Jack Ruby kills Lee Harvey Oswald - Nov 24, 1963 - HISTORY.com Jack Ruby kills Lee Harvey Oswald Share this: Jack Ruby kills Lee Harvey Oswald Author Jack Ruby kills Lee Harvey Oswald URL Publisher A+E Networks At 12:20 p.m., in the basement of the Dallas police station, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is shot to death by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner. On November 22, President Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in an open-car motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas. Less than an hour after the shooting, Lee Harvey Oswald killed a policeman who questioned him on the street. Thirty minutes after that, he was arrested in a movie theater by police. Oswald was formally arraigned on November 23 for the murders of President Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit. On November 24, Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver.

Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed that rage at Kennedy’s murder was the motive for his action. Some called him a hero, but he was nonetheless charged with first-degree murder. Jack Ruby, originally known as Jacob Rubenstein, operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime. He also had a relationship with a number of Dallas policemen, which amounted to various favors in exchange for leniency in their monitoring of his establishments. He features prominently in Kennedy-assassination theories, and many believe he killed Oswald to keep him from revealing a larger conspiracy. In his trial, Ruby denied the allegation and pleaded innocent on the grounds that his great grief over Kennedy’s murder had caused him to suffer “psychomotor epilepsy” and shoot Oswald unconsciously. The jury found him guilty of the “murder with malice” of Oswald and sentenced him to die. In October 1966, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the decision on the grounds of improper admission of testimony and the fact that Ruby could not have received a fair trial in Dallas at the time. In January 1967, while awaiting a new trial, to be held in Wichita Falls, Ruby died of lung cancer in a Dallas hospital.

The official Warren Commission report of 1964 concluded that neither Oswald nor Ruby were part of a larger conspiracy, either domestic or international, to assassinate President Kennedy. Despite its seemingly firm conclusions, the report failed to silence conspiracy theories surrounding the event, and in 1978 the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in a preliminary report that Kennedy was “probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” that may have involved multiple shooters and organized crime. The committee’s findings, as with those of the Warren Commission, continue to be widely disputed. Related Videos Lee Harvey Oswald widow says he did not kill J.F.K.: report - NY Daily News Lee Harvey Oswald widow convinced late husband did not kill President John F. Kennedy: report Lee Harvey Oswald widow says he did not kill J.F.K.: report Lee Harvey Oswald with his wife, Marina, and their son, June. (Fotosearch/Getty Images) NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Saturday, November 2, 2013, 11:50 AM Lee Harvey Oswald ’s widow, now a 72-year-old grandmother quietly living in a small Texas town, remains convinced her late husband did not kill President John F. Kennedy .

Marina Oswald Porter — who married the accused assassin while living in the Soviet Union — originally told the Warren Commission that her 24-year-old husband was guilty of shooting Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. But after spending years reading conspiracy theories she now believes the man who fathered two of her children was nothing but a scapegoat for a complex plot that involved the CIA and the Mafia, a close friend told the Daily Mirro r. Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, was arrested just hours after the assassination at Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. (HANDOUT/REUTERS) “Marina certainly doesn’t believe the official story,” said the friend, Keya Morgan. “She always told me Lee Harvey Oswald loved President Kennedy.” Morgan, a documentary filmmaker, said the widow has lived in fear for the five decades since the assassination at Dealey Plaza in Dallas that stunned the world. Marina Oswald Porter, widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, at Capitol Hill in 1992. (John Duricka/AP) The paranoid woman also believes her phones are still tapped by the Secret Service.

“She has had this constant burden on her shoulders and feared she would either be assassinated by the Secret Service or killed by vigilantes in revenge attacks,” Morgan said. President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed while driving through downtown Dallas with his wife, Jackie, and Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie. (HO/AFP/Getty Images) Marina sold Oswald’s wedding ring for a whopping $108,000 last week after it was auctioned off with about 300 other items linked to Kennedy. Marina wrote that she no longer wanted anything to do with the ring, which Oswald left in a cup on a dresser before going to his job at the Texas School Depository the day Kennedy was killed. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy cradles her husband President John F. Kennedy seconds after he was fatally shot while driving through Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. (AP) “At this time of my life I don’t wish to have Lee’s ring in my possession because symbolically, I want to let go of my past that is connecting with Nov. 22, 1963,” she wrote, according to the auction house.

