a case study in confidence

Here's a great one - a somewhat nervous but still unflappable Nancy Hamilton.

She worked for Jack Ruby as a bartender.

These are just normal, ordinary people - I mean, at one point she was down on her luck and she needed money and so she ended up working for Jack Ruby whom she says "provided booze, girls, and gambling to the cops" (and "everyone knew it", she says) - and the next thing you know she's Mrs. Nancy Hamilton, owner of the Hamilton Stables.




So now, after having seen this video, here's the next case study:

Did Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald know each other?

There are over a dozen eyewitnesses who say "yes, they did" - and not only that, they tell very specific stories about why they remember Oswald - some of which are even corroborated.

There are four strippers at the Carousel Club, Bill DeMar the ventriloquist/hypnotist, a bartender, three customers, and an individual who was standing "right next to Oswald" when Jack Ruby said to him: "You son of a bitch, I told you never to come in here".

That's an even 10, and Bill DeMar even recalls specifically having Oswald participate in one of his bits. And one of the girls specifically recalls Ruby telling her to go over and embarrass him a little - and another girl remember Oswald walking in the back door and Ruby saying to him, "Hi Ozzie". Ten eyewitnesses gets you two and half standard deviations, usually - that would be very hard to impeach in a court of law. (The attorneys would have to do a lot of work, let's say).

My question is: who's telling us they didn't know each other? Who wants us to believe that? Who is out there telling us there's "no evidence" that Oswald and Ruby knew each other?

Thing is - I had to dig a while to get the information about the ten eyewitnesses. If I just go to the internet and ask Google "did Ruby know Oswald" I get half yes and half no, and the "no" crowd seems very vocal. They're a minority but they're still very loud. Noise pollution, most likely.

People need to be able to see the actual evidence if they want to ask a question like that, and they can't see that if there's piles and piles of fluff. Not sure what to do about that exactly (other than to counter with volume, which is expensive), so for now I've arrived at two concepts, which are "very small timelines of very limited scope", and "very small packages for export". The former is just a visual, while the latter includes the supporting evidence. The purpose being, to float this stuff in a form that's easily accessible, to the layman as well as the expert.

Yes, there is evidence - and yes, it can be impeached (as can "all" evidence, even that obtained by the Warren Commission).

But after seeing the above one must consider carefully the concept of "confidence". Curry obviously isn't answering the math, he's answering the politics. He's "getting heat" from both the news media and the Congress Critters, and he's doing the "who, me?" bit. (I was kinda waiting for the voice from the woodwork - "was one of them JD Tippit?" - or, y'know, Curry's sentence continuing with "there were only four cops who knew him personally, and they're all dead."  

So far, I've got Jack Ruby into the following:

1. Prostitution
2. Gambling
3. Liquor Violations
4. Gun Running
5. Narcotics

And every single one of these activities includes corrupt Dallas cops.

And then there is the story of Michael Robinson.

And IF we are to believe that story, then maybe we should add another one.

6. Murder

The thing is, Robinson talks about an "agency guy" and a young man in a uniform. It's almost like he thinks the cops did the killing but the agency guy directed them.

On the Robinson story, we have NO eyewitnesses, and only the word of a 14-year-old kid.

But on the Oswald story we have 10 eyewitnesses plus two more maybe's.

The question is: if Ruby knew Oswald, does that automatically make this a conspiracy?

I'm kinda trying to figure out why some people are putting so much time and energy (and money) into trying to convince us that Ruby didn't know Oswald. It could be just a picket ("conspiracy, perish the thought"), but there could be something more to it.

Brian,

I seriously doubt Ruby and Oswald knew each other.  If I was asked to bet on it I would say they did not know each other.

Virtually every single Oswald-Ruby sighting can be matched to Larry Crafard.  I know you have found an issue with one of the sightings through the timeline due to Ruby allegedly being elswhere that I want to look into in more depth but no one can escape the fact that virtually all of the other "sightings" were actually Larry Crafard.

