Reclaiming History (253 page)

The same, however, cannot be said of Jack’s driving record—it was by no means clean. In fact, he was a terrible driver. His first of many tickets in Texas came in April 1950 as a result of speeding. From then on he accumulated violations at a pretty regular pace, with his most popular violation being to run red lights, totally consistent with his aggressive personality. Jack liked speeding and had a fondness for running stop signs as well. His worst year was 1956. At the end of January he ran a red light. Two weeks later he got caught doing it again. Thirteen days after that he was caught speeding. After the first three of his 1956 violations, his driving privileges were suspended for six months, accounting for the lack of violations on his record for the same period of time. No sooner was his suspension over before Jack was back at it. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas he ran two stop signs. However, not until August of 1959 was a petition filed against him for being a “habitual motor vehicle violator.” (At this point, he had had seventeen violations—for which he was caught—in less than nine years.) In December of 1959 he was convicted of this charge and put on twelve months’ probation, at the end of which he had to pass a driving test before his license would be reinstated. The records show that Jack apparently didn’t have to wait the entire twelve months of his probation before getting his license back. After passing a test in May of 1960, he showed his gratitude by slowing down his frequency of infractions and having only two automobile accidents and running just one red light that we know of in the next three years.
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It’s interesting to note that on the morning he shot Oswald, Ruby admitted to making an illegal left turn on Main Street after he saw a bunch of people gathered around City Hall.
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If only an officer had been there to give him a ticket on the spot that day.

T
he one area in Jack Ruby’s life that has received by far the most scrutiny is his alleged ties to the underworld, since conspiracy theorists and millions of everyday Americans believe that Ruby “silenced” Oswald for organized crime. Given his continual search to make a quick buck, and particularly in view of the fact that he operated a striptease club, it should not surprise anyone that Jack came into contact with and made the acquaintance of some shady characters and people of questionable reputations. Joe Bonds (Joseph Locurto), for instance, who had been one of his partners in the Vegas Club, was convicted of sodomy in 1954 and sentenced to eight years.
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But recalling Hyman Rubenstein’s remarks about him and his brother growing up in their Chicago neighborhood, what was Ruby to do when these unsavory characters walked into a Chicago diner he was in, or into his club in Dallas—ignore them? As brother Earl said, Jack “had a plush [hardly] striptease club and the Mafia used to go to his place when they were in town. They were big spenders and I’m sure he wasn’t unhappy when they came to his joint to spend their money.”
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Ruby associated with everyone. One of those people was Joseph Campisi, who with his brother Sam owned the Egyptian Lounge, a restaurant and bar that was one of Jack’s favorite haunts.
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Campisi told the FBI that the only times he had contact with Ruby were at various sporting events in Dallas and when one would visit the other’s club.
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However, there is some evidence that Campisi was closer to Ruby than he indicated. Campisi told the HSCA in 1978 that Ruby also came to his home once but did not stay for long.
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He also acknowledged visiting Ruby at the county jail on November 29, 1963, for ten minutes after the sheriff’s office contacted him to advise that he was one of several people Ruby wanted to have visit him.
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Indeed, Ruby’s roommate, George Senator, told the FBI that Campisi was one of Ruby’s three closest friends.
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In book after book by conspiracy theorists, Campisi turns up as an alleged “Dallas Mafia figure” with whom Ruby had close ties.
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But the HSCA thoroughly investigated Campisi and found that although his “technical characterization in federal law enforcement records as an organized crime member has ranged from definite to suspected to negative,” the only thing that was clear was that “he was an associate or friend of many Dallas-based organized crime members,” including Joe Civello. However, the HSCA went on to say there was “no indication” that Campisi himself “had engaged in any specific organized crime–related activities.” Yes, Campisi had mob friends. So did Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Although Campisi had been linked with gambling and bookmaking activities, he was never arrested for them, and the sense of the FBI is that he limited his gambling because he feared it would jeopardize the success of his Egyptian Lounge. Like Ruby, Campisi had just as many contacts with members of the Dallas Police Department as he did with those on the seamier side of society, but unlike Ruby, he also had close and friendly contacts with “both state judges and members of the Dallas County District Attorney’s office.”
