As the nation completes its observance of Police Memorial Week, the people of Bangor have to go back a long time to recall the only two officers in the city’s history to be killed in the line of duty.

Patrick H. Jordan was shot and killed on March 7, 1903, while investigating a domestic disturbance near Third Street. Francis A. Murray died June 28, 1950, three days after being struck by a hit-and-run driver while directing traffic in front of Bass Park.

The two officers were honored this week with the placement of memorial markers on their graves at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. A service for the city’s police officers was held at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church on Tuesday, and the American flag and the National Memorial flag were displayed at half-staff on Wednesday.

Though both men have secured an honored place in the city’s history, few of us know their names or the events that earned them their tragic distinctions. So in the spirit of remembrance, here are the brief accounts of their deaths, as recorded in the NEWS archives.

Patrick Jordan was born in Bangor in 1867 and attended public schools in the city. After working for the Bangor & Boston Steamship Co., on the Penobscot River, he joined the police force in 1902. Jordan drove the horse-drawn patrol wagon for 13 months before he was chosen to be one of the city’s regular officers. On March 7, his fifth night on the job, he and a fellow patrolman were sent to a domestic dispute at a house on St. Michael’s Court, which was located near Sanford Street. William H. Albert, who was drunk at the time, had been trying to break down the door of the house where his ex-wife lived, according to a neighbor’s complaint. The frightened woman jumped from a second-story window into the snow and fled to a neighbor’s house.

Albert, who managed to break into the house, leaped from the same window and escaped when the police arrived. Patrolman Jordan began to chase him on foot through a maze of alleys connecting Sanford, Second and Cedar streets. Meanwhile, a fire broke out on the other side of town and all available fire and police personnel were sent to the scene. Jordan, alone, continued to pursue Albert across Cedar Street to Carroll Street, just off Third Street. A short time later, a teen-ager named Rainsford Talbot, who had been helping his father transport scenery from the Bangor Opera House on Main Street, was walking to his home on Carroll Street when he saw a body lying across the sidewalk. When a policeman lifted the arm of the dead man, who had been shot in the face, he saw Jordan’s badge.

“My God, there’s the star,” he cried. “It’s the boy.”

On a tip, police found Albert hiding in Jesse Huddlan’s home on nearby Walter Street. The killer was lying in a dark back room, with a .32-caliber revolver in his hand and blood spots on his necktie. The police and newspaper reporters of the time regarded Albert as something of a curiosity. In his early 30s, he was a Canadian by birth and a recent resident of Ellsworth, who said he worked both as a blacksmith and a part-time detective. At the police station, his mood was bafflingly mercurial – smoking a clay pipe, he acted chatty and carefree one moment and nearly hysterical and belligerent the next. In his pockets were a bunch of keys, some silver change, a wad of Confederate bills and the brass badge he’d presumably bought by mail from the American Detective Agency in Indianapolis, Ind.

Albert was sent to prison for the murder of Patrick Jordan, who left a wife and six young children.

Late on a June night, 47 years later, Patrolman Francis “Shank” Murray was working a traffic detail when he was struck by a car he never saw.

Born in Bangor, 40-year-old Murray had graduated in 1929 from Bangor High School, where he had been an outstanding football player. After working at a local automobile service station for several years, he joined the police force in 1942. Over the next eight years, he become a popular policeman among the residents of the city, as well as a highly regarded professional by his fellow officers.

Just after midnight June 25, Murray was standing in the middle of Main Street, near Dutton, wearing a black raincoat, a white belt, white gloves and carrying a flashlight. His job was to direct traffic so that the trucks of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, which had wrapped up its final performance in town that night, could make its way down Main Street to the railroad yards.

At that moment, two young men from Brewer, both in their early 20s, had just driven into Bangor from Hampden, where they had dropped off a girl after attending a dance at Dow Field. The two men were traveling between 40 and 50 miles per hour on Main Street as they approached Bass Park. The car plowed into Murray, who was hurled onto the hood and roof and carried 60 feet before being thrown to the pavement. The two men drove on, leaving behind some broken glass and one of the car’s blue headlights.

About 12 hours later, a blue car with a dented hood and one headlight, and registered to one of the young men, was found abandoned in the yard of a Pearl Street residence. The men were arrested soon afterward at their Brewer homes. They told police they had not seen Murray in the road until the car struck the policeman. When asked why he didn’t stop, the driver replied, “I got scared and drove off.”

Murray died of his injuries three days later, on June 28. The young men were charged with manslaughter, but neither served time in jail. At the request of Murray’s widow, who asked that the court be compassionate, the judge placed the young men on two years’ probation and fined them a total of $1,698.

The people of Bangor filled St. Mary’s Church to capacity for Murray’s funeral, just as they had for Jordan’s funeral in the same church so many years before.

This week, Police Chief Donald Winslow shook his head as he reflected on the more than 50 years that have passed since the last Bangor police officer was killed in the line of duty.

“All I can say is we’ve been so very, very lucky in this city,” he said, and then lightly rapped his knuckles on his wooden desk.

Tom Weber’s column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.