AP woman living link to Kennedy assassination, Oswald murder

AVON PARK - Through herself and her father, shes a local connection to one of the most historical events in United States history.

Throughout late 1962 and into 1963, Loretta Bartletts father, Frank Boerder, worked for Jack Ruby, the nightclub operator in Dallas. Nov. 24, 1963, Ruby fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald, who was in police custody after being charged with the murder of President John F. Kennedy two days earlier.

Boerder was a German immigrant, raised in New York City who was living in Dallas and worked as an artist and interior decorator. In the late 1940s, he had moved to Dallas from Lima, Ohio, with his second wife and three of his daughters, including Bartlett, now 65, and living in southeast Avon Park.

In the living room of her Anglers Stream road home, Bartlett spoke about seeing her father work at Rubys nightclub, the Carousel Club, a burlesque venue in south Dallas. There, at 10 or 11 years old, she said she remembers meeting Ruby on several occasions and the black hat he always wore.

She also remembered her father telling her Ruby said he came to Dallas to be a hit man. Thats what he told me.

He seemed pretty laid back, a nice guy, she said. They(Ruby and her father) were pretty close. My dad got pretty emotional when he (Ruby) did what he did.

Bartlett - who works as an instructor at Cloud Nine Beauty School, Avon Park - said she isnt sure exactly how her father and Ruby originally got in contact. She said her father, who died in 1971, mentioned a wealthy business owner who was backing the club that may have put the two men in contact. That man may have been Joe Slatin, according to a Dec. 19, 1963, FBI report,

Bartlett said one of her most prized possessions, which she has stored in a safe-deposit box in Lima, Ohio, is a voided check which on the back, Ruby had written her father a note. On it, he wrote: Dear Frank, I stopped in to see you. Stop by and see me at the club. The note was left at the Carousel for Boerder.

I still find it strange that my dad saved that note from Jack Ruby, she said.

A bit of what Boerder knew about Ruby and Oswalds murder is outlined The Warren Report, the presidents commission on the assassination of Kennedy. Boerder was mentioned after three to four months of being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and on page 363, the report mentions Bertha Cheeks, the sister of a housekeeper where assassination suspect Lee Harvey Oswald lived. The report states Cheeks visited Ruby at his club Nov. 18, 1963, met an interior decorator and stopped in to possibly provide financial backing in Rubys new nightclub.

See more here:
AP woman living link to Kennedy assassination, Oswald murder