The Play
On November 22nd 1963, while campaigning for support in Dallas, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated. A suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was swiftly arrested and charged. Two days later in the basement of the Dallas Police Department a local nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, gunned him down live on national television creating twenty million witnesses to murder.
Fifty years on and the speculation continues. Kennedy: A beacon for peace or a man whose recklessness nearly brought the world to the point of nuclear disaster? The proud family man on the covers of the glossy magazines or a drug-dependent sex addict behind closed doors? An incorruptible master statesman or a president in office because of massive vote-rigging? Oswald: Lone nut or an unwitting patsy? Committed communist or CIA asset? No such debate exists for Ruby. The label "the Mafia's man in Dallas" has stuck fast. A blunt underworld weapon used to silence Oswald. A piece that fits the puzzle. No one asks if Jack Ruby fits the piece. This play is underpinned by on-the-record evidence – statements at Ruby's trial and before the Warren Commission, desperate notes smuggled out of the Dallas County Jail and his responses to polygraph and psychiatric testing. It's a story you won't have heard. |