Jack Beers

Ira Jefferson Beers Jr. (July 14, 1923 – February 17, 1975), known professionally as Jack Beers, was an American photojournalist who worked for The Dallas Morning News. Beers was best known for his widely distributed photograph capturing Jack Ruby lunging toward Lee Harvey Oswald a split-second before firing his fatal shot on November 24, 1963.

Career Beers' picture of Jack Ruby just before shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas on November 24, 1963.

After his military service, Beers was hired by The Dallas Times Herald, where he worked for nearly three years, then moved to The Dallas Morning News in 1948. Although a shadow was visible in a corner window of the sixth floor, the person could not be identified from the footage. positioning for a view of Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald as he was being transferred from the city jail to the larger county jail.

Personal life and death

Beers' rival at The Dallas Times Herald, Robert H. Jackson, took a similar photo, but approximately six-tenths of a second later, as Oswald screams in pain. That photo was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1964. According to his daughter, Beers suffered from depression that went untreated, due to "missing out" on the recognition that Jackson received. A few months after his death, FBI agents asked The Dallas Morning News for the negatives of three photographs taken by Beers shortly after Oswald's murder. The photographs were of "three shabbily dressed men at Dealey Plaza" whom the FBI said had mysteriously not been booked or fingerprinted.