JFK The Enduring Secret

In February 1946, thirty-four-year-old World War II veteran Jacob Rubenstein stepped off the train onto the freezing platforms of Chicago, carrying a good conduct medal on his chest and hoping his honorable service had finally cleansed him of his chaotic childhood. Instead, his return plunged him straight into a toxic family business feud. Joining forces with his brothers Sam...

In the mid-1950s, Jack Ruby was the self-appointed king of the Dallas strip, strutting through his nightclubs in immaculate double-breasted suits and a cocked fedora. Shaking hands, dropping names, and paying rent for struggling waiters, he projected the image of a flashy, generous showman. Yet, beneath this polished exterior lurked a terrifying, volatile thug. With a hair-tr...

We often think of Jack Ruby as a creature of the dark, of smoky, neon-lit walkups, back-alley brawls, and shady financial deals. But for nearly three years during the height of the Second World War, Jacob Rubenstein proudly wore the olive drab uniform of the United States Army Air Forces. Stationed at various air bases across the American South, Private First Class Rubenstein...

In the pre-World War II era of the "Chicago Cowboy," Jacob Rubenstein was a striking figure of manic energy on the West Side. Working out with desperate intensity at local YMCA clubs, he obsessed over his physical conditioning and receding hairline, famously boasting to anyone who would listen that he could "hit harder than Joe Louis." Struggling to stay afloat after the trag...

In the late summer of 1933, with the Great Depression holding Chicago in a frozen grip, twenty-two-year-old Jacob Rubenstein and his sister Eva packed a single suitcase and looked west. Under the sun-drenched palm trees of California, a strange transformation occurred. The volatile, quick-tempered kid from the West Side tenements seemed to vanish, replaced by a well-mannered,...