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As for Ruby, his gangster role is magnified by the recent books that go beyond the Warren Commission's portrayal of a strip-show proprietor and police buff. Some authors see him as a small-time hood in Chicago who worked his way up in what had been Al Capone's outfit. He was sent to Dallas in 1947, they say, with other Chicago gangsters to take over that city's rackets. Other reports had Ruby being exiled to Dallas by the Chicago Mob. Yet Marcello retained control of Dallas operations, working mainly through local boss Joseph Civello. The new books claim that Ruby was close to him and other Dallas gangsters active in prostitution, narcotics and slot machines.
Telephone records show that as the assassination date approached, Ruby made numerous calls to relatively high Mob figures in Chicago, New Orleans and Los Angeles, as well as to two associates of Jimmy Hoffa's. He later told the FBI that the calls were made to get union help in stopping other Dallas clubs from using amateur strippers. Yet the gangsters he called would not seem likely to trouble themselves with such petty problems.
However, if Oswald were merely a "patsy," as he claimed, it is difficult to understand why, after leaving the Texas School Book Depository building and picking up a revolver at his rooming house, he gunned down officer J.D. Tippit, who was about to question him. Six witnesses identified Oswald as Tippit's killer. Three watched him discard empty cartridges. The cartridges matched the gun he was carrying when police seized him in a theater.
Nor, despite the decades of sarcasm by earlier critics, has the basic evidence that Oswald killed Kennedy been shaken. Fragments of the bullets that hit Kennedy were matched with the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Depository. Oswald's fingerprints were on the rifle barrel. Fibers from the clothes he wore when arrested were caught on the rifle butt. That morning he had brought a long, thin package to work from the house in Irving where he spent weekends with Marina. He explained to the co-worker who gave him a ride that it contained curtain rods for his Dallas apartment, even though his flat had a full set.
One other problem for a conspiracy: Oswald got his job at the Depository on Oct. 15; the Secret Service did not decide on the motorcade route past this building until Nov. 14. It was not in Dallas newspapers until Nov. 19.
Most of the conspiracy writers contend that there was another gunman in Dealey Plaza, firing from a grassy knoll in front of the presidential motorcade. Numerous witnesses, including some officers, thought they heard shots from that direction. Still, as the House Assassinations Committee neared the completion of an exhaustive two-year reinvestigation of the Kennedy murder in December 1978, it approved a tentative conclusion that there had been no conspiracy.