Photograph of courtroom sketch of witness Sgt. Patrick Dean at Jack Ruby trial

Howard Brodie (1915-2010) was a sports artist for the San Francisco Chronicle when he enlisted in the U.S. Army with America's entry into World War II. He ultimately became one of the best-known sketch artists of the war, frequently published in the weekly U.S. military magazine, Yank, which ran from June 1942 to December 1945. After the war, Brodie spent the next thirty-five years as a courtroom artist, attending several notable trials including the Chicago Seven, Charles Manson and, of course, the Jack Ruby trial in 1964. For the Ruby trial, Brodie worked as a CBS-TV artist correspondent. Mr. Brodie recorded an oral history with the Museum in 2006. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator

Patrick T. Dean, who was a Dallas police sergeant until 1973, had a difficult time following the Kennedy assassination. After a clash with Warren Commission staff counsel Burt Griffin over Dean's honesty about how Jack Ruby entered the police basement, Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry requested in May 1964 that Dean take a polygraph examination. Dean failed the test. As he explained to The Dallas Morning News in 1979: "That particular day I was nervous and hypertensive, so I flunked it. Or rather it was inconclusive." The key issue was how exactly Jack Ruby gained access to the Dallas police basement on November 24, 1963. Dean said that Ruby told him he had entered down the Main Street ramp, though Warren Commission counsel Burt Griffin suspected that Ruby may have entered via a side door where he would have been seen and permitted entry by Dean. Griffin wrote in a memo to Warren Commission chief counsel J. Lee Rankin that Dean may have lied "trying to conceal his dereliction of duty."  This could have become a problem for Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade since Dean was a key prosecution witness during the Ruby trial. If Dean had lied to the Warren Commission, it meant that he also lied during his trial testimony. According to Dean (reflecting in 1979), Wade called President Johnson personally and explained the issues that Dean was having with Burt Griffin, which led to Griffin returning to Washington without interviewing Dean again. More than a decade later, fearing "a setup," Dean refused to answer questions from the House Select Committee on Assassinations, telling committee members that they would need to subpoena him. Although Dean was never subpoenaed, ironically, he told the Morning News that, if he had been subpoenaed by the House Select Committee, attorney Melvin Belli had agreed to represent him. -- Stephen Fagin, Curator