Lee Harvey Oswald’s wandering tombstone is finally back home. 
 
 Well, not home home. It’s not back in the cemetery, but it is back in Texas and in the hands of the guy who rightfully inherited it from the people who found it under their house. 
 
 Shall I explain? 
 
 Three and a half years ago, I wrote about David Card and the legal quest he had begun to reclaim Oswald’s original tombstone. 
 
 If Card’s name rings a bell, it’s because he’s Poor David, the owner of venerable Poor David’s Pub. And he’s even poorer now after almost four years of legal wrangling over the stone. 
 
 Oswald’s tombstone went missing from Fort Worth’s Rose Hill Cemetery on Nov. 22, 1967, the fourth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination. It was taken as a prank by some Oklahoma teenagers. 
 
 The stone was recovered soon enough, but Marguerite Oswald decided to give her son a plainer, less tempting stone instead. The replacement says “Oswald” and nothing more. 
 
 Jump ahead to the 1980s. Card’s father and stepmother bought the Fort Worth home that had belonged to Marguerite Oswald. A few years after moving in, they were amazed to discover her son’s original gravestone in the crawlspace under the house. 
 
 The Oswald family made no claim on it. So the stone went into the hands of Card’s cousin for safekeeping. But after he died, his wife suddenly cut off communication with the family. 
 
 By accident, the family discovered on the Internet that the stone had been sold to an eclectic private museum in Illinois. 
 
 And that’s where Card drove last week — to Historic Auto Attractions in Roscoe, Ill. — to claim the stone after a legal settlement was finally reached. 
 
 “Feel that!” Card said Tuesday, placing his hands on the gravestone, displayed for my benefit in the dark, daytime emptiness of Poor David’s Pub. 
 
 “You touch it and it’s like you’re reaching 6 feet down and right into Oswald’s coffin,” Card said. 
 
 I pressed my palm against the light gray granite and felt Marguerite instead. I felt the love of a mother, the only person who would have chosen pretty engraved flowers and a large cross for the grave of such a notorious killer. 
 
 The confidential legal agreement with Historic Auto Attractions owner Wayne Lensing prevents Card from disclosing any details or disparaging anyone. And my phone call to Lensing’s lawyer was not returned. 
 
 But the 75-year-old Card can sure talk about his excitement at having the gravestone back. 
 
 “It’s got a wow factor to it,” he said. “Think about it. It’s the original tombstone of the most famous assassin in the history of civilization, except perhaps for Cain, who killed Abel.” 
 
 Card said he has hoped all along that The Sixth Floor Museum will want to acquire and display the tombstone. But its clouded legal status has prevented any serious discussion till now. 
 
 In the meantime, he’s considering what he called a “Day of Display” at Poor David’s or some other Cedars area location. “I’d like to do it to thank the many people who supported me on this,” he said. “They knew the stress and financial strain I was under.” 
 
 He won’t disclose his legal fees. “Just say it was brutal,” he said. 
 
 But Card said he never wavered in his determination to get the stone back to Texas and to Dallas. “I was the only one with the legal standing and the financial means to fight for it,” he said. 
 
 Reflecting his hopes, he said, “Everyone who goes into The Sixth Floor and sees it and photographs it will be grateful it is where it is.” 
 
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 DALLAS (CBS11 I-TEAM) – The gravestone belonging to one of the most notorious killers in history has been returned to North Texas. 
 
 Wrapped only in a cardboard box and placed in the bed of a Ford F150, Lee Harvey Oswald’s original grave marker was driven nearly 1,000 miles to Dallas from Roscoe, Ill., where it had been displayed in a museum. 
 
 Owner David Card said he and a friend picked the famous artifact up personally, because he did not trust anyone else to “bring it home.” Card, owner of Poor David’s Pub near downtown Dallas, had been embroiled in a four-year court battle, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, over who rightfully owned the marker. 
 
 “I’m very relieved and happy to have the stone back here in Texas where it belongs,” said Card, standing over the 140-pound granite marker. Like so many other chapters of the Nov. 22, 1963 Kennedy assassination in Dallas, the journey of the accused killer’s grave marker is a strange one. 
 
 Oswald was killed two days after he is alleged to have killed the president, and buried in Fort Worth’s Rose Hill Cemetery. 
 
 His tombstone – the one now belonging to Card – was subsequently stolen. It was eventually returned to Oswald’s mother, Marguerite Oswald, who, believing it would just be stolen again off her son’s grave, instead placed it in the crawl space of her Fort Worth home. After Marguerite Oswald’s death, Card’s father purchased her home – and all of its “contents” — in the early 1980s. 
 
 The marker, which was discovered by an electrician working under the home, was passed around by Card’s family, eventually landing in the hands of a distant relative who in 2011 sold it for $45,000 to the owner of the museum in Illinois. In litigation, Card argued that the relative did not have the right to sell the marker. The case was settled out of court on July 19, a week before trial was to have begun, returning the gravestone to Card and bringing it back to Texas. 
 
 Card says he hopes to have the marker exhibited in the Sixth Floor Museum, located in Dallas’ old Texas School Book Depository building where Oswald is believed to have fired his fatal shots at Kennedy’s passing motorcade. If not the Sixth Floor Museum, Card said he hopes to give it to another worthy exhibit, “maybe the Smithsonian Institute.” 
 
 “I don’t want it. I don’t want to profit from it,” he said, adding, though, that he would like to recoup his legal expenses. Card said he has no plans to place the piece of history inside his club, other than to possibly have a “private viewing” for those who have supported his efforts to get it back. 
 
 Asked where he is keeping the stone for the time being, Card said wryly, “It’s in an undisclosed location guarded by the hounds from hell.” 
 
 If you want to reach CBS 11′s Senior Investigative Producer Jack Douglas Jr., you can email him at jdouglas@cbs.com. If you want to reach CBS 11′s Investigative reporter Ginger Allen, you can email her at gingera@ktvt.com. 
 
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– Dallas bar-owner David Card spent nearly four years of his life and a "brutal" amount in legal fees for the right to return the grave marker of Lee Harvey Oswald, who he calls "the most famous assassin in the history of civilization," home to Texas. And, last week he finally did just that, the Dallas Morning News reports. The strange history of the marker started on the fourth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, when some Oklahoma teens swiped it from a Fort Worth cemetery as a prank. CBS DFW reports the marker was returned to Oswald's mother, who put a more discreet marker on his grave and stashed the original in her crawlspace. Card's father eventually bought the Oswald home. After changing hands within the family, a distant relative eventually sold the marker to Illinois' Historic Auto Attractions in 2011 for $45,000. CBS reports Card went to court to prove his relative didn't have the right to sell the marker, and on July 19 the parties settled out of court. Last week, Card and a friend drove the 140-pound granite marker back to Texas all the way from Roscoe, Ill.—a distance of more than 900 miles. "You touch it, and it's like you're reaching 6 feet down and right into Oswald's coffin," he told the Morning News. Card tells CBS he'd like to give the marker to the museum housed in the building from which Oswald allegedly fired, but he may have a private showing of it in his bar first. At the moment, he claims that Oswald's grave marker is "in an undisclosed location guarded by the hounds from hell."