That is including ALL of the Carousel Club sightings.  Larry Crafard's resembled Lee Oswald.  He was categorically and factually mistaken for him on quite a few occasions and I have the documentation to back it up.  If certain individuals after the assassination thought they saw Lee Oswald in the Carousel Club then IMO they saw Larry Crafard.  If Ruby was calling a guy who resembled Oswald "Ozzie" at the Carousel then that certainly feeds into a theory that Crafard was impersonating Oswald with Ruby's foreknowledge but it could also mean that "Larry", or "Smokie" which was his nickname, has been converted after the fact by witnesses as being "Ozzie" once the media blitz began.  If I'm instead to believe that Ruby had someone who resembled Oswald working for him at The Carousel Club, who was mistaken for Oswald on many occassions, AND he had Oswald at The Carousel Club for some reason then I find that hard to swallow.

A different question would be 'did Ruby know of Oswald' prior to the assassination of JFK?  Now that might garner a different answer from me but I will have virtually nothing by way of evidence to support my answer.

So unfortunately you're going to have to place me down as someone who is on the path of being convinced that they did not know each other -- time and energy in trying to convince others has always been supported by the evidence and the record.

What stables did Nancy Rich own? In 1966 she married Stuart R Hamilton of Maine.

Going back a year on another thread here shows much PROMIS on your question, oui?

Colonel Von Hello wrote:Brian,

I seriously doubt Ruby and Oswald knew each other.  If I was asked to bet on it I would say they did not know each other.

Virtually every single Oswald-Ruby sighting can be matched to Larry Crafard.  I know you have found an issue with one of the sightings through the timeline due to Ruby allegedly being elswhere that I want to look into in more depth but no one can escape the fact that virtually all of the other "sightings" were actually Larry Crafard.

That is including ALL of the Carousel Club sightings.  Larry Crafard's resembled Lee Oswald.  He was categorically and factually mistaken for him on quite a few occasions and I have the documentation to back it up.  If certain individuals after the assassination thought they saw Lee Oswald in the Carousel Club then IMO they saw Larry Crafard.  If Ruby was calling a guy who resembled Oswald "Ozzie" at the Carousel then that certainly feeds into a theory that Crafard was impersonating Oswald with Ruby's foreknowledge but it could also mean that "Larry", or "Smokie" which was his nickname, has been converted after the fact by witnesses as being "Ozzie" once the media blitz began.  If I'm instead to believe that Ruby had someone who resembled Oswald working for him at The Carousel Club, who was mistaken for Oswald on many occassions, AND he had Oswald at The Carousel Club for some reason then I find that hard to swallow.

A different question would be 'did Ruby know of Oswald' prior to the assassination of JFK?  Now that might garner a different answer from me but I will have virtually nothing by way of evidence to support my answer.

So unfortunately you're going to have to place me down as someone who is on the path of being convinced that they did not know each other -- time and energy in trying to convince others has always been supported by the evidence and the record.

Hi Colonel - yes I agree, there seem to be a lot of "Crafard as Oswald" sightings. However Crafard worked at the Carousel Club, did he not? So, he wouldn't have been there as a customer, would he? And Ruby wouldn't have told him, "I told you never to come here, you sonuvabitch". Anyway, it's far too early for me to be arguing about this stuff. I'm trying to remain deliberately agnostic till all the data is in place, and even after that I'm going to try my best to retain an open mind. I'm just noticing there's a LOT of events in play, and making sweeping judgements about the relationships between them is a little premature (for me, at this point). All I can do so far is observe patterns and point out gaps, and once in a while the computer kicks out a postable piece of evidence.

I probably talk too much, Colonel. The stuff comes out of my mouth forcefully and with authority, but that doesn't mean I know anything, it just means I'm being a pompous jerk and I need to be cut down a notch.

But this is why I posted the thread in this way - the real question is, "why do we believe one piece of evidence, and not another". Y'know, you got an eyewitness Bill DeMar who swears up and down it was Oswald specifically (and has never changed his story), and Crafard was probably working there at the very same time DeMar was doing his show.... so why do we disbelieve him? Or, we could ask the question the other way: is there any specific reason why we should disbelieve DeMar (I mean, "besides" the pattern of Crafard sightings that you suggested)?

This is a "theoretical" question, right? I'm not trying to argue about the evidence, or even about this specific event. I'm asking "in general", what are the factors that contribute to such a result - because I mean, if we're going to discount the DeMar sighting then we end up actively ignoring a vital piece of evidence, don't we?

Tom Scully wrote:What stables did Nancy Rich own? In 1966 she married Stuart R Hamilton of Maine.

