JFK 'Killer's' Coffin Sells For £56k At Auction
2:05am UK, Saturday December 18, 2010
The wooden coffin that held the body of JFK's alleged killer Lee Harvey Oswald for 20 years has been sold at auction for more than £56,000.
The coffin was described as 'a one-of-a-kind item'
An anonymous buyer bought the coffin, which included a 20% commission, topping the target price of £38,600.
Oswald was arrested less than an hour after the assassination of President John F Kennedy on November 22, 1963.
He was shot and killed two days later, while in police custody, by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.
"This was a one-of-a-kind item. This was the first coffin that this auction house has ever auctioned and it was quite a unique item," said a spokesman for Santa Monica auction house Nate D Sanders.
The coffin was dug up in 1981
Bidding began on the coffin when it was posted online two weeks ago.
Auction house manager Laura Yntema declined to identify the buyer except to say that he was a "private individual" who was apparently bidding for himself.
The coffin was unearthed in October 1981 after a legal dispute between Oswald's widow, Marina, and his brother, Robert.
Marina successfully sought an exhumation to test a conspiracy theory that a look-alike Russian agent had been buried in her husband's place, according to the auction house.
Tests showed the badly decomposed body was indeed Oswald's, and he was returned to Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas, in a new casket.
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