JFK The Enduring Secret

Jeff Crudele
  • 4.6 (601)
  • Documentary
  • Updated Semiweekly

An in depth tutorial and discussion around the assassination of John F. Kennedy, (JFK) the country's 35th president who was brutally murdered in Dallas Texas on November 22, 1963. The series comprehensively explores the major facts, themes, and events leading up to the assassination in Dealey Plaza and the equally gripping stories surrounding the subsequent investigation. We review key elements of the Warren Commission Report , and the role of the CIA and FBI. We explore the possible involvement of the Mafia in the murder and the review of that topic by the government's House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970's. We explore the Jim Garrison investigation and the work of other key figures such as Mark Lane and others. Learn more about Lee Harvey Oswald the suspected killer and Jack Ruby the distraught Dallas night club owner with underworld ties and the man that killed Oswald as a national TV audience was watching. Stay with us as we take you through the facts and theories in bite sized discussions that are designed to educate, and inform as well as entertain the audience. This real life story is more fascinating than fiction. No matter whether you are a serious researcher or a casual student, you will enjoy the fact filled narrative and story as we relive one of the most shocking moments in American History. An event that changed the nation and change the world forever.

  1. 1d ago

    Episode 339 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 15

    Step inside the sweltering, smoke-filled basement assembly room of the Dallas Police Headquarters at 12:30 a.m. on Saturday, November 23, 1963, as District Attorney Henry Wade addresses a packed room of over one hundred global journalists. Looking to deliver the first formal summary of the murder charges against Lee Harvey Oswald, the exhausted prosecutor makes a staggering, cold-war slip of the tongue—accidentally declaring to the world that Oswald was a member of the anti-Castro "Free Cuba movement" rather than the pro-Castro "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." Before the error can fully scramble the public's understanding of the suspect's political alignment, a voice rings out clearly from the back of the room near a concrete abutment. It is Jack Ruby, a local strip club owner holding a notepad and pencil, who loudly corrects the District Attorney and establishes the record on live national television. While assistant prosecutors would later note that Ruby delivered his correction in a normal, helpful tone, his sudden public display of political literacy immediately raises eyebrows. When later questioned by the FBI on how a politically uneducated nightclub owner knew the exact name of Oswald's organization, Ruby offered a straightforward defense, claiming he had simply heard it on local radio and that it had stuck in his mind. But to historical researchers, his familiarity with Cuba was already a matter of record, tracing back to his highly scrutinized, documented trips to revolutionary Havana in the summer of 1959 to visit Tropicana casino gambling manager Lewis McWillie. Rather than keeping a low profile, the self-styled Dallas showman eagerly intercepts Henry Wade as he leaves the press conference, extending his hand for a personal handshake and proudly declaring, "Henry, I want you to know that I was the one that corrected you." Determined to continue playing "producer" for the media, Ruby spends his post-midnight hours acting as a self-appointed press liaison in the corridors of police headquarters. After running into competing KBOX radio reporters Jerry Gunkle (alt. spelling Gunkel)  and Sam Pease, Jack manages to secure the unlisted, highly restricted newsroom hotline for KLIF radio. Slipping behind the records counter, Jack dials the station to offer a box of sandwiches, and upon seeing Henry Wade walk past the counter, he physically pulls the District Attorney to the phone. By handing KLIF the live, exclusive telephone scoop of the night, Jack earns an ecstatic invitation from the newsroom, with the overnight staff promising to leave the locked back door open for exactly five minutes so he can bring the food up. But Jack's desperate, pathological need to secure favor and be helpful ultimately sabotages his strict five-minute entry window. On his way out of the building, he runs into KLIF disc jockey Russ Knight—known to his listeners as "the Weird Beard"—who is searching for the press action. Forgetting the clock, Jack insists on escorting the DJ back downstairs to introduce him to Henry Wade for another taped interview. By the time Jack drives his white Oldsmobile a single block to the KLIF studios, his entrance window has expired and the doors are locked tight. In this episode, we follow the self-appointed king of the Dallas strip as he is forced to wait outside on the chilly pavement for fifteen minutes, clutching a heavy box of pastrami sandwiches and soda pop, setting the stage for a mysterious 2:30 a.m. parking lot meeting that would alter the course of the entire weekend.

