Dan Abrams and his writing partner David Fisher have now written their fourth book. The first three were about trials involving Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and John Adams. All three books dealt with cases that presidents participated in as either advocates or defendants. Kennedy’s Avenger is about the trial of Jack Ruby for murdering Lee Harvey Oswald. Since Oswald did not shoot President John Kennedy, I don’t quite get the connection to the previous books. But since Abrams is a dyed in the wool, enthusiastic upholder of the MSM, one comprehends why fairly soon.
Kennedy’s Avenger is an all-out defense of the Warren Report. And it takes very little time or analysis to come to that conclusion. By page 22, the book says Oswald killed Kennedy in a Warren Report, three-shot scenario. Oswald then shot patrolman J. D. Tippit. The authors follow that up with the following:
Although no one made the connection at that time, it was later proven that a bullet fired from the same rifle Oswald had used to assassinate Kennedy had ripped into General Walker’s home seven months earlier, barely missing Walker. (p. 23)
Like the two other cases, the authors present this as a fact they do not have to prove to the reader. The problem is simple: it’s not a fact, because the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository handled different ammunition than the bullet originally described in the Walker shooting. The original bullet at the Walker scene was described in both police and newspaper reports as 30.06 in caliber. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 100) Further, the original police report described the projectile as being steel jacketed. The ammo for the alleged Oswald rifle was copper jacketed. In the nearly eight months that the Dallas Police investigated the Walker shooting, there was never any hint that Oswald was a suspect. In fact, the police thought that two men were involved. (ibid, pp. 102–03) This was largely based on the testimony of witness Kirk Coleman, who ran out of his nearby house the second he heard a shot being fired. He saw two men driving away in separate cars. According to the Commission, Oswald did not drive. Therefore, just from the above evidence, how could Oswald be involved? But if you don’t tell the reader how the FBI and the Commission made their phony case, then you do not have to explain how it contradicted the actual evidence.
Considering what we know today, Abram’s coinciding description of Oswald is quite shallow. It lasts about a paragraph. (Abrams, p. 23) The shooting of Oswald takes up about a page. Recall, this is really the main topic of the book, and it gets all of one page! (Abrams, pp. 24–25) Right after this, the book devotes about another page to a cliched description of Ruby, as “one of those likable characters who always had a smile and a scheme.” (Abrams, p. 25) And then, about as fast as they can get it in, the authors recite the holy creed about Ruby’s shooting of Oswald: Ruby felt compelled to kill the assassin due to sympathy for Mrs. Kennedy; “he did not want her to go through the ordeal of returning to Dallas for the trial of Oswald.” (Abrams, p. 26)
Everyone, except maybe Abrams and Fisher, knows that this was exposed as fraudulent way back in 1967 by Newsweek. (3/27/67 p. 21; HSCA Report, p. 158) The House Select Committee on Assassinations described this pretext as “a fabricated legal ploy.” And we know this from Ruby himself. Ruby passed a note to one of his lawyers, Joe Tonahill, at his murder trial and it exposes the title of this book as unsound. It read:
Joe, you should know this. Tom Howard told me to say that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and Mrs. Kennedy wouldn’t have to come to Dallas to testify.
Tom Howard was Ruby’s first lawyer. The night Ruby shot Oswald, Howard was at a meeting that took place at Ruby’s apartment with Ruby’s roommate George Senator and two reporters. (Michael Benson, Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, pp. 200–201) But it’s even more interesting than that. Howard entered the basement of the Dallas Police Department a bit after 11:20 AM. After Oswald was brought into the basement, the attorney told a policeman, “That’s all I wanted to see.” Ruby then shot Oswald. (CE 2002, p. 73)
As the reader can see, it’s what Abrams leaves out that is the real story. But before we expose much more of what is not there, let us deal with what the authors actually write.
II
Jack Ruby and his family decided they needed a higher profile attorney than Howard to deal with all the media coverage of the trial. They contacted some of the emerging superstars of the court room from that era (e.g. Percy Foreman and Jake Ehrlich). They finally decided on Melvin Belli. (Abrams, p. 32) Belli was surely one of the most accomplished lawyers of that time. In addition to his achievements in court, he had written 18 books. The silver haired, silver throated, exquisitely dressed Belli cut quite an impressive figure in court. Belli arrived in Dallas on December 10th. His local associates were to be Tonahill and Phil Burleson. The former would try some of the case and advise Belli about Texas law; Burleson was their appeals specialist.
