Lee Harvey Oswald's Casket Sells for $87K

The original coffin of Lee Harvey Oswald -- the man who assassinated President John F. Kennedy -- sold at auction Thursday night for $87,469, The Dallas Morning News reported.

The original deadline for bidding was 7 pm, but Nate Sanders, of Nate D. Sanders Auctions in Santa Monica, Calif., said auction rules allowed bidding to continue until one of two final competitors conceded. The auction ended about 10 p.m.

The auction house declined to identify the winner but said the person might be named FridayThe online bidding started at $1,000 early in the day and reached $23,000 by afternoon.

Oswald, who was arrested about an hour after President Kennedy was murdered in 1963, was shot dead two days later. He never faced the court system but the 1964 Warren Commission found him responsible for President Kennedy's death.

He was buried in a simple pine coffin, but his body was exhumed in 1981 after his wife won a legal battle to identify him amid theories a Russian agent was buried in his place.

The heavily water-damaged casket was replaced with a new one when Oswald was reburied at Rose Hill Cemetery, Texas.

The coffin was put up for sale by Allen Baumgardner, who kept it for three decades in a storage area of his funeral home in Fort Worth, Tex.

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