While at the Times-Herald, Ruby displayed to the composing room employees a “twistboard” he had previously promised to Gadash.[C6-963] The twistboard was an exercising device consisting of two pieces of hardened materials joined together by a lazy susan bearing so that one piece could remain stationary on the floor while a person stood atop it and swiveled to and fro.[C6-964] Ruby had been trying to promote sales of the board in the weeks before President Kennedy was killed.[C6-965] Considerable merriment developed when one of the women employees at the Times-Herald demonstrated the board, and Ruby himself, put on a demonstration for those assembled.[C6-966] He later testified: “* * * not that I wanted to get in with the hilarity of frolicking, but he [Gadash] asked me to show him, and the other men gathered around.”[C6-967] Gadash agreed that Ruby’s general mood was one of sorrow.[C6-968]
At about 4:30 a.m., Ruby drove from the Dallas Times-Herald to his apartment where he awakened his roommate George Senator.[C6-969] During his visit in the composing room Ruby had expressed the view that the Weissman advertisement was an effort to discredit the Jews.[C6-970] Senator testified that when Ruby returned to the apartment, he began to discuss the Weissman advertisement and also a signboard he had seen in Dallas urging that Chief Justice Earl Warren be impeached.[C6-971] Shortly thereafter, Ruby telephoned Larry Crafard at the Carousel Club.[C6-972] He told Crafard to meet him and Senator at the Nichols Garage adjacent to the Carousel Club and to bring a Polaroid camera kept in the club.[C6-973] After Crafard joined Ruby and Senator, the three men drove to the “Impeach Earl Warren” sign near Hall Avenue and Central Expressway in Dallas. There Ruby instructed Crafard to take three photographs of the billboard. Believing that the sign and the Weissman newspaper ad might somehow be connected, Ruby noted on the back of an envelope a name and post office box number that appeared on the sign.[C6-974] According to George Senator:
* * * when he was looking at the sign and taking pictures of it, and the newspaper ad, * * * this is where he really wanted to know the whys or why these things had to be out. He is trying to combine these two together, which I did hear him say, “This is the work of the John Birch Society or the Communist Party or maybe a combination of both.”[C6-975]
Pursuing a possible connection between the billboard and the newspaper advertisement, Ruby drove to the post office and asked a postal employee for the name of the man who had rented the box indicated on the billboard, but the employee said that he could not provide such information. Ruby inspected the box, however, and was upset to find it stuffed with mail.[C6-976] The three men then drove to a coffeeshop where Ruby continued to discuss the two advertisements. After about 30 minutes, they left the coffeeshop. Crafard was taken to the Carousel Club; Ruby and Senator returned to their apartment,[C6-977] and Ruby retired at about 6 a.m.[C6-978]
The morning and afternoon of November 23.—At 8 or 8:30 a.m. Crafard, who had been asked to feed Ruby’s dogs, telephoned Ruby at his apartment to inquire about food for the animals.[C6-979] Ruby forgot that he had told Crafard he did not plan to go to bed and reprimanded Crafard for waking him.[C6-980] A few hours thereafter Crafard assembled his few belongings, took from the Carousel cash register $5 of money due him from Ruby, left a receipt and thank-you note, and began hitchhiking to Michigan. Later that day, Andrew Armstrong found the note and telephoned Ruby.[C6-981]
Ruby apparently did not return to bed following Crafard’s call. During the morning hours, he watched a rabbi deliver on television a moving eulogy of President Kennedy.[C6-982] According to Ruby, the rabbi:
went ahead and eulogized that here is a man that fought in every battle, went to every country, and had to come back to his own country to be shot in the back [starts crying] * * *. That created a tremendous emotional feeling for me, the way he said that. Prior to all the other times, I was carried away.[C6-983]
An employee from the Carousel Club who telephoned Ruby during the morning remembered that his “voice was shaking” when he spoke of the assassination.[C6-984]
Ruby has stated that, upon leaving his apartment some time between noon and 1:30 p.m., he drove to Dealey Plaza where a police officer, who noted Ruby’s solemnity, pointed out to him the window from which the rifleshots had been fired the day before.[C6-985] Ruby related that he inspected the wreaths that had been placed in memory of the President and became filled with emotion while speaking with the police officer.[C6-986] Ruby introduced himself to a reporter for radio station KRLD who was working inside a mobile news unit at the plaza; the newsman mentioned to Ruby that he had heard of Ruby’s help to KLIF in obtaining an interview with Henry Wade, and Ruby pointed out to the reporter that Capt. J. Will Fritz and Chief Curry were then in the vicinity. Thereafter, the newsman interviewed and photographed the officers.[C6-987] Ruby said that he next drove home and returned downtown to Sol’s Turf Bar on Commerce Street.[C6-988]
The evidence indicated, however, that sometime after leaving Dealey Plaza, Ruby went to the Nichols Parking Garage adjacent to the Carousel Club, where he was seen by Garnett C. Hallmark, general manager of the garage, and Tom Brown, an attendant. Brown believed that at about 1:30 p.m. he heard Ruby mention Chief Curry’s name in a telephone conversation from the garage. Brown also recalled that, before finally departing, Ruby asked him to inform acquaintances whom he expected to stop by the garage that the Carousel would be closed.[C6-989] Hallmark testified that Ruby drove into the garage at about 3 p.m., walked to the telephone, inquired whether or not a competing burlesque club would be closed that night, and told Hallmark that he (Ruby) was “acting like a reporter.”[C6-990] Hallmark then heard Ruby address someone at the other end of the telephone as “Ken” and caught portions of a conversation concerning the transfer of Oswald.[C6-991] Hallmark said Ruby never called Oswald by name but used the pronoun “he” and remarked to the recipient of the call, “you know I’ll be there.”[C6-992]