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

Really, it amazes me that anybody believes that Jack Ruby was capable to doing the things he is purported to have done, such as being a hit man. That's right. According to some, Oswald wasn't the first person that Ruby killed. On the contrary, he was a regular Mafia hit man, according to some. He was also a pimp and someone who often beat people up. His favorite thing to do was to throw them down stairs. He even threw them down his own stairs- when he was trying to get rid of them. Seems like a contradiction to me, but what do I know. Ruby was also purportedly a drug runner, a gun runner, and a guy who regularly abused women. 

You don't have to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist to know that violent acts are committed by those with violent personalities.  Jack Ruby lived in custody for three years, and we got to see a lot of him and hear quite a bit from him. He testified directly to the Warren Commissioners. He wrote letters which became public. And we have enough of Jack Ruby's words and his behavior and reactions over those three years to get a sense about how violent a nature he had.  

He did a long interview with Dorothy Kilgallen, and even though we know nothing about what he told her,  her reaction was like a thunderbolt- like she learned something about him which changed everything. And, I assure you that it wasn't that he was working with Johnson or Nixon or anything like that. It would be very foolish to think that Jack Ruby changed his story to Dorothy Kilgallen. I'm sure it had to do with HIM- that he wasn't the person being depicted by the press.   

And what I gather from it is that he did not have a violent nature at all. The fierce temper that he was supposed to have- it didn't exist. The maddest I ever saw Ruby get was when he erupted at his attorney who was trying to tell the judge not to allow Ruby to speak because he was out of his mind. Lo and behold, Ruby didn't like that. Would you? He told his lawyer, in so many words, to shut up, but he was barely rankled.    

It was the maddest I ever saw him get, but on the scale of anger, I would say it was about 10% as mad as I am capable of getting. From observing him and knowing myself, I would say that I am 10X more hot-headed than Jack Ruby. Seriously. If I feel I have been wronged or mistreated, I can get plenty mad. It doesn't translate into physical violence. I would NEVER initiate violence against anyone- no matter how mad I got. I took an oath when I became a doctor- to do no harm. It was handed down by Hippocrates, and it is the first principle of Medicine. 

So, I would never hit anybody- unless I had to defend myself or another from someone who became violent- where he started it. But still, it is undeniably true that one can emanate a violent energy just with words.  A voice can seem violent even if the words don't threaten physical harm. If one is explosive, if one bursts into anger at the slightest provocation, it can seem violent. 

And one would expect that a person who regularly committed acts of physical violence, as Jack Ruby was purported to,  would display a violent disposition- all the time, or at least frequently.

But, for the whole three years, Jack Ruby was never that way. When did he ever lose control? When did he ever show fierceness? When did he ever show combativeness? And I'll plainly admit that I am VERY combative in my disposition.  Again, I have a firewall of prohibition to being physically violent, but that would fall apart quickly if the other guy got violent with me.  But, the point is that we can look at Jack Ruby over the last three years of his life and get a feeling from his words, his responsiveness, his body language, his gestures, and even his facial expressions about how far down the spectrum of violence he was, and I have to say that he was in the lowest percentile. I've known plenty of women in my life with a greater penchant for anger and violence than Jack Ruby had.  

And that's why I don't believe these stories about him throwing people down stairs and beating women and beating men. I look at him, and I see someone who was very non-aggressive. Even in court, when policemen were testifying against him, and saying terrible things about him, he never reacted with anger, bitterness, or contempt. He retained his admiration, his hero-worship, of the Dallas Police until his last breath. He never put up resistance to them. He was not aggressive. He was never bitter. He was never even irate. The idea that he was this monster of abuse, a psychopath or sociopath, is ridiculous. He was nothing like that.  He was fundamentally a very nice guy, in some ways childlike, and not at all like the Jack Ruby of legend.