As boxes open, so does old debate about JFK

The recently unearthed boxes are full of memorabilia from the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

By JENNIFER EMILY, Dallas Morning News

Last update: February 23, 2008 - 5:06 PM

DALLAS

The Dallas County district attorney's office has unearthed a treasure trove of memorabilia from the aftermath of President John F. Kennedy's assassination in an old safe on the 10th floor of the courthouse.

It includes personal letters to and from former District Attorney Henry Wade, a gun holster, official records from the Jack Ruby trial, letters to Ruby and clothing that probably belonged to him and Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, said Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins.

And conspiracy theorists will rejoice over one find: a highly suspect transcript of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald plotting to kill the president because the Mafia wanted to "get rid of" his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

"It will open up the debate again about whether there was a conspiracy," said Watkins, who at 40 was born four Novembers after Kennedy was killed in 1963.

But the curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza said the conversation could not have happened.

Terri Moore, Watkins' top assistant, said she believes the transcript is part of a movie that Wade was working on with producers.

"It's not real. Crooks don't talk like that," she said.

"If that transcript is true, then history is changed because Oswald and Ruby were talking about assassinating the president."

Wade wrote about the movie, "Countdown in Dallas," in letters found in the safe. Wade prosecuted Ruby in Oswald's death, although the verdict was overturned, and Ruby died of cancer in 1967 before his second trial could begin.

"I believe it important for the film to be factually correct, that it come from official files, that the witnesses who in any way were participants should appear in person in the film, and in my opinion, will result in an excellent film not only of interest at present but the record of events for history," Wade wrote.

It is unclear if any further work was ever done on the film.

The purported Oswald-Ruby conversation took place on Oct. 4, 1963, at Ruby's Carousel Club on Commerce Street. It reads like every conspiracy theorist's dream of a smoking gun that ties the men to a plot to kill Kennedy.

Part of the two-page transcript reads:

Oswald: You said the boys in Chicago want to get rid of the attorney general.

Ruby: Yes, but it can't be done ... it would get the feds into everything.

Oswald: There is a way to get rid of him without killing him.

Ruby: How's that?

Oswald: I can shoot his brother. ...

Ruby: But that wouldn't be patriotic.

Oswald: What's the difference between shooting the governor and in shooting the president?

Ruby: It would get the FBI into it.

Oswald: I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have to have some money to live on while I do the planning.

Later, Ruby warns Oswald that the Mafia will ask Ruby to kill him if he's caught.

Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, laughed when told of the transcript.

The transcript resembles one published in a report by the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination and determined that Oswald was the lone gunman.

The FBI determined that conversation -- again between Oswald and Ruby, but this time about killing the governor -- was definitely fake.

Mack said it's well documented that Oswald was in Irving, Texas, the evening of Oct. 4, at a home where his wife was staying. He could not have been at Ruby's club.

Mack suggested that the transcript in the Warren Commission report was probably used as a model for the one found in the district attorney's safe.

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