Have a few thousand bucks to burn? Then Truman Capote's ashes could be yours

On Aug. 25, 1984, just shy of his 60th birthday, Truman Capote died in California.

The "In Cold Blood" author's death, of liver disease exacerbated by drug abuse, occurred in one of the two rooms he kept in the Bel Air house belonging to TV host Joanne Carson, ex-wife of Johnny Carson.

As the Los Angeles Times described it in 2006, Capote had slowly turned a section of her home into his pied-a-terre after he became an ex-Manhattan outcast – the first installment of his unfinished book "Answered Prayers," published in Esquire in 1975, was a jet-set expos too thinly disguised as fiction to keep Capote's New York friendships intact.

His relationship with Carson weathered the East Coast storm. "He had a writing room in my house - he spent a lot of time here because it was a safe place and nobody could get to him," Carson told Vanity Fair in 2012.

Capote made such an impression on Carson's life that she would keep intact the writing room, the room in which he died, as a sort of shrine – mementos included his 6-foot teddy bear and his computer – until she began auctioning off his belongings in 2006.

What Carson kept, until her death in 2015, was half of his body. In ashes, at least.

And now, if you are so inclined, the writer's remains that once belonged to Carson can be yours for a few grand, when Capote's ashes go to auction in September. (Broadly speaking, under U.S. federal law you can purchase non-grave-robbed human remains, unless the deceased in question is Native American.)

From the news release issued last Wednesday by Julien's Auctions: "The ashes of Truman Capote are housed in a memorial Japanese carved wooden box. The ashes were kept by Joanne Carson who was one of Capote's closest friends. She often said the ashes brought her great comfort." The wooden box bears the date of Capote's cremation, Aug. 28, 1984. The seller estimates that when the box goes to auction in late September, the remains will fetch between $4,000 and $6,000.

It is safe to say Carson cherished his remains. Visitors to her house coveted them, too. At a Halloween party Carson held in 1988, someone burgled Capote's urn, along with hundreds of thousand of dollars of her jewelry.

She said she had entered into the writing room to deliver some balloons to the deceased Capote when she noticed the urn was missing. "His ashes were my sanity for the last four years," Carson told People at the time. "I'm not woo-woo-woo, but I am spiritual ... Truman often referred to me as his very own Holly Golightly come to life."

Less than a week later, according to People, someone mysteriously returned the remains, tucking them amid a loop of garden hose in Carson's yard and speeding away to thwart identification. Carson then interred the urn in a vault in Los Angeles, at Westwood Memorial Park, among such Hollywood luminaries as Marilyn Monroe and Dean Martin.

But that half of Capote did not stay put. In 1991, Carson brought out his remains for another party – the first after the fateful Halloween affair, the L. A. Times said. It was to celebrate a play about the writer's life, "Tru," which had just returned to Los Angeles. Yet again, someone attempted to purloin the ashes. This time, however, the thief was caught in the act "before he could make it out the door," an unnamed source told Page Six.

When "Breakfast at Tiffany's" was adapted for the stage in 2013, Carson was asked to take Capote's remains to the opening night party. She decided it was too risky. Capote remained tucked away since. Until the upcoming Carson estate auction, that is.

Legality aside, some might find the idea of selling human ashes gauche. But auction house owner Darren Julien argued that selling the remains was in keeping in the spirit of Truman Capote's life.

"Truman Capote loved the element of shock," Julien said in an interview with Vanity Fair. "He loved publicity. 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."

It would not be the first time that an artist's body became part of a transaction. As the New Yorker reported recently, the ashes of influential Mexican architect Luis Barragn were dug up in September and turned into a diamond. The resulting ring was used as part of a negotiation for public access to a privately held Barragn collection.

Nor does the celebrity remains market stop there. Other body parts sold possibly include Napoleon's penis; New York urologist John K. Lattimer purchased the organ that purportedly once belonged to the French general. There is something of a demand for celebrity hair, too - among the famous tresses sold were those that once sat on the heads of John Lennon, JFK and Beethoven, with the most expensive lock belonging to Elvis, scoring a six-figure winning bid in 2002.

This story was originally published August 23, 2016 at 10:25 AM with the headline "Have a few thousand bucks to burn? Then Truman Capote's ashes could be yours."