Here’s your chance to learn more about Jack Ruby, the man who shot the man who shot the President in 1963.
Even if you’re still not sure who killed Kennedy, you’re probably pretty certain who killed his alleged assassin.
After all, strip club owner Jack Ruby was caught on live TV and in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph firing the shot that killed Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963, two days after President Kennedy was gunned down in a Dallas parade.
But — in the eyes of the law, at least — Ruby died an innocent man.
That’s just one of the facts explored in a new exhibit at Dallas’ Sixth Floor Museum, which seeks to set the record straight on Ruby’s life, crime and trial. “Jack Ruby: Voices from History” debuted earlier this month as the nation prepares to mark the 41st anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination on Monday.
Though a jury convicted Ruby in 1964 of murder with malice and sentenced him to death, an appeals court later reversed the verdict on the grounds that a police sergeant gave false and inadmissible testimony and that the trial should have been moved outside Dallas County.
Ruby became ill and died in January 1967, a month before his new trial was set to begin in Wichita Falls.
The temporary exhibit, separate from the permanent exhibit on Kennedy’s assassination, is expected to run at least six months, organizers said. It’s a patchwork of photos, newspaper pages, artifacts and quotes from witnesses, key players, Ruby’s acquaintances and Ruby himself.
“Every time we talk to people about Jack Ruby, we find that not many people know much about him,” said museum curator Gary Mack.
Check it out.