The Original Dallas Morning News Article
Sunday, February 17, 2008
The Dallas County district attorney's office has unearthed a treasure
trove of memorabilia from the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's
assassination in an old safe on the 10th floor of the courthouse.
It
includes personal letters to and from former District Attorney Henry
Wade, a gun holster, official records from the Jack Ruby trial, letters
to Ruby and clothing that probably belonged to him and Kennedy's
accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, said Dallas County District
Attorney Craig Watkins.
And conspiracy theorists will rejoice
over one find: a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between
Ruby and Oswald plotting to kill the president because the mafia wanted
to "get rid of" his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
"It
will open up the debate again about whether there was a conspiracy,"
said Mr. Watkins, who at 40 was born four Novembers after Kennedy was
killed in 1963.
But the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza said the conversation could not have happened.
Terri
Moore, Mr. Watkins' top assistant, said she believes the transcript is
part of a movie that Mr. Wade was working on with producers.
"It's not real. Crooks don't talk like that," she said.
"If that transcript is true, then history is changed because Oswald and Ruby were talking about assassinating the president."
Mr.
Wade wrote about the movie, Countdown in Dallas, in letters found in
the safe. Mr. Wade prosecuted Ruby in Oswald's death, although the
verdict was overturned and Ruby died of cancer in 1967 before his
second trial could begin.
"I believe it important for the film
to be factually correct, that it come from official files, that the
witnesses who in any way were participants should appear in person in
the film, and in my opinion, will result in an excellent film not only
of interest at present but the record of events for history," Mr. Wade
wrote.
It is unclear if any further work was ever done on the film.
Mr.
Watkins is expected to formally announce the finding of about a dozen
boxes of materials on Monday at a news conference. The vast majority of
the documents are authentic records from the 1960s.
The
purported Oswald-Ruby conversation took place on Oct. 4, 1963, at
Ruby's Carousel Club on Commerce Street. It reads like every conspiracy
theorist's dream of a smoking gun that ties the men to a plot to kill
Kennedy.
Part of the two-page transcript reads:
Lee: You said the boys in Chicago want to get rid of the Attorney General.
Ruby: Yes, but it can't be done ... it would get the Feds into everything.
Lee: There is a way to get rid of him without killing him.
Ruby: How's that?
Lee: I can shoot his brother.
...
Ruby: But that wouldn't be patriotic.
Lee: What's the difference between shooting the Governor and in shooting the President?
Ruby: It would get the FBI into it.
Lee:
I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it
will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have
to have some money to live on while I do the planning."
Later, Ruby warns Oswald that the mafia will ask Ruby to kill him if he's caught.
Gary
Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, laughed when
told of the transcript. He has not seen it or any of the other
documents found in the safe.
The transcript resembles one
published in a report by the Warren Commission, which investigated
Kennedy's assassination and determined that Oswald was the lone gunman.
The FBI determined that conversation - again between Oswald and Ruby,
but this time about killing the governor - was definitely fake.
Mr.
Mack said that it's well documented that Oswald was in Irving the
evening of Oct. 4, at a home where his wife was staying. He could not
have been at Ruby's club.
Mr. Mack suggested that the transcript
in the Warren Commission report was probably used as a model for the
one found in the district attorney's safe.
The conversation
published in the commission report was a fake account of a conversation
between Ruby and Oswald on the same night at the Carousel Club. A
now-deceased Dallas attorney "re-created" the conversation after
Kennedy's assassination for authorities after he claimed he recognized
Oswald in a newspaper photo as the man he saw talking to Ruby that
night.
"The fact that it's sitting in Henry Wade's file, and he
didn't do anything, indicates he thought it wasn't worth anything," Mr.
Mack said of the newly found transcript. "He probably kept it because
it was funny. It's hilarious. It's like a bad B movie."
William
J. Alexander, the only surviving prosecutor from Ruby's trial for
killing Oswald in the days after Kennedy's assassination, told the
district attorney's office he'd never seen the Ruby-Oswald transcript.
But it's labeled with a sticker that says, "Plaintiff's Exhibit 27."
Typically, exhibits for criminal trials are marked as state's exhibits
or defense exhibits.
The DA's office said Mr. Alexander, who rarely talks about the Ruby trial, declined to be interviewed.
While the two-page transcript is most likely fake, Mr. Watkins says he's never believed Oswald acted alone.
"You know me: I'm always a conspiracy theorist," Mr. Watkins said. "It was too simple of an explanation. I don't see that."
Mr.
Watkins, Ms. Moore and several investigators from the DA's office found
the boxes of materials about a year ago because they had heard that the
gun used to kill Oswald was somewhere in the courthouse. They didn't
find the gun, which Mr. Mack said is privately owned, but instead found
the records and other items.
For the past year, they've been
trying to determine what they discovered and began scanning some of the
documents. The process is not complete.
The boxes probably sat
in the safe since being moved when the courthouse opened in 1989. Mr.
Watkins said he plans to donate the files to an entity that will
authenticate and preserve them, as well as make them available to the
public.
"It's interesting, and it's not ours," Mr. Watkins said. "It's the public's."
No
one has yet thoroughly read all of the documents, so it's not known
whether they contain information previously unknown to the public or
the Warren Commission.
Mr. Mack, the museum curator, said many
of the court files and even personal letters to Mr. Wade and Ruby have
been widely circulated. The museum already has a transcript of Ruby's
trial, as well as his medical records.
Still, he said, he would
be eager to obtain the documents and authenticate them to see "anything
and everything that can help answer lingering questions."
"These records may not have any particular value," he said. "But 100 years from now, who knows what's going to be important?"