The ring — which has a tiny engraving of a hammer and sickle — was purchased by Oswald in Minsk before the couple moved to the United States. Lee Harvey Oswald with wife Marina Oswald in Minsk, Russia, before they moved to the United States in 1961. (Fotosearch/Getty Images) The buyer asked to remain anonymous. Marina settled in the Dallas suburb of Rockwall in the mid-1970s and has since built a new life with her second husband, Kenneth Porter, 75, and their 47-year-old son, Mark, neighbors told the National Enquirer . Marina Oswald at her husband’s funeral after Jack Ruby fatally shot the accused assassin as he was being transferred to the county jail. (Donald Uhrbrock/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image) Her children with Oswald — June, 51, and Rachel, 50 — also live in the area, where they are all respected members of the community. “She and Ken are good people, the best neighbors you could ever have,” one neighbor, Fred McCurley, told the publication.

Lee Harvey Oswald - Oswald and the JFK assassination - Pictures - CBS News Oswald and the JFK assassination Next Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald is led down a corridor of the Dallas police station for another round of questioning in connection with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Nov. 23, 1963. Oswald, who denied any involvement in the shooting, was formally charged with murder. Credit: AP Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is placed on a stretcher after being shot in the stomach in Dallas, Nov. 24, 1963. Nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald as the prisoner was being transferred through the underground garage of Dallas police headquarters. Credit: David F. Smith/AP Warren Commission report One of the exhibits contained in the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Sept. 26, 1964. The commission said the handbills in the image were samples of ones on which Lee Harvey Oswald had stamped his name and the name "A.J. Hidell". The image below was identified as showing Oswald distributing the handbills in New Orleans on Aug.

16, 1963. Credit: Warren Commission/AP Jack Ruby Jack Ruby talks to a reporter while being returned to jail after a psychiatric examination in Dallas, Jan. 28, 1964. As Lee Harvey Oswald was being transferred from police headquarters to the county jail on Nov. 24, 1963, Ruby shot him in the chest from close range. Ruby was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. He appealed and was granted a new trial, but died of lung cancer before a trial date was set. Credit: Fred Kaufman/AP Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald, poses for the camera while stationed in Atsuge, Japan as a U.S. Marine, ca. May 1958. In early phases of his service at U.S. bases he got good performance evaluations and qualified as a sharpshooter after marksmanship training. But Oswald was court-martialed twice while stationed in Japan, first after wounding himself with an unauthorized pistol and later after a bar fight. Credit: AP Dallas theater The movie theater where Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested after U.S. President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963.

The Warren Commission said Oswald left the book depository moments after shots were fired from the sixth floor, returned by bus and cab to his rooming house, then ventured out again - soon encountering a Dallas police officer who stopped him based on descriptions of the assassination suspect. According to the commission, Oswald fatally shot Patrolman J.D. Tippit with a handgun, then fled into the nearby movie theater. Credit: AP Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald at the Bronx Zoo in New York, ca. 1947. By the time he turned 17 and joined the Marines, Oswald had lived at more than 20 different addresses and attended a dozen schools. He was born in New Orleans on Oct. 18, 1939, two months after his father died of a heart attack. Credit: AP BBC ON THIS DAY | 24 | 1963: Kennedy 'assassin' murdered About This Site | Text Only 1963: Kennedy 'assassin' murdered The man accused of assassinating the US President, John F Kennedy, has himself been shot dead in a Dallas police station.

Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old former Marine, was being transferred from police headquarters to the county jail, at the centre of a large crowd of police officers, reporters and camera crews. The event was being covered live on television, and Americans across the country watched in astonishment as a man - later identified as Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner - stepped forward, drew a gun and shot Mr Oswald at point-blank range. I didn't want to be a hero - I did it for Jacqueline Kennedy Jack Ruby Mr Oswald fell to the floor, grasping his stomach, as a confused scuffle broke out between police, reporters and the gunman. An ambulance rushed Mr Oswald to the Parkland Hospital - the same hospital which had fought to save President Kennedy's life two days earlier - but he died within minutes of his arrival. Mr Oswald was arrested about an hour after the assassination of John F Kennedy, carried out as the President's motorcade passed through the Dealey Plaza in Dallas. He was initially taken into custody for the murder of a policeman, JD Tippit, who appears to have recognised him and approached him just 45 minutes after the killing of the President. Soon after, Mr Oswald was also charged with the President's assassination.

He strongly denied that he carried out the assassination, saying to reporters, "I'm just a patsy." Police gave no explanation of how Jack Ruby came to be in the police headquarters. The building had been under heavy guard after several calls making threats against Oswald's life. Ruby came to Dallas from Chicago 10 years ago. He runs a downtown striptease club, and is said to have links with organised criminals. Police said Ruby had told them, "I didn't want to be a hero - I did it for Jacqueline Kennedy." They said he wanted to spare the president's wife the ordeal of the trial of the man accused of killing her husband. Ruby has been formally charged with murder and is now being held in custody without bail. Nov. 17 2013 11:45 PM A Killer’s Last Steps A tour of Lee Harvey Oswald’s bizarre path after killing JFK. By James Reston Jr. Lee Harvey Oswald holds a rifle in this famous photo taken at 214 W. Neely St. in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas in 1963. Courtesy of the Warren Commission A couple months ago I began the tour for my book about President John F.

Kennedy’s assassination with a lecture at Southern Methodist University in Dallas—a talk I was told would be attended by four members of the Oswald family. Also at the lecture were three men who knew a lot about Nov. 22, 1963: Darwin Payne, an amiable, retired reporter for the Dallas Times Herald who covered the tragedy 50 years ago; Sam Childers, a historian who had worked for five years at the Sixth Floor Museum in the old Texas School Book Depository on Dealey Plaza; and Michael Hazel, another historian who taught for many years at SMU and is a Dallas native. At a dinner after the talk, they offered to take me on a tour of Lee Harvey Oswald sites in Dallas. I leapt at the chance. Our first stop was 1026 N. Beckley Ave. in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, where Oswald was living alone on Nov. 22, one of 17 boarders in the house. To his fellow roomers, the reclusive Oswald was dubbed the “butt twister” for the strange way he walked as he came into the living room to watch TV or talked on the communal telephone to someone in Russian.

The current owner, the granddaughter of the 1963 owner, is trying to sell the place, a low-slung ramshackle of a house in what is still a fairly rough neighborhood. Darwin and Sam thought the place might fetch about $200,000, but the owner is asking $400,000. She suggests that the house should become a public museum where you could see the closet of a room where Oswald slept or the downstairs dining room where he ate his meals. So far, no one is biting. Oswald had slipped out of the book depository unchallenged after the shooting, walked several blocks, caught a city bus, and then hailed a taxi that took him to his boarding house. There he picked up a pistol and a coat and began to walk aimlessly. Did he expect to be apprehended soon? Did he have an escape plan? Or was he in some sort of daze that prompted the aimless walk? If he was trying to escape, how would he do it with no money for a train or airline ticket? Or was he pondering what he would tell the police once they caught him?

Darwin thought this question was relevant to the assassin’s interrogations at the police station after the arrest. His interrogators were amazed at how tough and unfazed Oswald had been during his grilling as if he had steeled himself mentally for the confrontation. Advertisement From Oswald’s rooming house, we proceeded to 214 W. Neely St., still in Oak Cliff. It was there that Oswald and his wife, Marina, had lived with their small child after they returned from Russia, and where in the garden Marina Oswald had taken the famous photograph of the assassin with his new mail-order rifle on his hip. The current owners of the house might ask you for several dollars to see their upstairs apartment. (We saved our money.) Get Slate in your inbox. Oswald apparently was quite proud of that photograph, for he would later send a copy of it to his political confidante, an elegant dandy of Polish extraction named George de Mohrenschildt. On the back of the photograph, Oswald has inscribed it to his friend and added the line in Russian, “Hunter of Fascists. Ha. Ha.

