Historical talk Sunday about Brookline cops killed in the line of duty

Their deaths were also a long time ago. McMurray was killed in 1904, and O’Brien was killed in 1930.

McHugh said he researched their deaths by digging up copies of old newspapers that detailed the shootings in graphic detail.

McMurray was 45 at the time he was killed, and had previously received accolades for saving a child from drowning in Leverett Pond in 1894 and then saving a second man, Harry Boles, from drowning.

On Oct. 17, 1904, McMurray responded to the home on Boylston Street after a woman ran out crying for help, McHugh said. Just as McMurray tried to kick in the door to the home, someone fired a shot through the door and killed the police officer, McHugh said.

The person who fired the shot was Boles, whom McMurray had rescued a few years earlier, McHugh said.

“It’s an amazing story,” McHugh said.

O’Brien was fatally shot on Ivy Street in Brookline in 1930 after he approached two suspicious men he’d been following, McHugh said. While O’Brien frisked one of the men, the other pulled out a gun and shot O’Brien twice in the head and then in the stomach before fleeing.

O’Brien survived long enough to describe the two men, and McHugh said that a nationwide manhunt eventually caught shooter Paul Hurley in Baltimore. Hurley was convicted of first-degree murder for O’Brien’s death and was executed by electrocution, McHugh said.

McHugh said he became interested in the history of Brookline Police early in his career, and through the years he has developed into the unofficial department historian.