Episode 346 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 22

0:00Welcome to JFK, the Enduring Secret. I'm your host, Jeff Crudell. Hello everyone and welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is episode 346 and it's part 22 of the Jack Ruby miniseries. You know in November of 1963 Americans were told who Jack Ruby was of course. He was a nightclub owner, a police buff, a man who hung around headquarters with free food and coffee because he liked being near the badge. He was erratic, he was sentimental, he was not connected to anything or anyone. He was a man who shot Lee Harvey Oswell because well he could not stand what had been done to the president. That was sort of the public facing the narrative

1:06that was developed through the Warren Commission and the popular press but the FBI's own files describe a different man. In the weeks after the assassination agents obviously interviewed the people who had worked for Ruby. His bookkeeper, his waiters, his bartender and of course his dancers and what those people describe was not a police buff and in all of that they described what was a working relationship. You see Ruby gave the Dallas Police Department things and the Dallas Police Department gave Ruby things back and while that was going on Ruby was also sitting down privately with a federal agent. You see those interviews are the subject of this episode. Most of them have been public since 1964. They were actually printed in the Warren Commission volumes and so many other things were later released obviously through the National Archives and the work of the ARRB and others. They were never sealed and they were never suppressed but they were scattered. Thousands

2:10of pages, separate files, separate agents, separate cities and nobody ever put them side by side and that's what we're going to do in this episode. So without further ado let's listen to the rest of episode 346 of JFK the Enduring Secret. You know for decades the official record offered a very specific image of Jack Ruby. They painted him as a pathetic lonely police buff, a harmless but very erratic club owner who loved the police. He was a man who brought free pizza and high coffee to headquarters. Then he was a man who acted on a sudden tragic impulse to avenge the president. But when we examine the

3:10files of the Dallas Police Department and the files of the FBI that harmless caricature disappears. And in its place what we find actually is a highly calculating operator. Ruby was a man who survived on the edge of the law and in some ways operating on parallel tracks. He would placate local vice officers on the one hand and at the same time would be meeting with federal agents as an informant on the other. So what are we going to do today? We're going to look at the corruption records. We're going to follow the bookkeepers, the waiters and the dancers. We're going to look at the after-hour lock-ins that he used to have. And we're going to lay out evidence of his system that protected Jack Ruby all the way up until the moment that he pulled the trigger and shot Lee R.V. Oswald.

4:13To understand Jack Ruby's real standing in Dallas you really have to look at his history. He didn't arrive in Texas as a simple businessman. And his relationship with law enforcement was never purely social. Sometime between 1953 and the spring of 1955 there was a card game operator named Harry Hall who was operating under the alias of Harry's Sinclair Jr. He was running a gambling hustle in Dallas. When Jack Ruby learned about the scheme, well he didn't report it to the authorities but what he did do was corner Hall. He told him that as a Jew he would have no chance at all in Dallas if he were arrested. And then Ruby pitched himself as a junior partner. Ruby boasted that he had plenty of juice going with the Dallas Police Department to handle any complaints that might occur. And together they beat local gamblers out of somewhere between

5:14$70,000 and $80,000. And Ruby took his 40% of the cut. Now this wasn't an isolated boast because by 1960 that juice was an active operational asset for him. And on November 24th 1963 the very day that Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, well that was the same day that a major crack in Ruby's shield reached the FBI. You see an ex-fellon in Corpus Christi, a man named Albright contacted the FBI. He dropped a name that they had never heard before. Mike Ryan. Albright told FBI agents that he had met Jack Ruby earlier that year. He was in the company of Ruby's former bookkeeper, a man known as Mike Ryan. Now Bright stated that Ryan had confided a massive secret. Bright stated that Ryan told him that Jack Ruby was the official payoff man for the Dallas Police Department. Now according

6:20to Bright the pay off system was highly organized. Whenever the Dallas Police Department vice squad planned liquor or gambling rates on the Dallas Underworld an unknown insider from the police headquarters would contact Ruby first. Which if true gave Ruby something worse a great deal to the people that he drank with. Now the FBI took this tip with extreme seriousness. The Dallas Field Office was immediately instructed to locate and interview Mike Ryan. But when agents finally tracked him down well they discovered Mike Ryan was a ghost. There was no Mike Ryan. His real name was Roy William Pike. In November of 1963 Pike was living in Dallas. He was working briefly as a car salesman at none other than Collins Ford. And he was also a bartender at local ends. He admitted to agents

7:24that he had used the name Mike Ryan. He told them that was because he was broke and he was ashamed of his financial position. He also admitted that he worked for Ruby as a part-time bookkeeper and ticket-taker at the carousel club. But when confronted with Albright's allegations, Pike flatly denied them. He told agents that he had no knowledge whatsoever of any police payoffs. Pike described Ruby as emotional and unstable and always trying to get ahead of or outsmart the next person. But Pike stated that he did not believe Ruby was actually dishonest. Interestingly enough the FBI didn't simply drop the lead. They re-interviewed Pike in Hollywood in March of 1964. And again in July at the Warren Commission's written request. The investigation stretched on for almost eight months before reaching the commission.

