Documents released for the first time Tuesday indicate Jack Ruby, ashamed that the Dallas police "were helpless to do anything" to Lee Harvey Oswald, killed the assassin of President John Kennedy in a moment of insanity and grief.
Interviewed by the FBI one day after he gunned down Oswald in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters, Ruby denied that he had planned to shoot Oswald."No one knew that he was going to the basement or PD headquarters and no one assisted him in any way whatsoever," the FBI agents said in a report to Director J. Edgar Hoover.
"He felt ashamed that officers of the Dallas PD were helpless to do anything to Lee Harvey Oswald," the FBI quoted Ruby as saying.
The report was part of 21,000 pages of documents released by the National Archives in a disclosure of files on the Kennedy assassination. An additional 50,000 pages are to be released by next July.
Ruby told the FBI he did not know Oswald and first saw him under police escort the night of Nov. 23, 1963.
Later that evening, Ruby said he again saw Oswald under police escort, and this time "he had a feeling he wanted to do something better than anyone else."