  2. 1d ago

    Episode 338 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 14

    It is midnight in Dallas on Friday, November 22, 1963, and the weekend of tragedy is bleeding into Saturday morning. Inside the limestone walls of the Dallas Police and Courts building, the air is thick with tobacco smoke, sweat, and cheap coffee as hundreds of international journalists clamor for a glimpse of the prime suspect. Fearing that prolonged silence behind closed doors will spark rumors of police brutality, police chiefs and prosecutors make the fateful decision to show Lee Harvey Oswald to the world. But as Captain Fritz attempts a brief showing in the cramped third-floor hallway, the corridor explodes into absolute bedlam, triggering a frantic press stampede down to the basement assembly room. Standing right in the center of this media storm is Jack Ruby, clad in a sharp gray suit and his signature snap-rim fedora, carrying a notepad and pencil. Bypassing every security checkpoint without credentials simply because local officers recognize him as the friendly operator of the Carousel Club, Ruby easily infiltrates the media theater known as the assembly room. But where exactly was he standing during the showing? While the Warren Commission accepted Ruby's clean narrative—supported by Detective Augustus Everhart—that he stood out of the way on a table in the back of the room, veteran police reporter John Rutledge swore under oath to a far more active presence. Rutledge testified that Ruby was down on the floor, weaving through the crowd between the second and third rows of desks, actively circulating and handing out Carousel Club business cards. When the double doors of the assembly room finally swing open, Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald stand face-to-face for the first time under the blinding, scorching television lights. We examine Ruby's chilling, immediate post-arrest impressions of the suspect to the FBI. Rather than seeing a historical or political figure, Ruby saw something visceral and disgusting, describing Oswald as a "little weasel" and a "creep," while uttering a strangely prophetic sentence: "He didn't look like he would have killed our president. Well, not all alone." But the most terrifying revelation of this midnight press showing lies in Jack's front pocket. As he stood mere feet away from the handcuffed suspect, Jack Ruby was carrying his loaded, nickel-plated .38 caliber Colt Cobra revolver. We dissect the heavy questions that still hang over this historic encounter: Was  Ruby's eventual shooting of Oswald  born of spontaneous, hysterical grief? Was he premeditated and if so, then why did he stand armed in that basement on Friday night and do nothing? We challenge the official, emotionally convenient narrative of a grieving citizen, exploring whether this Friday night infiltration was a calculated rehearsal—a dry run to test the building's security and see just how close a friendly local club owner could get to the most heavily guarded prisoner on Earth.

  3. 2d ago

    Episode 337 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 13

    Step into the heavy, suffocating silence that fell over Dallas on the evening of Friday, November 22, 1963. Inside the local police headquarters at City Hall, a chaotic media gauntlet was rapidly taking shape on the third floor, as over three hundred out-of-town journalists, photographers, and television crews shoved shoulder-to-shoulder in the smoke-filled corridors. In this episode, we follow the frantic, hour-by-hour movements of Jack Ruby during this critical three-hour window, examining how a local strip club owner managed to bypass strict security checkpoints, navigate police barricades, and position himself directly at the center of the crime scene of the century. We dissect the stark and troubling contradictions between the two competing timelines of Ruby’s Friday night. On one hand is the "clean," emotionally tidy alibi constructed by Jack and his sister Eva for the Warren Commission—depicting a man paralyzed by grief, sobbing hysterically over deli meat at his sister’s apartment before seeking spiritual solace in the pews of Temple Shearith Israel at ten o'clock. On the other hand lies the unvarnished, sworn statement of Dallas Homicide Detective R.A. Robertson, who spotted Jack on the third floor of police headquarters hours earlier, actively attempting to open the locked door to the very office where Lee Harvey Oswald was being interrogated. Following the conclusion of temple services, the somber mourner immediately transformed back into a frantic, hyperactive nightclub operator. We trace Jack as he roams the dark streets of Dallas in his white Oldsmobile, growing angry at competing clubs that refused to close out of respect for the fallen president. We follow him into Phil's Delicatessen on Oak Lawn Avenue, where he ordered a massive, late-night shipment of ten premium corned beef sandwiches, black cherry sodas, and celery tonics, pacing the floor and using a payphone to contact the police department. Despite Detective Richard M. Sims flatly rejecting the food delivery because the homicide division was shutting down for the night, Jack refused to go home. Driven by an obsessive urge to be useful, Jack headed straight for City Hall with his box of sandwiches, claiming to guards that he was searching for a radio reporter to secure an unlisted phone number. Slipping onto the third floor, he began handing out Carousel Club business cards to exhausted national reporters, acting as a self-appointed liaison for the press. We close on a chilling, suspenseful cliffhanger as a whisper sweeps through the crowded hallway, and Jack joins the media throng heading down to the basement assembly room for the midnight press showing—standing inches away from Lee Harvey Oswald while carrying a loaded .38 Colt Cobra revolver in his front trouser pocket.

