Mr. Sorrels. Yes; and I might say that it was at that time that I found out his name was Ruby in place of Rubin, and he informed me his name had formerly been Rubinstein, and that he had had his name changed in Dallas.
I asked him—after I identified myself, I told him I would like to ask him some questions.
He said, “For newspapers or magazines?”
I said, “No; for myself.”
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”?