JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s coffin up for sale

LONDON - The original casket in which the body of former US President John F. Kennedy’s alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald lay for 20 years is all set to go under the hammer this month.

A Los Angeles auction house announced on Wednesday that the simple pine coffin would go to the highest bidder on December 16, reports the Daily Mail.

Bidding will start at 1,000 dollars, but the item is expected to fetch much more due to strong interest from museums and collectors of presidential memorabilia.

Baumgardner Funeral Home, the local undertaker that handled the re-internment, is selling the original coffin, which had suffered extensive water damage.

“The original deteriorated coffin offered here, measures 80in long by 24in deep, with the thickness of the sides of the casket approximately one inch. Sitting on wood crate which measures 84in by 24in,” said a statement from the Nate D Sanders auction house in Santa Monica, California.

The auction also includes several instruments that were used to embalm Oswald, his death certificate, an Easter card he sent to his brother, and a section of the car seat on which President Kennedy was sitting when he was shot.

“There’s just a lot of interest in Kennedy and anything to do with his assassination,” said auction manager Laura Yntema.

The burial plot’s original tombstone, which gave Oswald’s full name and the dates of his birth and death, was stolen and was replaced by a marker simply inscribed ‘Oswald’.

According to the auction house, Oswald’s body was exhumed in 1981 and buried in Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas in a new casket to lay to rest rumours that a look-alike Russian agent was buried in his place. (ANI)