Museums fancy gun, if donated

By Mike Trask

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 | 2 a.m.

The gun Jack Ruby used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald would seem to belong in a museum, behind glass, never to be touched.

But that’s not the case. The .38-caliber Colt Cobra has been in private hands since 1967. This weekend it will be auctioned at the Palms. The starting price is $1 million.

In the years after the Kennedy assassination and the subsequent killing of Oswald, all artifacts related to the cases were dispersed. The FBI had taken possession of the rifle Oswald used to shoot the president, and it ended up in the National Archives in College Park, Md., along with other evidence from the Kennedy assassination.

Other artifacts found their way to the Dallas archives, the National Museum of American History in Washington and The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas. The gun used by Ruby, however, was released to the Ruby estate after his death in 1967.

Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum, acknowledges he has been hoping that a private buyer would donate the gun someday. But he’s not too surprised that the owners want money.

Mack says his museum has asked the gun’s owner, Anthony Pugliese III, who bought it in 1991 from the Ruby estate, to display the gun. Pugliese disputes that, saying no museum has ever inquired about the gun.

Brent Glass, director of the National Museum of American History, said most museums do not pay to display items. In most cases the artifacts are government property or have been donated or loaned.

“I think as things like that are donated we would be interested,” Glass said about the Ruby gun. “We haven’t discussed whether we would bid on that.”

Mack is not giving up hope that someday the gun will return to Dallas. “It would be really nice if someone would buy it and donate it to us for the tax write-off,” he said.