Oswald wedding ring among JFK items up for auction

The wedding ring that belonged to the man who assassinated US President John F Kennedy is among nearly 300 items linked to the former president that go up for auction today in Boston as the 50th anniversary of the shooting approaches.
Lee Harvey Oswald's ring, which has a tiny hammer and sickle engraved on the inside of the band, is a "very powerful, significant piece of evidence" in the 1963 shooting, said Bobby Livingston, an executive vice president with the auction house, RR Auction.
"It gives you such insight into the mind of Lee Harvey Oswald," said Livingston, who added that the ring could bring USD 100,000 or more.

The auction house has gathered items ranging from Kennedy's rosary beads and clothing items to a hat worn by
Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who killed Oswald two days after Kennedy's assassination.
Oswald left the wedding ring at home before leaving that November day in 1963.

Oswald's widow Marina Oswald Porter, recently recovered the ring, which apparently sat forgotten for decades in the files of a Texas lawyer who once did work for her.
Accompanying the ring is a five-page handwritten letter dated May 5, 2013, in which Porter writes: "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."

At her request, the auction house is not releasing the full contents of the letter, in which Porter documents the history of the ring, from its purchase in the Soviet city of Minsk, Belarus, before their April, 30, 1961.
Also up for auction today are a white Lincoln Continental that the president and first lady rode in hours before his death and the sixth-floor window believed to have served as Oswald's sniper perch, which the building's owner removed in the weeks after the attack.