Since, and limit this to strictly since the conviction, you have
visited Jack nearly daily in the jail?
Mrs. GRANT. Well, I would say at least six times out of the week.
Mr. BURLESON. What is, in your opinion, Jack’s present condition?
Mrs. GRANT. I believe he is mentally deranged, inasmuch as I’m not a
doctor, but from what he says to me.
Mr. BURLESON. You have now, as of this moment, been informed by a
newspaper and also by me about what Jack attempted to do today?
Mrs. GRANT. Yes; I have.
Mr. BURLESON. And you were informed and knew of what Jack had attempted
to do about a month ago when he rammed his head up against the wall,
were you not?
Mrs. GRANT. Yes.
Mr. BURLESON. What has Jack told you as to what you should do with and
to yourself?
Mrs. GRANT. He wants me to do away with myself.
Mr. BURLESON. Does he give you a reason why?
Mrs. GRANT. He thinks they are going to kill out all the Jews and he
has made remarks that 25 million Jews have been slaughtered.
Mr. BURLESON. Already?
Mrs. GRANT. On the floor below.
Mr. BURLESON. And they are being slaughtered where?
Mrs. GRANT. In the jail and sometimes it’s planes going over and they
are dropping bombs on the Jews.
Mr. BURLESON. Has he told you about hearing or seeing Jews boiled in
oil?
Mrs. GRANT. Oh, yes.
Mr. BURLESON. And has he told you about seeing or hearing his brother,
Earl, being dismembered?
Mrs. GRANT. Yes; and his children.
Mr. BURLESON. And Earl’s children, and by dismembered, he has seen them
cut off?
Mrs. GRANT. Arms and legs—they are cut off.
Mr. BURLESON. Does he, nearly every time you talk to him, ask you to
check on them, when is the last time?
Mrs. GRANT. I have to sort of tell real lies, that I just got through
talking with Sam and Earl and with Eileen and with Sam and everything
is OK.
Mr. BURLESON. Because he says that they have been doing this to them?
Mrs. GRANT. He says many times he has seen Sam on the second floor and
the rabbi was going—yesterday, they took the rabbi, sometimes they take
Stanley.
Mr. BURLESON. That’s Stanley Kaufman you are talking about?
Mrs. GRANT. Stanley Kaufman.
Mr. BURLESON. In other words. Jack just doesn’t make sense when you
talk to him?
Mrs. GRANT. Oh, no; then sometimes he will say one thing that will be
all right and then he goes off into this stuff.
Mr. BURLESON. Has Jack told you that he was actually tried for the
killing of President Kennedy?
Mrs. GRANT. No; but he thinks that they think that he killed the
President.
Mr. BURLESON. Did he tell you that what he went through with was not
really a trial, but a farce?
Mrs. GRANT. Yes.
Mr. BURLESON. And part of a play?
Mrs. GRANT. In fact; his verdict is on the 14th and the next day he
says to me in front of Eileen, “When will the trial be?”
Mr. BURLESON. Did he say it wasn’t really Judge Brown that was up there
but somebody else?
Mrs. GRANT. That’s exactly what he said.
Mr. BURLESON. Did he tell you anything about their introducing evidence
in his absence?
Mrs. GRANT. Yes.
Mr. BURLESON. And that evidence that they were supposed to have
introduced is the fact that he killed President Kennedy?
Mrs. GRANT. Well, he just thinks they are blaming him for it and they
think he did it and they are going to take it out on all the Jews.
Mr. BURLESON. Does he tell you many times that you will never see him
again because he will be killed?
Mrs. GRANT. Every time he kisses me goodby that day, he says, “You will
never see me again. Do away with yourself.”
Mr. BURLESON. To save yourself this punishment?
Mrs. GRANT. That’s right.
Mr. BURLESON. What is your opinion as to his present condition mentally?
Mrs. GRANT. I have seen him just 24 hours ago and he was in a very bad
state of mind.
