Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy

The Commission investigated claims that Jack Ruby visited Parkland Hospital at approximately 1:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963, when press secretary Malcolm Kilduff announced President Kennedy’s death. Reporter Seth Kantor reported and testified that Ruby briefly stopped him at the hospital entrance during that window and tugged at his coattails. The only other person who claimed to have seen Ruby at the hospital did not come forward until April 1964, had never seen him before, allegedly saw him only briefly with an obstructed view, and was uncertain of the time. Ruby firmly denied going to Parkland, asserting he went directly to the Carousel Club, and video tapes of the hospital scene do not show Ruby. Telephone records and Armstrong’s testimony established that Ruby arrived at the Carousel by no later than 1:45 p.m., limiting the period when Kantor could have encountered Ruby at Parkland to only a few minutes before or after 1:30 p.m. Even if Ruby had driven from Parkland to the Carousel in the nine or ten minutes possible under normal conditions, his presence at the Morning News until after 1 p.m. and at the Carousel before 1:45 p.m. would have made his hospital visit exceedingly brief, especially given likely traffic congestion. The Commission concluded it was improbable that Kantor saw Ruby at Parkland at that time and suggested that Kantor may have confused his encounter, perhaps recalling instead an event at a midnight press conference at the Dallas Police Department on November 22, when both men were present.

Ruby’s Decision to Close His Clubs

Upon arriving at the Carousel Club shortly before 1:45 p.m. on November 22, Ruby instructed Andrew Armstrong to notify employees that the club would be closed that night. During the following hour, Ruby made several telephone calls, spoke with Armstrong and Larry Crafard about the assassination, and watched television. At 1:51 p.m., he called his close friend and financial backer Ralph Paul in Arlington, Texas, urging him to close his drive-in restaurant as well. Unable to reach former girlfriend Alice Nichols, who was at lunch, Ruby telephoned his sister Eileen Kaminsky in Chicago, who described him as completely unnerved and crying over the President’s death. When Nichols returned the call, Ruby cut short the conversation with his sister to speak with her, expressing shock over the assassination despite their not having socialized in some time. At 2:37 p.m., Ruby called his boyhood friend Alex Gruber in Los Angeles, briefly discussing a dog he had promised to send, a potential carwash business, and the assassination before losing composure and ending the three-minute conversation. Two minutes later, he telephoned Ralph Paul once again.