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The murders of President John F Kennedy , his alleged killer Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK’s brother Bobby will go down as one of the most sinister chapters in US history, amid claims shadowy forces were at work.

But the forgotten player among the plots and sub-plots was Jack Ruby – the gangster whose death 50 years ago this week is still shrouded in mystery.

He shot dead Oswald, the sniper blamed for JFK’s assassination in Dallas in 1963, and languished in prison until cancer claimed his life at the age of 55.

It was only after New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison outlined his conspiracy theory behind JFK’s murder that Ruby’s death was reassessed.

Some believe the club owner, who had his conviction quashed and was about to get a retrial, was injected with cancer cells to stop him from potentially revealing the truth in open court.

Just as Ruby ensured Lee Harvey Oswald took his story to his grave, he may also have been silenced.

(Image: Rex Features)

Garrison – played by Kevin Costner in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK – said before his death in 1992: “Jack Ruby died of cancer a few weeks after his conviction for murder had been ­overruled in appeals court. He was ordered to stand trial outside of Dallas, thus allowing him to speak freely if he so desired. There was little hesitancy in killing Lee Harvey Oswald in order to prevent him from talking, so there is no reason to suspect that any more consideration would have been shown Jack Ruby if he had posed a threat to the architects of the conspiracy.”

Garrison believed JFK was ­assassinated by the secret services, working with America’s criminal underworld. Their motive was his plan to withdraw the US from the Vietnam War and dismantle the CIA.

This plot, he claimed, was led by New Orleans businessman and CIA informant Clay Shaw, along with Guy Banister and David Ferrie.

Ferrie, a staunch right-winger who hated JFK’s “soft stance” on communism, knew Oswald from his former days as a pilot and is said to have made him the fall guy for the assassination on November 22, 1963.

Oswald was charged with murder and, as he was transferred between jailhouses two days later, Ruby shot him dead in front of live television cameras, while yelling: “You killed the President, you rat!”

While the shooting was seen as an act of patriotism, Ruby was convicted of murder on March 14, 1964, and sentenced to death. His conviction was overturned on October 25, 1966, because it was ruled that his trial in Dallas, the scene of the crime, could never have been fair.

(Image: Daily Mirror)

Then on January 3, 1967, Ruby died of lung cancer just a month after his tumours were discovered. The disease had spread to his brain and liver, and he was declared dead in ­Parkland Hospital in Dallas, the same hospital JFK and Oswald were taken to.

It was a fate the gunman had predicted.

Dallas Deputy Sheriff Al Maddox, who met Ruby, said: “He said, ‘Well, they injected me for a cold’. He said it was cancer cells. That’s what he told me, Ruby did. I said, ‘You don’t believe that bull***t’.

“He said, ‘I damn sure do!’ Ruby shook hands with me and I could feel a piece of paper in his palm… he said it was a conspiracy and he said … if you will keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, you’re gonna learn a lot.”

And Garrison believed he knew the potential source of the cancer cells. “David Ferrie had a rather curious hobby,” he said. “He filled his apartment with white mice, at one point he had almost 2,000, and neighbours complained.

“He wrote a medical treatise on the subject and worked with a number of New Orleans doctors on means of inducing cancer in mice.

“After the assassination, one of these physicians, Dr Mary Sherman, was found hacked to death with a kitchen knife in her New Orleans apartment.”

(Image: Daily Mirror)

On February 22, 1967 – just two weeks after it was revealed Garrison was ­investigating the death of JFK – the plot thickened when Ferrie killed himself.

After he learned of the probe he is said to have told one of Garrison’s aides: “You know what this news story does to me, don’t you? I’m a dead man. From here on, believe me, I’m a dead man.”

Even more suspicious was the fact that, despite Ferrie writing two suicide notes, the coroner and pathologist said the cause of his death was an aneurysm.

Garrison added: “I suppose it could just be a weird coincidence that the night Ferrie penned two suicide notes, he died of natural causes.” Less than two weeks after the death, Shaw was arrested on the orders of Garrison and was charged with conspiring to kill JFK.

After a two-year trial, he was acquitted of all charges – an outcome helped by the fact that Ruby was out of the picture.

Quite why he killed Oswald was always a mystery. Ruby claimed he was a lone wolf attempting to “redeem” the image of Dallas. However, he hadn’t done much to boost the city’s image. Originally from Chicago, he peddled drugs, prostitution and gambling through his two nightclubs.

Many said he had actually been hired by the Mafia to silence Oswald.

(Image: Rex Features)

Ruby’s biographer, Seth Kantor, said: “The mob was Ruby’s ‘friend’. And Ruby could well have been paying off an IOU the day he was used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Garrison added: “Jack Ruby had no strong political views of his own…he was just a hoodlum out for a buck [and] if Oswald had lived another day or so, he very probably would have named names.”

In 1965 Ruby also gave a TV interview which contradicted the idea he was working alone. He said: “The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I’m in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.”

The interviewer then asked him: “Are these people in very high positions, Jack?” Ruby responded: “Yes.”

According to an article in The Sunday Times, Ruby also told psychiatrist Werner Teuter that the assassination was “an act of overthrowing the government” and that he knew “who had President Kennedy killed”.

He added: “I am doomed. I do not want to die. But I am not insane. I was framed to kill Oswald.”

US Presidents who were assassinated and two who survived

JFK was the fourth US President to be shot dead in less than 100 years.

Abraham Lincoln

April 14, 1865

Shot on Good Friday by Confederate sympathiser John Wilkes Booth while watching a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington DC with his wife, Mary. Lincoln died the following day.

James A Garfield

July 2, 1881

Lawyer and writer Charles J Guiteau shot him as he visited a railway station in Washington DC.

William McKinley

September 6, 1901

Anarchist Leon Czolgosz nearly failed in his bid to kill the President as he visited a concert hall in New York. The first bullet hit a button or medal on McKinley’s jacket, but the second shot penetrated his stomach.

Two other US Presidents have been injured in attempted assassinations.

Theodore Roosevelt

October 14, 1912

The former President, known as Teddy, was campaigning for a third term in power when New York saloon-keeper John F Schrank shot him in the chest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Ronald Reagan

March 30, 1981

Shot by John Hinckley Jnr in Washington. Suffered a broken rib, punctured lung and internal bleeding.