Ruby shoots Oswald

Ruby shoots Oswald

The mystery surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has taken a dramatic new twist following the discovery of new documents in an old safe at the Dallas County district attorney's office.

Most intriguing among the new material is a transcript purportedly recording a conversation between assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and his own killer Jack Ruby, in which the two discuss how to eliminate the president.

While the district attorney's office dismissed the document as a fictional account intended for use in the making of a movie, conspiracy theorists will leap on the new material.

Other items found locked up on the 10th floor of the county courthouse include letters to and from former district attorney Henry Wade, the now-dead prosecutor in the Ruby trial, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Ruby shot and killed Oswald as the latter was being transported to jail two days after the president's death.

There are also letters to Ruby, records from his trial, a gun holster and clothing that probably belonged to Ruby and Oswald.

Much of the attention is bound to focus on the transcript purporting that Ruby and Oswald met at Ruby's nightclub on Oct. 4, 1963, less than two months before the Nov 22 assassination.

In it, they talked of killing the president because the Mafia wanted to "get rid of" his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

In the transcript, Oswald says "I can still do it, all I need is my rifle and a tall building; but it will take time, maybe six months to find the right place; but I'll have to have some money to live on while I do the planning."

Historians have expressed skepticism over the discovery. Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum near where the president was shot, has not seen the transcript but doubts it is real.

"The fact that it's sitting in Henry Wade's file, and he didn't do anything, indicates he thought it wasn't worth anything," Mr Mack said.

"He probably kept it because it was funny. It's hilarious. It's like a bad B movie."

Mr Wade was apparently working with producers on a film about the assassination.

The former prosecutor wrote about the proposed movie, "Countdown in Dallas," in letters found in the safe.

The transcript resembles one published in a report by the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy's assassination and determined that Oswald was the lone gunman.

The FBI has dismissed that conversation between Oswald and Ruby about killing the governor as definitely fake.

The account in the commission report was "re-created" for authorities by a now-deceased Dallas attorney who claimed he recognized Oswald in a newspaper photo as the man he saw talking to Ruby.