As the book notes, after Belli’s first meeting with his client, he decided that something was imbalanced with Ruby. (Abrams, p. 38) And it was probably this—plus Belli’s vast background in medical law—that caused him to bypass the defense Howard was going to use. That was murder without malice (i.e. Ruby was “overtaken by the passion of the moment”) and, if successful, this could have amounted to spending no more than five years in prison. (Abrams, p. 29)
But at the second bail hearing, Belli introduced something that would eventually be the key to his defense. Ruby he said recalled going down the ramp and seeing Oswald, but he did not recall anything else until the officers subdued him. (Abrams, p. 49) Some doctors labeled this as being in a “fugue state.” Belli was going to show that Ruby “suffered from a rare form of epilepsy and had been legally insane when he killed Oswald.” (ibid) The epilepsy Ruby was afflicted with was a newly discovered form. It was called psychomotor epilepsy.
Going with his high risk, Hail Mary type of defense, Belli understood that he had to get the trial moved out of town. He could never get a neutral enough jury in Dallas to give him a fair shake. And here Abrams and Fisher do a decent job, much better than Mark Shaw, in describing just how unfair Judge Joe Brown was to the defense.
Brown clearly looked at this trial as being an opportunity for him to become at least a local, if not a state, celebrity. He hired Sam Bloom, probably the most famous PR man in Texas to represent him. (Abrams, p. 38) With that kind of conflict of interest, he was not going to let his golden moment get away from him. Therefore, when Belli moved for a change of venue—based on the prior Billy Sol Estes case—Brown looked askance on the perfectly justified motion. According to the authors, Brown ultimately decided the motion when he learned he could not move with the trial. (Abrams, pp. 55, 85) Even Henry Wade, the local DA, thought that the media frenzy made a fair trial unlikely. (Abrams, p. 61)
But in his pursuit of a star turn, Brown ignored the obvious. For instance, the chair of the board of directors of the Dallas Crime Bar Association said the only way to vindicate Dallas was to convict Ruby. (Abrams, p. 71) Ruby’s neighbor told the court she knew Ruby could not get a fair trial, because the newspapers had run stories quoting her saying things she did not say. (Abrams, p. 79) When Judge Brown ordered Ruby to Parkland Hospital for psychiatric tests, the hospital refused to run them. Belli thought this was due to Wade and his assistant Bill Alexander. When he posed that direct question, Wade objected and Brown upheld the objection. (Abrams, p. 73) And this was a real problem with the trial. The prosecution made many, many objections, some of which were made before the defense even finished their questions. No matter what, Brown sustained almost all the objections by the DA. (Abrams, p. 78)
Brown also denied bail for Ruby. (Abrams, p. 66) To try to counteract Brown’s rulings, Ruby’s lawyers and siblings published a two-part article entitled “My Story,” which was released in many newspapers. Ruby specifically denied he was a gangster or racketeer or any kind of underworld character. In reply to any other conspiracy charges, he said that he was not a communist and he did not know Oswald. He also wrote that he had not “been employed by anyone to ‘silence’ Oswald.” (Abrams, p. 67) Of course, if any of these suspicions were true, it would be highly unlikely that Ruby would admit to them. Just as it would not be likely that his lawyers or family would either.
But Abrams agrees with what was in those columns. Ruby was none of those things. He writes that in order to deal with mushrooming rumors, “President Johnson announced the creation of a fact-finding commission, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, to investigate the assassination.” (Abrams, p. 68) He then says that Warren took the job because LBJ told him he had to in order to prevent divisions in the country.
