Lee Harvey Oswald's Grave

Fort Worth, Texas

Oswald, alleged assassin of John F. Kennedy, was gunned down by Jack Ruby on Nov. 24, 1963, and was buried the next day in what is now called Rose Hill Park, the only cemetery in the Dallas area that would take him. So few people attended his funeral in the Rose Hill Chapel that newspapermen reportedly had to help carry the coffin to the grave. Oswald is buried under a burgundy granite slab flush with the ground, engraved only with his last name. The grass around his grave is sometimes worn off from people standing on it, photographing the slab.

The slab next to Oswald's is engraved "Nick Beef," an almost identical design that appeared in 1997 or so. The cemetery says that no one's buried there, and no one knows what it means. A popular theory is that it was placed by an Oswald grave enthusiast to help others find the grave -- the cemetery employees don't provide directions to Oswald's grave.

"Where's the Beef?"

"Two rows over and three plots diagonal..."

The Nick Beef mystery was finally solved on August 10, 2013, in a front page New York Times story and interview with Nick Beef, a Manhattan "non-performing performance artist" actually named Patric Abedin. He bought the plot and marker in 1996 to memorialize a personal connection he had as a young boy seeing JFK the day before he was shot. According to the NYT story, Nick Beef has no plans to be buried in the plot.