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N0KFQ > TODAY 14.03.12 20:12l 57 Lines 2667 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 19105_KB0WSA
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Mar 14
Path: IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<VE2PKT<N9PMO<GB7LDI<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 120314/1752Z 19105@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQ1.4.49
Mar 14, 1964:
Jack Ruby sentenced to death
Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed Lee Harvey
Oswald--the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy--is
found guilty of the "murder with malice" of Oswald and sentenced
to die in the electric chair. It was the first courtroom verdict
to be televised in U.S. history.
On November 24, 1963, two days after Kennedy's assassination, Lee
Harvey Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police
headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of
police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to
witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby
emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot
from a concealed .38 revolver. Ruby, who was immediately
detained, claimed he was distraught over the president's
assassination. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless
charged with first-degree murder.
Jack Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein, operated strip
joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to
organized crime. He also had a relationship with a number of
Dallas policemen, which amounted to various favors in exchange
for leniency in their monitoring of his establishments. He
features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and many
believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger
conspiracy. In his trial, Ruby denied the allegation and pleaded
innocent on the grounds that his great grief over Kennedy's
murder had caused him to suffer "psychomotor epilepsy" and shoot
Oswald unconsciously. The jury found him guilty and sentenced him
to die.
In October 1966, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the decision
on the grounds of improper admission of testimony and the fact
that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas at the
time. In January 1967, while awaiting a new trial to be held in
Wichita Falls, Ruby died of lung cancer in a Dallas hospital.
The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded that
neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either
domestic or international, to assassinate President Kennedy.
Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to
silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978
the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a
preliminary report that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as a
result of a conspiracy" that may have involved multiple shooters
and organized crime. The committee's findings, as with those of
the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
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