The predawn raid of a West Side apartment killed two Black Panthers in December 1969 and the promising political career of a Cook County State's Attorney. Complications from leukemia took his life on June 9, 2009.

As the man who ordered the infamous raid four decades ago, Hanrahan became the primary lightning rod for the hyper-charged racial and social tensions of a tumultuous period. That fate, many say, was undeserved. People locally who knew Ed Hanrahan say the circumstances that made national headlines did not reflect an extraordinary life.

"It was very hurtful to the family over the years," said Hanrahan's nephew, Tom Wheeler. "He was a very liberal, compassionate, caring individual."

On Thursday, Hanrahan's widow, Geraldine, and their four children, including son Edward Hanrahan Jr., stood by his casket in front of the altar inside St. Giles Catholic Church in Oak Park. As they greeted 300 to 400 wellwishers at a visitation and memorial mass, old friends stood about outside the church, renewing acquaintances.

A few spoke of a man committed to fairness and justice, one who cared deeply about the world. His life, they say, was dedicated to public service before and after Dec. 4, 1969.

"He was a brilliant guy," said retired Cook County Circuit Judge Mike Bolan, who joined up with Hanrahan when he became state's attorney in 1968. "He paid his way through Notre Dame by working as a stenographer. In the military, he worked in intelligence."

Bolan said Hanrahan spoke Japanese. "He didn't show it off," said former Illinois Senate President Phil Rock, who also came to work for Hanrahan in 1968. Rock's wife, Sheila, also said the public didn't know another side of Hanrahan.

"He had a marvelous sense of humor. Just a wonderful wit," Sheila Rock said.

"He was the most complex and complete person I ever met," Wheeler said. "He was relentlessly faithful to his personal values."

Ed Burke, alderman in Chicago's 14th Ward, knew Hanrahan for more than 40 years. "I think anyone who ever met Ed Hanrahan quickly came to realize he was a man of high principles and fiercely loyal to his values," Burke said.

"Ed was an idealist," Bolan said. "He was motivated to do good." Bolan recalled a time when Hanrahan became involved with an embezzlement case. "This woman had embezzled like $4,000," he said. "And Ed asked the bank officials, 'How much are you paying this lady?' " Bolan said that when the bank indicated the woman, a mother of three, barely earned a living wage, Hanrahan laid into them, questioning their own morality and sense of fairness. Bolan didn't recall whether the case went to trial, but said the exchange was illustrative of Hanrahan's value system.

According to Bolan, Hanrahan was not one to back off of an argument.

"He raised a lot of dust where he walked," said Bolan, who recalled conducting a test on his boss. "With most people, they talk about different subjects until they find one they agree on, sports or something. Ed, he'd talk until he found the subject you disagreed on, then focus on that," Bolan said with a bemused look. "I tested him maybe three times, and he always chose the disagreement."

But he'd listen to people, said Hanrahan's neighbor, Beverly Carraher. "He was always questioning. He'd change his opinion if you had a good argument," Carraher said.

A consummate political insider, Hanrahan was already a former U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois and current Cook County State's Attorney in 1969. He was considered a likely future candidate for Chicago mayor or governor.

In their book on the first Mayor Daley, American Pharaoh, Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor quote from a tape recording of Daley urging President Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to appoint Hanrahan U.S Attorney. Daley cited Hanrahan's list of accomplishments, including his Notre Dame and Harvard Law School pedigrees, but concluded with the ultimate Chicago compliment.

"More than that, Mr. President, let me say with great honor and pride, he's a precinct captain!"

Then came Dec. 4, 1969.

The Black Panther raid

Around 4 a.m. that morning, police officers attached to Hanrahan's office, acting on information provided by the FBI, executed a search warrant for illegal weapons on an apartment on the 2300 block of Monroe. Two young members of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, were killed in what was characterized as a fierce shootout.

Hampton, 21, was deputy chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party. Clark, 22, was a member of the party. The Black Panther Party was a politically active group organized in California in the mid-1960s to promote self-defense.

At the time of the raid, Hanrahan aggressively supported his officers' actions, saying, "We wholeheartedly commend the police officers for their bravery, their remarkable restraint, and their discipline in the face of this vicious Black Panther attack, and we expect every decent citizen of our community to do likewise." He added that it was "miraculous" that police weren't injured in the alleged fuselage of bullets fired at them.

But the exact opposite of Hanrahan's contention was later shown. According to newspaper accounts, only one of the bullets struck a surface in the direction of the police and a reported bullethole in a door frame was in fact a nailhead.

A May 1970 grand jury report said that "only one of the 82 to 99 bullets recovered at the scene could be traced to the Panthers' weapons." The 249-page report accused Chicago police of a coverup, including falsified ballistic and coroner's findings.  It found Chicago's investigation of the circumstances surrounding the shootings "so seriously deficient that it suggests purposeful malfeasance."

A 1976 report by the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations related to intelligence activities concluded that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who described the Black Panthers as "the greatest threat to the internal security of the country," and who reportedly pledged that 1969 would be the last year of their existence, led Cointelpro, a concerted campaign of subversion and disinformation against the Panthers and other black groups.

