A Dallas bar owner is trying to figure out what to do with Lee Harvey Oswald's original grave marker, 54 years after Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.
"It's in excellent condition," said David Card, owner of Poor David's Pub on Lamar Street.
Card, 77, showed off the marker, which was tucked in an electrical room in the back of his bar.
"What do I have here?" he asked. "I have here the headstone, the original headstone of the most famous assassin in the history of Western civilization."
It weighs 130 pounds and includes Oswald's name with the dates of his birth and death and a cross at the bottom surrounded by a flowery design. Oswald was killed on Nov. 24, 1963, by nightclub owner Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.
If grave stones could talk, this one would tell quite a story.
It sat for four years on top of Oswald's grave in a Fort Worth cemetery before it was stolen by two Oklahoma teenagers. Police later found it and returned it to Oswald's mother, who replaced the headstone with a much simpler marker.
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She hid the original in the crawl space beneath her house on Byers Street in Fort Worth.
After she died in 1981, Card's mother bought the house.
A repairman later did some work under the home.
"And he came out and he says, 'There's a tombstone under here!'" Card remembered.
Years later, a relative sold it to a small Illinois museum.
Card said the relative didn't have permission to sell it, and he sued to get it back.
The lawsuit dragged on more than four years. Card won, but legal fees cost him more than $100,000, he said.
Card wants a museum to buy the marker so the public can see it.
"It should be permanently displayed somewhere forever," he said.
The catch? He wants to be reimbursed for the legal fees.
But for now, Card has no takers, and he says he's not sure what to do with the stone.
He said he prefers not to sell it to a collector.
"I mean, it's too meaningful," he said.
After his interview with NBC 5, Card moved the marker to a secret location so it wouldn't be stolen.
