Lee Harvey Oswald's coffin to be auctioned in L.A.

[MNeagle]

Lee Harvey Oswald's coffin to be auctioned in L.A.



http://d.yimg.com/a/p/rids/20101201/i/r807180952.jpg?x=213&y=142&xc=1&yc=1&wc=410&hc=273&q=85&sig=zXtJxnlaFJGO.fc25MK7AA--
Reuters – The coffin of suspected assassin of President John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, is shown in this undated …


LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – For the JFK-assassination conspiracy junkie who has everything: Lee Harvey Oswald's coffin. Body not included.

A Los Angeles auction house said on Tuesday it would sell the simple pine coffin in which the suspected assassin of President John F. Kennedy was buried for almost 20 years.

Bidding will start at $1,000, but the item is expected to fetch strong interest from museums and collectors of presidential memorabilia when it goes on the block on December 16.

"There's just a lot of interest in Kennedy and anything to do with his assassination," said Laura Yntema, auction manager at Santa Monica, California-based Nate D. Sanders.

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 lookalike Russian agent had been buried in her husband's place, according to the auction house.

A medical exam 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.

The original coffin, which had suffered extensive water damage, is being sold by Baumgardner Funeral Home, the local undertaker which handled the re-internment.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20101201/od_nm/us_coffin_auction

[Hatha Sunahara]

Is this coffin a historical relic? Isn't that history unraveling before our eyes? Doesn't a large part of the population believe the whole story is a lie, and Oswald was a patsy? It could be a relic of a false history. If I were a museum, I'd stay away from this one.

I wonder if there is a market for used coffins.


Hatha

[MNeagle]

Lee Harvey Oswald's coffin sells for $87,469


http://api.emerald.synacor.com/api/hangar.php/c21hcnRjcm9wOjMwMDoyMDAsc21hcnRyZXNpemU6MzAwOjIwMD ox/http://newsimages.emerald.synacor.com/ap_photos//ed1b03a8-ab79-4100-8892-d272cf1dd852.jpeg

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The simple wooden coffin that was supposed to be Lee Harvey Oswald's final resting place will soon have a new resting place of its own after a mystery bidder bought it at auction for more than $87,000.

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 Thursday evening for $87,469, which includes a 20 percent buyers' fee.

"Anything connected to the JFK assassination sells for really high," said Nate D. Sanders of Nate D. Sanders Auctions in Santa Monica.

He declined to provide details on the winning bidder, but said the bidder might speak publicly Friday.

The auction was extended two hours because of a last-minute rush of bidding. Sanders said two bidders battled it out until the end.

Oswald was arrested in President John F. 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 gotten 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.

Still, the curator of a museum dedicated to Kennedy's Nov. 22, 1963, assassination said when bidding opened on Nov. 30 that he expected it would generate a lot of interest.

"My experience as a curator has been, if people have room and it's a Kennedy item, they will collect it," said Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas.

The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation has declined to comment.

Baumgardner was a 21-year-old funeral home assistant when Oswald was shot to death in a Dallas police station just two days after Kennedy was assassinated while riding through Dallas in a motorcade.

"I've never seen so many security police and FBI and Secret Service and news media just everywhere," he recalled earlier this month.


link (http://www.centurylink.net/news/read.php?ps=1016&rip_id=%3CD9K5E5O01%40news.ap.org%3E&news_id=18199670&src=most_popular_viewed)

[Eyebone]

87,000 dollars?

Just when I think there is a limit to stupid.

[MNeagle]

Brother disputes sale of Lee Harvey Oswald coffin


LOS ANGELES – The brother of Lee Harvey Oswald said Monday a coffin that once held the body of the presidential assassin should have been destroyed years ago rather then being auctioned off and allowed to exist as a ghoulish keepsake.

Robert L. Oswald said he didn't know the coffin still existed until he read in a Texas newspaper this month that it had been put up for sale.

Oswald, 76, said he attempted to contact a funeral home owner to halt the sale, but his call was not returned. He said a similar request was ignored by the Santa Monica auction house that handled the sale.

"This is not about money on my part." Oswald said. "The coffin should have been destroyed years ago, and that is what I desire now."

Lee Harvey Oswald was shot to death at a Dallas police station two days after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in an open convertible. Although Oswald was never put on trial, authorities concluded he was the killer.

An anonymous bidder on Thursday bought the water-damaged coffin that held the body of Oswald until it was exhumed in 1981.

The bidder agreed to pay $87,469 after a spirited round of bidding that Nate D. Sanders Auctions of Santa Monica, Calif., said continued two hours past the original closing deadline.

Robert Oswald said he bought the original coffin in 1963 and believes that makes him its rightful owner. He has no plans to sell it and no immediate intent to file a lawsuit, he said.

"We're going to evaluate all the legal options and see what needs to be done," he said.

The retired salesman who lives in Wichita Falls, Texas, said he never gave anyone the authority to do anything with the coffin.

Sanders was out of the office and unavailable for comment, but auction house spokesman Sam Heller said he was unaware of any ownership dispute.

Texas funeral home owner Allen Baumgardner, who put the coffin up for sale, did not return calls. He previously said he swapped the coffin with Oswald's family for a new one when the body was dug up then reburied in 1981.

Robert Oswald said he never heard from Baumgardner at that time and didn't believe anyone else in the family had, although he couldn't say for sure if his brother's widow had been contacted. He noted his mother had died a few months before her son's body was exhumed.

Baumgardner kept the coffin in a storage room at the Baumgardner Funeral Home, saying he hoped someone interested in its historical significance would buy it.

The body had been dug up to lay to rest conspiracy theories that Oswald wasn't buried in the grave. The body was identified through dental records then returned to Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park in Fort Worth, Texas.

Baumgardner said he put the body in a new coffin after it was discovered Oswald's burial vault had cracked, allowing moisture to damage the original coffin.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101220/ap_on_re_us/us_oswald_s_coffin