Evidence
Items displayed in this exhibit
As with any murder committed in the City of Dallas, the assassination of President Kennedy generated a homicide report. Brief and to the point, it lays out the time, place, and method of the murder. It also provides the names of the coroner, physician, officers making the report, and officers who arrested Lee Harvey Oswald.
Oswald holding rifle. Prints and Photographs 1964/30, Dallas Police Department photos accompanying Attorney General’s Office John F. Kennedy assassination investigation files.
The Dallas Police Department property clerk’s invoice or receipt of “property taken from the person of Lee Harvey Oswald” and “confiscated from his rooming house and home” is a 25-page, meticulously detailed document. Items included a “Map of Beautiful Russia,” his daughter’s birth certificate, his discharge from the U.S. Marine Corps, rolls of unexposed film, clothing, toiletries, and an Italian-made 6.5 mm Carcano Model 91/38 rifle, serial number C2766. All of this was seized as evidence in the murders of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit.
Oswald’s property. Photo shot by FBI and developed by Dallas Police Department. Prints and Photographs 1964/30, Dallas Police Department photos accompanying Attorney General’s Office John F. Kennedy assassination investigation files.
Two days later, on November 24, 1963, television cameras captured the moment that nightclub owner Jack Ruby killed Oswald in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters while Oswald was being transferred to the county jail.
An office memorandum from the City of Dallas concerning the wine and beer permit first issued to Jack Ruby for his Vegas Club in 1955 recommended cancellation of that permit because Ruby was “not of good moral character,” and had a reputation for being the opposite of “a peaceable and law-abiding citizen.”
Caricaturist Gordon Currie published a collector’s copy edition titled Inside the Ruby Trial in 1964, including a statement from lawyer Melvin Belli on “Why I’m defending Ruby.”
Following his 1964 conviction for Oswald’s murder, Ruby appealed his sentence. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals case file 37900 (Jack Rubinstein, alias Jack Ruby), contains, among other things, the verbatim transcript of his court-ordered Sanity Hearing in the Criminal District Court Number Three of Dallas County, June 13, 1966.
Items displayed in this exhibit
Police report, “Property clerk’s invoice or receipt,” November 26, 1963
[Box 2008/054-3]
Homicide report, November 22, 1963
[Box 2008/054-3]
City of Dallas office memorandum re: Vegas Club (Jack Ruby’s liquor license—Ruby “not of good moral character”)
[Box 2008/054-3]
FBI Interview of Jack Ruby, December 25, 1963 (16 pages, missing one page)
[Box 2008/054-3]
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals: Case file 37900, Jack Rubinstein, alias Jack Ruby, vol. VIIII, Statement of Facts, Sanity Hearing, June 13, 1966
[Box 1993/088-3293]