'JFK killer' Lee Harvey Oswald's coffin sold for $90,000

The coffin of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man who is believed to have assassinated US President John F Kennedy, has been sold for $90,000 (£58,000).

The Los Angeles auctioneers said two buyers battled it out for the coffin, after bids started at $1,000.

Oswald, who was murdered shortly after being arrested for the 1963 shooting, was reburied in a new coffin in 1981 after his widow had him exhumed.

The buyer has not yet spoken publicly.

The Texas funeral director kept the old coffin and chose to sell it at auction.

"Anything connected to the JFK assassination sells for really high," said auctioneer Nate D Sanders.

Oswald was arrested about an hour after President Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas on 22 November, 1963.

Oswald himself was shot two days later and was never brought to trial.

There have been numerous conspiracy theories ever since about who really shot JFK and why Lee Harvey Oswald was killed.

The exhumation of his body in 1981 was designed to lay to rest one of these theories - namely, that the man who was buried was a Soviet agent who had taken Oswald's identity to carry out the killing.

The auction in Los Angeles also included instruments that were used to embalm Oswald, his death certificate, an Easter card he sent to his brother, and a section of the car seat on which President Kennedy was sitting when he was shot.