WASHINGTON, October 24 (RIA Novosti) – The 14-carat gold wedding ring that US President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, bought in Minsk before his marriage in 1961 to Russian-born Marina Prusakova sold at auction in Boston on Thursday for $108,000, the auction house that sold the ring said.
Bidding on the ring started at $32,500 when it came up for sale in the auction of around 300 items connected with Kennedy’s assassination. RR Auction said it sold to a to a bidder from Texas, who asked to remain anonymous, for $108,000.
The buyer of the wedding band also got a five-page handwritten letter dated May 5, 2013 in which Marina Oswald Porter, who married Kenneth Porter in 1965, documents the story of the ring from its purchase in 1961 to its return to her in 2012.
Oswald Porter explained in the letter to RR Auction of New Hampshire, that on Nov. 22, 1963, the day Kennedy was killed, her then husband left the ring on a night table next to her bed, the first time he had ever removed it.
After Oswald’s arrest the ring was given to the United States Secret Service and then to the Texas lawyer who represented Oswald’s widow in 1964. Placed in an envelope, it lay forgotten in a file for five decades, until finally being returned to Porter last year.
In a letter sent to the auction house, Oswald Porter wrote: "That is the only item of Lee's that has been returned to me and it took almost 50 years. 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 Nov. 22, 1963."
Other items sold at the auction were a lock of Kennedy’s hair, which went for $1,800; the white, convertible Lincoln Continental in which Kennedy rode in Fort Worth, Texas, on the morning of his death, which sold for $318,000; and Kennedy’s 18-carat presidential ring, which sold for $90,000 -- nearly $20,000 less than the Oswald wedding ring.
(Updates sale prices, adds detail.)
