Jack Ruby in the context of Dorothy Kilgallen

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Kennedy was in the vehicle with his wife Jacqueline, Texas governor John Connally, and Connally's wife Nellie, when he was fatally shot from the nearby Texas School Book Depository by Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine. The motorcade rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where Kennedy was pronounced dead about 30 minutes after the shooting; Connally was also wounded in the attack but recovered. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was hastily sworn in as president two hours and eight minutes later aboard Air Force One at Dallas Love Field.

After the assassination, Oswald returned home to retrieve a pistol; he shot and killed a lone Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit shortly afterwards. Around 70 minutes after Kennedy and Connally were shot, Oswald was apprehended by the Dallas Police Department and charged under Texas state law with the murders of Kennedy and Tippit. Two days later, as live television cameras covered Oswald being moved through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters, he was fatally shot by Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby. Like Kennedy, Oswald was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital, where he soon died. Ruby was convicted of Oswald's murder, though the decision was overturned on appeal, and Ruby died in prison in 1967 while awaiting a new trial.

Henry Menasco Wade (November 11, 1914 – March 1, 2001) was an American lawyer who served as district attorney of Dallas County from 1951 to 1987. He participated in two notable U.S. court cases of the 20th century: the prosecution of Jack Ruby for killing Lee Harvey Oswald, and the U.S. Supreme Court case that held abortion was a constitutional right, Roe v. Wade. In addition, Wade was district attorney when Randall Dale Adams, the subject of the 1988 documentary film The Thin Blue Line, was wrongfully convicted in the murder of Robert Wood, a Dallas police officer. After his term and death, he was criticised for his corruption, ranging from wrongful convictions, to attitudes and certain comments on race, in addition to some decisions such as execution of innocent men.

J. D. Tippit (September 18, 1924 – November 22, 1963) was an American World War II U.S. Army veteran and Bronze Star recipient, who was a police officer with the Dallas Police Department from 1952 to 1963. On November 22, 1963, less than an hour after the assassination of president John F. Kennedy, Tippit was shot and killed in a residential neighborhood in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was initially arrested for the murder of Tippit and was subsequently charged with killing Kennedy, but he was murdered by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner, two days later, before he could be tried. In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Tippit was killed by Oswald acting alone, though Tippit's murder has spawned alternative scenarios from Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists.