Welcome back for Part 2 of our excavation into Jack Ruby with Max Arvo! In Part 1, we dug up the surface layer of Ruby’s biography and followed his life trajectory from Chicago’s Southwest side (b. 1911) to Dallas’s club scene in the early 60s. In this episode, rather than going broader, we go deeper. This episode is really about adding some much-needed nuance to the often simplistic picture of American Organized Crime, and how it fits into the nexus between the business and intelligence networks that fueled the rise of the postwar American Empire.

We put the City of Chicago in the broader context of postwar America and trace the mob’s westward and southerly expansion from hubs in Chicago and New York. We also examine some of Ruby’s oldest and closest friends from the school of hard knocks - guys like Lenny Patrick, Dave and Sam Yaras, and the hulking Barney Baker. These were street toughs who grew up alongside the Rubenstein kids in the ghetto gauntlet of Capone’s town, and they’d serendipitously pop back up in Jack Ruby’s life in Fall 1963. We also take roll call on Jack’s other bosom pals he met along the way from Chicago to Dallas and beyond - brainier guys like Paul Roland Jones and Lewis McWillie.

All of these characters have direct lines to mob royalty: whether it’s Patrick & Yaras’s wet work for Sam Giancana, Baker’s muscle work for Jimmy Hoffa, or McWillie’s work running casinos for Meyer Lansky. They constituted a layer between the higher-ups in the Cosa Nostra and disposable dummies like Ruby.

We do our best to really flesh out these connections and go beyond the corkboard, so that we (and you, listener!) can really understand just how “the men who put [Jack Ruby] in the position [he was] in” did so. With this episode the stage is set to pick back up next time in 1963 and go deep on the factual narrative of the Oswald hit. Enjoy!

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Read Max’s investigative series on Ruby here: https://www.kennedysandking.com/content/author/415-maxarvo.

And find Max’s other work here: https://maxarvo.com.