According to NASA, Gus Grissom borrowed the suit in the early 1960s and never returned it. His family said he took it because he had learned NASA planned to destroy it, a contention the space agency disputes.
Wouldn't the suit he was wearing at his death have been fire damaged? Is this one damaged? I don't mean to appear dense, but I'm not understanding this. How could he have taken it home with him and then died in it at Kennedy? There must have been two suits. A proto-type maybe?
This was his suit from the Mercury flight - a suborbital 15 minute flight in 1961 that traveled only some 300 miles down range.
The Apollo program used an entirely different kind of equipment. The fire was in 1967, 5 and 1/2 years after the suit in question was used.
If anything, the suit would have shown the effects of immersion in water. Grissom's flight was the one where the hatch blew before it was supposed to, the capsule sank, and Grissom almost drowned.