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

 Open Letter to Mark Shaw on Dorothy Kilgallen

Mark,

I realize this must  come as a shock to you, but Jack Ruby did not shoot Oswald. Please hear me out.

1 If you study the images of the Garage Shooter carefully and compare them to images of Jack Ruby, you can see that they don't conform. The shooter was too short to be Ruby. Ruby was Oswald's height, 5'9", and it's clear that the shooter was shorter than Oswald. The shooter's hair was different from Ruby's. The shooter's hair was rather long in back, even curling up at the bottom in the Jackson photo. And below where the hair ended, his neck was clean, meaning clean of hair, like he was freshly razored. Ruby, at the time, was scruffy in back. He must have been longer between haircuts. The shooter was a very thick guy, particularly with thick thighs, which were in contrast to Ruby's thin ones.  And, the shooter had a very short neck in contrast to Ruby's longer neck. 

2. Despite the numerous photographers and filmers in the garage, no one caught the shooter's face, and I assert that that was no accident. They couldn't show his face because he wasn't Jack Ruby. You are a criminal defense lawyer, and hence,  you must know that police never move a violent offender anywhere without first getting him in restraints. Why did Dallas Police attempt to move the shooter into the jail office instead of cuffing him right there in the garage? It's because if they had done that, then everyone would have moved aside, and we'd have seen the shooter's face, which wasn't the face of Jack Ruby. IT WAS THE FIRST AND ONLY TIME, IN THE HISTORY OF LAW ENFORCEMENT, THAT A VIOLENT CRIMINAL WAS TAKEN SOMEWHERE WITHOUT FIRST BEING PUT IN RESTRAINTS. 

3  It is a falsehood that Ruby admitted shooting Oswald. He accepted that he shot Oswald, since the Dallas Police told him that he did. But, he had no awareness of doing it and no memory of doing it. Why do you think Melvin Belli used the "psychomotor epilepsy" defense? It's because Ruby told him that he didn't remember anything, that he had no consciousness or mindset about shooting Oswald, and the first he knew of it was when police dragged him up to the 5th floor and told him that he did it. 

4 And Ruby couldn't possibly have had any mindset of shooting Oswald because if he did, he would have showed up on time. The only guidance the police ever gave was 10 AM. So, obviously, if he planned to shoot Oswald, he would not have shown up at 11:17.

5  But, Ruby did NOT show up at 11:17. He showed up much earlier than that. Perhaps an hour earlier, and at least 45 minutes earlier. We know that the conditions at the top of the ramp were different when Ruby was there than what Pierce and Vaughan described. Ruby said that he saw an officer on foot on his side of Main Street, the Hardin Street side, with his back to him leaning into the squad car and talking to Pierce. But Roy Vaughan said that as Pierce came out, he moved to the other side of Main Street, the  Pearl Street side. And it makes sense that he would because he knew that Pierce, the driver, was on that side, and so if he wanted to have words with him, he'd have moved to the driver's side, which was the Pearl Street side. So, Ruby must have gotten there earlier, a lot earlier; gone down the ramp; got jumped by cops (and reflect on Ruby having said during the melee, "What are you doing? You know me. I'm Jack Ruby. I'm not some criminal." Why would he say that if he knew he had just shot a man? He really didn't know why police were jumping him because he hadn't done anything. And then they dragged him upstairs and told him that he did it. 

6. So, why did Ruby believe them when Dallas Police told him that he shot Ruby? Why didn't he fiercely deny it if he didn't do it, as most people would? It's because Ruby wasn't right in his head. He was out of it mentally. He was heavily drugged- on amphetamines and probably other drugs, and I am talking about mind control drugs. Remember, this was during the height of the MK-ULTRA era. And who did they get to treat Ruby in prison? The Maestro of Mind Control, the CIA's own Dr. Louis Joylan West of UCLA. They flew him out. What? There were no psychiatrists in Dallas? And why did Melvin Belli let the State treat and drug his client? That was the same State that was seeking to put him to death. 

