JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s coffin sells for 55K pounds

LONDON - The wooden coffin that was supposed to be John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s final resting place has been sold for more than 55,000 pounds at an auction.

The coffin was put on the auction block late last month by a Texas funeral home owner who swapped it with Oswald’s family for a new one when the body was briefly exhumed in 1981.

It sold for 87,469, dollars, which includes a 20 per cent buyers’ fee.

“Anything connected to the JFK assassination sells for really high,” the Telegraph quoted Nate D. Sanders of Nate D. Sanders Auctions in Santa Monica, as saying.

He declined to provide details on the winning bidder.

Oswald was arrested in President Kennedy’s 1963 death but was slain two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

Funeral home owner Allen Baumgardner had held onto the coffin since Oswald’s body was dug up in 1981 in an effort to put to rest conspiracy theories that he really wasn’t buried in his grave. After the body was identified through dental records, it was returned to Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park in Fort Worth, Texas.

Because water had got into a cracked burial vault and damaged the original coffin, Baumgardner swapped it with Oswald’s family for a new one.

The original shows signs of the water damage. Its metal ornamentation is rusted and parts of it, including the roof, have rotted. Its satin lining has long since disintegrated. (ANI)