Probe Into Prosecutor’s Death Appears Stalled

On the eve of Paul R. McLaughlin’s funeral, the investigation into the shooting of the veteran gang prosecutor appeared stymied.

In the wake of Monday night’s fatal attack, police are now hedging on early theories that the 42-year-old assistant attorney general who headed a task force on gang violence had been targeted for execution, perhaps in retribution for a criminal prosecution.

The theory had gained credence because nothing was taken from McLaughlin or his vehicle, which was parked at a commuter rail station in a low-crime neighborhood.

McLaughlin’s killing bore the marks of a gang execution, authorities said, sending a chill through law enforcement officials across the nation. Investigators freely used the term “hit murder” in the days following McLaughlin’s death.

But one frustrated police investigator said the evidence being gathered ranges from nebulous to contradictory, and suggested that “divine intervention” will be needed to crack the case.

Working against the theory of a criminal execution is that gangs in Boston tend to be small, poorly organized and independent of one another. Groups like the Crips and the Bloods have yet to find footing in the city’s relatively small African American population.

Boston Police Supt. John Boyle said the original description of the assailant--a 14- to 15-year-old male in baggy jeans and a hooded sweat shirt--had been revised.

“We’re looking for a black teen-ager, we’re not just focusing on 14- or 15-year-olds,” Boyle said at a press conference.

But if law enforcement officials looking into the case were frustrated, they were also furious.

“This homicide has so outraged the department,” Police Capt. Al Sweeney said at the scene.

“This is a coldblooded murder of one of the best prosecutors in the city,” Atty. Gen. Scott Harshbarger said.

McLaughlin had a reputation as a tough and determined prosecutor, winning nearly all the cases he pursued. He was well-liked by associates, “not a stuffed shirt or a puffed-up kind of person, just a real journeyman prosecutor,” said Carmen Fields, a spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Ralph Martin II.

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He also was part of a prominent political family. Legendary Mayor James Michael Curley appointed his grandfather, Edward McLaughlin Sr., to serve as Boston’s fire commissioner. The slain man’s father, Edward McLaughlin Jr., is a former lieutenant governor and was a U.S. attorney when his old friend and Navy squadron partner, John F. Kennedy, represented the Boston area in Congress. Edward McLaughlin Jr. founded the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. unit of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, named for the late President’s war hero brother.

The murdered prosecutor was to be buried today.