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

Jack Ruby got to the garage an hour before the televised spectacle, and I can prove it.  First, there is the fact that Ruby told the Warren Commissioners that he sent the money wire at 10:17.  Right away, a Secret Service agent from San Francisco, who was not in Texas at the time, softly and gently corrected him. Ruby didn’t argue with him, but he didn’t relent either. He just didn’t respond. But, there is no chance that Ruby lied. He surely believed he sent the money wire at 10:17.

Second is the timeline. Ruby said he got up early Sunday morning. He didn’t give a time, but let’s say 8 because anything after 8 isn’t early. He said he fixed some breakfast and watched his favorite rabbi on tv, and also browsed the newspaper as he ate.  A call came in from Karen Carlin but they didn’t talk long because they had already talked the night before about her financial situation and need for an advance.  

So, how much time had elapsed since he got up early? It couldn’t have been more than an hour. So, if he got up at 8, it was 9. Do you know how far the drive was to Western Union? It was 5 minutes at the most. I put it in MapQuest. And remember that traffic was much lighter in 1963 than today. And it was a Sunday morning, which is one of the lightest traffic times of the week.

So, what time would he have gotten there? It seems like he could have gotten there by 9:30, but, let’s add a buffer of 30 minutes. That would make it 10:00.  And that works out perfectly for him to have sent the money wire at 10:17.

But, you can’t slap another hour into that timeline, not when he said he got up early, and only had to get dressed, eat breakfast, and talk to Karen Carlin briefly before leaving.

In her WC testimony, Karen was pressured to say that she called at 10 or later, but she was very reluctant to commit to that.

Mr. Hubert. Would you be able to say with any degree of accuracy that it could not have been earlier than 10?
Mrs. CARLIN. It could have been. I am not going to say for sure.

After that, Karen was put into the Witness Protection Program and relocated to Michigan with a new identity. And a rumor was started that she was dead. Penn Jones published that she was dead. But, someone tracked her down in Michigan many years later. I think it was the 1990s. She gave him an interview but was evasive.

I also read the testimony of George Senator, Ruby’s “roommate.” And I put that in quotes because it’s bizarre how they came to be roommates. Senator had his own apartment in Ruby’s building, and he was being evicted for not paying his rent for having lost his job. Ruby saw it happening, and he offered to let Senator move in with him- to keep him from being homeless. I don’t doubt Ruby’s sincerity, but I do doubt Senator’s. I think he was a plant.

But, when you read his testimony, it’s bizarre because, as with Karen Carlin, they wanted him to commit to a late departure by Ruby. But, Senator wouldn’t commit to it either. He kept saying that he was only guessing. Then, his questioner and him battled him over his use of the word “guess” for a whole page of transcript. But, Senator stuck to his guns, that he couldn’t be sure about the time he was being asked to confirm.  

But, forget about that. I keep my focus on Ruby, who said he got up early and just did a few predictable, easy to time things and then left. And 10:17 fits much better in that timeline than 11:17.

In his narrative, Ruby said he took twice his usual dose of amphetamines that morning plus some other tablets. And that’s all he said. But, who writes like that? And Ruby especially tended to be verbose, providing excess details. So, why did he take more drugs, and what were the other drugs? He didn’t say. Or did he? A Hollywood screenwriter William Read Woodfield was brought in to “help” Ruby write his narrative. I don’t know how that came about. But, what I suspect is that Woodfield was assigned to make sure the narrative included nothing that deviated from the official story.

Here's a flagrant example. Ruby said he got up early, and Woodfield wrote a subtitle for it: Approximately 9:30 AM. Ruby never said that, and 9:30 is not early. 9:30 is late. 

His “diet pills” referred to the amphetamine Preludin. But, what were the other tablets? And why would he say that without explaining? But, there is no doubt that Ruby was high as a kite that Sunday morning.

Compare the cop’s eye to Ruby’s. Ruby looks like a drugged-out freak; he was one.  And if you look closely, you can see that his pupil was very dilated, and it was due to drugs. 