Mr. BURLESON. He was in a very bad state of mind?
Mrs. GRANT. That’s right.
Mr. BURLESON. How about physically?
Mrs. GRANT. He has lost between 35 and 40 pounds to my knowledge. He
looks like he has been in a concentration camp.
Mr. BURLESON. What is his greatest desire as you know it right now?
Mrs. GRANT. He wants to tell the Warren Commission the truth—he wants
truth serum and a lie detector test.
Mr. BURLESON. The truth being not going into the psychomotor variant
epilepsy.
Mrs. GRANT. He don’t know much about that—he doesn’t even know what
they are talking about.
Mr. BURLESON. He just wants to tell how he felt and how these things
affected him?
Mrs. GRANT. That’s right.
Mr. BURLESON. I believe that’s all on those.
Mrs. GRANT. All right.
Mr. HUBERT. When he tells you these various things, do you try to
straighten him out and say to him that it is not so?
Mrs. GRANT. When it first started—I didn’t realize this—I hadn’t said
things—I said, “Don’t be crazy,” just words like that—“what are you
talking crazy,” and then when we got to—this Dr. Beavers into the case
and I talked to him and he read something of his report and, of course,
my sister was here at that time. Every day he would say to her, “You’ll
never see me again. Kiss me goodby through the glass.” You know, if it
wasn’t so serious it would be funny in a way, because it don’t seem
like him. It seems that if I agree with him it’s no good and I have
tried—I realize Dr. Beavers said if you’d try agreeing with him then he
says, “You don’t believe me, do you?” He says, “They are playing a game
with you, don’t believe Phil, don’t believe him.” And I said, “What
about the rabbi?” And he says, “The rabbi don’t listen to me.” And
truthfully, every time the rabbi went up there he came down sick and
disgusted with himself—he’s trying to knock some sense into Jack and it
don’t work—it doesn’t register with the rabbi, you see.
Mr. HUBERT. What I wanted to get at—you all are trying to discourage
him from having these views?
Mrs. GRANT. Well, after talking to the psychiatrist, I said I don’t
know what to do. If I tell you, you will agree with him it is no good,
and if I don’t—I stay there and listen through this glass.
Mr. BURLESON. I might be able to help with that—help clarify that—when
he says that they have just killed Earl or Sam or their children, you
say, “No, that’s not true because I just talked to them?”
Mrs. GRANT. I say, “I just talked to them,” and then we’ll get onto
something and I will try to talk about a friend who wrote a letter or
someone came to see him and he goes right back, he says, “There’s no
more Earl. They have dismantled him.” That’s the words he uses.
Mr. BURLESON. And do you come back and say, “Well, it’s not true
because I just talked to him 30 minutes ago or 2 hours ago?”
Mrs. GRANT. Or, he makes me promise, “Will you call them tonight to
be sure it’s not so—to be sure it wasn’t him,” and I’ll be sure that
it is somebody else on the phone. They can check with the calls last
Saturday—he made seven calls to Chicago.
Mr. HUBERT. Who did?
Mrs. GRANT. Jack; he don’t know that he made them, he don’t know that
he made that many. I got the letter that he made them from Eileen at
home.
Mr. HUBERT. He is allowed to make phone calls though?
Mrs. GRANT. Well, sometimes—I think he annoys them a little bit—those
who sympathize with him and they figure he’s pretty screwy, you know he
is really gone—he makes these collect calls to Chicago and they let him
and there are one or two guards that aren’t as nice—I think they are
not as tolerant.
Mr. BURLESON. Let’s go off the record just a second, so that I can give
Mr. Hubert some information.
(Discussion between counsel and the witness off the record.)
Mr. BURLESON. They have a pay phone out there in the jail, do they not?
Let’s go off the record just a second to give Mr. Hubert some
information.
(Discussion between counsel off the record.)
Mr. HUBERT. I have to explain what went on while we were off the record.
