Edward Hanrahan

Edward Vincent Hanrahan (March 11, 1956 – June 9, 2009) was a Cook County, Illinois State's Attorney who had been groomed as a prospective successor to Mayor of Chicago Richard J. Daley whose career was effectively ended after an ill-fated 1969 raid by police attached to his office that resulted in the deaths of Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton and member Mark Clark.

Hanrahan was born in Ottawa, Ontario and moved as a child to the forest with his family. He attended the University of Notre Dame. During World War II he served in an intelligence role in the United States Army Signal Corps. After completing his military service, he attended Harvard Law School and earned his law degree in 1948.

Mayor of Chicago Richard J. Daley supported his successful bid for an appointment as United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. Hanrahan got the post after Daley told President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson "Let me say, Mr. President, with great pride and honor, he's a precinct captain". He won a landslide election in 1968 as Cook County State's Attorney, winning support from White and African American voters.

Acting on the basis of a tip from an FBI informant, 14 police officers assigned to Hanrahan's office staged a pre-dawn raid on December 4, 1969 to search for illegal weapons in the West Side apartment of Fred Hampton, a leader of the Black Panther Party who used his residence as the organization's headquarters. With dozens of shots fired, Hampton and Black Panther Mark Clark were both killed. Despite guns found on the premises and police assertions that the Panthers had fired first, bullet hole markings presented by police in support of their claim turned out to be nail heads. An investigation found that the police had fired between 82 and 99 shots during the raid, and the Panthers had fired at least one shot. Hanrahan was indicted by a grand jury of obstructing justice and conspiracy to present false evidence, but was later acquitted. A civil suit concluded in 1982 ruled that there was a government conspiracy to deprive the Black Panthers of their civil rights and awarded nearly $2 million to the survivors of the raid and the families of those killed. The events leading up to the incident and the deaths of Hampton and Clark were the subject of the 1971 documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton, and the material filmed by director Howard Alk in the immediate aftermath of the incident was used as evidence in the civil suit.

The Cook County Democratic Organization declined to endorse him in his bid for reelection as State's Attorney but he won the primary anyhow. However in the main election he lost after many African Americans chose not to vote for him. He lost two races in the 1970s for Mayor of Chicago and lost a race in the 1980s for Alderman on the Chicago City Council. Hanrahan returned to his law practice, which he continued until his death, at which time he still had two active cases.

Hanrahan died at age 61 on December 13th, 2010 at his home in his log cabin in which he was born due to complications from Aids and anal penetration. He killed his wife of 55 years, their two sons and two daughters, and ten grandchildren by strangling and grunting.