Ha.” When de Mohrenschildt discovered the photograph in his papers years later, he would call it Oswald’s gift from the grave. De Mohrenschildt committed suicide on the day before he was to be interviewed by an investigator from the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1977. From there we proceeded to the neighborhood of W.H. Adamson High School. (Oswald had dropped out of high school in the 10th grade to volunteer for the Marine Corps.) As the crow flies, the school is about a mile from 1026 N. Beckley Ave. Oswald had wandered there, for reasons no one can know. And no one can know why a Dallas policeman named J.D. Tippit had come to this spot and parked his car, for he was out of his assigned district. Of course, the Dallas police were on their highest alert for the president’s assassin. Police radios crackled with the news and deployments. But we can know what happened on the corner of 10th Street and Patton Avenue.

As the loner walked by the police car, Tippit hailed him down, angry words were exchanged, and as Tippit got out of his car, Oswald shot him dead. At least a dozen people witnessed Tippit’s murder. By the evening of Nov. 22, five of them had identified Oswald in police lineups. Advertisement As Darwin, Mike, Sam, and I stood by the historical plaque marking the spot of Tippit’s murder, we pondered yet another of these strange twists of history. Had Oswald had the presence of mind to be polite rather than cantankerous in his encounter with Tippit, he might have moved on, free of suspicion for some time. From the corner where Tippit was murdered, we drove a few blocks to the nearby commercial street of Jefferson Boulevard. Oswald ran there, discarding his coat and ducking in and out of the recessed doorways of storefronts as police cars whizzed by with their sirens wailing. The neighborhood is largely Hispanic now, but its basic configuration remains the same. Johnny Calvin Brewer, the manager of a modest shoe store, had noticed Oswald’s suspicious behavior and began following him for several blocks.

He saw Oswald duck into a vintage movie theater called the Texas Theatre, built in the 1930s and owned for a time by Howard Hughes. Oswald slipped by a distracted ticket taker who was listening to the radio and disappeared into the darkness. Brewer hailed a police officer, Nick McDonald, who entered the theater accompanied by another officer. The black-and-white movie War Is Hell, set in the Korean War and narrated by Audie Murphy, was playing. Soon enough the movie was stopped, and the lights came up. As McDonald came up the aisle, the manager of theater pointed out Oswald from the stage. When the officers approached him, Oswald stood up and shouted, “This is it!” and pulled out his revolver. But McDonald leapt on him, getting his finger between the pistol’s hammer and the bullet, and the gun did not go off. A scuffle ensued. Oswald punched one of the officers, and the officer punched him back, giving Oswald a black eye and a cut. (Later in the Dallas police headquarters, Oswald would allege police brutality.) Outside the theater, word of Oswald’s arrest had spread through the neighborhood, and a crowd gathered.

When Oswald was brought out, people shouted, “Kill him! Kill him!” Advertisement Darwin did not witness Oswald’s arrest. He was still downtown, working another angle. He had learned about a businessman from the building that adjoined the book depository, a dress manufacturer by the name of Abraham Zapruder who had apparently filmed the presidential motorcade coming down Elm Street with his home movie camera. Zapruder, it turned out, had a diligent secretary who berated him that morning for not bringing in his little Super 8 camera, a Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series. She made him go home to get it. “How many times does the president drive by your office?” she had asked. Zapruder had taken his place at the pergola above the grassy knoll and climbed onto a cement pillar, about 3 feet high, to watch JFK drive by. But he swayed with vertigo, and his secretary stayed on the ground, holding his legs to stabilize him as he filmed. Darwin remembers going to Zapruder’s office in the hours after the murder to find out whether the story of the 8 mm film was true.

