Over the years, Richmond.com has published several data projects using public information. 
 
 Here's a sampling of some of those projects. 
 
 - Our annual database of state employee salaries was recently updated with 2016-17 data. 
 
 - Our salary database of local government employees was updated recently with the 2016-17 data. ||||| Mark Lane, the defense lawyer, social activist and author who concluded in a blockbuster book in the mid-1960s that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have acted alone in killing President John F. Kennedy, a thesis supported in part by the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979, died on Tuesday at his home in Charlottesville, Va. He was 89. 
 
 The cause was a heart attack, his friend and paralegal Sue Herndon said. 
 
 The Kennedy assassination, one of the manifest turning points of the 20th century, was the pivotal moment in Mr. Lane’s life and career. He would go on to raise the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. five years later, but it was his Kennedy inquiry that made his name. 
 
 Before the president’s murder on Nov. 22, 1963, Mr. Lane was a minor figure in New York’s legal and political circles. He had organized rent strikes, opposed bomb shelter programs, joined the Freedom Riders, took on civil rights cases and was active in the New York City Democratic Party. He was elected a State Assemblyman in 1960 and served one term. 
 
 After the Kennedy murder, Mr. Lane devoted much of the next three decades to its investigation. Almost immediately he began the Citizens’ Committee of Inquiry, interviewed witnesses, collected evidence and delivered speeches on the assassination in the United States and in Europe, where he befriended Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, who became an early supporter of Mr. Lane’s efforts. ||||| A champion of the second-shooter conspiracy theory behind the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory has died — just a year before all records of the president’s death are to be made available to the public. 
 
 Mark Lane, died of a heart attack Tuesday night at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, a publicist’s statement said. He was 89. 
 
 Lane was most known for his 1966 bestseller “Rush to Judgment,” which criticized the Warren Commission’s report on the assassination. The book pointed out inaccuracies and suggested a second gunman, in addition to Lee Harvey Oswald, fired at Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas, from what Lane called the “grassy knoll.” 
 
 The Commission's report will be completely released to the public in 2017. 
 
 Remembering John F. Kennedy 
 
 Lane's book sparked theories that JFK was killed as part of a conspiracy — something the House committee on Assassinations admitted was likely true in 1979. 
 
 The committee also concluded that it was highly possible that a second shooter was at the scene, though no other gunman has ever been identified. 
 
 The pivotal conspiracy book was later made into a documentary in 1967, and turned into the film “Executive Action” in 1973. 
 
 Lane believed that there was a shooter on the grassy knoll that helped assassinate JFK in 1963, and that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act on his own. (AP) 
 
 Lane was born in Brooklyn on Feb. 24, 1927, and went on to earn his law degree from Brooklyn College in 1951. 
 
 The politically active author also served one term in the New York State Assembly, starting in 1960. 
 
 Lane went on to investigate the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, and was a lawyer for the civil rights leader's killer, James Earl Ray. 
 
 In Mark Lane's breakout novel "Rush to Judgment," he criticized the Warren Commission's report for inaccuracies on JFK's assassination. 
 
 After Ray’s death in 1998, Lane still maintained his former client's innocence, accusing the Tennessee and Federal Bureaus of Investigation of suppressing evidence that would have acquitted Ray. 
 
 “The death of James Earl Ray effectively ends any hope that the courts might provide a new trial for him and the truth for the American people,” Lane said in 1998. 
 
 Lane also represented Jim Jones, the suspected cult leader who orchestrated a mass suicide in 1978. He detailed his experience with the “Peoples Temple” cult leader in his 1980 novel, “The Strongest Poison.” 
 
 Lane also represented Martin Luther King, Jr.'s killer James Earl Ray (r.) in front of the House Assassinations Committee in 1978. (Anonymous/AP) 
 
 Lane was still publishing about the JFK assassination conspiracy in 2011. His book, "Last Word," accused the CIA of plotting the president's death. 
 
 “He always believed in the power of Americans to understand the problems faced by our country and to stand up to them with their voices and actions,” a tribute posted by Lane’s Facebook page wrote. “Most of you know him through his work with the Kennedy Assassination, which really was the tip of the iceberg of a lifetime of service to the search for truth.” 
 
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– Mark Lane, "one of the most important experts on the Kennedy assassination," died Tuesday at his his home in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the age of 89, the New York Times reports. Lane came to national prominence with his best-selling 1966 book Rush to Judgment, which questioned the findings of the Warren Commission and concluded a second gunman helped Lee Harvey Oswald assassinate Kennedy. He was the first to use the now well-known phrase "grassy knoll." He went on to publish multiple books—and write a number of films—on the Kennedy assassination. “While I don’t agree with his conspiracy theories about President Kennedy’s assassination, he deserves credit for raising important questions,” the director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics tells the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Lane was also a defense lawyer who represented some high-profile clients, including James Earl Ray and cult leader Jim Jones. Even after Ray was convicted of killing Martin Luther King Jr., Lane maintained his innocence and believed another conspiracy could be at play, the New York Daily News reports. Lane was also a civil-rights activist and served one term in the New York State Assembly. “His life was just an absolute testament to what people can become,” his assistant and friend Sue Herndon tells the Times-Dispatch. “He lived more lives than so many people.” Lane passed away one year before all government records of Kennedy's death are set to be made public.