Why JFK's $3,995 Bronze Casket Was Dropped Into the Atlantic

On November 22, 1963, a Dallas funeral director named Vernon Oneal was asked for the best casket he had. He sent a solid bronze Elgin Britannia, priced at $3,995, to Parkland Hospital. It carried President John F. Kennedy's body out of Dallas, through the narrow door of Air Force One, and down onto the runway at Andrews Air Force Base in front of a live television audience. Then, after less than a day, it was taken off the job. It was damaged, it could never be used again, and nobody knew what to do with it. This file follows that one bronze box through a funeral home warehouse, a bill dispute with the government, and a locked room in the basement of the National Archives. In February 1966, Senator Robert F. Kennedy picked up the phone and asked for the casket to be taken to sea. Using the memos released by the National Archives in 1999, including Lawson Knott's notes of that call, the Attorney General's letter, the Archives handling branch report, and the Defense Department's own account of the flight, we trace how the Pentagon drilled 42 holes in the casket, loaded it with three bags of sand, and dropped it from a C-130 into about 9,000 feet of water off the Atlantic coast. Where the sources disagree, we say so, and we tell you only what the records can back up. This video covers the casket and its fate, not the theories about the assassination.