The Perfect Halloween Costume: Jack Ruby's Hat and Shackles, Now Up for Auction

Heritage Auction Gallery had hoped to keep The Hat under its hat a little while longer -- the press release was going out tomorrow, matter of fact. But word got out (someone espied the item already posted on the auction house's Web site), which is why Heritage's Noah Fleisher is...

By Robert Wilonsky

August 27, 2009

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Heritage Auction Gallery had hoped to keep The Hat under its hat a little while longer -- the press release was going out tomorrow, matter of fact. But word got out (someone espied the item already posted on the auction house's Web site), which is why Heritage's Noah Fleisher is out spreading the word: Beginning in a few weeks, you can begin bidding on the hat Jack Ruby was sporting when he shot Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of Dallas Police HQ on November 24, 1963. It's part of Heritage's November Music & Entertainment Auction. But of course.

"And not only do we have the Ruby hat, but we have the front page of The Dallas Morning News from November 22, 1963, signed by JFK," Fleisher says, referring to this heretofore unheard-of piece of memorabilia. "It's even more spectacular when you see it." And one more thing: "We also have the Ruby shackles -- the ones that were around his legs when he died so his body wouldn't get stolen. The police shackled his body to the bed. It's a little morbid." Unlike, say, this.

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