Just a month shy of the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's assassination, one of shooter Lee Harvey Oswald's last remaining possessions is hitting the auction block on Thursday.
Oswald's gold wedding band will be auctioned in Boston by RR Auction on October 24, Dallas News reported. The ring will be accompanied by a five-page handwritten letter by Oswald's widow, Marina Oswald Porter, detailing the ring's history. RR Auction expects the ring will be sold for $30,000 to $50,000.
Oswald reportedly left the ring in a cup next to Porter's bed before he shot and killed Kennedy on November 22, 1963 (Oswald himself was shot and killed two days later by club owner Jack Ruby at Dallas police headquarters). The Secret Service confiscated the ring and gave it to Porter's former lawyer, who then gave it to the law office of Porter's attorney, Forrest Markward, where it remained in a manila folder until it was rediscovered in 2004.
No one staked a claim to the ring or contacted Porter for eight years, until one of the partners at Markward's former law office wrote her a letter telling her that the ring had been found. Porter picked it up in early 2013 and is now eager to part with it.
“This is the only item of Lee’s that has been returned to me, and it took almost 50 years,” Porter said in the letter. “I’m remarried for many years now, raised my children and have been blessed with grandchildren... At this time of my life, I don’t wish to have Lee’s ring in my possession because symbolically I want to let go of my past that is connecting [me] with Nov. 22, 1963.”
Earlier this year, the engagement ring Napoleon gave to his future wife Josephine was auctioned for $948,000. And Elizabeth Taylor's wedding dress was recently sold for $187,000.
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