The Senate report concluded that "the chief investigative branch of the Federal Government, which was charged by law with investigating crimes and preventing criminal conduct, itself engaged in lawless tactics and responded to deep-seated social problems by fomenting violence and unrest."

Bolan said the idea to raid the Panthers' apartment wasn't Hanrahan's, but he signed off on it. "It was sold to Hanrahan by the FBI," Bolan said. "That same weekend, there was a raid in San Francisco," Bolan said, referring to a raid on Black Panthers that actually was in Los Angeles,on Dec. 8, 1969. That raid, too, featured a trumped-up weapons warrant.

"The Chicago police wouldn't buy it. They didn't believe the intelligence from the informants," Bolan noted, adding that the officers involved lied to Hanrahan.
"They came back and gave him false info," he said. "Out of loyalty to his troops, he believed everything they said. That was a real, real mistake. Bad judgment."

Fair or not, Hanrahan was the face of that debacle. A week after the raid, about 75 people protested outside his Galewood home. Hanrahan was blasted in the press, including by Chicago Daily News columnist Mike Royko, who mocked Hanrahan's characterization of a "miracle" occurring.

"Indeed, it does appear that miracles occurred," Royko wrote of the killings. "The Panthers' bullets must have dissolved in the air, before they hit anybody or anything. Either that, or the Panthers were shooting in the wrong direction, namely, at themselves."

An acquittal, not a recovery

Hanrahan was acquitted of obstruction of justice charges in November 1971. A civil lawsuit was later dropped. Politically, however, he was radioactive. Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley's slate makers declined to tap him for re-election as Cook County State's Attorney. Hanrahan defied Daley and won a contested primary for re-election on his own.

Amid a monumental betrayal, Hanrahan, according to his nephew, showed a legendary flash of humor.

Wheeler recalled being with his uncles Bill and Dick Hanrahan at a huge political gathering at the Palmer House. The gathering was attended by thousands of precinct captains and their workers. No longer supported by Daley's machine, Ed Hanrahan, with his brothers' help, arranged to pay off the bell boys and bell captains so that every table was graced with a basket containing fortune cookies. When the precinct workers opened up their cookies, each one had the same message: "Hanrahan's the Man!"

"We heard that even Daley busted a gut when he heard what happened," Wheeler said.

Six days before the general election, however, with polls showing Hanrahan ahead of Republican challenger Bernard Carey, Royko again penned a column about him, outlining an alleged private meeting with the Chicago crime syndicate's political conduit, John D'Arco. The inference was that Hanrahan had made a pre-election deal with the syndicate, despite the fact that Hanrahan had, as U.S. Attorney, put Sam Giancana in jail for contempt of a grand jury, and won a conviction against Oak Park resident and mob leader Sam Battaglia on conspiracy charges.

"He fought organized crime when it was very dangerous," Wheeler said. Carey won, effectively ending Hanrahan's political career, though he would run for Congress in 1974 and for Chicago mayor twice.

"The good he did is overlooked," Bolan said. "One or two things in the past doesn't sum up a life."

Mardi Bloch, who knew Hanrahan mainly through her late husband, Walter, echoed Bolan. "Who can say their life is without mistakes, or without misjudgment?" Bloch asked.

A lion in winter

Even in his later years, increasingly frail and weak, Hanrahan maintained his intellectual vigor and interest, keeping busy professionally, intellectually and socially. Bloch said Hanrahan remained interested and involved in local political issues until the end, volunteering weekly at PADS dinners and writing countless letters.

"He was always involved," she said. "He cared whether the schools were good and the churches were open and accepting."

Bloch and Wheeler said Hanrahan audited at least 20 classes at Concordia University in recent years, many with Walter Bloch, "mostly religion, English, some history." Mardi Bloch laughed at the thought of what the instructors had to endure during class conversations involving her husband and Hanrahan, two passionate, intelligent and opinionated men.

"He befriended the whole Concordia community," Wheeler said.

"He lived in the computer lab at Concordia," Mardi Bloch said. "I saw him there two weeks ago, researching something."

Hanrahan also kept up on village politics, routinely sitting in on village board meetings up until last summer. In several memorable village board meetings, he went toe to toe with former River Forest Village President Frank Paris in heated confrontation over what Hanrahan saw as questionable governance practices.

"He was like an old bulldog," said River Forest resident Al Popowits, who worked with Hanrahan on some of the issues that placed them in opposition to Paris. "Once he got on a subject, he didn't let go."

Over the past year, there were increasing reports that Hanrahan was fading. "I always felt he was putting in more physical and psychic energy than he possessed," Popowits said.

"He'll be missed. I know it's a cliché, but he really, truly was one of a kind."

Edward V. Hanrahan, 88, died at home June 9, holding his wife's hand.

"I was so glad I got to see him one last time and speak with him," said Carraher, who watched him and Geraldine interact lovingly.