In light of the declassified record, neither of these statements is accurate. It was not Johnson’s idea to create the commission. It was pressed on him by outside forces, namely, Eugene Rostow of Yale and journalist Joseph Alsop. LBJ was quite reluctant to create a federal commission and actually thought it should remain a state matter, which, legally, was the correct procedure. But after Ruby shot Oswald, men like Rostow and Alsop thought things had spun out of control and Washington had to stop what appeared to be a modern version of Tombstone. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 8–15) According to both Warren and LBJ, the clinching arguments the president used to convince a very reluctant Chief Justice to head the commission was that if he did not there would be an atomic war with the Russians that could kill 40 million people. LBJ based this nuclear scenario on reports he was getting from the CIA about what Oswald had allegedly been doing in Mexico City. (Washington Post, 9/23/93, article by Walter Pincus; HSCA Vol. 11 p. 7) By avoiding this kind of underlying data, Abrams saves himself from posing some intriguing questions like: Was Oswald even in Mexico City? And if he was not what was the point of the reports?
III
For all intents and purposes, with no change of venue, and Brown’s bias, there was no way the defense was going to get a fair shake. Belli’s all or nothing defense made it even more difficult. But as the authors note, Belli had made a strong case for appeal. (Abrams, p. 85)
Abrams touches on another problem for the defense before the trial began. In the first jury call up of 500 people, there was not a single Catholic, Jew, or member of a union. (Abrams, p. 59) Considering there were about 700,000 people living in Dallas at the time, this seems improbable.
This gave the authors a convenient opportunity to review the once hidden record of DA Henry Wade. Yet, in the entire book, there is no mention of Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line. It was that film, plus the Lenell Geter case which first revealed the horrible corruption of the Dallas DA’s office under Wade. (Click here for the former and here for the latter) In the Geter case, Wade convicted the defendant for armed robbery, even though nine witnesses placed him at work, fifty miles away, that day.(Washington Post, 2/3/87, story by James McBride) In the Morris film involving defendant Randall Adams, the appeals court overturned Wade’s conviction due to improper jury selection. Wade then asked the governor to commute Adams’ sentence so a new trial would not be granted. But there was a hearing anyway and the judge ruled that the DA withheld key evidence about witnesses and that the real killer had charges dropped against him in another county after he testified against Adams. The daughter of another witness also got this kind of deal: charges dropped against her for the mother’s testimony against Adams. (D Magazine, April of 1998, article by Sally Giddens)
Those were by no means isolated incidents. No other county has had as many felony cases reversed on appeal due to DNA evidence than Dallas. (Click here for details) In fact, Dallas had more cases overturned than some states did. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 196)
But if the authors opened up this door, then the reader would have to question their assumptions about the Kennedy case and the Tippit case, because those two murders were solved by the DA in less than 24 hours. And Wade was pronouncing Oswald’s guilt in the JFK case to the world at that time, which, of course, all went up in smoke when Ruby shot Oswald on NBC TV.
During the voir dire process, that is when the attorneys interviewed potential jurors to be impaneled, Brown allowed people who had seen Ruby’s shooting of Oswald live to be on the jury. Belli objected since Texas law disallowed a witness to a crime to be on a jury. (Abrams, p. 90) Belli, as he would be continuously, was overruled. The authors do note that Texas law allowed only married men and women who owned property to be on juries at this time. The very few African-Americans who qualified were treated as second class citizens by the prosecution: they were called by their first names. (Abrams, p. 94) Needless to say, Belli ran out of peremptory challenges. When he asked Brown to give him 15 more, Brown granted him three. In other words, after denying a change of venue, Brown failed to begin to even the scales against bias. (Abrams, p. 96) When jury selection was all over, the tally was 8 men, 4 women, all white Protestants, four college graduates, and 11 of them saw the shooting. (Abrams, p. 102)
With the defense that Belli had chosen, in 1964, the M’Naghten rule applied. This meant that the defendant was acting under such a defect of reason that he did not know what he was doing and could not tell the difference between right and wrong. Therefore, the prosecution had to show that Ruby had acted with intent. The trial opened on March 4, 1964. Belli made several motions that day before the first witness was called. Every one of them was denied. (Abrams, p. 112) There were no opening statements.
