Mr. GRIFFIN. Can you tell us how much has been paid and how much is
claimed as to the total bill?
Mr. RUBY. Well, the original investigator that we had, I think, we paid
him about $5,000 already, plus some expenses of a thousand dollars or
so; I don’t remember the exact figures, and he claims we owe him $1,500.
Mr. GRIFFIN. More?
Mr. RUBY. Yes; and there is a little dispute about that.
Now, we have got a new investigator, I don’t know his name there. My
sister hired him down there and she has given him several hundred
dollars, I don’t know how much. I don’t know how much she gave him.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did Mr. Howard get any money?
Mr. RUBY. Oh, yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How much was he paid?
Mr. RUBY. I think we paid him, I am not sure of this figure though,
$3,500.
Mr. GRIFFIN. And the remaining funds that have been paid, I take it,
have been paid to Mr. Belli?
Mr. RUBY. Belli got, I think, $11,000, if I am not mistaken. Then
we paid the doctors, I don’t know, $5,000 or $6,000, you know, the
psychiatrists that came down, and some of my expenses came out, just my
flight expenses and telephone calls, and who else now?
We gave Burleson some money, he has got, I think, about a thousand
dollars that we gave him since the trial. He was supposed to get paid
from Belli before. That is the reason we didn’t pay him. However,
he claimed Belli never gave him anything. And we paid, like George
Senator, the witness, our No. 1 witness, we had to give him money to
live on because he was so, what shall I say the word for that, well,
he lost his job and he was so upset he couldn’t, you know, he just
couldn’t work.
And then we had to pay—he went home and I had to send him airplane fare
to come back, you know, and there is——
Mr. GRIFFIN. How about Larry Crafard, did you pay him any money?
Mr. RUBY. Larry Crafard, I think we just gave him a few dollars, $5
maybe because he was broke when he was living on the road, he didn’t
have a dime, so I think I gave him some money.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did Larry incidentally contact you any time while you were
in Detroit?
Mr. RUBY. No, no; I wish he would have, because he hitchhiked all the
way down there, and I was driving at the same time, but he didn’t know
I lived there, and we——
Mr. GRIFFIN. How was he notified to come to the trial?
Mr. RUBY. I don’t know. If I remember correctly he came on his own.
He just thought that when all this came out about, you know, Jack
getting him to take that picture of Earl Warren, he had the camera or
something, I forgot the full details myself, but he is the one who took
the picture, right, if I am not mistaken, and he just thought he should
come down to help Jack as much as he possibly could.
Could I go a little further?
Mr. GRIFFIN. I don’t really want to pry into this unless this is
something you care to reveal.
Mr. RUBY. The most important thing is coming up now, I mean one of the
most important things.
Mr. GRIFFIN. All right. I do want to reflect this—that I don’t want
to push you into saying things, talking about subjects that you would
rather not talk about, and I realize that this in one of them. Now, if
you do want to say something about it why, of course, we would be happy
to hear anything you want to say.
Mr. RUBY. Well, I returned home, I went from L.A. to Dallas, I talked
to Jack, I talked to Howard. We hadn’t hired Belli yet. He was going to
go down and see Jack, and talk to him before he decided to come in,
you know, and take over the case.
I went back to Detroit and in a couple of days I get another call, I
get a call, from Woodfield. He is very upset. He just heard some news
that he thinks I must know. However, it is so confidential that he
can’t even tell it to me over the phone. And I talk to Mike Shore and
between us—they couldn’t tell me on the phone, I had better go back to
California.
So, I go out there again. The story he tells me is that, in the
meantime he is trying to make contacts, this is about a week later.
He is trying to make contact to sell the story to the different
publications, to the Saturday Evening Post, you know, and other
publications, and somebody from the Saturday Evening Post called him,
I think—now this is what he told me—and said that Tom Howard was up
to the Saturday Evening Post office in Dallas offering for sale a
picture of President Kennedy with a piece of his head shot off, and so
I immediately, or as soon as I could, when I left them, I called my
sister Eva in Dallas and I said, “Get a hold of the agent that has been
talking—that has been taking—your story there and tell them about this
so they can check into it.”
And then I went home, I flew back to Detroit.
By the time I got to Detroit they had tried to contact me to get some
more information on the story. I mentioned this to Tom Howard and he
denied it.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Was his denial a flat denial?
Mr. RUBY. Yes, yes; you know, complete, and you know. However, I
think it was the fellow at the Saturday Evening Post that said—now I
have given all this to the special agents or, I think, the Treasury
Department.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Yes.
Mr. RUBY. The Saturday Evening Post man said, “Well, let them come in
front of me in my office and deny it.”
But, of course, we never brought it to a head. But, anyhow, I don’t
know what happened. They never told me, of course, as you know.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Do you recall the name of the Saturday Evening Post man in
Dallas that Howard allegedly contacted.
Mr. RUBY. No; I did originally but I think I gave it to the agents.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Did you talk personally to this man from the Saturday
Evening Post who claims he talked to Howard?
Mr. RUBY. No; Woodfield.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Somebody—you just reported that somebody said—“Let Howard
come before me and deny it.”
Mr. RUBY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. I take it this was the Saturday Evening Post man who
allegedly made that statement?
Mr. RUBY. Let me look in my book. Perhaps I have it.
Mr. GRIFFIN. What I am getting at is where did you get—who told
you—that the Saturday Evening Post man said that?
Mr. RUBY. Woodfield.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Woodfield?
Mr. RUBY. Yes.
Mr. GRIFFIN. So everything you know about this transaction between
Howard and the Saturday Evening Post comes either from Woodfield or
from Howard’s denial?
Mr. RUBY. Yes; right. I don’t have it. I may have it somewhere else in
another book but I don’t have it here.
By the way, if you are asking about the finances, we still have bills
of—altogether from what my sister tells me—of close to $10,000 that are
unpaid now.
Mr. GRIFFIN. Is there any money left in either of the funds at this
point?
Mr. RUBY. No; I have been putting it off.
I mean, Burleson insists he wants some money so I have been sending him
out of my personal account.
Mr. GRIFFIN. How soon after your brother shot Oswald did you see him?
Mr. RUBY. I think it was about at least a week.