An anonymous seller has put up for auction letters about John F. Kennedy’s assassination. The said auction is set for 27 January at Sotheby's. The lot includes a letter from US President Lyndon B Johnson to California Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown following Kenedy’s assassination, a news flash about the incident as well as letters from Kennedy himself and his wife Jacqueline.
One letter reads: "President Kennedy was shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy jumped up and grabbed Mr. Kennedy. She cried, "Oh, No!" The motorcade sped on:. The starting price for the lot is $14,000, however, a Sotheby’s official said the auction house expects the lot to fetch $30,000.
The news frustrated the son of California Governor Edmund Brown Jr, who wants to find out the identity of the person selling the letters. Brown Jr, who also served as California’s governor said in an interview with Politico: “I'd sure like to know why the seller is claiming anonymity — and why these documents aren't at the UC Berkeley archives with the rest of my father's papers". Sotheby’s auction has house declined to disclose the identity of the seller.
"Thanks to the support of leaders like you, our system has prevailed through dark and dangerous waters. Let us begin the New Year resolved to forge in this country a deeper sense of unity regardless of political party or persuasion", reads a letter from President Lyndon Johnson.
One of the managers working in Edmund Brown Senior’s archive at the University of California Berkeley said the letters put up for auction were never in possession of the library and speculated that an employee of the Brown administration may have taken them, knowing their value.
President John F. Kennedy was killed on 22 November 1963 while he was riding in a motorcade with his wife Jacqueline. Shortly after the incident police arrested a former US Marine Lee Harvey Oswald and charged him with the murder of John Kennedy. Oswald was never tried, because he was killed by Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner, as he was being transferred to jail. At the time of his arrest, Oswald denied he was involved in Kennedy’s murder.
