A judge has ruled that Lee Harvey Oswald’s former coffin does not belong to a Texas funeral home, whose owner attempted to sell it for a princely sum of over $87,000. According to the judge who presided over the case, Judge Donald J. Cosby of Fort Worth’s District Court, the proprietor of the funeral home had behaved with “… wrongful and wanton and malicious conduct.”
It is reported that Allen S. Baumgardner, who owns the Baumgardner Funeral Home in Fort Worth, Texas, had attempted to stop Lee Harvey Oswald’s brother, Robert, from becoming aware of the coffin’s existence. For many years, the coffin remained hidden away in storage, unbeknownst to Robert.
In 2010, Baumgardner put the coffin up for sale and was due to make over $87,000 from an undisclosed buyer. Realizing what had happened, Oswald’s brother filed a lawsuit against the Baumgardner Funeral Home, thereby suspending the transaction.
Lee Harvey Oswald was buried in a $300 wooden coffin, shortly after assassinating President John F. Kennedy in 1963. His body was later dug up to disprove a widespread conspiracy theory, which contended his body had been replaced by a Soviet agent.
Dental records were used to successfully identify the body, and Oswald was then reburied. However, the assassin’s corpse was placed in an entirely new coffin, as the wooden coffin had started to break down because of water damage. The old coffin was then secretly transported to the Fort Worth funeral home. According to Judge Cosby, Baumgardner understood the potential financial gains of selling the coffin, and deliberately squirreled the coffin away in storage.
Ultimately, Baumgardner was instructed to pay damages, amounting to the value expected from the proceeds of the auction sale, to Oswald’s brother. He was also ordered to return the casket to Robert, and pay over $10,000 worth of fees to the auction house.
According to The New York Times, Robert said he was “pleased” with the judge’s verdict. “The judge did not think much of their case,” stated Robert Oswald’s legal representative.