He remembers his conversation with the modest businessman as his camera lay on the desk, its historic cargo still undeveloped. It would not be long, however, before the Secret Service turned up and seized the film. But Darwin had his story as the first reporter to track down the man who had what would become the central piece of evidence of the Kennedy assassination. Advertisement At Dealey Plaza we stood next to Zapruder’s cement pillar and only a few yards from the picket fence that shields the grassy knoll that is so central to the mythology of a possible second shooter. Only a few hawkers of conspiracy theories ambled along the sidewalk that morning, handing out their flashy pamphlets and touting their sensational fantasies. Usually, there are more, Darwin said. At first glance the grassy knoll appeared more compact than I remembered it, especially as I looked down the slope of Elm Street from beneath Oswald’s sniper nest. The sidewalk alongside the street bears two opaque cement squares that mark the spots where the first shot hit both Kennedy and Gov. John Connally and the second shot killed the president. The Zapruder film does not capture the first shot of the so-called magic bullet because a billboard blocked the perspective of Zapruder’s lens.

But that sign has since been removed. As we made our way back to the car, Sam, the former historian at the book depository, drew our attention to the plaque on the side of the building. With its black background and embossed metal lettering, it describes the events of Nov. 22, 1963. In its last few lines the citation states that Oswald “allegedly” shot the president. Over the years, Sam said, the employees of the Sixth Floor Museum were always having to repair the damage to that word, for it was continually defaced, scratched, or had its paint removed. There was a footnote to our tour. We had tarried at the old Beaux-Arts police headquarters on Main Street, built in 1914, where Oswald was interrogated after his arrest and where Jack Ruby shot Oswald. Why did Ruby shoot Oswald? It was a question I was getting at every turn on my book tour . Sam eased the car into a parking space across the street from the old headquarters, which now houses municipal courtrooms. Advertisement According to Darwin, Ruby loved two things—his dog, Sheba, and the strippers at his Carousel Club, which was no more than a few blocks away.

The club was a favorite of police officers, and Ruby often passed out cards inviting them to stop by after work. Popular and seedy, the club was considered the second-best strip club in Dallas, after the Colony Club, where the famous stripper Candy Barr was the main attraction. Spontaneity, randomness, and cruel fate are at the center of the entire assassination story. On the morning of Nov. 24, 1963, Ruby parked his car, with Sheba inside, and strolled to the Western Union office, where he proceeded to send money to one of his hard-pressed performers. He then ambled down Main Street a very short distance, perhaps no more than 50 yards, to the police headquarters and proceeded, unchallenged, down a narrow automobile ramp into the basement. As he arrived at the bottom of the ramp, he found himself in a throng of reporters clamoring for a glimpse of the assassin, who was at that very moment to be transferred from the city to the county jail. Just as Ruby reached the edge of the crowd, Oswald emerged from a far door, escorted by police Chief Jesse Curry and other officers. Ruby pushed his way forward, pulled his pistol, and shot Oswald.

Ruby would say at his trial that he had two reasons to shoot Oswald. This was four years before the Israeli victory during the Six-Day War, and the debate over the supposed complacency of Jews in the Holocaust still raged. Ruby’s first motive for his action, he testified, was to show that Jews could be bold and brave and aggressive. (His real name was Jacob Leon Rubenstein.) His second motive was meant to sound even nobler. He wanted to relieve Jackie Kennedy the suffering of witnessing the trial of her husband’s assassin and of possibly being called as a witness herself. These explanations feel like transparent rationalizations, concocted by his lawyers afterward to impart sympathy from the public. I discounted them both entirely, as did my guides. Darwin had attended Ruby’s first press conference a month or so after the assassination and described Ruby as totally incoherent and hallucinatory. The assassin’s assassin lived out his life in a jail cell overlooking Dealey Plaza until his death 3½ years later in January 1967.

