Lee Harvey Oswald's casket was wrongly sold for over $87,000 by funeral home and now must pay back JFK assassin's brother

• Lee Harvey Oswald's casket belonged to his brother, not the funeral home
• Funeral home must now pay Oswald's brother $87,468
• Lee Harvey was accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy 

By ASSOCIATED PRESS

PUBLISHED: 15:08 EST, 30 January 2015 | UPDATED: 00:16 EST, 31 January 2015

Lee Harvey Oswald's casket that was auctioned off for more than $87,000, actually belongs to Oswald's brother, not the funeral home that sold it, a Texas judge said.

Oswald's brother, Robert, 80, had sued Baumgardner Funeral Home in Fort Worth, Texas, after it sold the pine coffin for $87,468 in 2010.

A Tarrant County judge on Friday ordered the funeral home to pay the same amount of money in damages to Robert Oswald, saying its conduct was 'malicious and wanton.'

Lee Harvey Oswald's original pine burial coffin is pictured - it was sold at auction for over $87,000

Lee Harvey Oswald (right), was accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy (left)

Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot during a jail transfer two days after Kennedy's death. 

Oswald was buried at the Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park in Texas in 1963, but his body was exhumed 18 years later and examined after mounting speculation about CIA involvement. 

After being exhumed in 1981, the casket was too damaged for reburial.

The lawsuit says Oswald's family thought the casket had been thrown away but was actually kept in storage.

Robert Oswald said he paid a total of $679 to purchase the casket, vault, suit and flowers for the funeral.

The body of Lee Harvey Oswald lies in a casket at Parkland Morgue in Dallas, Texas, in 1963

Funeral director Allen Baumgardener failed to sell the coffin on numerous occasions but finally found a buyer in 2010. 

After Oswald's death, doubts that he was the true assassin quickly surfaced and some historians came to believe that he was in fact a covert U.S. intelligence agent.

The former Marine is said to have defected to the Soviet Union in 1960 promising to reveal valuable military secrets.

The government theory that Oswald acted alone was not enough to convince many Americans following the President's assassination, including the leader's own brother.

Robert Kennedy, who was the Attorney General at the time, immediately suspected that the CIA had something to do with the President's death in Dallas.

Robert Oswald (pictured) will be paid $87,000 for the wrongful auction of his brother's coffin

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2933605/Judge-Funeral-home-...