[Sal]

I'm curious to know who had what on Ruby to coerce him to kill Oswald ...

Ruby worked for Sam "Mooney" Giancana, the head of the Outfit in Chicago. Mooney sent him to Dallas way before the assassination to do favors for the police and get in good with them while establishing a useful "presence" there.

Source: Doublecross by Mooney's brother and son (written after Mooney's death). Unfortunately most of my books are in storage so I can't check the dates and am relying on memory here, but I'm sure Ruby was originally sent there just to establish Outfit influence in Dallas. I just can't remember if he was sent there in time to have worked on "helping" the election of JFK--which most people acknowledge the mob did in IL and TX.

My point being that I'm pretty sure the Giancana book did NOT indicate that Ruby was originally sent there for the purpose of killing Oswald, but he sure was there and handy after the mob (including the Outfit) got very, very angry with JFK.

[DustyMoment]

As I recall the story (and on this part of it, my memory is about as dusty as your books in storage [don't you hate that?]) Ruby had been in Dallas running a relatively sleazy nightclub for at least two years. The cops knew him well because he was always hanging around the police station.

As the result of his relationship with the police, they didn't raise a collective eyebrow when he showed up to observe Oswald's perp walk out of the lockup facility to the county jail.

I had forgotten about Ruby's connection to Sam Giancana. Jeez, all this reminiscing over the Kennedy assassination has brought up just how ugly this whole story got. I was better off when I had forgotten most of it.