IV
The prosecution attempted to establish Ruby at the offices of the Dallas Morning News at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. They called three witnesses, yet, through Belli’s skillful cross examination, none of them could place Ruby in their sights at the exact moment of the shooting. (pp. 115–118) This had to be done circumstantially. Wade then tried to trace Ruby’s movements the rest of the day. Two things are interesting about this part of the book, one the authors describe, one they leave out. It turns out that very late that night, reporter Bill Duncan got a call from Jack Ruby. Ruby wanted to know if the reporter wished to talk to Wade, he then put the DA on the line. Belli played this up for all if was worth on cross examination. Less than 48 hours before the defendant killed Oswald, he was in the office of the man now prosecuting him. (Abrams, p. 120) Later, in court, Wade actually said he had never seen Ruby before that night. (Abrams, p. 127)
Using reporter Wes Wise, the future mayor, the prosecution then placed Ruby outside the county jail on Saturday afternoon. This was about an hour before the first announced transfer to that destination. (Abrams, p. 123) At this point in the trial, the authors write that Belli was doing a bit too well. Therefore, Wade decided to take over the lead in the trial. The book does not reveal that Wade let Alexander go in 1967. This was after Alexander stated that Warren should not be impeached, he should be executed, preferable by hanging. Alexander also once said about JFK’s murder: “And as far as anybody giving a particular rat’s ass about John Kennedy getting his ass wiped in Dallas, who cares?” (DiEugenio, p. 198)
The prosecution then called parking lot attendant Garnett Claude Hallmark. Ruby had parked his car in his lot on Saturday afternoon. He then made a phone call which Hallmark overheard. He told the person on the other end that Oswald would be transferred soon, but he did not know when; but when he was, he would be there. (Abrams, p. 128) For the Commission, Hallmark clarified this as being Ruby’s phone call with disc jockey at KLIF radio, Ken Dowe. The witness said he was about two feet away from Ruby while he let him use his office phone. Ruby was referring to what he thought would be a transfer on that day, Saturday. (WC Vol. XV, pp. 488–89)
Doyle Lane then placed Jack Ruby at Western Union on Sunday. Belli tried to explain that, since he was there at 11:17 and could not know when the transfer was going to occur, this eliminated premeditation and therefore malice. (Abrams, p. 130) The prosecution then brought Ray Brantley to the stand and he testified he sold the handgun to Ruby which the accused used to shoot Oswald.
At this point, the prosecution wanted to insert the testimony of certain police officers as to what Ruby allegedly said after his shooting of Oswald. Belli and Tonahill vigorously objected on the doctrine of self- incrimination. At that time, in Texas, after the point the defendant was arrested, his words could not be used against him. (Abrams, p. 133) Brown overruled the objection and decided it was part of the Res gestae, or part of the felonious act.
Let me add this point: Wade and Alexander had lined up more than one witness who was willing to state that Ruby made incriminating remarks right after he shot Oswald. And this may have had an influence on the defense that Belli decided to follow. In this instance, Jim Leavelle said that Ruby uttered the words “I hope the sonofabitch dies” after shooting him. But the defense ended up finding ways to either counter or discount this kind of testimony. For instance, Detective L. C. Graves said he never heard Ruby say what Leavelle said he did. And it was Graves who snatched the weapon from Ruby’s hand. (Abrams, pp. 145–46) Officer Don Archer also stated he heard these kinds of incriminating statements from Ruby, yet as Belli examined him, he admitted he did not mention these statements to the FBI. (Abrams, p. 153) Thomas McMillon, Archer’s partner, said that Ruby leaped forward and said, “You rat sonofabitch, you shot the president!” Ruby then shot Oswald. Belli later demonstrated that this was far-fetched, since McMillon was separated from Ruby by three people and was looking the wrong way when Ruby burst forth. (Abrams, p. 159)
V
A man who became a very controversial witness also took the stand to testify against Ruby. This was Sgt. Patrick Dean. The book designates that Dean was in charge of security that day for the basement transfer. (Abrams, p. 173) And if the reader can comprehend it, that is all the book says about this crucial subject—which we will discuss a bit later. Dean testified that Ruby told him, “He…had thought about this two nights prior, when he saw Harvey Oswald on the show up stand.” Belli objected wildly and asked for a mistrial on the grounds that Ruby had been arrested at least ten minutes earlier. (Abrams, p. 174) No surprise, Judge Brown allowed it.
