An online casino has bought the flophouse bathtub which James Earl Ray stood in when he shot Martin Luther King Jr. for $7,600.

The website placed the winning bid on eBay on March 20th, said D’Army Bailey, the Memphis judge who owned the tub, according to Associated Press.

The tub originally went on sale in 2004 but eBay removed the artefact because they though it may be too offence to King’s family.

However, the website assured Bailey that it would treat the tub “with sensitivity for its historical significance”.

Bailey says he bought the tub in 1983 when the National Civil Rights Museum was being renovated.

King, the legendary civil rights activist, was shot dead on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis while helping to lead a strike by city sanitation workers in 1968.

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