Robert Oswald awarded custody of Lee's casket and the amount paid at auction, $87,000 plus.

WFAA-TV coverage is here.

Tarrant County judge rules that Lee Harvey Oswald’s casket belongs to

his brother Robert

A Tarrant County judge has ruled that the rotting casket of Lee Harvey

Oswald belongs to his brother Robert.

Judge Donald Cosby issued that conclusion this morning, almost two

months after the 80-year-old Robert appeared in a Fort Worth courtroom

in an attempt to keep the casket out of a stranger’s hands. Writes

Cosby, he bought his brother’s pine box for $300 on November 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.

What remains of Lee Harvey Oswald's casket, which will be returned to Robert

In December 2010, a Los Angeles auction house sold the casket to an

unidentified buyer for $87,468. Weeks later, Robert filed a suit in

Tarrant County to stop the transaction, which he blasted as “highly

objectionable to a reasonable person.” Oswald sued Nate D. Sanders,

Inc., and Baumgardner Funeral Home over the sale of the casket, as well

as other grim items tied to his brother’s death.

The casket’s journey from six feet under to a Tarrant County courthouse

is a long one involving the sale of a funeral home, Lee Harvey Oswald’s

exhumation in 1981 (following allegations he wasn’t really buried in

that box) and his transfer to a new casket when he was put back in the

ground at Rose Hill Cemetery. In his lengthy finding, Cosby details its

tortured history. But long story short, he writes: When Baumgardner

Funeral Home kept the 1963 casket following Lee Harvey’s re-burial 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 to Lee since “Robert would never see the casket again,

and it would remain in the ground forever and ever.”

Instead, it kept the box, and in 2010 partnered with Nate D. Sanders,

Inc., to auction off the casket and other “funeral items.” As far as the

Los Angeles auction house was concerned, Baumgardner had every right to

the casket. Wrong, says the judge, who has awarded Robert the $87,468 in

damages as well as the casket. Baumgardner Funeral Home will have to pay

for its return.

Says the judge, the funeral home “wrongfully exercised dominion and

control over the 1963 casket.”

Click here:

https://www.scribd.com/doc/254213782/Judge-Rules-on-Oswald-Casket