Mark Lane – author who led backlash against official account of JFK assassination – dies aged 89
Lane briefly represented James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of the Reverend Martin Luther King, alleging he was an innocent pawn in a government plot.
Mark Lane, a crusading lawyer for often unpopular causes, who was best known as an early and persistent sceptic of the lone-gunman account of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and who wrote several books affirming his belief that the president was the victim of a far-reaching government conspiracy, died May 11 at his home in Charlottesville. He was 89.
The cause was heart disease, said his wife, Patricia Lane.
In addition to his decades-long interest in the Kennedy assassination, Lane was a participant in other high-profile events, with clients including Vietnam war protesters; American Indians in the 1973 uprising at Wounded Knee, South Dakota; and Jim Jones, the leader of the 1970s cult that came to an end with a mass suicide in South America.
For a time, Lane represented James Earl Ray, the convicted killer of the Reverend Martin Luther King, alleging that he was an innocent pawn in a government plot.
Once called “the country’s most controversial legal gadfly” by Newsweek magazine, Lane was also a vice-presidential candidate in 1968 on a fringe-party ticket headed by comedian and activist Dick Gregory.
