Slain 150 years ago, thanked once more

Ezekiel W. Hodsdon was on the job for about 16 months when the Boston police officer went looking for suspicious persons on the streets of East Boston.

It was Hodsdon's last shift.

Around 5 a.m., as he wrestled with a burglary suspect near Maverick and Havre streets, a second man crept up behind him and shot Hodsdon in the head.

Today at 10 a.m., 150 years to the hour after the New Hampshire native became the first Boston police officer to die in the line of duty for the nation's oldest police force, Hodsdon will be remembered with a new granite memorial where he died.

"We're just trying to bring his memory back," said Boston police Officer Robert Anthony, who along with Officer Daniel P. Cunningham researched Hodsdon's slaying and pushed for the permanent memorial.

As the two officers put the final touches on the memorial yesterday, Cunningham explained his involvement. "It's just a way of reaching back and thanking the man and his descendants for his service 150 years ago," he said.

Some of Hodsdon's descendants are expected to attend the unveiling ceremony today. Anthony said Captain Timothy J. Murray, a former commander of the cold case squad, located some 200 relatives of the Ossipee native who died less than 13 days after his only child, a son, was born.

Dana Leavitt, a Superior Court administrator, is one of those relatives. He had no inkling he had a connection to the shooting until his family was contacted by researchers earlier this year.

"What a small world," said Leavitt. He said he expects to meet distant relatives for the first time today when they gather at the Area A-7 station on Paris Street, a short walk from where Hodsdon's memorial awaits its dedication.

The memorial is installed in a manicured square on the grounds of Maverick Landing, a privately owned, mixed-income development on the site where the battered Maverick housing development once stood.

Deirdre Wyman, the Winn Residential property manager, said the development's owner, Trinity Financial, readily agreed to having the memorial installed on a corner of the property.

"It's an honor for us to be asked to host it . . . to be able to contribute a little bit to honoring that gentleman," she said.

The estimated $8,000 cost of the memorial was paid with donations from Area A-7 police officers, the Boston Police Patrolmen's Association, and East Boston businesses, said Anthony.

Researching details of the crime, Anthony said, he found Hodsdon's shooting had been heavily covered in the Boston press. He also unearthed reports in the department's archives, including one by the first officer to find his wounded colleague.

"I hastened to him, and saw it was Officer Hodsdon," Officer Jonathan Aiken wrote in the report. "Hodsdon turned his eyes upon me, as though he recognized me, and I asked him who it was that hurt him; I asked him this question two or three times, until I found that he was unable to speak."

Police scrambled to track down Hodsdon's assailants and quickly located one suspect, a man whose last name was Joyce and whose first name has not been rediscovered. But they had to wait almost a year until the shooter, William McNulty, surfaced in a New Hampshire prison serving a sentence under an alias.

Both men were convicted of second-degree murder. McNulty was granted a pardon in 1865 due to ill health.

Anthony and Cunningham tracked down Hodsdon's gravesite at Woodlawn Cemetery in Everett, where a headstone bears both his name and the name of the man who killed him. Anthony said they scrubbed Hodsdon's headstone clean. "We really are brothers in blue," said Anthony.

John Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com.