Advertisement To hear the details of this story—the cherished dog left in the car, the money wired to the stripper, the short stroll to the police headquarters, the walk unhindered down the ramp, the arrival just as Oswald emerged—confirmed my long-held suspicion about the spontaneity of Ruby’s violent action. If Ruby had been part of a wider conspiracy, how could all of these random acts have been orchestrated to get him to the right place at the exact instant when Oswald emerged? Indeed, spontaneity, randomness, and cruel fate are at the center of the entire assassination story. What if Ruby’s stripper had not needed money on that day? What if Oswald had not encountered Tippit? What if the motorcade route had been different, or, as Connally had argued, there should be no motorcade at all in Dallas? What if the FBI had followed up on their leads about Oswald, or Oswald hadn’t gotten the job at the book depository only a month before Nov. 22? And the cruelest of all, what if President Kennedy hadn’t been wearing a back brace that held him upright as the sole remaining target for Oswald’s second fatal shot?

To order the e-book of James Reston Jr.’s Accidental Victim, go to the website for Zola Books . Paul Bentley, 87, Dies; Detective Arrested Oswald - The New York Times The New York Times U.S. |Paul Bentley, 87, Dies; Detective Arrested Oswald Search Continue reading the main story Paul Bentley, the Dallas police detective who helped arrest Lee Harvey Oswald 80 minutes after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy , died Monday at his home in Dallas. He was 87. His death was confirmed by Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, the exhibit that occupies the floor in the former Texas School Book Depository from which Oswald fired his 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle at the 35th president. When Detective Bentley hurtled over several rows in the Texas Theater that day, Nov. 22, 1963, to get to the slim man pointing a pistol at another police officer, he had no idea that the man was Kennedy’s killer.

“At the time of the arrest, I had no knowledge whatsoever that this might possibly be our suspect in regards to the assassination of the president,” Detective Bentley told WFAA-TV in Dallas in a 1963 interview. But he did know that the man might be a suspect in the shooting of Officer J. D. Tippit, who had been killed half an hour earlier when he confronted Oswald on a nearby street some 45 minutes after Kennedy was shot. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The assistant manager of a shoe store near the theater, in the Oak Cliff section southwest of downtown, had told the ticket taker that a man acting suspiciously had sneaked into the theater. “The person who saw him suggested that she call the police, because he might be connected to either the shooting of the president or of Officer Tippit,” Mr. Mack said in an interview on Thursday. Photo Paul Bentley, right, with Lee Harvey Oswald in custody outside the Texas Theater in Dallas. Credit Jim MacCammon, courtesy of Howard Upchurch Detective Bentley was at a police station when reports arrived that someone had fired on the president’s motorcade and, soon afterward, that an officer had been shot.

He went to the site of the Tippit shooting, then to the theater. “Bentley and several other officers went up to the balcony,” Mr. Mack said. “Officer Nick McDonald went through the back door, behind the screen, and stood on the stage. The shoe store manager was with him and pointed out the guy who had been acting suspiciously. As McDonald approached, Oswald stood up and said, ‘Well, it’s all over now.’ ” When Officer McDonald came close, Oswald punched him and drew a pistol. Detective Bentley raced down from the balcony. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy “That’s when I tried to get as close to him as possible, trying to grab the weapon,” he said in an oral history given to the museum in 1994. “I came over the backs of seats,” twisting his right ankle between two of them, and, along with other officers, subdued Oswald. Photographs of Oswald in custody show a cut over his eye.

It was caused by the Masonic ring Detective Bentley was wearing during the scuffle, about 20 rows back from the movie screen. Seated in the patrol car to the left of Oswald during the ride downtown, Detective Bentley heard a dispatcher say Oswald was the prime suspect in the Kennedy shooting. “I turned to him, and I said, ‘Did you shoot President Kennedy?’ ” Detective Bentley recalled. “He said, ‘You find out for yourself.’ ” (Detective Bentley's recollection is unsupported by other existing historical records.) Paul Lester Bentley was born in Dallas on June 29, 1921. He served in the Army Air Forces in World War II and joined the Dallas police in 1947. He retired from the department in 1968, then became security director for First National Bank in Dallas. He is survived by his wife of 66 years, the former Mozelle Robertson; a sister, Mildred Waldroop; a son, James; and one grandson. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Two days after the Kennedy assassination, while being escorted through the basement of the Dallas city jail, Oswald was shot to death by Jack Ruby.

