Jack Ruby shot and killed alleged John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald on national television 48 years ago in the basement of the Dallas Police Department.
Ruby's second jury trial for the murder of Oswald was set to be tried in Wichita Falls when the nightclub owner died in jail.
Ruby's conviction and death sentence was reversed and the city of Wichita Falls was set to make the history books when his second trial was set in this city of 105,000 near the Red River.
Two days earlier on Nov. 22, 1963, Oswald allegedlly shot and killed President Kennedy as his motorcade wound slowly through downtown Dallas.
Oswald was also charged with killing Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit about thirty minutes later.
Oswald was arrested about an hour later in a theater in Dallas.
He was arraigned for the murder of both Kennedy and Officer Tippit.
On Nov. 24, 1963, at approximately 12:24 p.m. Oswald was being transported to a more secure jail facility on live national television when he was shot by Ruby.
Conspiracy theorists would later claim Oswald was eliminated as part of coverup so he couldn't tell law enforcement everything he knew.
Ruby said he was a supporter of the President's and killed Oswald out of anger.
Ruby's first jury trial was in Dallas.
The Texas Court of Crimial Appeals later ruled Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas and reversed his conviction.
The second trial was set for Wichita Falls until Ruby died from lung cancer.
Shortly before his death Ruby would claim he was injected with cancer to keep him quiet.
Jack Ruby was born in 1911 in Chicago. As a youth he reportedly ran errands for Al Capone.
After a failed business venture in Chicago he moved to Dallas where he opened the Silver Spur nightclub.
On the day of Kennedy's assassination, Ruby owned the Carousel Club nightclub in Dallas.
Seth Kantor, a White House correspondent, said he saw Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital where Kennedy was taken about an hour after JFK was assassinated.
Conspiracy theorists have speculated Ruby might have tampered with evidence at the hospital.
Kantor later wroter a book entitled "Who Was Jack Ruby?"
Kantor testified in front of the Warren Commission that Ruby was at the hospital after the assassination.
When the Warren Commission chose to believe Ruby when he said he wasn't at the hospital, Kantor decided to put his version in a book.
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