Are you in the market for some human remains and have a couple thousand dollars to spend? Great news!
The ashes of legendary author, Truman Capote are going up for sale. The remains of the deceased writer will go up for auction Sept. 23 and 24 in Los Angeles.
As strange as it may sound, it appears that Capote’s ashes have been in high demand for some time.
Capote left the ashes in his will to Johnny Carson's wife, Joanne Carson. They were stolen from Carson on two occasions. Both times the ashes were recovered. After Carson died last year, the Carson estate wasn’t sure what to do with the remaining bits of Capote. So it was decided that Julien's Auctions would put them up for sale and that they would go to the highest bidder.
Julien's CEO Darren Julien admits that the whole situation is pretty odd and that there are certainly ethical questions involving the sale of human remains. But, there is no law prohibiting the sale of ashes or other remains unless the remains in question have been stolen from a grave or belonged to a Native American.
Julien also told Vanity Fair magazine that "this is probably what he [Capote] would have wanted done.”
[He] “loved the element of shock. He loved publicity," Julien says. "And I’m sure he’s looking down laughing, and saying, ‘That’s something I would have done.’ He was a larger-than-life character."
This is not the first time that big auction houses have sold body parts to….um…collectors.
Julien's has previously sold William Shatner's kidney stone, and Christie’s auction house sold what is believed to be Napoleon's penis to John J. Lattimer, a leading American urologist, in 1977.
According to Julien’s web site, the ashes are housed in a memorial Japanese carved wooden box. (It’s actually a pretty nice box. You would never know it contained a dead person if you saw it on someone’s coffee table.)
Julien’s estimates that the ashes will fetch somewhere between $4,000 and $6,000.