Richard Purcell Horan, a 35-year-old White male, was an FBI Special Agent looking forward to a bright future. He and his wife, Helen, were parents to a two-year-old son, also named Richard, and had plans to build a new home in Hartford. An intelligent and witty man who had joined the FBI in 1948, Horan was known for his love of dancing and his red Ford convertible. The day after his death, April 19, 1957, would have been his 36th birthday.
Instead, his life was cut short on Good Friday, April 18, 1957, during a manhunt for a dangerous fugitive in Suffield, Connecticut.
The object of the search was Francis Kolakowski, an ex-convict known since his youth as "Machine Gun Kos" for his skill in building homemade machine guns. Kolakowski was a desperate man, wanted for the recent murder of his wife, a crime his own 13-year-old daughter witnessed. Shortly after that killing, Kolakowski escaped custody and compounded his crimes by robbing an armored car guard of more than $66,000 in Windsor, Connecticut. The FBI was called in to assist local police when it was suspected that Kolakowski had crossed state lines.
The manhunt led authorities to the Suffield home of Kolakowski's sister, Wanda Slater, on that fateful April day. Slater contacted the police after her brother called out to her from the woods near her house. Suffield police, state troopers, and the FBI quickly surrounded the property. Agent Horan was among those who responded to the call. He and a small group of officers made the decision to enter the home through a cellar bulkhead in the rear of the house to search for the fugitive.
As the officers entered the basement and Agent Horan began to climb the stairs to the floor above, Kolakowski ambushed them from the top of the staircase. He opened fire, and a single shot struck and fatally wounded Agent Horan. His own shot missed the fugitive. Following the shooting, the other officers retreated. A standoff ensued, and tear gas was fired into the house. When officers were finally able to re-enter the home, they discovered that there would be no arrest. Francis Kolakowski had taken his own life with the same gun he had used to murder the federal agent.
