Thomas Downing, 82; Congressman Headed Assassination Probes
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Thomas N. Downing, 82, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia who headed a 1976 House committee that launched new investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, died Tuesday in Newport News, Va.
A persistent critic of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of Kennedy, Downing was the author of a 1976 measure to reopen the case. After the House voted to launch new inquiries into the Kennedy and King murders, he was appointed chairman of the 12-member panel.
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