DALLAS — A gravestone for President John F. Kennedy’s assassin has been returned to Texas after an ownership dispute.
David Card, 75, of Dallas, has the granite marker following a settlement with Historic Auto Attractions of Roscoe, Ill. The case over Lee Harvey Oswald’s gravestone was settled out of court last month, KTVT-TV reported.
“I’m very relieved and happy to have the stone back here in Texas where it belongs,” Card told the Dallas-Fort Worth television station.
The gravestone has Oswald’s name, his birth date of Oct. 18, 1939, and his date of death, Nov. 24, 1963. It is believed to have been the original marker for his grave.
Oswald was in police custody when club owner Jack Ruby fatally shot him two days after Kennedy’s death.
Touching the 140-pound tombstone is like “reaching 6 feet down and right into Oswald’s coffin,” Card told The Dallas Morning News.
Oswald’s tombstone turned up missing from Fort Worth’s Rose Hill Cemetery on Nov. 22, 1967, the fourth anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination. It was allegedly taken as a prank by some teens and later recovered.
Card claims Oswald’s mother put the stone in the crawl space of her Fort Worth home because she feared it would be stolen from the cemetery. A simpler gravestone was placed on the grave. Card’s father and stepmother bought the house in the 1980s, after Marguerite Oswald died. Another distant relative in 2011 apparently sold the marker to the museum.
Card argued the relative did not have the authority to sell the gravestone.
Card says he might place the marker in the Sixth Floor Museum, dedicated to history of Kennedy’s assassination and located in the former Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald shot at Kennedy as the president’s motorcade made its way through Dealey Plaza.
