Suit by Lee Harvey Oswald’s Brother Claims Casket Auction Was a Privacy Invasion
Lee Harvey Oswald’s brother has sued a Texas funeral home and an auction house over the sale of Oswald’s casket and other items linked to the presidential assassin.
Oswald’s original casket, saved after a 1981 exhumation, brought nearly $87,500 in the auction, according to the Associated Press, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and Courthouse News Service. Other items sold at auction included Oswald’s death certificate and the table used to embalm him, raising a total of more than $160,000 for the Baumgardner Funeral Home and the auction house.
The suit by Robert Edward Lee Oswald, 76, claims invasion of privacy, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, conversion, and breach of contract. The action (PDF posted by Courthouse News Service), seeks the money raised in the auction plus unspecified damages.
Part of the publicity for the auction included a photo of the body of Lee Harvey Oswald in the coffin. Arrested in the assassination of President Kennedy, Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby while in police custody. Oswald’s body was exhumed after conspiracy theorists claimed that another body may be in the casket. Because the original casket had deteriorated, a new coffin was used to rebury the body.