Hi Tom - here's a little on Nancy:

"On June 1, 1964, an FBI agent took Nancy a plane ticket, paid for by the Commission, and drove her out to Logan Airport. The man saw a thirtyish woman, very nervous, with obtrusive facial tics, quick in her speech, articulate despite a minor lisp, and full of information -- on the family of Prince Faisal of Saudi Arabia (for which she served as interpreter, since she speaks five languages, including two dialects of Arabic), on the civil rights movement (she is prominent in CORE), on her lifelong career as an undercover agent for various district attorneys and the FBI, on counterfeit cases she has cracked, on the difficulty she is having as a housewife (after her exciting days underground), on her first husband (a writer) and her present one (too old for her). "

Hello? Arabic? Dialects of Arabic? That's unusual, isn't it?

"Nancy, in whichever of her many guises, is an unfortunate young woman -- one who left high school to get married at seventeen, had a child (whose whereabouts she no longer knows), was divorced at nineteen, attempted suicide at twenty; married again, but saw her husband only in intervals of his psychiatric care, and separated after eight months; at twenty-three, got a Mexican divorce and married her "first" husband of the Logan Airport conversation -- a "writer" who also had a history of psychiatric treatment and who killed himself, with arsenic, in 1962. This man had as colorful a mind as Nancy's own. He told her he had been a mercenary on both sides of the Spanish Civil War, piloting a boat that ran guns to the armies -- all at the age of sixteen. He knew many prominent gangsters. This is the husband Nancy somehow lost track of in Boston, though he left a note saying he would be in Dallas (he was not). Nancy called the police to see if he was there; then came to Dallas, though he was not there. Guess who answered her phone call? J. D. Tippit. When she came to Dallas, she went straight to the police station. Guess who was the first man she saw behind the desk? Good old J. D. Nancy's stories preserve an admirable economy; most of the cast is known from other contexts. In a space of three or four or five months, she works for three or four clubs, including two months at The Carousel. From Dallas, she and her husband (retrieved, at some point, from South Bend, where he has been living, Nancy tells us, "with my secretary") move to New Orleans, where the writer dies. Nancy, alone again at twenty-six (except for four children scattered somewhere), goes to California and, by her own account, helps various district attorneys solve crimes, using the name Julie Ann Cody. She marries a fourth time in 1964, a fifth time in 1966.

...

"Poor Nancy, the Pasionaria of some Warren critics, would hardly deserve mention were it not for Mr. Lane's deft presentation of her as a dire threat to Commission findings. Mr. Lane told us he was very impressed with her and placed great reliance on her memory -- something she must have sensed, for she revealed to him that the apartment at which the Cuba meetings took place had an ammunition depot, "probably half a dozen land mines, and, why, twenty or thirty packing cases of hand grenades." Why did she omit this in her Warren testimony? She did not leave it out -- Mr. Griffin told the reporter to strike it from the record. (Her deposition ends with the question, "Is it not a fact that all that has occurred between you and me in this interview, with Mr. Griffin, is on the record?" To which Nancy answered, "That is correct.")

The former attorney of hers cited above called Rich "an habitual liar, who found it difficult to tell the truth . . . continually telling wild tales concerning her exploits or the exploits of others. These stories were so ridiculous that no one could possibly believe them."⁽¹⁾

On the other hand, Nancy Hamilton, in this interview, is telling us something very specific, in several different ways: she's telling us that Jack Ruby provided "liquor, gambling, and girls" to the Dallas Police Department. (And don't forget the second interview on that video, which corroborates Nancy's estimate of "600" as the number of DPD cops Jack Ruby knew or was friendly with).

We don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater, do we? We can believe "one" thing she says and not "another", can't we?

One thing I want to know is how Frank Sinatra fits into all of this.

Stan Dane wrote:One thing I want to know is how Frank Sinatra fits into all of this.

You mean the bit about the motel owner in Oklahoma?  

Mark A. O'Blazney wrote:Going back a year on another thread here shows much PROMIS on your question, oui?

Mark,

as Tom pointed out back then, it was a different Nancy Hamilton involved with PROMIS
https://reopenkennedycase.forumotion.net/t215-nancy-perrin-rich-hamilton-promis

Stan Dane wrote:One thing I want to know is how Frank Sinatra fits into all of this.

You mean how he fits in with Nancy? That's easy, Stan.
Enjoy.

Oh, I get it now.  Sorry, should have read further.  Thanks, Greg.