One of the most serious flaws in this book is that it takes place in a time warp. That is, Abrams and Fisher wrote the book as if nothing had happened on this case since. In fact, much had happened. For example, the HSCA concluded that Ruby likely had help getting into the basement and he likely did not come down the Main Street ramp. He came in through an unsecured door off an alley to the rear. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp. 227–228) If that door was not secured, it was very likely due to Dean’s negligence, or perhaps his cooperation.
What retroactively sheds light on Dean is this: he failed his department polygraph—even though he wrote his own questions! When the HSCA tried to find Dean’s polygraph test, they could not locate it. For these reasons, the Committee concluded that Dean was very likely a key figure in Oswald’s shooting. In fact, while subduing Ruby, Dean reportedly said, “Man, you got me in one hell of a shape,” to which Ruby apologized at the time. Dean failed to arrange a deposition with the HSCA and would not reply to written questions. (DiEugenio, p. 229)
But one does not even need to go that far forward in time. Commission counsel Burt Griffin, one of two men on the Ruby case, strongly suspected Dean was lying to his question about whether or not Ruby could have gotten into the basement through that door. Dean said he would have needed a key to get in. When the HSCA investigated this issue, they found three witnesses on the custodial staff who denied such was the case. Griffin finally lost all patience with Dean. He wrote a memo saying that:
- Dean was derelict in securing all doors to the basement.
- He had reason to think Ruby did not come down the ramp.
- He suspected Dean was part of a cover up and advised Ruby to say he came down the Main Street ramp even though he knew he did not. (DiEugenio, pp. 229–230)
In fact, the authors must know all this. Since they have Seth Kantor’s biography of Ruby in their bibliography. The HSCA found a new witness, Don Flusche, who said he was leaning up against his car outside the Main Street ramp at the time of Oswald’s transfer. He watched the whole thing and he knew Ruby. He said Ruby was nowhere near the ramp, let alone walking down it, before the shooting. (DiEugenio, pp. 227–228). All this leaves the question: did Dean leave that door unsecured for Ruby to enter the building?
There is one last point which should be made about this key issue. After he got into the basement, Ruby insisted that he was not hiding behind anyone prior to Oswald entering the foyer. This is a lie. (See the film Evidence of Revision, Part 7, nine minute mark) He is seen hiding behind Blackie Harrison and, when this was conveyed to him, Ruby exploded in rage. The day Harrison was scheduled to be polygraphed about Oswald’s murder, he was on tranquilizers to disguise his reactions. His test turned out inconclusive. (DiEugenio, p. 229) To put it mildly, all of this puts a different spin on what Dean said under oath. In fact, it reveals just how bad the DPD was and how dedicated Wade was to cover it all up. But somehow, the authors were not interested in any of it.
VI
Because of Belli’s defense, perhaps the most important part of the trial was the duel between each side’s authorities. Belli used Dr. Roy Schafer, Dr. Martin Towler, Dr. Manfred Guttmacher, and Dr. Fredrick Gibbs. The key witness was Gibbs, who was given credit for discovering the sickness and was an expert in reading EEG’s. Wade brought in his own experts, like Dr. Robert Schwab, Dr. Francis Forester, and Dr. Roland MacKay, but one of the problems with Belli’s case is that his star authority, Gibbs, would not say whether or not Ruby knew right from wrong when he shot Oswald. (Abrams, p. 321)
Brown concluded his poor stewardship of the trial with his charge to the jury. Tonahill called it “a road map to a verdict of guilty of cold-blooded murder.” Burleson wrote up 36 pages of suggested corrections. It took seventeen minutes to read the charge to the jury. Very few of Burleson’s corrections made it. (Abrams, pp. 322–24)
As the reader can understand by now, although Belli and Tonahill put up a valiant fight, it was pretty much doomed by Judge Brown, but the defense never let up. In his summation, Burleson asked: why were none of these incriminating statements by Ruby in the first day police reports? (Abrams, p. 331) Tonahill said the reason the prosecution was so hotly after Ruby is that they let Oswald be shot on national TV. And he hammered home the message that police witnesses were not trustworthy. He even hinted that perhaps the police were in cahoots with Ruby, to which Wade wildly objected. (Abrams, p. 334)
The prosecution rebutted Tonahill by saying his was the oldest defense in the book, “If you can’t defend the defendant, prosecute the prosecutor.” (Abrams, p. 336) Belli stressed the learned knowledge of Gibbs and the instability of Ruby. Wade stressed to the jury that they had to put a price on the laws of the state. Ruby had to pay for shooting an unarmed, handcuffed man in the stomach. He then said Ruby did what he did to be in the limelight. He then asked the jury to show Ruby the same mercy Ruby showed Oswald. (Abrams, pp. 342–43)
Needless to say, after Brown paved the way for them, the jury agreed with the prosecution. They gave Ruby the death penalty. Belli sensed this would occur and counseled Ruby that they had tried the case for an appeal and they would win on appeal. But even at that, Belli exploded when he heard the verdict and his incendiary remarks were squarely aimed at Brown. He told Brown he had blood on his hands.(Abrams, pp. 348–50)
Burleson prepared a good appeal, which Brown denied. Brown then retired from the case. The Texas appellate court overturned the verdict on appeal in October of 1966. One of the issues they dealt with was the wrongful admittance of Dean’s testimony, which they asked to be struck from the record. A new trial was scheduled for Wichita Falls in February of 1967, but Ruby was admitted to Parkland Hospital in December of 1966 with cancer. He died on January 3, 1967.