  4. Aug 23

    Episode 336 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 12

    Friday, November 22, 1963. While the nation was shattered by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Jack Ruby's day began in a remarkably ordinary way. Sitting at a free desk in the second-floor retail advertising department of the Dallas Morning News, the 52-year-old nightclub owner spent his morning writing out longhand copy for his weekend advertisements, completely oblivious to the fateful motorcade scheduled to pass just blocks away. When employees from the newspaper  burst into the room with the devastating news that shots had been fired, Ruby sat holding the morning paper in stunned disbelief. He was pale, ashen, and speechless—the loudest man in Dallas suddenly rendered completely silent as his city descended into chaos. As the afternoon unfolded, a mysterious gap of nearly forty minutes emerged between his departure from the newspaper office and his arrival back at the Carousel Club. This segment of his day remains one of the most hotly contested chapters in assassination lore. A respected national reporter who knew Ruby well, Seth Kantor, swore under oath that he spoke with Ruby at Parkland Hospital at 1:30 PM, where a frantic Ruby asked him whether he should close his clubs in mourning. While the Warren Commission brushed this encounter aside to protect their narrow timeline, years later the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and even the Commission's own staff attorneys would admit their skepticism was likely misplaced. This gap is further complicated by the claims of a local housewife who also reported seeing Ruby at Parkland, only to receive chilling, anonymous telephone calls warning her to keep her mouth shut. Simultaneously, Ruby became obsessively hyper-focused on a full-page, black-bordered advertisement in that morning's paper. Signed by "Bernard Weissman" of the "American Fact-Finding Committee," the ad welcomed the president while launching highly critical accusations against his administration. Convinced this ad was a sinister anti-Semitic plot designed to blame the assassination on the Jewish community, a frantic Ruby spent his afternoon staking out Post Office Box 1792, desperately waiting to see who would arrive to collect Weissman's mail. This obsessive sensitivity to his heritage eventually drove him that evening to slip into the back of Temple Shearith Israel for a solemn memorial service, standing afterward awkwardly  while making small talk over coffee with members of the congregation. But the day was far from over. Determined to position himself at the center of the action, Ruby shut down his clubs and headed to the Dallas Police Headquarters, carrying sandwiches for the officers and blending in with reporters by carrying a notebook. Just before midnight, he managed to slip unnoticed into the basement assembly room for a packed press conference showing Lee Harvey Oswald to the world. It was there, standing at the back of the room, that Jack Ruby stepped into history by speaking up to correct District Attorney Henry Wade on the exact name of Oswald's political group: the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Hour by hour, from writing advertising copy to standing inches away from the accused assassin, we trace the well  documented and deeply haunting footsteps of Jack Ruby on the longest day of his life.

  5. Aug 20

    Episode 335 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 11

    Step into the summer of 1963, when Jack Ruby took a fateful scouting trip to New Orleans and returned with his ultimate, red-carpet feature attraction: a fiery, red-haired headliner named Jada. Born Janet Adams Mole, Jada possessed the perfect storm of expensive clothes, a flashy Cadillac, and a commanding salary that instantly turned heads at the Carousel Club. But while her signature tiger-skin routine and provocative stage presence promised to bring "class" to Jack's walk-up club, she quickly transformed into his most expensive and uncontrollable nightmare. Their relationship rapidly devolved into legendary spotlight battles—with an increasingly paranoid, puritanical Jack sitting at the lightboard, furiously killing the stage lights mid-act whenever Jada pushed the boundaries of Dallas's decency laws. Behind their volatile personal war lay Jack's growing obsession with his wealthy competitors, Abe and Meyer Weinstein. Convinced that the brothers were destroying the Carousel's business through low-wage "amateur nights," Ruby spent his afternoons filing anonymous complaints with the IRS and the strippers' union, AGVA. Yet, as Jack desperately lobbied the union to ban his rivals' gimmicks, his own poor treatment of employees left him exposed to a barrage of labor complaints. When Jack tried to fire Jada and tear up her high-priced contract, the union intervened as a referee, forcing a miserable, cash-strapped Jack to endure her presence on his runway for three tense months. The friction peaked in late October 1963 when a terrified Jada marched into a Dallas courthouse and secured a formal peace bond to protect herself from Jack's notorious history of physical violence. Finally, we unravel the bizarre, heavily debated events of November 22, 1963. We explore Jack's frantic, jealous phone calls on the morning of the assassination to local sports writers, warning them to stay away from the "evil" Jada. We also document her highly unusual mid-morning car accident near Texas Instruments on Lemon Avenue, where her Cadillac struck a pedestrian just hours before the president's motorcade entered Dealey Plaza. Rushing back to Louisiana after the accident, Jada would sit in front of an ABC News camera less than 48 hours later, telling the world that she wasn't surprised by the basement shooting and that her former boss was "perfectly capable of an act like that." We close by evaluating the persistent conspiracy theories that have placed Lee Harvey Oswald sitting right at Jada's table. We test the famous, highly inconsistent late-reporting claims of Beverly Oliver against Jada's own immediate, sworn denials to federal investigators. Sifting through the folklore and the official files, this episode traces the tragic, quiet post-Dallas life of Janet Adams, whose story came to a sudden, heartbreaking end on an Albuquerque highway in 1980.

