John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s gold wedding ring has sold at an auction in Boston for $108,000 (€78,139), ahead of the 50th anniversary of the murder of the US president in central Dallas.

RR Auction said the ring sold to a buyer from Texas who wished to remain anonymous.

It was relatively recently that Oswald’s widow, Marina Oswald Porter, recovered the ring, which apparently sat forgotten for decades in the files of a Fort Worth lawyer who once did work for her.

Accompanying the ring is a five-page handwritten letter dated May 5, 2013, in which Oswald Porter writes: “At this time of my life I don’t wish to have Lee’s ring in my possession because symbolically I want to let go of my past that is connecting with November 22, 1963.”

At her request, the auction house did not release the full contents of the letter, in which Oswald Porter documents the history of the ring, from its purchase in the Soviet city of Minsk, Belarus, before their April 30, 1961, wedding, to how it was left on the dresser at her friend Ruth Paine’s home, where she and their children were living when Kennedy was killed.

The ring took a circuitous route from the dresser to being offered at auction. In 2004 it was discovered in the files of the lawyer who once worked for Oswald Porter. It was in an envelope marked Treasury Department Secret Service with a receipt stating that Paine gave it to the Secret Service on December 2, 1963.

A July 2012 letter from the Fort Worth law firm of Brackett & Ellis to Porter says the ring had apparently been in lawyer Forrest Markward’s possession since 1964.

Luke Ellis, a partner at the firm, said when the ring was discovered, retired Markward could not recall exactly how it came into his possession. Markward has since died.

The ring was among nearly 300 items linked to Kennedy’s life and death that went up for auction.

The sale also included Kennedy’s rosary beads, Oswald’s revolver and a hat worn by Jack Ruby, the nightclub owner who killed Oswald two days after Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963. (Reuters/AP)