The Jack Ruby Mugshot That Traces Back to the Deputy Who Found Oswald's Weapon

On November 24, 1963, just two days after President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Jack Ruby stepped out of a crowd of police and reporters in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters and shot Lee Harvey Oswald at point blank range, killing the man accused of the president's murder on live national television. It remains one of the most stunning moments ever captured on camera, and it instantly turned Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner with a history of minor scrapes with the law, into one of the central figures of the entire Kennedy assassination story. This original Type I deckle edged photograph is Ruby's standing profile mugshot, taken by the Dallas Police Department that same day following his arrest, the booking photo of the man who changed the course of the investigation before it had barely begun.

The photograph's path to this collection runs through one of the other key figures of that weekend. It was obtained directly from former Dallas County Deputy Sheriff Eugene L. Boone, who two days earlier had been the officer who located the 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle hidden between stacks of boxes on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, the weapon used to kill the president. Boone had his own prior dealings with Ruby, having sold him advertising space for his club while working at the Dallas Times Herald, a small but telling detail that connects the two men beyond their roles that weekend. The photograph came out of Boone's personal collection through a trade made at his home in Abilene, Texas in 2016, and is accompanied by a signed provenance letter detailing that exchange. Encapsulated and authenticated by PSA/DNA as Type I, meaning it was printed from the original negative within roughly two years of the event, this is as close as a collector can get to the actual moment Dallas Police processed the man responsible for one of the most consequential unanswered questions in American history.