Update at 6 p.m.: Revised to include details of the City Council vote.

Dallas' council agenda shows that North Texas lawyer Ronald Holmes is the "LawDude" who paid more than $1.4 million for the city's Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Soldier sculpture.

The council voted Wednesday to approve the sale of Alexander Phimister Proctor's 1935 sculpture of the general, which the city moved into storage in 2017 amid a national push to remove glorified symbols of the Confederacy from public display. Documents prepared for the meeting identified the winning auction bidder, who had the online username "LawDude," as the Holmes Firm PC, with Holmes as the only name listed. Holmes' website says he practices real estate law.

The council's vote authorized City Manager T.C. Broadnax to "execute a purchase agreement and bill of sale with the purchaser."

The 1935 statue of Robert E. Lee, right, and a young soldier by sculptor Alexander Phimister, sits in storage at Hensley Field, the former Naval Air Station on the west side of Mountain Creek Lake in Dallas. The buyer of the Lee statue for more than $1.4 million in a Dallas auction has been identified as a local law firm but the reason for the purchase still remains unclear. (Ashley Landis/The Dallas Morning News)

But the documents do not say whether Holmes purchased the statue for the firm, for himself or as a stalking horse for a client. Holmes did not return messages seeking comment Tuesday. And following Wednesday's vote, he wasn't interested in answering questions.

"I really don't have any comment on it," is all he said when asked why and for whom he bought the statue.

But that was fine with the city: "We went into this knowing someone could use an agent," Assistant City Manager Joey Zapata said after the vote.

The Holmes Firm in the auction narrowly beat out Diamond A-Ford Corp., of which Southern Methodist University's football stadium namesake Gerald J. Ford is chairman and CEO. Twinwood (U.S.), Inc. out of Simonton came in a distant third with a $775,000 bid. And Patrick Shelby finished fourth with a $550,000 offer.

Holmes also declined to say where he or the next owner planned to display the sculpture. Other Proctor works are on display all over the country, including in New York City, Austin and Salem, Ore.

The Dallas City Council, when approving the auction, forbid the statue's public display inside city limits. The Holmes Firm's offices are on Quorum Drive, near the Dallas North Tollway and Belt Line Road in Addison.

Ronald Holmes, at right, at Dallas City Hall on Wednesday (Hayat Norimine / Staff )

But before the vote was taken, North Dallas council member Lee Kleinman added one further stipulation: The sculpture cannot be displayed anywhere in the "Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area."

Chris Caso, the interim city attorney, told the council Holmes had no issue with those added restrictions.

City officials have said the statue's September 2017 removal from its longtime perch in a then-eponymous Oak Lawn park cost taxpayers $450,000. The sale price covers that cost, as well as the $200,000 the city paid to remove the base from the park and the $500,000 projected expense to remove the Confederate War Memorial from Pioneer Park Cemetery in front of the downtown convention center.

The city figures to have an additional $285,000 left over from the sale.

City officials now plan to move ahead with the Confederate War Memorial's removal, which is at the center of a lawsuit filed by Karen Pieroni of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Dallas resident Chris Carter in county court. The two sued the city after the Landmark Commission and City Plan Commission refused to overturn a council vote earlier this year to remove the statues.

But earlier this week, state District Judge Eric Moyé denied a temporary injunction to halt the removal.

The council voted to remove the Lee statue and weigh the Confederate War Memorial take-down amid a national push against longstanding symbols that heroically characterized southern states role in the Civil War and downplayed slavery as a cause for the conflict.

Rickey Callahan was the only council member to vote against the Lee sculpture's sale. Callahan, who decided not to run for re-election this year, pleaded with his colleagues to keep the work and let it go to a museum. He suggested the Civil War museum in White Settlement, which city leaders had previously rejected as an option.

"It hurts me deeply," Callahan said Wednesday. "I'll never be able to side or go along with this. ... It's dishonorable for me and my family, because it's part of history. It's a teachable moment. It's part of our history."

He again implored his colleagues at their final voting meeting together: "Please don't do this, and if you're going to do it, allow it to be displayed."

But in the end the council sided with Kleinman and his amendment.