"Just Terrible Strange"

The serendipity behind Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald crossing paths 60-years ago this morning

Sixty years ago today, Jack Ruby’s housekeeper, Elnora Pitts, woke him up when she called between 8:30 and 9:00.  She asked whether she should stop by to clean the apartment later that day.

“He sounded just terrible strange to me,” she recalled.  He told her to call back at 2:00 before she came over.

Ruby did not get out of bed for another half an hour. His roommate, George Senator, noticed he was a “little worse this day … the way he talked. He was even mumbling, which I didn’t understand.… His lips were going. What he was jabbering, I don’t know. But he was really pacing.”

Ruby turned on the television to listen to the latest news and read the morning’s Dallas Times Herald. At 10:19, while still lounging in the apartment in his underwear, one of his dancers, Karen Carlin, called (her phone record revealed the exact time).

“I have called, Jack, to try to get some money, because the rent is due and I need some money for groceries and you told me to call.”

Ruby asked how much she needed, an…