Mystery Surrounding Grave Next To Lee Harvey Oswald Solved

The tombstone next to Lee Harvey Oswald has been raising questions for years. INSIDE EDITION solves the mystery behind the identity of Nick Beef.

Next to the grave of the loner Lee Harvey Oswald, who assassinated JFK and changed world history is a tombstone exactly the same size with a strange name, Nick Beef.

The headstone appeared mysteriously in 1997. Since then conspiracy theorists have wondered, who was Nick Beef? His identity has become one of the lingering mysteries surrounding the 1963 assassination. But unlike those other mysteries, this one can now be solved because nobody is buried there.

Nick Beef told INSIDE EDITION’s Paul Boyd, “Maybe he's the son of Oswald nobody knew about. He was one of the guys there at the grassy knoll. People, historians, would just go nuts over this.”

Boyd said, “Some people speculated that Nick Beef was a KGB agent who was involved in the shooting of JFK.”
 
Beef said, “I heard that one.”

Nick Beef’s real name is Patric Abedin, and as first revealed by The New York Times, he's a 56-year-old writer who lives in New York City sometimes using the pen name “Nick Beef.”  He actually saw President Kennedy and first lady Jackie arrive in Fort Worth, Texas, the day before the assassination.

He said, “It was just a neat experience as a kid because this was the president, and it was President Kennedy.”

Over the years, his mother often took him to see Oswald’s grave as a history lesson.

He said, “We'd look at the tombstone, 'Don't forget you got to see Kennedy the night before he died.'”

He was still a teenager when he discovered that nobody wanted the plot next to Oswald’s. After all, who'd want to be buried for all eternity next to Lee Harvey Oswald? So he bought it in 1975, lot no. 258 for $175.

Boyd asked, “Why did you buy the burial plot next to Lee Harvey Oswald?”
 
He said, “I kind of felt like, I’m almost buying a part of history for myself.”

It was another 20 years before he decided on a whim to place a headstone there with the name of his own alter-ago, Nick Beef.

Boyd said, “Your gravestone has been the focus of conspiracy theories for years and it was you the whole time!”

Beef said, “Just simple me.”

Boyd asked, “Does it baffle you that so many people became so curious about who Nick Beef really was?”

Beef replied, “It was for exactly that reason I didn't want to put my real name on it. I knew that no matter what was put on there would be scrutinized. Somebody was going to read something into it.”

He plans to pass on the pocket-sized piece of history to his heirs and doesn't plan on lying next to Lee Harvey Oswald for eternity.

“Will you eventually be buried in that plot?,” Boyd asked.

Beef said, “I prefer to be cremated to be honest.”