8:28But the whispers inside the carousel club, well those could not be silenced so easily. Pike may have denied the payoffs just to protect his own skin. I think that's a logical conclusion you can make here. But other carousel employees were frankly much more candid. When the FBI interviewed a former part-time waiter named Richard William Frober, he dropped a bombshell of his own. Frober worked part-time as a waiter. And until he couldn't quite recall the name of the club, he thought it was the Vegas club. He had plenty to say. Now we should say that he did leave Dallas in 1961. But Frober told agents that it was a constant open talk among Ruby's help. They all whispered. What were they whispering? Well that Ruby was actively paying off the Dallas Police Department for

9:31special favors. Now while Frober had no idea what those special favors actually consisted of, other witnesses put some flesh on what the daily relationship looked like. Looking at it from the floor of the club. Consider the statement of carousel dancer Beatrice Colgrove who performed under the stage name Najada. In an interview with FBI agents on November 26th, 1963, she stated that around New Year's Eve, 1961, Jack Ruby flew into a rage and he slapped her inside the club. At that exact moment, a lieutenant from the Dallas Vice Club was sitting right there in the carousel. Colgrove knew it and she ran directly to the officer. She demanded that he arrest Jack Ruby right there on the spot for assault. But the Vice Officer didn't pull out a no pad or a pair of handcuffs. No, no, no. He didn't arrest Jack Ruby. Instead,

10:37he laughed right in her face. And in front of Ruby, the officer told the dancer she was crazy. Colgrove also stated to investigators that she watched numerous Dallas Police officers walk into Jack Ruby's private office. And then moments later, she would watch those same officers walk out of the club. But with a little something extra, you see they had bottles of whiskey tucked under their arms. And Dallas, the Vice didn't operate in spite of the police. On many nights, it actually operated because of them. This daily transactional relationship was the background for other whispers in the city. An 18-year-old stripper named Elizabeth who worked at the theater lounge in late 1958. She also claimed that owner Barney Weinstein made regular cash payoffs to the Dallas Police Detectives. There was, I guess, equal opportunity corruption in the city.

11:41Now, this claim was recorded as double hearsay by the FBI. And then there was a relative of the dancer. His name was Robert Seymour Hirsch. And he told FBI agents in Kansas City on December 4, 1963 what she had told him years earlier. Of course, he admitted that he had no director personal knowledge of any payoffs. These connections obviously implied a working relationship between Ruby and the police. And in 1960, these relationships culminated in actually what was an extraordinary gathering inside the carousel. An FBI interview with carousel photographer and part-time bartender James H. Jimmy Rhodes reveals a highly sensitive investigation. James H. or Jimmy Rhodes was a photographer and he was a stage entertainment producer. He worked at the carousel for about

12:45three months. In his interview, which was published in 1964, its commission exhibit 1659, Rhodes described two separate gatherings. First, he recalled a party during a 1960 police convention. It was a party where Jack Ruby hosted maybe 30 or 40 out of town officers. And he picked up the entire tab. Rhodes recalled that Ruby boasted to him that the chief of police himself was present at that party. Though Rhodes could not verify it because he never saw him. One other thing here, Rhodes described a more intimate after hours gathering during his three-month employment. Rhodes in his statements says that exactly 14 members of the Dallas Police Department Vice Squad were in attendance at a private after hours party at the carousel. How does Rhodes know? Well, he was the bartender for the entire affair.

13:49He told agents that the officers, well, they were good boys that night. They drank mostly cooks. But still, having 14 officers in a closed club after hours remains a striking image. And it says something about their relationships with Jack Ruby. Yet Rhodes at that moment really also defended his boss. He explained to agents that Ruby was very cranky about serving any alcohol after hours because he didn't want to break the law. And Rhodes actually, in that same interview, insisted that Ruby had no reason to pay off officers as he would not tolerate law breaking in the carousel. Well, maybe that's true. Maybe it isn't. It's kind of interesting because the FBI, once they had knowledge of this, well, they confronted Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry about this party. And then, of course, the blue wall of silence immediately went up. Chief Curry flatly denied

14:53ever-knowing Jack Ruby. And he also told agents that his officers had never attended such a party. And to back up his denial, Chief Curry offered a specific shift schedule defense to investigators. He argued that the 14-man party was, well, it was physically impossible, he said. Why? Well, because the vice squad was divided into shifts and they had scheduled days off. Curry went on to state that because of these rotations, there probably was not over 14 men assigned to the squad. And many of them would have been off duty. But look closely at the logic of that defense. Jimmy Rhodes wasn't describing an official on-duty police inspection. He was describing a private after hours social party. And police officers don't need to be off duty to attend the social gathering. At least not back in the day. Chief Curry was trying to use professional

15:53on-duty schedules to rule out an off-duty social gathering. Yet Curry's estimate actually exposed a much deeper problem for the department. You see, Rhodes' number and Curry's estimate of the number of people on the vice squad, well, coincidentally, they exactly match. Now, either the photographer guessed the squad's maximum strength exactly, or maybe he actually counted the 14 men standing in front of him. Anyway, it's another one of those crazy coincidences of this whole case. The FBI systematically tracked down and they interviewed members of the vice squad. They interviewed Lieutenant William Frazier, Captain Ganaway, Lieutenant Kaminsky, and Sergeant Boyd Rogers. Every single officer that they talked to gave the exact same uniform response. What was it? Now, they had no information whatsoever concerning any such party.

