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

 Now, we need to talk about Officer RC Nelson, Tippit's partner. They didn't ride together. They each had separate patrol cars. But, they worked the same area of Dallas, Oak Cliff.

Nelson was silent for 50 years. He made no public statements until 2013, the time of the 50th anniversary. And he said something startling: he said he was there in the basement on November 24, and that he was the one who handcuffed Ruby. What he said doesn't make sense. How could Ruby not have a gun?

“I grabbed for his hands and didn't find a gun, and then I managed to manhandle him into the basement jail house office and handcuffed him.”

Nelson isn't even in the films we have of the detectives pouncing on "Ruby" after the shot. The only uniformed officer we see, involved in that, was Sergeant Patrick Dean. And the WC testimonies make clear that it was Detective Thomas McMillan who handcuffed "Ruby." We don't see McMillan doing it because it reportedly happened in the Jail Office off-camera.

So, why Why WHY would Nelson say that he handcuffed Ruby, and that Ruby had no gun in his hand at the time?

It's because of what I've been telling you that there were two melees, an hour apart. The first involved the real Jack Ruby and was not televised or reported. The second involved FBI Agent James Bookhout masquerading as Ruby, and it was televised.

And of course the real Ruby didn't have a gun in his hand when Nelson cuffed him because Ruby did not shoot Oswald. So, where was Ruby's gun at the time? I presume it was still in his pocket.

But, in the frenzy of the fracas, as they were taking him uptstairs, somebody must have reached into Ruby's pocket and gotten his pistol. I say that because: how could they tell him that he shot Oswald if his gun was still in his pocket? What murderer shoots his victim and then puts his gun back in his pocket?

In the films that we have, particularly the KRLD film, we can see Detective LC Graves wrestling Ruby's gun out of his hand, and he held on to it. You can still see him later holding the gun.

So, what Nelson said in his 2013 interview conflicts with what we know happened on 11/24/63.

However, it doesn't mean that Nelson was necessarily lying. There were two events: the seizing of the real Ruby that happened an hour before, and then the televised spectacle that did not include the real Ruby, where James Bookhout played him, and they did the dog and pony show in the garage, that is part of JFK assassination lore.

So, maybe Nelson did handcuff Ruby at the first melee' with the real Ruby.