  6. Aug 16

    Episode 334 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 10

    On August 8, 1959, Jack Ruby boarded a plane to Havana, embarking on what he would spend the rest of his life claiming was a simple, eight-day vacation to visit his close friend, syndicate gambler Lewis McWillie. But official Cuban immigration cards, flight manifests, bank records, and the memories of eye-witnesses at the famous Tropicana casino paint a far more complex and troubling picture. Jack wasn't just on vacation; he was traveling back and forth to the island, even making a mysterious, unexplained one-day round trip to Miami. Decades later, congressional investigators would look at this erratic, secret itinerary and draw a chilling inference: that the "Dallas strip king" was serving, at a very minimum, as a courier for international gambling interests desperately trying to move their cash and assets out of the reach of Fidel Castro’s newly installed revolutionary government. We also dig into the official paper trail of Jack’s underworld associations and his bizarre relationship with federal law enforcement. Long before his fateful moment in the Dallas police basement, the FBI’s Dallas office recognized his proximity to the criminal element and attempted to cultivate him as a potential criminal informant. Though Special Agent Charles Flynn ultimately closed the file after nine meetings because Jack was far more interested in trying to get his competitor strip clubs in trouble than providing actual mob intelligence, the files prove a deeper truth: Jack Ruby was small-time, but he was far from isolated. He had direct and indirect lines to some of the most powerful syndicate bosses in the country, including Santo Trafficante and associates of New Orleans boss Carlos Marcello. Furthermore, we expose the massive gaps in the Warren Commission’s original 1964 investigation, which chose to ignore key witnesses, phone logs, and travel records that did not fit their comfortable "lone wolf" narrative. We analyze his frantic flurry of long-distance calls in the weeks leading up to the assassination, connecting him to Teamster officials, mob bondsmen, and New Orleans associates. We also look at the terrifying jailhouse conversation recalled by carousel comedian Wally Weston, where a shaken, imprisoned Ruby whispered that the authorities were finally going to "find out about Cuba... the guns... and everything." Finally, we examine the shocking moment on the night of November 22, 1963, in a crowded hallway at Dallas Police Headquarters. As District Attorney Henry Wade held an impromptu midnight press conference, a voice from the crowd corrected Wade’s mistake about Lee Harvey Oswald’s political affiliations, shouting out the exact name of the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." The voice belonged to Jack Ruby. Why did a Dallas strip club owner know the nuances of revolutionary Cuban politics better than the district attorney? Join us as we dismantle the comfortable historical portrait of Ruby as a harmless, unconnected hanger-on who simply snapped, and look instead at a man deeply enmeshed in a highly dangerous shadow world.