16:54What's interesting is that that identical phrasing came because an FBI agent read a standardized allegation to each man in the same way. Oh my god, they're all so thick as thieves together, aren't they? There's a few released teletypes that show that the FBI left a massive investigative gap in the file. Rhodes had told agents that a former host at the Colony Club, a guy named Bob Larkin, could easily identify the vice squad members who were always hanging around Ruby's clubs. And one of the reasons for that was those same officers were also in and out of the Colony Club. Yet nothing in the released files shows the bureau ever interviewed Bob Larkin. They chose to accept the vice squad's synchronized response. And then what did they do? Well,

17:55they just dropped the lead. But five weeks before Chief Curry sat down with FBI agents and told them that he had never met Jack Ruby. Reports had already reached FBI headquarters. On November 26, 1963, Eli Schoelman, a Chicago nightclub owner who had known Ruby for many years, he told agents that he had recalled that Ruby made trips to Hot Springs, Arkansas with the Dallas Police Chief. Imagine that. It couldn't be fair here. Schoelman couldn't recall the exact year or if it was Curry himself. But the lead remains as a striking contradiction to the department's blanket denials. And it points directly to the next layer down of protection that Jack Ruby enjoyed. And because his protection didn't just operate at the local level, it appears to have gone all the way

18:56to the federal government. You already know this from previous episodes. But in 1959, Jack Ruby's name entered a confidential file at the Dallas FBI Field Office. And in June of 1964, answering a written request from Warren Commission General Counsel, J. Lee Rankin, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover put it on the record. Jack Ruby Hoover wrote, had an I quote, furnished no information whatsoever, in further context with him were just continued. Well, that's a nice cover memo by J. Edgar Hoover. But the detail files reveal a different reality. You see from March through October of 1959, Jack Ruby had nine separate contacts over seven months with Dallas FBI Special Agent Charles W. Flynn. He was formally designated as a potential

20:04criminal informant. For decades, researchers, writers, they've all claims that on this very first contact, Agent Flynn wrote a description of Ruby calling him a known Dallas criminal. But the files reveal a very different, perhaps a more bureaucratic reality. FBI headquarters in Washington reviewed the file after the Warren Commission asked it to do so. They did that on June 1, 1964. And you know what? They confirmed that those words were not flins. They had been added later in a summary report by Special Agent Lewis M. Kelly, who swore in affidavit in Little Rock on June 4, 1964. And in that affidavit, he said that he possibly included that phrase on a document there. But it was based solely on Ruby's local Dallas Police Department identification records. I know that's complicated. But the file

21:08itself was very real. And one information was the owner of the Vegas and Caruso Clubs actually providing to federal agents. Here the record splits in two, as you know. The Bureau's own file says flatly that Ruby furnished no information, not at the first contact, really not at any of the eighth that followed. But he, Ainsworth, the Times Hero reporter who knew Ruby personally remembered it differently. Every time the agents came, Ainsworth said Ruby handed them his competitors. Ainsworth recalled that Ruby informed on a Weinstein of the colony club claiming that Weinstein was cheating on his income tax. And he informed on Barney Weinstein of the theater lounge, claiming that his club was selling booze after hours. It was a brilliant low-level survival loop. Ruby tried to use federal agents to eliminate his rivals while using his status as an FBI source

22:10to project an aura of protection to local viscops, a dual shield. Pretty brilliant, if you ask me, if that was actually what was going on. He was doing other things too. He was placating the local viscoyd with free dinners. And at the same time feeding what was selective, self-serving tips to federal agents. Jack Ruby wasn't a patriotic, simple citizen who acted on sudden impulse. He was a highly compromised, deeply protected operator. And he was a guy who had spent 16 years navigating the corrupts intersections of Dallas vice. And as we will see in our next episode, that shield didn't just protect him on the streets of Dallas. It followed him all the way to the gambling tables of Savannah. So on our next episode, we'll follow the money trail going south.

23:10We'll unmask Jack Ruby's secret 1959 trips to Cuba. It wasn't a simple vacation, as you know. But it was a journey on behalf of Syndicate Casino interests that led directly to a Havana prison camp. And that's the next time on JFK, the Enduring Secret. Thank you for listening to episode 346 of JFK, The Enduring Secrets.