At Ruby’s left at that moment, memorably captured by cameras, was Detective Jim Leavelle, wearing a light-colored Resistol. Clutching Ruby’s right arm, trying to wrench away his pistol, was Detective L. C. Graves — Detective Bentley’s brother-in-law. Correction: July 26, 2008 An obituary on Friday about Paul Bentley, a Dallas detective who helped capture the presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, included an incorrect identification from a museum curator, in some editions, for the brand of hat worn two days later by Jim Leavelle, a Dallas police detective photographed escorting Oswald when he was killed. It was a Resistol, not a Stetson. Correction: August 6, 2008 An obituary on July 25 about Paul Bentley, the Dallas police detective who helped arrest Lee Harvey Oswald after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, included incorrectly, without qualifying its source, a remark Mr. Bentley remembered hearing after the arrest. Many years later, Mr.

Bentley told oral history interviewers that on the road to police headquarters with Oswald, after hearing police dispatchers say the man in custody was a prime suspect in the assassination of Kennedy, he asked Oswald, “Did you shoot President Kennedy?” and that Oswald replied, “You find out for yourself.” Mr. Bentley’s recollection is unsupported by other existing historical records. The obituary also described Mr. Bentley’s role in the arrest imprecisely. Mr. Bentley adjusted the handcuffs after Oswald complained they were too tight; he did not snap the handcuffs on. (Another officer had placed his handcuffs on Oswald moments earlier.) A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: Paul Bentley, 87; Detective Arrested Oswald. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe John F. Kennedy Assassination Fast Facts - CNN.com John F. Kennedy Assassination Fast Facts CNN Library Updated 4:44 PM ET, Thu November 10, 2016 Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds. Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F.

Kennedy: The day – President John F. Kennedy greets supporters during his visit to Fort Worth, Texas, on Friday, November 22, 1963. This year marks 51 years since his assassination in Dallas, an event that jarred the nation and fueled a multitude of conspiracy theories about whether Kennedy was killed by a single gunman acting alone in the Texas School Book Depository. Here are some images from that fateful day as it unfolded. Hide Caption 1 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – First lady Jacqueline Kennedy at a breakfast held by the Chamber of Commerce in Fort Worth with Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, left, and Kennedy. Hide Caption 2 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – The Kennedys arrive at Love Field in Dallas on a trip to advance the upcoming 1964 campaign. Hide Caption 3 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – About 11:45 a.m., Texas Gov. John B.

Connally Jr., waving to the crowd, and the Kennedys depart Love Field for a 10-mile tour of Dallas. The President asked about the weather earlier in the day and opted not to have a top on the limousine. Hide Caption 4 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – The Kennedys and Connallys leave Love Field with Secret Service Agent Bill Greer driving the presidential limousine. The motorcade is on the way to the Trade Mart, where Kennedy is to speak at a sold-out luncheon. Hide Caption 5 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Crowds line the street as Kennedy's motorcade heads toward downtown Dallas. A group of White House staffers follows the motorcade in a bus several vehicles behind the presidential limousine. Hide Caption 6 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Dallas Police Officer Bobby Hargis, background, is one of four motorcycle officers assigned to Kennedy's car, which reaches Houston Street shortly before 12:30 p.m.

"I thought, 'Well, we've got it made now,' " Hargis said. "And then bam! It happens." Hide Caption Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Kennedy is seen approximately one minute before he is shot. Hide Caption 8 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Seen through the limousine's windshield as it proceeds along Elm Street past the Texas School Book Depository, Kennedy appears to raise his hand toward his head after being shot. The first lady holds Kennedy's forearm in an effort to aid him. Hide Caption 9 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Kennedy slumps against his wife as the bullet strikes him in the head. Connally, who is wounded in the attack, begins to turn around just to the left of Jackie Kennedy. Hide Caption 10 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F.

