He appeared to be considering whether or not he was going to answer my
questions, and I told him that I had just come from the third floor,
and had been looking out of the window, and that I had seen Honest
Joe, who is a Jewish merchant there, who operates a second-hand loan
pawn shop, so to speak, specializing in tools, on Elm Street, and who
is more or less known in the area because of the fact that he takes
advantage of any opportunity to get free advertising. He at that time
had an Edsel car, which is somewhat a rarity now, all painted up with
“Honest Joe” on there. He wears jackets with “Honest Joe” on the back.
He gets writeups in the paper, free advertising about different things
he loans money on, like artificial limbs and things like that. And I
had noticed Honest Joe across the street when I was looking out of
Chief Batchelor’s office.
So I remarked to Jack Ruby, I said, “I just saw Honest Joe across the
street over there, and I know a number of Jewish merchants here that
you know.”
And Ruby said, “That is good enough for me. What is it you want to
know?”
And I said these two words, “Jack--why?”
He said, “When this thing happened”--referring to the assassination,
that he was in a newspaper office placing an ad for his business. That
when he heard about the assassination, he had canceled his ad and had
closed his business, and he had not done any business for 3 days. That
he had been grieving about this thing. That on the Friday night he had
gone to the synagogue and had heard a eulogy on the President. That his
sister had recently been operated on, and that she has been hysterical.
That when he saw that Mrs. Kennedy was going to have to appear for the
trial, he thought to himself, why should she have to go through this
ordeal for this no-good so-and-so.
Mr. HUBERT. Did he use any words or did he say “no-good so-and-so”?
Mr. SORRELS. He used the word “son-of-a-bitch,” as I recall.
Mr. HUBERT. All right.
Mr. SORRELS. That he had heard about the letter to little Caroline, as
I recall he mentioned. That he had been to the Western Union office to
send a telegram, and that he guessed he had worked himself into a state
of insanity to where he had to do it. And to use his words after that,
“I guess I just had to show the world that a Jew has guts.”
I, of course, asked him when he was born. He told me in Chicago, March
25, 1911. That he operated the Carousel Club. And also a Vegas Club.
I asked him if anyone else was involved in this thing besides him, and
he said that there was not.
I asked him if he knew Oswald before this thing happened, and he said
he did not. He said that he had been a labor organizer years ago.
I asked him if he had ever been convicted of any offense or done any
time, and he said no felony, that he had a JP release in 1954--in other
words, he had been arrested but released by the JP in 1954.
I asked him what his father’s name was, and he said his name was Joseph
Rubenstein.