He was knocked unconscious and had to be hospitalized. (HSCA Record 180-10113-10493, May 29, 1964) Ruby’s conviction for Oswald’s murder thrust him into great despair, triggering a hastening of the mental degenerative process and causing him to lose all hope for a successful appeal and to not cooperate with his lawyers, who were seeking to reverse his conviction on appeal. To protect Ruby from himself, Sheriff Decker assigned two round-the-clock guards to watch over Ruby, who slept on a mattress on the bare floor, lights always shining directly on him. When his sister Eva would visit him, he would urge her to do away with herself because he said his whole family was in jeopardy. His visions of his brother Earl and his children being dismembered were so clear that Eva said that since she wasn’t in daily contact with the rest of the family, she had “to sort of tell real lies, that I just got through talking” with them “and everything was okay.” He also told her that “25 million Jews have been slaughtered”