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And former Dallas sheriff Jim Bowles told me, “I had pizza with Joe many times at his restaurant,” recalling his days when he was the sheriff.
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Another mobster with whom Ruby has been allegedly linked is the aforementioned Joe Civello. Civello, to be sure, was a Mafia figure and the head of the mob, or what there was of it, in Dallas. We know that because he attended the famous Mafia conference of mob leaders from around the country in Apalachin, New York, in 1957.
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But the Mafia had a very small presence in Dallas, and indeed, the FBI concluded there was “no evidence of illegal activity by Joseph Francis Civello,” indicating he was just an associate of leading mob figures who broke bread with them but didn’t participate in their crimes. If he did, they never appeared on the FBI radar screen.
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Civello
was
convicted on a narcotics charge in 1937, and when he later applied for a pardon, guess who was one of his character witnesses? The sheriff of Dallas County, Bill Decker.
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Conspiracy theorists, desperate to connect Ruby to Civello and the Mafia, have been reduced to pointing out that among the many papers found in Ruby’s car after his arrest for killing Oswald was a November 18, 1963,
Wall Street Journal
article on the “Mafia and Business,” in which Civello, among many other mob figures, was briefly mentioned. Some connection. However, Civello did acknowledge to the FBI in a 1964 interview that he had been a casual acquaintance of Ruby’s (as was half of Dallas) “for about ten years,” and had seen Ruby “four or five times during that period.”
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Talking about both Civello and Campisi, former Dallas assistant district attorney Bill Alexander said that around the time of the assassination, “we had no organized crime in Dallas. Our local criminals were too tough for them. I would be the one to have known because I screened all the cases that came through the district attorney’s office. Carlos Marcello had no influence here, and as far as two of our locals, Joe Civello and Joe Campisi, they never did anything here. Campisi owned the Egyptian Lounge, an Italian restaurant, which still has the best spaghetti and meatballs. Joe thought it would add a little flavor, a little romance, to his place if he let on like he was Mafia-connected.”
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Another alleged mob associate of Ruby’s was convicted in 1947 of attempting to bribe the Dallas County sheriff, Steve Guthrie, as part of the Chicago mob’s attempt to move into Dallas by establishing a nightclub as a front for illegal gambling. Since Ruby, from Chicago, permanently moved to Dallas in 1947, the thought has persisted for years that the Chicago mob had sent him to Dallas to be the front man for its gambling club. The alleged Ruby associate was Paul Roland Jones,
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whom Jack’s sister Eva had met in Dallas in 1947. Later, and while free on bail pending his appeal on the bribery conviction, Jones had a chance meeting with Ruby in the lobby of a hotel in Chicago. He said members of the Chicago Syndicate who were with him recognized Ruby and told him Ruby was “okay.” Ruby told Jones he planned to return to Dallas to help his sister in business there. It was only after Jones served the five years for his bribery conviction that he returned to Dallas and got to know Ruby fairly well by visiting Ruby’s club.
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Although Sheriff Guthrie stated that Jack Ruby’s name came up on numerous occasions in discussions with Jones during a sting operation in November and December of 1946 at Guthrie’s house after it was wired, a subsequent review by the FBI of the twenty-two tape recordings showed that “at no time on any of the 22 recordings was the name of ‘Jack L. Ruby’ or ‘Ruby’ mentioned.”
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Indeed, Jones, on tape, can be heard telling Guthrie that the front man brought in from Chicago looked like “a preacher” and was “not a Dago, not a Jew.”

The chief of police in Dallas at the time the recordings were made was Carl Hansson. When questioned by the FBI in 1964, the former chief did not recall the name of Jack Ruby ever being mentioned. Furthermore, Hansson noted that he did not have a good opinion of Steve Guthrie and would not place any confidence in any statement by Guthrie to the effect that Paul Roland Jones had mentioned the name of Jack Ruby on the tapes. And Jones himself said he did not mention Ruby’s name and, in fact, had never even heard of the name Jack Ruby at that point in time. Lieutenant George Butler of the Dallas Police Department, who was part of the sting operation with Guthrie, and tape-recorded the meetings with Guthrie and Jones he participated in, investigated the whole case and said Ruby was not involved in the bribery attempt.
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Author Anthony Summers asserts that “Ruby said” his eventual move to Dallas had been “on mob instructions.”
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But Anthony, Ruby could only have said this in one of your dreams, and you would have been better off citing a dream of yours as your source than giving no citation at all.
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Of all the evidence the conspiracy theorists cite to connect not just Ruby with the mob, but Ruby and the mob with JFK’s assassination, none has been cited or relied on more than Ruby’s telephone contact with mob figures in the two months preceding the assassination. And, indeed, Ruby did dramatically increase his contact with mob figures he had known from his Chicago days during this period. Conspiracy author David Scheim writes that “these timely and intensive contacts of Ruby suggest that a mob conspiracy [to murder Kennedy] was in progress.”
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“[Ruby’s] calls” to the underworld before the assassination, says conspiracy author John Davis, “suggest some sort of conspiracy.”
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But an analysis of these calls and their purpose by the Warren Commission and HSCA clearly reveals that this most promising of conspiratorial trees bore no fruit for the theorists.
All of the calls
related to Ruby seeking help in getting the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA) to enforce its rules against two competitors of his, Abe and Barney Weinstein.
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Ruby, having struggled throughout his life to keep his head above water, and having failed in previous nightclub ventures, was determined that this would not happen to his beloved Carousel. But Abe Weinstein, who ran Abe’s Colony Club next door to the Carousel on Commerce Street, and his brother, Barney, who ran the Theatre Lounge around the corner on Jackson, started to seriously hurt Ruby in the summer and fall of 1963 by violating AGVA’s ban on “striptease contests” and performances by “amateurs.”
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As conspiracy author Seth Kantor put it, “The clumsy, sometimes overly enthusiastic amateur strippers were drawing a lot of customers and, what was worse, the Weinsteins were getting by with entertainers they didn’t have to pay for.”
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“Ruby,” the Warren Commission concluded, “apparently believed his two competitors, the Weinstein brothers, were scheduling amateur shows in a manner calculated to destroy his business.”
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Jack himself used to have amateur nights, but when AGVA notified all the club owners in February of 1963 to stop, he immediately complied and his competitors did not.
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And right up to within days of the assassination, Ruby was pleading everywhere for help in stopping the Weinsteins.
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When Ruby’s personal appeals asking AGVA to force the Weinsteins to cease and desist failed, he reached out, wherever he could, to people he felt might get AGVA to do its job. And when one thinks of putting pressure on unions during this period, one automatically thinks of organized crime, which either had infiltrated or had influence over many unions throughout the country. So Ruby, with his union roots in Chicago, naturally reached out, among others, to mob figures. He told the Warren Commission, “I knew persons of notorious backgrounds years ago in Chicago, and I left the union when I found out the notorious organization [mob] had moved in there.” He went on to speak of the “unfair competition” he had been facing in Dallas that “had been running certain shows that we [in the business] were [prohibited] to run by regulation of the union, but they [Weinsteins] violated all the rules of the union, and I didn’t violate it, and consequently I was becoming insolvent because of it…Every person I called, and sometimes you may not even know a person intimately, you sort of tell them, well, you are stranded down here and you want some help—if they know of any official of the American Guild of Variety Artists to help me. Because my competitors were putting me out of business. I even flew to New York to see Joe Glazer [who headed up a large theatrical agency], and he called Bobby Faye, the national president [actually the administrative secretary of AGVA, but “the true head of AGVA in 1963” per the HSCA]. That didn’t help.” Ruby said that “all” of his calls in October and November “were related” to getting people to “help me with the American Guild of Variety Artists…That is the only reason I made those calls.” None, he said, were “in anyway [related] to the underworld.”
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