  7. Aug 15

    Episode 333 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 9

    Step inside the red spotlights of the 1300 block of Commerce Street, where the neon glow of the Carousel Club promised a world of "classy" burlesque, live jazz, and high society glamour. But behind the red velvet curtains and the cheap, overpriced champagne lay a business built on pure financial desperation, high-interest loans, and an intense, green-eyed envy of Jack's chief competitors. In this episode, we pull back the curtain on the daily operations of Dallas's most famous clip joint, exploring how a failed private club was rebranded into a lucrative runway stage, and how Jack deployed "champagne girls" and "spit glasses" to keep his struggling empire afloat. We also examine Jack’s bizarre and petty bureaucratic warfare against his rivals, Abe and Meyer Weinstein. Driven by a childish jealousy of their success, Ruby launched a relentless campaign of anonymous complaints to the IRS, the liquor board, and even the FBI. Yet, when Jack approached the bureau to act as a confidential informant, special agents quickly discovered that the "Dallas strip king" was far more interested in snitching on his competitors' minor liquor violations than providing actual underworld intelligence. But behind the volatile brawler and the obsessive name-dropper was a deeply lonely man harboring profound emotional vulnerabilities. We explore the central romance of Jack's life: his torturous 11-year relationship with Alice Nichols, a respectable, quiet widow whom he loved but could never bring himself to marry due to a sacred deathbed promise to his mother. She too had her own hesitations. We also witness Jack's surprising spiritual devotion following his father's death in 1958, showing how the tough-talking nightclub owner spent eleven straight months slipping away to a conservative synagogue to recite the traditional mourner's Kaddish. Finally, we look at Jack's cozy relationship with off-duty Dallas police officers and set the stage for his descent into much darker territories. Next time, we follow him on a highly mysterious 1959 journey to a sun-drenched, revolutionary Cuba to visit syndicate gambler Lewis McWilly—a fateful trip that would forever entangle Jack Ruby’s name with the violent underbelly of the international mob.

  8. Aug 15

    Episode 332 Jack Ruby Miniseries Part 8

    In Episode 332, we dive into the fascinating, complex double life of Jack Ruby during his golden years in Dallas—a decade defined by manic showbiz dreams that went nowhere and explosive, bone-breaking violence. To the public, Jack desperately wanted to be seen as a sophisticated entertainment mogul, a Dallas "somebody" who constantly dropped the names of the mayor, the police chief, and oil tycoons to anyone who would listen. From his passionate, short-lived stint managing a 12-year-old song-and-dance prodigy named Little Daddy Nelson to his bizarre prudishness—which saw him furiously throw a teenage Gabe Kaplan out of an audition for using a single off-color word—Jack was completely obsessed with maintaining the illusion that his venues were high-class establishments. But behind the slick showman's mask lay a terrifying, self-appointed bouncer with a hair-trigger temper. Jack didn't hire security; he handled the brawls himself, frequently resorting to blackjacks, brass knuckles, and raw physical force. In this episode, we recount some of his most legendary and shocking club altercations, including the brutal 1951 floor-rolling struggle with country guitarist Willis Dickerson that left Jack missing the top joint of his index finger, and his warped sense of street chivalry that saw him force a 6-foot-3 giant to crawl out of his club on his hands and knees for slapping a woman. Yet, the deepest mystery of Jack Ruby was his staggering sentimental streak. This violent brawler was also a notorious "crier" who would weep hysterically at passing fire engines, sad movies, and stories of struggling underdogs. We reveal the quiet, completely anonymous charities that defined his softer side, from paying the rent of down-on-their-luck waitresses to leaving hundreds of dollars of groceries on the kitchen table of a Dallas police officer drowning in medical bills. Finally, we explore how his mounting financial desperation and a staggering $40,000 tax debt drove him into shady, "bet-and-run" gambling schemes with con man Harry Hall, and ultimately inspired his high-stakes gamble to open the Sovereign Club. Designed as a high-end private club for the wealthy carriage trade of Dallas, the Sovereign’s rapid slide toward bankruptcy would force Jack to make his most radical choice yet: a full-scale pivot into the lucrative, competitive world of burlesque and striptease, paving the way for the creation of his most famous establishment, the Carousel Club.

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An in depth tutorial and discussion around the assassination of John F. Kennedy, (JFK) the country's 35th president who was brutally murdered in Dallas Texas on November 22, 1963. The series comprehensively explores the major facts, themes, and events leading up to the assassination in Dealey Plaza and the equally gripping stories surrounding the subsequent investigation. We review key elements of the Warren Commission Report , and the role of the CIA and FBI. We explore the possible involvement of the Mafia in the murder and the review of that topic by the government's House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970's. We explore the Jim Garrison investigation and the work of other key figures such as Mark Lane and others. Learn more about Lee Harvey Oswald the suspected killer and Jack Ruby the distraught Dallas night club owner with underworld ties and the man that killed Oswald as a national TV audience was watching. Stay with us as we take you through the facts and theories in bite sized discussions that are designed to educate, and inform as well as entertain the audience. This real life story is more fascinating than fiction. No matter whether you are a serious researcher or a casual student, you will enjoy the fact filled narrative and story as we relive one of the most shocking moments in American History. An event that changed the nation and change the world forever.

Information

  • Creator
    Jeff Crudele
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    386
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 JFK The Enduring Secret
  • Show Website
    JFK The Enduring Secret

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