Buyer of saint's skull died on day sale closed

The mystery Canadian buyer of the head of a saint died on the day he bought it, it has emerged. In May of this year, the severed head of St Vitalis was put up for auction in Duleek by Oldcastle auctioneer Damien Matthews, making national headlines here and abroad. The phone buyer, who at the time was a mystery, spent €3,500 on the grizzly artefact. This week we can reveal that the buyer was Billy Jamieson, a tribal art collector and macabre museum owner, who died in mysterious circumstances on his birthday on 3rd July this year, the same day the sale was completed. The head never left for Jamieson's Toronto residence and auctioneer Damien Matthews now is awaiting instruction from Jamieson's widow, Jessica, on what the estate wishes to do with it. "Billy was a lovely man with a genuine love of history. His aim was to bring the past alive and create an interest with the younger generation. His television programmes were very, very popular in both Canada and America," said Mr Matthews. Mr Matthews could not reveal who the previous owners of the head were but alluded to their deaths also in mysterious circumstances - "maybe there is a curse on the ownership of the head, it could be a case of the next buyer beware," he said. Mr Matthews said that he had become friendly with Jamieson and that he was "gregarious, fun-loving and someone who was young at heart". Billy Jamieson was a modern-day treasure hunter, an ancient and tribal arts collector and dealer but little is known about his death. He established an international reputation as a dealer and collector and his collection boasted an eclectic variety of ethnographic material, including shrunken human heads and war trophy skulls, weaponry, ancient Egyptian and Peruvian mummies, and a very unique collection of curiosities. In 1999, he purchased the entire contents of the Niagara Falls Museum, Canada's oldest museum, which opened in 1827. The collection included nine unidentified Egyptian mummies. While negotiating the deal, Jamieson and Egyptologists began an investigation which would eventually lead to one of these mummies being identified as the missing Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramses I. Billy sold the nine mummies to the Michael C Carlos museum, which is part of Emery University in Atlanta, Georgia, where the identity was confirmed. Ramses I was then returned to Egypt and is now on display at the Luxor Museum in Egypt. He owned and operated William Jamieson Ancient and Tribal Art from his Toronto studio, a cross between a museum and an art deco/gothic mansion. He worked regularly with major auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's, and sold and donated fine works of art to the Royal Ontario Museum, New York Metropolitan Museum, The Houston Museum of Fine Art, The Indiana State Museum and many private collectors. The decapitated head of St Vitalis, housed in a 17th century Queen Anne case, was sold by an Anglo-Irish family from Co Louth. Saint Vitalis of Assisi, who died on 31st May 1370, is said to have been an Italian hermit and monk. Born in Bastia Umbra, Vitalis as a youth was licentious and immoral. However, he attempted to purge his sins by going on pilgrimage to various sanctuaries in Italy and Europe. When he returned to Umbria, he became a Benedictine monk at Subiaco and later lived as a hermit. He spent the rest of his life in the hermitage of Santa Maria di Viole, near Assisi, in utter poverty. His one possession was an old container that he used to drink water from a nearby spring. His reputation for holiness soon spread after his death. He was known as a patron against sicknesses and diseases affecting the genitals.