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A stripper named Penny Dollar, who once worked at Ruby's Carousel Club, told the jury that she had seen Ruby throw a man downstairs, pounce on him and beat his head repeatedly on the sidewalk, then rise in bewilderment and say, "Did I do this? Did I do this?" George Senator, 50, Ruby's bachelor roommate who identified himself as "a former postcard salesman," recalled that Ruby woke him at 3 a.m. the day after Kennedy was shot, seemed "very, very solemn, very moody." Dallas Rabbi Hillel Silverman, who had known Ruby for ten years, recalled that one day last year Ruby suddenly appeared on Silverman's front yard with half a dozen dogs. Said the rabbi: "Suddenly he began to cry. He said, 'I'm unmarried,' and, pointing to one dog, he said, 'This is my wife,' and, pointing to all the dogs, he said, These are my children.' Then he sobbed and cried." Silverman considered Ruby "a very emotional, unstable, erratic man."
The Doctors. But the bulk of the defense case was based on testimony from that trial genus known as the expert witness (see THE LAW). First was Yale Psychologist Roy Schafer, who had given Ruby ten psychological tests after his arrest. The results? Said Dr. Schafer: "He gave a rather weighty indication of emotional instability." Schafer's conclusion: "There' was organic brain damage and the most likely nature of it was psychomotor epilepsy."
Next was Dr. Martin Towler, a University of Texas neurologist and psychiatrist who had spent hours examining Ruby for Judge Joe Brown in order to offer a neutral source of information to the court. Towler had made electroencephalographic examinations (brainwave readings) of Ruby, told the jury that his graphs showed "paroxysmal discharges" from parts of Ruby's brain—indicating that "the subject is suffering from a seizure disorder." But in crossexamination, District Attorney Wade asked Towler if he meant to imply to the jury that Ruby had been out of his mind when he shot Oswald. Replied Towler: "I have not tried to say so."
Then Belli brought in his star doctor, Manfred Guttmacher, 65, of Baltimore, a psychiatrist for 32 years and a veteran witness in court cases. Belli immediately asked him the key question: Was Ruby sane when he killed Oswald? Guttmacher did not hesitate in his answer: "I don't think he was capable of distinguishing right from wrong or realizing the consequences of his act at the time of the shooting."
"A Known Person." Guttmacher ticked off a list of Ruby's deviations: he is a "suicide risk," has a "voracious need" to be loved, especially by "persons in positions of power," has a deep "consciousness of sexual doubt," has "a narcissistic concern over his weight and his baldness."