The amount of trivia that found its way into FBI files 30 years ago is a window on the conspiratorial mindset that swept America after Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, who had shot John F. Kennedy.
In Fairlawn, N.J., a woman noticed from television tape replay of Oswald being shot "a seemingly obvious connection between two honkings of an automobile horn and the action which followed." She wondered why no newspaper or television account mentioned that.A fire chief from Dearborn Heights, Mich., told a hometown newspaper of being in Dallas that November weekend and having no difficulty getting into the police station's basement. FBI agents tracked him down and he admitted his published account of the shooting was "a complete fabrication and untrue."
A woman in Roseville, Ohio, notified the FBI that on Nov. 21, 1963, a day before the Kennedy assassination, she was watching Jimmy Dean's television show. After singing part of "Cowboy's Lament," she said, Dean stopped and said something. She told the FBI that she concluded that was a message of instructions to Jack Ruby.
The FBI's records on Ruby were released for reading Tuesday in the National Archives, in compliance with a 1992 law making assassination-related material public. The FBI tried to find a connection between Oswald and Ruby, between Ruby and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee to which Oswald belonged, between Ruby and the Communist Party, between Ruby and the mob.
But to no avail.
In less than a month after the Kennedy shooting in Dallas, a thousand or more people had been interviewed, either as a result of such tips, or from the mere mention of a person who might at some time have had some contact with Ruby, who operated a couple of strip joints in Dallas.
The FBI concentrated heavily on Las Vegas, where one man who knew Ruby for a long time "stated that he is certain in his own mind that Ruby has no underworld connections, although he might be acquainted with some figures in gambling and other illegal activities."
The 21,224 pages from the FBI's Jack Ruby headquarters file were in 28 archival boxes. The FBI's half-million files are expected to be turned over to the archives by July 4.
Much of the material already has been opened to the public through the FBI reading room. But portions of some documents previously blacked out or omitted from the public record was included in the archives release.
The files included clippings, including a wire service story that said Ruby had told the truth during a polygraph test administered in 1964 at the request of the Warren Commission. At the bottom is scrawled: "I assume none of this is coming from FBI." It was signed "H," by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
The investigation was so thorough that it included an evaluation by the Chicago Institute for Juvenile Research on 12-year-old Jacob Rubenstein in 1923. That was Ruby's name before he shortened it.
"Patient truant from school. Disobedient. Quick tempered. Patient doesn't steal. Doesn't know of any sex delinquencies. Patient fell from table at age of two years and hurt his head. No enuresis (bed-wetting)," it said.
After the Oswald slaying, which unfolded on national television as Kennedy was lying in state in Washington, the FBI put together 150 pages of notes on interviews with the Dallas police officers who witnessed the shooting. Detective T.D. McMillon said he heard Ruby say, as he charged toward Oswald, pistol in hand, "You rat son of a bitch, you shot the president." Others quoted Ruby as saying, "I hope I killed . . . " Oswald.
A Dallas jury convicted Ruby of murder in March 1964. Ruby died of cancer on Jan. 3, 1967.