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| Jack Ruby "Thought He Was Going to Be a Hero," Niece Says - NBC Chicago Posted: 20 Nov 2013 07:55 AM PST Jack Ruby grew up in a crowded house in Chicago. In fact, lots of them. Ruby and his eight siblings moved repeatedly, children of an alcoholic father and a mother they remembered as domineering and angry. The parents kept kosher but often had little to put on the table. Fannie Rubenstein would be confined more than once to the state mental hospital in Elgin, leaving her children to fend for themselves, often shuttled to foster homes and families. Ruby left Chicago for what he hoped would be a better life in Dallas in 1947. And 16 years later, he fired a single shot which deprived the world from learning the absolute truth about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. "He always wore a suit and hat," recalled a Ruby niece, one of two surviving relatives in Chicago. She asked that we not give her identity, because of repeated reprisals over the years. The daughter of Ruby's sister, Eileen, the 60-year-old woman says she vividly remembers a trip to see her uncle Jack just three months before the assassination. She was just 10 years old. "He had a wonderful dog who would never come out from under the bed to play with us," she recalled. That dog, Ruby's beloved dachshund Sheba, would later become a piece of evidence in the investigation. "You know, he was outgoing and gregarious, and laughed a lot," said a sister, who has also kept her relationship to Ruby so secret that she has not told her own children. As the two sisters told their story for the first time, one said that her efforts over the years to explain her uncle's actions had proven largely fruitless with listeners who refuse to believe that a larger conspiracy was not afoot. "They don't want to hear a simple story like he was a hothead guy, a really emotional guy in the wrong place at the wrong time," she said. "I have tried at various times over the years and it's gone bad." Sitting in the living room of a north side high rise, the sisters showed a visiting reporter mementoes of their uncle Jack: his "JR" cufflinks, a locket which Ruby gave their mother, and the checkerboard he used in jail. "After the assassination, when he was in prison, he would call our house a lot," one recalled. Her older sister added: "He was always sort of apologetic and many times he would sort of start to cry, and ask for forgiveness for what he had done to the family." But it was a different phone call they remembered the most. It was the evening of the assassination, November 22, 1963. Ruby was upset. And he wanted to come home to Chicago. "Jack called and he was crying. He was upset, and he wanted to come to Chicago and be with the family for the weekend," one of his nieces recalled. But their mother told Ruby no. He needed to stay in Dallas with their sister who was recovering from surgery. No one knows for certain if Ruby would have left town if his sister had encouraged the trip. Instead, he stayed in Dallas and shot Lee Harvey Oswald in front of a national television audience two days later. "I know she felt guilty about that 'til the day she died," one of the sisters recalled, although she said her mother rarely talked about the assassination. Instead, she would often leave to be at Ruby's side. "After he killed Oswald, and during the trial, she'd be gone for three, four, five, even six weeks at a time." On the morning of his appointment with history, Ruby hardly displayed the planning of a cunning killer. Oswald had been scheduled for transfer from the Dallas Police jail at 10 a.m. But it wasn't until 11 a.m. that Ruby arrived downtown, planning to wire some money to one of his dancers. He walked to the Western Union office, leaving the dog, Sheba in his car. "If he had planned to do anything, he never would have left that dog in danger," one of the sisters recalled. Instead, walking back to his car after the wire transfer, Ruby noticed activity at the entrance ramp to the Dallas Police garage. He walked down the ramp, and as Oswald emerged, he pulled the gun he always carried, and fired. A receipt from the Western Union office showed that just four minutes had elapsed. Ruby's nieces maintained investigators got it right. Ruby was not a mobster. He had no mission. He was just a man who was overcome with grief. "Just the perfect storm, just the events came together, for that shooting to occur,' the younger sister remembered. "If he did think about it in that snap, he thought he was going to be a hero. Thought he was going to be a big shot. People were going to thank him for killing the man who killed the president." |
| Serial killer Joseph Franklin executed after hours of delay - CNN Posted: 20 Nov 2013 08:10 AM PST STORY HIGHLIGHTS
(CNN) -- White supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin was executed Wednesday morning after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final requests for a stay, the Missouri Department of Public Safety said. The execution, which had been scheduled for shortly after midnight Wednesday, was delayed for hours because of court appeals. Franklin was administered a lethal injection at 6:07 a.m. CT (7:07 a.m. ET). He died ten minutes later. Franklin refused his final meal and gave no final statement. He was on death row for the 1977 murder of Gerald Gordon outside a synagogue in St. Louis. He was blamed for 22 killings between 1977 and 1980 in a bid to start a race war.   Authorities said DNA recovered from the body of Mary Sullivan matches that of her suspected killer -- the confessed Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo. After a sample was secretly collected from a relative, DeSalvo's body was exhumed in July for more DNA testing. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in 1973 while serving a prison sentence for rape. Click through to see more of history's infamous killers. Infamous serial killers HIDE CAPTION Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon denied clemency for Franklin on Monday, saying he had committed "merciless acts of violence, fueled by hate." In addition to the killings, Franklin admitted to the attempted assassinations of Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt in 1978 and civil rights leader Vernon Jordan in 1980. Flynt, who was paralyzed by Franklin's bullet, has called for clemency for Franklin, saying "the government has no business at all being in the business of killing people." Battle over drugs used One of Franklin's final legal maneuvers focused on the drug used for the lethal injection, pentobarbital. His attorneys argued that the injection would violate the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey granted a stay of execution, finding Franklin's lawyers showed the use of pentobarbital carried "a high risk of contamination and prolonged, unnecessary pain beyond that which is required to achieve death." An intimate discussion with a serial killer "Given the irreversible nature of the death penalty and plaintiffs' medical evidence and allegations, a stay is necessary to ensure that the defendants' last act against Franklin is not permanent, irremediable cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment," Laughrey wrote. Another federal judge granted a second stay Tuesday, based on a separate defense petition contesting Franklin's competency. "The Court concludes that a stay of execution is required to permit a meaningful review," U.S. District Judge Carol Jackson wrote. The state appealed both stays to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which decided early Wednesday that Franklin's lawyers had not provided enough evidence to warrant a stay. The U.S. Supreme Court denied Franklin's requests to step in and halt the execution. Missouri had planned to use propofol, the surgical anesthetic made infamous by the death of pop star Michael Jackson. But Nixon reversed that decision after being warned that the European Union -- whose members forbid capital punishment -- might halt shipments of the drug, leading to shortages for medical purposes. Missouri and other states that conduct executions have had to scramble for new drugs after European-based manufacturers banned American prisons from using their drugs in executions. In October, the state announced it would use pentobarbital, which would be provided by an unnamed compounding pharmacy. Franklin's lawyers argued that would raise the risk of contamination and a painful death. CNN's Dana Ford and Josh Levs contributed to this report. |
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