Lee Harvey Oswald's Brother Sues Funeral Home For Selling Oswald's Old Coffin

from the ownership-of-coffins dept

Paul Keating alerts us to a bizarre lawsuit, where the brother of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Robert Edward Lee Oswald, is suing a funeral home and an auction house because they auctioned off an old casket that Lee Harvey Oswald had been buried in for a while. Apparently, back in 1981, due to one round of conspiracy theories that claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was not actually buried in his grave, the grave site was dug up and Owald was exhumed and proven to be Lee Harvey Oswald again (for the doubters). In doing so, it was discovered that his original coffin had "deteriorated" (they tend to do that), so it was replaced with another one.

Fast forward to December of last year when Robert Edward Lee Oswald discovered that the funeral home was auctioning off the old casket, along with some other items related to the funeral of both Lee Harvey Oswald and his mother. It's not clear how he has any right to claim ownership or some sort of contractual obligation concerning those items, but he's trying. While it's true that he did "buy" the original coffin, it does not appear that he paid for the replacement coffin, which leads to all sorts of interesting "ownership" questions. Do we really continue to "own" a coffin after it's been buried in the ground? And then what if it's been exhumed and replaced? The living Oswald didn't seem to have any issue with the fact that he never got back the original coffin until he found out it was being sold, so perhaps an argument could be made that he "abandoned" it. The whole thing will likely make for an entertaining trial either way, assuming it gets that far.

Filed Under: caskets, lawsuits, lee harvey oswald, robert edward lee oswald