'Kennedy assassination windows' up for auction
The windows from which President John F Kennedy is said to have been assassinated are to go up for auction in the United States, it emerged today.
Former Nashville music producer Aubrey Mayhew claims he has turned down offers of $1m (€838,000) for the sixth storey windows where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired his fatal shots in November 1963.
As a one-time owner of The Texas Book Depository Building in Dallas, Mayhew claims to have acquired many items from the site, including the sniper’s perch window, work table and hand-written ledger.
The collection includes thousands of letters, documents and photographs from the Kennedy family.
There is no outside confirmation of the property’s authenticity but Mayhew’s spokesman, Will Faller, said there was every reason to believe it was genuine.
“There is a lot of imitation stuff out there but there is nothing to doubt this collection,” he said. “We have some 400,000 items which will be sold on eBay and through various auction houses and would hope to raise more than a million dollars for the windows.”
Barry Landau, owner of the most extensive collection of inaugural memorabilia outside the Smithsonian Institution, is sceptical about the property.
“I talked to my Secret Service sources and they told me everything was confiscated from that room, even the window frames,” he told the New York Daily News.