As per Ruby’s rather fast acting and late detected cancer, although the book says that Ruby’s psychiatrist said he had delusions and was paranoid, there is no mention of who he was. (Abrams, p. 355) His name was Louis Jolyon West. West had worked for and with the CIA in their MK ULTRA program, doing experiments in drug induced hypnoprogramming. (Tom O’Neill, Chaos, pp. 359–65) West even wrote a letter to Earl Warren saying that Ruby had acted in an irrational and unpremeditated manner in order to prove that Jews loved the president and were not cowards. West edited lines from another psychiatrist’s report about Ruby’s running guns into Cuba. (Abrams, p. 386)
I think we all know why a CIA asset like West would do the last. And why the authors would simply ignore the fact. As Henry Hurt noted in his book Reasonable Doubt, Ruby was involved in these kinds of illegal weapons operations with a man named Thomas Eli Davis. (Hurt, pp. 400–05) In fact, Ruby even told his lawyers about this, since he feared it would surface in the papers. On the day of Kennedy’s assassination, Davis was in Algiers and was using the name ‘Oswald.’
Let me conclude with two points that, again, although important, are not dealt with by Abrams. In Chapter 18, the book deals with the polygraph test that Ruby insisted on taking. The book agrees with the official verdict about that test revealing no area of deception. What the book does not say is that the HSCA commissioned a study of the records of that test. That three man expert panel concluded Ruby’s test broke about 10 different accepted protocols of polygraph technique. (DiEugenio, pp. 267–70) They deduced that, contrary to what the Commission wrote, Ruby had lied during the test. The report is blistering. It strongly suggests the test was so worthless it was probably rigged.
If such was the case, the rigging was done through the FBI, which relates to the issue of why Ruby was at the Western Union station, across the street from the Dallas Police Department, right before the Oswald transfer. Belli and Ruby always insisted that Karen Bennett, one of Ruby’s strippers, had asked Ruby for a small advance on the weekend. After examining this issue with the help of Greg Parker, this reviewer came to a different conclusion. Both the FBI and Secret Service worked on Karen and her common law husband Bruce Carlin to massage them into saying that this Sunday morning call was from them to Ruby. This was after Ruby had advanced her five dollars through a third party the night before. The agents were so insistent on making the couple say it was their idea that they literally harassed Bruce at work to the extent he lost a job. The couple would get calls in the middle of the night. Karen had been interviewed seven times before she appeared before the Commission. They were one of the few Commission witnesses who brought a lawyer with them. (DiEugenio, pp. 225–27) The bottom line is this: Karen first stated that it was Ruby’s idea for the Sunday call, and even Leon Hubert, the Commission lawyer on the Ruby case, once agreed with her.
If Ruby arranged for the call, if he came in through an unsecured door, if he was hiding behind Harrison before springing forward to shoot Oswald, this indicates a much different picture than either the defense, the prosecution, or Abrams presents. And this is what makes Kennedy’s Avenger a superfluous book.