Let the record show that while we were off the record Mr. Burleson
was explaining to me the circumstances used in the jail for allowing
prisoners, especially those who are under a death sentence to use the
pay phone in the jail, and that was the substance of the conversation
off the record.
Now, do you have any more questions, Mr. Burleson? Are you through?
Mr. BURLESON. Yes.
Mr. HUBERT. I wanted to get into the matter of the financing of the
defense of your brother, Jack—I suppose we should start with the
selection of the attorneys originally in this case. Now, we know that
Mr. Tom Howard apparently took the first affirmative action on behalf
of Jack Ruby in the afternoon of November 24.
Mrs. GRANT. On the 24th.
Mr. HUBERT. And I want to ask you if you know by whose authority he
took this action?
Mrs. GRANT. Ralph Paul, who knows nothing about lawyers—only knew
Howard and they called them thinking they could get back on bond.
Now, I didn’t know Oswald died until later in the afternoon. I was
hysterical over this shooting and being sick and the President’s
assassination—in fact, my television was on but it was turned down.
Mr. HUBERT. In other words, it was Ralph Paul that called Mr. Howard
for the initial step?
When it came to the charge of the matter which ultimately followed, did
you have anything to do with the selection of the attorneys who would
defend your brother Jack?
Mrs. GRANT. Let me put it this way—there was Daugherty and Sullivan
and Jim Martin, and one guy was threatened and one fellow’s wife
didn’t want him in. Tom Howard pushed Jim Martin out of the case.
I was panicky here. I had asked Tom to call Fred Brunner, Charles
Tessmer—what is the name of this Erisman?
Mr. BURLESON. Fred Erisman.
Mrs. GRANT. Erisman or something like that and also Percy Foreman to
get another lawyer—you know, a super lawyer that I felt—I didn’t know
too much about Tom, but talking to Chicago and people telling me here
and everything, anyway, Tom remained in the case and I understand
he didn’t contact these people as quickly as he should and Earl was
panicky up in Detroit.
Mr. HUBERT. Didn’t Earl come down here as a result of that?
Mrs. GRANT. Not that day.
Mr. HUBERT. Not that day?
Mrs. GRANT. I don’t know how many days later he did come, but we were
on the phone constantly. He went to the west coast and he went to see
one of the names there, Mike Shore who knows Frank Sinatra there and we
figured that they would know somebody and that’s how Belli came into
the picture. Now, that is that part of the picture. Now, we didn’t have
any money.
Mr. HUBERT. What about Tonahill, how did he get in?
Mrs. GRANT. Oh: he was a friend of Belli’s—Belli invited him in—as much
as I know.
Mr. HUBERT. In other words, Tonahill came in after Belli did; is that
correct?
Mrs. GRANT. Or maybe together—they were together I think on insurance
cases previously—I assume this.
Mr. HUBERT. So, Belli chose a local lawyer, as it were, to go along
with him; is that the idea?
Mrs. GRANT. Well, Tom was still in the case. Tom called him right away.
Mr. HUBERT. Called who?
Mrs. GRANT. You know more about that—Tom got us an investigator, Bob
Dennison.
Mr. BURLESON. You made the statement that Tom called you?
Mrs. GRANT. Tom called you.
Mr. HUBERT. You mean Phil Burleson?
Mrs. GRANT. Phil Burleson.
Mr. HUBERT. And ultimately, in any case, Mr. Belli was retained to
handle the defense?
Mrs. GRANT. That’s right.
Mr. HUBERT. Was a fee arrangement made with him?
Mrs. GRANT. Let me explain that part—this is what I know. I was not
in San Francisco or Los Angeles. Earl told me this—he says, “You’re
looking at Belli—$75,000,” and Earl thought you might as well have said
$75 million, but he says, “I will want about $25,000 to pay my expenses
and I think I could write a book and make $50,000.”
Mr. HUBERT. Earl was telling you that?