Tom Howard was born in
1917. After qualifying as a lawyer he settled
in Dallas. Jack
Ruby
murdered Lee
Harvey Oswald on
24th November, 1963. Ruby asked Howard if he would take the case.
Howard had a good record and none of his clients had been executed.
On 24th November, 1963, Bill Hunter (Long Beach Independent Press Telegram) and Jim Koethe (Dallas Times Herald) interviewed George Senator. Also there was the attorney Tom Howard. Earlier that day Senator and Howard had both visited Jack Ruby in jail. That evening Senator arranged for Koethe, Hunter and Howard to search Ruby's apartment.
It was Howard who came
up with the idea that Ruby
should say in court that he killed Oswald because he "couldn't
bear the idea of the President's widow being subjected to testifying
at the trial of Oswald". Howard told friends he intended to put
Ruby on the stand. Howard planned to argue that killing Oswald was
like "another nigger murder case" and after pleading guilty
to murder without malice would get "five years in prison at most".
Jack
Ruby
was not convinced by this approach and replaced Howard with Melvin
Belli.
On 23rd April 1964, Bill Hunter was shot dead by Creighton Wiggins, a policeman in the pressroom of a Long Beach police station. Wiggins initially claimed that his gun fired when he dropped it and tried to pick it up. In court this was discovered that this was impossible and it was decided that Hunter had been murdered. Wiggins finally admitted he was playing a game of quick draw with his fellow officer. The other officer, Errol F. Greenleaf, testified he had his back turned when the shooting took place. In January 1965, both were convicted and sentenced to three years probation.
Jim Koethe decided to write a book about the assassination of Kennedy. However, he died on 21st September, 1964. It seems that a man broke into his Dallas apartment and killed him by a karate chop to the throat.
Tom Howard died of a heart-attack,
aged 48, on 27th March, 1965.
Open Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
Forum Debate on the Bill Hunter, Jim Koethe and Tom Howard meeting
Forum Debate on Watergate
(1)
Penn
Jones, Jr, Disappearing Witnesses included in The Rebel
(22nd November, 1983)
Shortly after dark on Sunday night, November 24, 1963,
after Ruby had killed Lee Harvey Oswald, a meeting took place in Jack
Ruby's apartment in Oak Cliff, a suburb of Dallas, Texas. Five persons
were present. George Senator and Attorney Tom Howard were present
and having a drink in the apartment when two newsmen arrived. The
newsmen were Bill Hunter of the Long Beach California Press Telegram
and Jim Koethe of the Dallas Times Herald. Attorney C.A. Droby
of Dallas arranged the meeting for the two newsmen, Jim Martin, a
close friend of George Senator's, was also present at the apartment
meeting. This writer asked Martin if he thought it was unusual for
Senator to forget the meeting while testifying in Washington on April
22, 1964, since Bill Hunter, who was a newsman present at the meeting,
was shot to death that very night. Martin grinned and said: "Oh,
you're looking for a conspiracy."
I
nodded yes and he grinned and said, "You will never find it."
I asked soberly, "Never
find it, or not there?"
He added soberly, "Not
there."
Bill Hunter, a native of
Dallas and an award-winning newsman in Long Beach, was on duty and
reading a book in the police station called the "Public Safety
Building." Two policemen going off duty came into the press room,
and one policeman shot Hunter through the heart at a range officially
ruled to be "no more than three feet." The policeman said
he dropped his gun, and it fired as he picked it up, but the angle
of the bullet caused him to change his story. He finally said he was
playing a game of quick draw with his fellow officer. The other officer
testified he had his back turned when the shooting took place.
Hunter, who covered the
assassination for his paper, the Long Beach Press Telegram
had written:
"Within minutes of
Ruby's execution of Oswald, before the eyes of millions watching television,
at least two Dallas attorneys appeared to talk with him."
Hunter was quoting Tom
Howard who died of a heart attack in Dallas a few months after Hunter's
own death. Lawyer Tom Howard was observed acting strangely to his
friends two days before his death. Howard was taken to the hospital
by a "friend" according to the newspapers. No autopsy was
performed.
Dallas Times Herald
reporter Jim Koethe was killed by a karate chop to the throat just
as he emerged from a shower in his apartment on Sept. 21, 1964. His
murderer was not indicted.
What went on in that significant
meeting in Ruby's and Senator's apartment?
Few are left to tell. There
is no one in authority to ask the question, since the Warren Commission
has made its final report, and the House Select Committee has closed
its investigation.
(2)
David Welsh, Ramparts (November, 1966)
Howard was a friend of District Attorney Henry Wade, although
they often opposed each other in court, and it was not uncommon for
them to meet for a sociable drink after court adjourned. He was also
close to Ruby and others on the fringes of the Dallas underworld.
Like Jack Ruby, Howard's
life revolved around the police station, and it was not surprising
when he and Ruby (toting his gun) showed up at the station on the
evening of the assassination. Nor was it unusual when Howard arrived
there shortly after Ruby shot Oswald, two days later, asking to see
his old friend.
Howard was shown into a
meeting room to see a bewildered Ruby, who had not asked for any lawyer,
and for the next few days - until Ruby's brother Earl soured on Howard
and had him relieved - he was Jack's chief attorney and public spokesman.
Howard took to the publicity with alacrity, called a press conference,
wheeled and dealed. He told newsmen the case was a "conce-in-a-lifetime
chance" and that "speaking as a private citizen," he
thought Ruby deserved a congressional medal. He told the Houston Post
that Ruby had been in the police station Friday night with a gun.
He dickered with a national magazine about an Oswald-murder story.
He got hold of a picture showing the President's brains flying and
tried to sell it to Life. Ruby's sister even accused him of leaking
information to the DA. All told, it was never quite clear whether
Howard was working for Ruby or against him.
Howard met frequently with
his client in the days immediately following the death of Oswald.
From this, along with his ties with both police and hoodlum circles
in Dallas, and his presence at the Ruby-Senator apartment meeting
that fateful Sunday, one would assume he was the repository of a wealth
of privileged information about the events of November 1963. And we
know he was an irrepressible talker, privy to the intrigues of petty
criminality but hardly one to be trusted with any secrets surrounding
the Kennedy assassination.
On March 27, 1965, Howard
was taken to the hospital by an unidentified person and died there.
He was 48. The doctor, without benefit of an autopsy, said he had
suffered a heart attack. Some reporter friends of Howard's are not
so sure. They observed that for three days before his death, the normally
gregarious Howard seemed preoccupied and uncommunicative, and did
not appear to recognize friends. One Dallas reporter says flatly that
Howard was bumped off; others are more circumspect. "As far as
I'm concerned the case is closed," one of them says. "You're
not going to catch me messing in that hornet's nest."
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