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Manuscript/Mixed Material Note, Jack Ruby to attorney Elmer Gertz revealing the assassin's despair and paranoia, 9 September 1965.
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Title
Note, Jack Ruby to attorney Elmer Gertz revealing the assassin's despair and paranoia, 9 September 1965.
- On 24 November 1963, Dallas, Texas, police were transferring Lee Harvey Oswald (1939-1963), who had been arrested for murdering President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) two days earlier, from one jail to another. In the jail's basement garage, a crowd of journalists, photographers, and police watched as Oswald emerged and was about to be placed in a police car. In an action caught on television cameras, Jack Ruby (1912-1967), an owner of a Dallas nightclub and admirer of President Kennedy, edged forward in the crowd, drew a gun, and killed Oswald. Convicted of murder, Ruby was sentenced to be executed. He appealed and won a retrial on the basis that procedural errors had occurred. Before the retrial could be held, however, Ruby died in prison in 1967 of natural causes.
- After his original conviction and during the appeal process, Ruby's mental condition disintegrated, and he increasingly became subject to delusions. At an appeal hearing in 1965 in Dallas, Ruby gave Elmer Gertz (1906- ), one of his attorneys, this note. In it, Ruby expressed despair and voiced his belief that government authorities in the courthouse were killing and torturing "our people," a reference to Jews. In a similar fashion, Ruby told his sister that government authorities were engaged in murdering twenty-five million Jews.
Source Collection
Elmer Gertz Papers
Repository
Manuscript Division
Online Format
pdf
image
IIIF Presentation Manifest
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Part of
Words and Deeds in American History: Selected Documents Celebrating the Manuscript Division's First 100 Years (87)
Manuscript Division (170,427)
Format
Manuscript/Mixed Material
Dates
1965-09-09
Language
English
Subject
Arrest
Assassinations
Dallas (Tex.)
Gertz, Elmer (1906- )
Imprisonment
Jews
Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald)
Law
Lawyers
Manuscripts
Oswald, Lee Harvey
Persecutions
Presidents
Prisons
Ruby, Jack
Texas
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Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.
Chicago citation style:
Note, Jack Ruby to attorney Elmer Gertz revealing the assassin's despair and paranoia, 9 September. 9 September, 1965. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mcc.075/.
APA citation style:
(1965) Note, Jack Ruby to attorney Elmer Gertz revealing the assassin's despair and paranoia, 9 September. 9 September. [Manuscript/Mixed Material] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mcc.075/.
MLA citation style:
Note, Jack Ruby to attorney Elmer Gertz revealing the assassin's despair and paranoia, 9 September. 9 September, 1965. Manuscript/Mixed Material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/mcc.075/>.
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