7 .Regarding the JFK assassination, you're right that the Mafia had a role, but it was ancillary. The killing of Kennedy was a CIA operation where Oswald was the patsy. And it was an urgent matter for them to get Oswald killed. They certainly couldn't let Oswald go to trial, and worse than that, they couldn't let Oswald talk to an attorney, not even once. It would have blown the case wide open. Oswald would have told the attorney that he was standing in the doorway during the shooting, and we have a picture of him there, in the Altgens photo, where you can recognize him and his clothing. And there has been a mountain of fraud and lies about that in the decades that followed. And, Oswald would have told his lawyer that he never ordered any rifle from Chicago. And keep in mind that when first asked if Oswald owned a rifle, Marina said that back in Russia he owned one to go hunting with (it was a shotgun, which was all they allowed in Russia) but he sold it. Why would she mention that if she knew that he currently owned a rifle? You need to read the work of John Armstrong, Gil Jesus, and others to get clear on why Oswald never mail-ordered a rifle.  And it means that what the FBI came up with was an elaborate fraud. One meeting with a lawyer, and that lawyer would have known two things: that Oswald was innocent, and that law enforcement, particularly the FBI, was framing him with phony evidence. Oswald pled for a lawyer and complained about not having one 13X that we can hear with our own ears. His brief statement at the Midnight Press Conference mostly concerned his desire for a lawyer and his being denied one. 

8  But, they couldn't keep denying him one much longer before it was patently obvious. So, they needed him dead. And they didn't just get lucky with Jack Ruby. Ruby was a patsy, and the difference between him and Oswald was that Oswald was of right mind while Ruby was heavily drugged and out of his mind. Are you aware that there was one local Dallas tv report that he was "muttering incoherently" after his arrest? But, that was never repeated. 

9. Now, brace  yourself: The Dallas Police and FBI killed Oswald. They didn't do it in the garage. That was just a theatrical spectacle for television. They did it afterwards. The guy playing Jack Ruby was FBI Agent James Bookhout. And you'll notice that there are no images of him from the JFK assassination, even though he attended every Oswald interrogation. But, the Garage Shooter was him, James Bookhout shot a blank at Oswald, who apparently was recruited to go along with it. They must have told him, "We believe you, Lee, that you didn't do it, but we can't just release you. In order to protect you from vigilantes, we have to fake your death first." And Lee trusted them. 

10  I can provide proof that the Dallas detectives escorting Oswald, including the recently departed James Leavelle, lied. He lied, and so did Graves, Combest, and Fritz. They were all in on it. The Dallas Police and FBI killed Oswald. And the order had to come from the top, meaning LBJ and J.Edgar Hoover. "The country needs closure. The Kennedy and Tippit families need justice. We're only doing what a jury would certainly decree. We need to spare the Kennedy family and the American people the burden of a trial."  Etc. Etc. 

And there is plenty more I could tell you. I have been studying this for years. But, Dorothy Kilgalen interviewed Jack Ruby twice. What do you think she learned from him? About his Mafia ties? He didn't have any, to speak of. He knew a few, like the guy who owned the Elephant Room. But, it's nothing. He must have told her what he told authorities, that he wasn't Mafia, and the Mafia didn't put him up to anything. What sense would it have made for him to lie to the Warren Commissioners and then tell the truth to her? What sense would it have made for him to lie during his polygraph test and then tell the truth to her? So, what Dorothy must have figured out about him was not that he had Mafia ties but that he was mentally incompetent, and too incompetent to lie. I don't know how close she got to figuring out that he didn't do it, but I can guarantee you that she was killed because they were afraid that she was going to figure it out, if she hadn't already. 

The whole "Mafia did it" story was government story #2. It's what the HSCA arrived at in the 1970s. So, they wouldn't have killed her for barking up that tree. They knew that doubters had to look somewhere, and that's exactly where they wanted them to look. That was the sandbox that they wanted them to play in. She must have figured out that Jack Ruby was gone, mentally gone, that he was totally and hopelessly incompetent and a completely manipulated patsy. That was the scoop.   

Ralph Cinque