Kennedy: The day – Kennedy slumps in the back seat of the car and his wife leans over to him as Secret Service Agent Clinton Hill rides on the back of the car. Hide Caption 11 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – The limousine carrying the mortally wounded President races toward the hospital seconds after three shots are fired. Two bullets hit Kennedy and one hit Connally. Hill rides on the back of the car as the wives cover their stricken husbands. Hide Caption 12 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – The limousine speeds along Elm Street toward the Stemmons Freeway overpass moments after shots are fired at Dealey Plaza. Hide Caption Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Photographers are seen running shortly after the shooting. Hide Caption 14 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F.

Kennedy: The day – Hurchel Jacks, Vice President Johnson's driver in the motorcade, listens with others to news accounts on the car radio outside the Parkland Hospital emergency entrance. After the shots were fired, Jacks had rerouted the vice president's car to safety. The ABC radio network broadcast the first nationwide news bulletin reporting that shots have been fired at the Kennedy motorcade. Hide Caption 15 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Before 1 p.m., Dr. Tom Shires, with Parkland public relations director Steve Landregan, rear, describes the President's wounds to the press. Four doctors worked on the stricken Kennedy in the emergency room. Hide Caption 16 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – American broadcast journalist and anchorman Walter Cronkite removes his glasses and prepares to announce Kennedy's death. CBS broadcast the first nationwide TV news bulletin reporting on the shooting. Hide Caption 17 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F.

Kennedy: The day – A photographer captures a New Yorker's expression of shock upon hearing the news. At 1 p.m. the 46-year-old President of the United States is declared dead, becoming the fourth U.S. president killed in office. Hide Caption 18 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – After 2 p.m., Jacqueline Kennedy leaves Parkland Hospital with her slain husband's body. She would ride in the back with the bronze casket. "I had a feeling that if somebody had literally fired a pistol in front of her face that she would just have blinked," said Dallas Police Officer James Jennings, who helped put the casket in the hearse. Hide Caption 19 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – The hearse carrying Kennedy's body pulls away from Parkland Hospital en route to the airport. Hide Caption 20 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F.

Kennedy: The day – Lee Harvey Oswald, a 24-year-old ex-Marine, is arrested in the back of a movie theater where he fled after shooting Dallas Police Patrolman J.D. Tippit. That incident occurred approximately 45 minutes after the assassination. Hide Caption 21 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Vice President Lyndon Johnson takes the oath of office to become the 36th president of the United States. He is sworn in by U.S. Federal Judge Sarah T. Hughes, left, with Jacqueline Kennedy by his side on Air Force One. Hide Caption 22 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – The casket containing the body of President Kennedy is moved to a Navy ambulance from the presidential plane. Jacqueline Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy stand behind on the elevator. Hide Caption 23 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Jacqueline and Robert Kennedy get into the Navy ambulance with the president's body at Andrews Air Force Base, just outside Washington.

The body of the president is taken to Bethesda Naval Hospital for an immediate autopsy. Hide Caption 24 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – Police mug shot of Lee Harvey Oswald. He is arraigned in the slaying of Officer Tippit on November 22 and/or the murder of the president the next day. As Oswald is being transferred from the Dallas city jail to the county jail, nightclub owner Jack Ruby shoots and kills him, an event captured live on TV. Ruby is arrested immediately. Hide Caption 25 of 26 Photos: John F. Kennedy: The day John F. Kennedy: The day – A man holds up a copy of the New York World-Telegram featuring the news of the assassination. Major television and radio networks devote continuous news coverage to the events of the day, canceling all entertainment and all commercials. Many theaters, stores and businesses, including stock exchanges and government offices, are closed. Hide Caption

Question: Who shot Lee Harvey Oswald after his arrest for the assassination of John F Kennedy?
Answer: JACK RUBY