The Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago will be the setting for a bold and provocative play about the assassination of our 35th president.”
Opening August 11, the play was written by editor/author Hillel Levin. He blames the Chicago organized crime figures for the Kennedy’s death. Levin says the play will bring new information to light proving his claim.
I’m most curious about what Levin has to say about Jack Ruby, the man who lived at the intersection of the JFK story and Chicago organized crime.
Source: New play Assassination Theater delves into details of JFK’s death – Chicago Tribune
From the Museum of Broadcast Communications:
Hillel Levin is an investigative reporter and author who has written extensively about organized crime. His books include When Corruption Was King and In With the Devil. Both are in development to become major motion pictures. His magazine articles have appeared in New York magazine, Metropolitan Detroit, Chicago magazine (where he was also editor) and Playboy. The movie, Idol’s Eye, based on his Playboy article, “Boosting the Big Tuna,” will be directed by Olivier Assayas. For additional information, visit www.HillelLevin.com.
Rereading some of Larry Hancock’s “Some Would Have Talked” regarding Ruby today. It’s pretty obvious he was not morose over the weekend as he used for an excuse afterward. He was stalking Oswald. Who was the first person to visit him in jail? A Campisi, one of his superiors, most likely a “made’ member of the Mafia. Who told him what? Keep your mouth shut, we’ll get you out, your a National Hero?
Not that I personally believe “the mob did it”. This may have been their only role.
Jack Ruby to me is one of the keys to understanding the assassination that has never been fully addressed. Seth Kantor’s fine book on him “The Ruby Cover-Up” is dated (1978) but still essential. To my knowledge no single book has examined his role so extensively since. While there is much other information in many books since, much of it well documented, no one has focused on assembling it. His organized crime connections throughout his life are well documented. While not a made member of the Italian/Sicilian Mafia in part because of his Jewish roots he made himself a useful tool to those he idolized. He sill lived by the code of Omerta. He was ordered to do the Hit on Oswald. To have refused would have most likely assured his own death.
I think Ruby is a red herring, a limited hangout, a misdirection to implicate the mob as the determining factor. The mob could not pull off the cover-up. The mob couldn’t manipulate the Warren Commission. It is not that there was no mob connections, it is just that they are low figures on the totem pole of the system. And it was a systemic hit, a coup d’etat.
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I also subscribe to the probable connection between Jack Ruby and Lee H. Oswald. His problems begin with his movements after JFK was killed. He left the offices of the Dallas Morning News (only blocks from the TSBD). Then he goes off-line for a bit of time. Next we see/hear from him he is taped only steps from the Homicide Detectives offices at the DPD and the room where Oswald was being questioned on Friday Evening. Of course…his then appears at the News Conferences and then makes his correction for the Fair Play for Cuba connections of Oswald.
More importantly, it’s Ruby’s movements BEFORE the killing. Being visible at the Newspaper while, according to witnesses testimony later on, Ruby reported he was waiting for an appointment with a agent of the DMN who said he wasn’t even working that day. Then Ruby stays at the DMN long enough to make an ‘event’ about the shooting. Almost, according to a secretary, ‘acting’ overly ‘overcome with grief’. Ok maybe.
However, then he goes off the chart is either seen at Parkland or not, delivers his food to the DPD, then makes his appearance on tape while at the News conference and in the Hallway out side of the Homicide Offices at the DPD. Ok. Maybe.
Yet, here is this man, Jack Ruby, who is out of his mind with grief but, only hours earlier, did NOT WANT TO WALK the 3 blocks to see the President of the United States turn off of Main Street onto Houston? I mean….What???? The President of the United States was going to drive right past him. Ok. Maybe.
Then Ruby goes about his business and, despite what Mark Lane said to a national audience on the Merv Griffin Show, was NOT PHOTOGRAPHED at the TSBD area. I actually agree with this part.
Yet, what I find amazing is that Oswald, who could have been simply running for the local Greyhound Bus Terminal, would actually be only a few hundred yards from Jack Ruby’s Apartment when he kills Officer JD Tippet. Tippet of course, was driving like a madman in the hour after JFK was killed in his patrolling of the Oak Cliff area.
A person with nothing to gain here…no book to write…film to sell…would simply be thinking that Oswald was never supposed to leave that building and, because he did escape, wanted answers from someone who would know. Of course that someone would be Jack Ruby…who did everything he could to be seen PUBLICLY after the shooting of JFK.
Peace.
Could they have planned, orchestrated and covered up the big event No,
could they have supplied the gunmen, very possible.
I am always amused by the Ruby deniers (Bugliosi, Posner, et. al.)who claim Jack has a sudden emotional response on 11/24.
First, he was stalking LHO all weekend, presumably while armed. Second, he locked his dog in the car. People do this all the time, even with young children. Third, he carried several thousand dollars in cash when he visited Western Union to wire $25 to an out of town stripper.
Did it ever occur to these geniuses that career criminals such as Ruby set up alibis before doing a hit? The dog supports a “sudden impulse” rather than a premeditated murder. The cash supports the carrying of a .38, but did he really need $2,000 to wire taxi fare to a stripper?
When I was in college I was advised to keep a size 55 military coat on the back seat, in which I kept my weed. If a cop stopped and looked, I would say I picked up a hitchhiker who got out a few miles ago and forgot his coat.
“Do you expect me to believe that?’ the cop would have asked.
“No, but I expect the judge will find reasonable doubt as to whose weed you found.”
Mobsters aren’t stupid.
Why Jack Ruby was probably part of the Kennedy conspiracy http://dailycaller.com/2014/03/14/why-jack-ruby-was-probably-part-of-the-kennedy-conspiracy/ via @dailycaller