By TER Staff
FBI reports written during the investigation into former Jewish Defense League chairman Irv Rubin's apparent 2002 suicide at a federal lockup in Downtown L.A. reveal Rubin told several people he planned to kill himself but nobody reported the threats or took action to prevent it.
The documents, obtained directly from the U.S. Department of Justice by The Enterprise Report, contain startling interviews with a polygrapher and inmates – all who say Rubin had threatened suicide in the days before he allegedly slit his throat and jumped from a third-floor railing.
“Tell my wife I love her,” one inmate said Rubin warned the night before the fall. “Tomorrow, I'll slit my throat,” he told FBI agents.
Another inmate said Rubin had provided a box of his personal papers to a guard the same night, and made a comment about, 'not needing them anymore.'
This same inmate said, “...he believes now that Rubin was saying goodbye to him at that point,” and the inmate said he was so worried about Rubin that he planned to try and warn prosecutors by sending a message through his own attorney.
The inmate (name redacted), “...did not report his concerns, however, because if he reported that Rubin was suicidal, he was afraid that Rubin might be sent to the hole.”
The guard who accepted the box of Rubin's belongings, who's name was never mentioned in the FBI file, was either never interviewed by agents, or the FBI 'lost' the document when the file was turned over to The Enterprise Report.
A prison psychologist was interviewed by the FBI, and said Rubin had been under his care for several months, and he never detected suicidal thoughts.
“He met with Rubin often during the past few months and always asked Rubin how he was feeling and if he felt like killing himself. Rubin always told (name redacted) that he felt fine and looked forward to seeing his family,” the FBI report says.
On May 7, 2003 the FBI closed its investigation – about six months after Rubin's death.
“There is no additional investigation to be conducted and it is requested that this case be administratively closed,” wrote the case agent.
Why then – two months later, on July 7, 2003 - did the FBI conduct another interview in the case?
This time, agents interviewed a former federal law enforcement officer now working as a private polygrapher, who backed up the inmate's suicide warning story:
“Irving Ruben [sic] had told (name redacted) that he was going to kill himself the night before he actually did it. Ruben [sic] told him to say a prayer for him, a special Jewish prayer that is said for the dead,” the ex-fed told agents.
“(name redacted) tried to talk him out of it but couldn't change Ruben's [sic] mind.”
* For more on the story of the JDL's Irv Rubiin and the FBI files about him, read The Enterprise Report's previous story on the case from March 16, 2009.
