Lee Harvey Oswald Wedding Ring Among JFK Items To Be Auctioned [Video]
Lee Harvey Oswald’s wedding ring is among more than 300 items linked to JFK that will be put up for auction on Thursday in Boston.
The assassin left his wedding ring and $170 in a cup on his wife’s night table on the morning of November 22, 1963, before leaving for work at the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.
President Kennedy and First Lady Jackie Kennedy were in town that day and would drive by in their motorcade.
As the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination is upon us, the auction house has collected several items including Kennedy’s rosary beads, clothes belonging to the President, Lee Harvey Oswald’s US Marine Corps rifle score book, and a hat worn by Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who killed Oswald two days after the President’s murder.
The ring, who has recently been found, has a tiny hammer and sickle engraved on the inside of the band, which is part of the symbol of the communist party and a “very powerful, significant piece of evidence,” according to Bobby Livingston, an executive vice president with the New Hampshire-based auction house, RR Auction.
“It gives you such insight into the mind of Lee Harvey Oswald,” said Livingston, who added that the ring could bring $100,000 or more.
The seller is Marina Oswald Porter, the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald, who recovered the ring after it spent decades on the shelves of a lawyer who did some work for her.
Porter included a letter with the wedding ring which reads in part:
“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 with November 22, 1963.”
Porter has requested that the auction house not release the full contents of the letter which chronicles the history of the ring.
Lee Harvey Oswald’s wedding ring was discovered in 2004 in the files of a Fort Worth, Texas lawyer inside an envelope marked “Treasury Department Secret Service.” it was later revealed that it had been in the possession of lawyer Forrest Markward’s since 1964.
A partner in the firm, Luke Ellis, says that when Lee Harvey Oswald’s ring was found, Markward could not remember how it had come to be in his possession.
Two of the most remarkable items being auctioned together with the ring, are the limousine JFK and his wife Jackie were riding when he was shot and the window believed to be the one from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired the deadly shots.
