Court rules Oswald's coffin is brother's

FORT WORTH -- The original coffin in which Lee Harvey Oswald was buried belongs to Oswald's brother, not the funeral home that auctioned it off for more than $87,000, a judge ruled Friday.

Oswald's 80-year-old brother, Robert, had sued Nate D. Sanders Inc. and Baumgardner Funeral Home after they sold the pine coffin for $87,468 in 2010.

In his lawsuit he blasted the sale of the coffin and other items tied to his brother's death as "highly objectionable to a reasonable person."

Tarrant County Judge Donald Cosby on Friday said Robert bought his brother's pine box for $300 on Nov. 24, 1963, and it remains to this day "the personal property of Robert." That means the person who bought it at auction in 2010 can't have it.

Cosby ordered the funeral home to pay $87,468 in damages to Robert Oswald, saying its conduct was "malicious and wanton." It also must pay the auction house more than $10,000 in storage fees.

The funeral home also must cover the expense of transporting the coffin from California to Texas, where the family plans to destroy it, according to Robert Oswald's attorney, Gant Grimes.

Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot during a jail transfer two days after Kennedy's death. His body was exhumed in 1981 amid conspiracy theories that the coffin did not contain his body.

After a Dallas hospital confirmed the body through dental records, it was reburied, but not in the original coffin, which was too water-damaged.

The lawsuit said Oswald's family thought the coffin had been thrown away, but it was actually kept in storage. Robert Oswald said he didn't know the coffin still existed until he read in a Texas newspaper in December 2010 that it had been put up for sale.

In his lengthy finding, Cosby said that when Baumgardner Funeral Home kept the 1963 coffin after Lee Harvey Oswald's reburial in 1981, it should have told Robert or Lee's widow, Marina, of its whereabouts.

At trial, the funeral home's attorney argued that it was "a gift" from Robert Oswald to Lee Harvey Oswald since "Robert would never see the casket again, and it would remain in the ground forever and ever."

The funeral home kept the box and in 2010 partnered with Nate D. Sanders Inc. to auction off the coffin, along with Lee Harvey Oswald's death certificate and the embalming tools and table used in his burial.

The funeral home "wrongfully exercised dominion and control over the 1963 casket," the judge said Friday.

Information for this article was contributed by Emily Schmall of The Associated Press and by Robert Wilonsky of The Dallas Morning News.

A Section on 01/31/2015

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