This mystery has to do with the succession. So, I will post it here. I just read this on pages 287-288 of “The Death of a President” by William Manchester, and I am flabbergasted. I didn’t know this, should I have known this?
Remarkably, almost none of the Kennedys’ objects had been mislaid. In spite of the two-hour anarchy virtually every article they had brought to Dallas was leaving with them; the President’s clothes, wallet, and watch, and Mrs. Kennedy’s gloves, hat and handbag were all safely stowed aboard. There was one exception. Tripping down the ramp steps toward Earle and Dearie Cabell, who were waiting on the field, Sarah Hughes was hailed by a self-assured man—she remembers him as “rather officious”—who pointed at the black binding in her hand and asked, “Do you want that?” She shook her head. “How about this?” he inquired, fingering the 3 × 5 card with the text of the oath. Neither belonged to her, and so she surrendered them, assuming that he was some sort of security man.
He wasn’t. His identity is a riddle. How a cipher could have penetrated Jesse Curry’s cordon is difficult to understand, but he did. The venture required enterprise and luck. The spoils, however, were priceless; he left the airport with a pair of unique souvenirs. The file card is the less valuable of the two. It is an archivist’s curiosity, of interest only to collectors and museums. The book, however, is something more. It was private property, and at this writing it remains untraced. President Kennedy’s family is entitled to it and would give a lot to have it back. By now, however, the anonymous cozener may have disposed of it. Either way, the fact remains that the last item of Kennedy memorabilia to be left in Dallas, his most cherished personal possession, was his Bible.
Here is a snip from pages 284-285 that explains where the Bible came from:
Then a voice from the semicircle of witnesses asked, “What about a Bible?” The Scriptures had always been part of the ritual. There was a pause in which everyone looked at everyone else, hoping that Lem Johns’s manifest included someone of exceptional piety. Then Joe Ayres reassured them. President Kennedy always carried his personal Bible under the lid of the table between the two beds in his private cabin, and Ayres went to fetch it.
It was an unusual copy, and very personal; even Larry O’Brien, to whom Ayres handed it, had never seen it before. The cover was of tooled leather, the edges were hand-sewn; on the front there was a gold cross and, on the inside cover, the tiny sewn black-on-black initials, “JFK.” On flights alone the President had read it evenings before snapping off the night light. Larry carried the white box in which the President had kept it down the corridor, and as he re-entered the stateroom and stepped behind Sarah Hughes she nervously began the oath. Her voice quavered, “I do solemnly swear that I will—”
“Just a minute, Judge,” Larry said, slipping the Bible from the box and handing it to her.
She regarded it dubiously. Kennedy, she remembered, had quoted the Bible a lot. This must be his—after all, this was his plane—and that meant it was probably Catholic. She hesitated and decided it would be all right.5
My question is: Does this still remain a mystery? Or, has this bible been located since Manchester wrote his book?