Jack Ruby

by Ovid Demaris

A detailed account of the day that Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills and crime writer Ovid Demaris describe Ruby's background and reconstruct his crime on 24th November 1963. The text reveals the man who claimed to have done his duty as an American.

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Pete daPixie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Published way back in 1968, Wills & Demaris' 'Jack Ruby' is a welcome addition to my JFK assassination library, even after fifty two years.
With hundreds of books on this single topic, I still cannot say how or why Jack shot Lee, but I'm sure Lee didn't shoot Jack!
The authors do not shine spotlights on the minutiae of Dealey Plaza, but produce a vivid portrayal of the man who darted forward in that Dallas Police Department basement and fixed the verdict on the lone-nut assassin. Incorporating interviews of family, friends, acquaintances, Carousel staff, cops, lawyers, legal transcripts....even Warren Commission volumes, this book offers a sharp profile of the subject.
From the 22nd November '63 all the way to January 3rd '67, Ruby is tracked and analysed through the pages, producing a very readable account, even if we don't always follow the logic of the man.
There are little gems contained herein, like Joe Tonahill's description of Assistant D.A. Bill Alexander "a tarantula-eyed one hundred per cent pure liar."
Perhaps this book has matured with age.

[Jon]

Wills' book (co-written with Ovid Demaris, so I'm not breaking my only-one-review-per-writer rule) on Lee Harvey Oswald's killer is still worth reading over 40 years after publication whether or not one agrees with Wills that Ruby acted alone, rather than under pressure, in Oswald's murder.
Wills and Demaris do a good job both of making Ruby come alive on the page and clearing up some myths about Dallas, which they suggest is not as much of a haven for right-wing nuts as its reputation might lead one to believe.

[Beverle Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent account of this complex man. Sheds light on the mysteries of his behavior. The authors reconstructed his personality after many interviews with the people who knew Ruby best--friends, family, employees, and adversaries. Recommended.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

straight forward..no conspiracy theories

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book presents two faces to the reader, obviously the result of it being the combined efforts of two authors. We read in the About the Authors section that a good bit of the information in the book came from the reporting job and efforts of Ovid Demaris, a bona fide journalist who was there in the Dallas police basement when Ruby shot Oswald and who interviewed many of those who new Ruby in the days and months following the assassination. Then we are told that Garry Wills actually wrote the book. So we have some sections heavily based on the reporting and interviews of Demaris, which are of particular interest in terms of getting to know Ruby through the eyes of his associates and of interpreting some of the events of his trial, and other sections full of psychological analysis of Ruby and interpretations of what he was thinking. The fact-based sections are interesting and useful; the highbrow psychobabble sections are less interesting and hardly convincing.

The first chapter is by far the most interesting and useful all these years later. Here we hear from Ruby’s associates, employees, and even competitors about the kind of man Ruby was – the rough-fisted guy who could physically fight a guy one minute and then come back and befriend him an hour later, the kind of man who respected and took care of his strippers and other employees and even offered assistance and money to his enemies when they needed help, and a man who constantly sought to acquire and exude a sense of class and dignity in defiance of his low upbringing. Despite all of his rough edges, that Jack Ruby is a likable guy, and you get to know him a bit in these pages. The description of the trial and Ruby’s suffering at the hands of a terrible defense led by Melvin Belli is also quite helpful and valuable to the reader. It is all downhill from there, though, as Wills tries to penetrate Ruby’s mind, even engaging in stream of consciousness prattle on several occasions as he describes Ruby’s time in prison before finally adding in a final chapter basically just to attack Mark Lane and other pioneering Warren Commission critics of the mid-1960s (this book was first published in 1967).

The book is still worth a read if you are interested in learning about Jack Ruby, but there are obviously much more comprehensive and updated Ruby books that have been published over the intervening decades.

[Matt Potter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read. A good roadmap for further research.