Ruby's perspective nor the Mafia's. It’s just a stupid, thoughtless idea by stupid, thoughtless people.

And Ruby was certainly not out to destroy his whole life. Did you know that he had plans for that Sunday afternoon? He was going to hang out at the swanky new apartment building that he would soon be moving into. It was called Something Tower. And he was telling people that this was going to be a big step up for him, that it had all the amenities; it had social activities, including parties, that he was finally going to start living the good life. Ruby was looking forward to the futrure.

The biggest secret of the JFK assassination is not that Oswald was innocent because that is no secret at all. That is plain as day. For Goodness sake, he was standing in the doorway of the Book Depository during the shooting. The biggest secret of the JFK assassination is that Jack Ruby was innocent of killing Oswald.  The sad truth is that everybody was bamboozled about this for 62 years. Of course, not everybody, because I and the people who follow me know that Ruby was innocent, and we’ve known it for over 10 years. I think it was about 2014 that I came to realize it. But, anyone who doesn't know that Jack Ruby was innocent might as well be completely in the dark about the JFK assassination.