The next thing is the discrepancy between what Ruby said and what Officer Roy Vaughn said about what happened at the Main Street ramp.

It was a one-way, incoming ramp. So, why was there a crowd gathered there? Who were they expecting to arrive? Elvis? There was no reason for them to be there. So why were they there? They were there to attract Ruby.  

So, Vaughn said that when Pierce was coming up the ramp that he responded by stepping to the curb to check on traffic. And seeing that it was clear, he waved Pierce through. He said that Pierce didn’t stop or slow down, and they didn’t exchange words; that Pierce just turned on Main and was gone.

But, Ruby gave a very different account. He said that when he got to the ramp that Pierce was stopped. The word he used was “parked”; that Pierce was parked at the top of the ramp. And he said there was a uniformed officer there who was leaning into Pierce’s window, and the two of them were talking. He didn’t recognize the officer. But, Ruby knew Roy Vaughn. Vaughn had pulled Ruby over once for a traffic violation, but he didn’t ticket him because “he was a friend of the Department.” There were also a couple times that Vaughn went to the Carousel Club, but always on police business; not for entertainment. The point is that Ruby knew Vaughn and would have recognized him. Ruby recognized Pierce, and he would have recognized Vaughn too, had he been there.  But, there must have been some other officer there whom Ruby didn’t know.

So, those are two very different accounts, and there is no reason to think that either of them was lying. So, how do we make sense of it? They were talking about different times and different events. Pierce went up that ramp twice: first at 10:15 and then again an hour later.  And the way it went for Vaughn was that he was working in the field somewhere in Dallas that morning, directing traffic. Then, he got a call on his radio to report to the Dispatch office. He went there and was told that one of Sergeant Dean’s men would come for him, and that he should wait. So, Vaughn waited and for a long time. He said he just drank coffee and chatted with the other men. Then, someone came for him and took him to the basement, where he was told to guard the Main Street ramp.

So, I looked at that timeline too. If he was in the field at 9, then it could easily have been 10:30 before he was placed at the ramp, which was after Ruby was apprehended at 10:20.

Vaughn was intended to be the third victim that day, the scapegoat who would be blamed for letting Ruby in, supposedly out of incompetence, not collusion. But, Vaughn was no pushover. After he got a reprimand for letting Ruby in, he hired a lawyer, and they filed suit against the DPD.  It was settled out of court, and the DPD paid him cold hard cash, an undisclosed amount of money to drop the lawsuit, and the reprimand was rescinded too.  

And 29 year old Roy Vaughn went on to have a very illustrious career, becoming the Police Chief in Midlothian, Texas, and after retiring from that becoming a Municipal Judge for 13 years before dying of old age. And to his last breath, he said that Ruby never got past him, and he didn’t. Ruby got there before Vaughn was placed there. It was a staggered situation; first Ruby; then Vaughn.

But, why Vaughn? Why’d they choose him? You should read John Hankey, who is the top expert on George HW Bush’s doings on 11/22. Bush was the “Houston oil man” who briefly got arrested after rushing out of the DalTex building in a suspicious manner.  The officer who arrested him was Roy Vaughn. Is that why they selected him to be the ramp patsy?  

And before I quit, let me say that all talk about Ruby lying; that he got to the basement another way with help from the DPD opening doors for him is nonsense. There was no collusion between the Dallas Police and Ruby. How could there be when they arrested him and were prosecuting him and trying to put him to death? If Ruby was in possession of a secret like that, don’t you think he would have told his lawyers? After all, he didn’t want to die in the electric chair. The Dallas Police could never have trusted Ruby with a secret like that. They would have had to kill him. It never happened. Ruby got in exactly as he said; by using the Main Street ramp. There wasn’t one thing that Ruby ever lied about. He was pathologically honest.

Jack Ruby was innocent. He was in custody on the  5^th floor in his underwear when the Garage Spectacle went down. FBI Agent James W. Bookhout masqueraded as him for the cameras. Ruby, with his clothes restored, was brought down to the 3^rd floor at 3 pm to make his catwalk in front of reporters, and that was his first emergence into the story.  It was a classic bait and switch.