POLICE MYSTERY SOLVED: IRISH COP WAS FIRST OFFICER KILLED IN CHICAGO

It has taken 156 years to finally come up with the truth about a murder in Chicago but a police mystery has now been solved.
Officials have decided that Irish-born Constable James Quinn should finally be recognised as Chicago's first policeman to be killed in the line of duty.
The details of Quinn's contentious death have long been the subject of debate in the Windy City.
At first it was believed that Quinn, who was a famine-era Irish immigrant, had died in a drunken bar fight.
But is was not until the Illinois city's Alderman Ed Burke and writer Tom O'Gorman joined forces to research for a book that the significance of Quinn's untimely death was realised.
They uncovered the real story behind Quinn's murder while writing their new book called End of Watch, the story of every Chicago cop killed on duty.
The pair handed over all their research to the Chicago History Museum, whose historians pored over the information.
They finally decided Quinn was fatally beaten while serving a warrant on a robber in 1853 and deserved the title of being the city's first fallen officer.
The evidence the writers discovered completely undermined the theory that Quinn was off-duty, drunk and killed in a brawl.
In fact, he was on duty and attempting to make an arrest in a part of the city notorious for anti-Catholic and anti-Irish bigotry and the statements of witnesses claiming Quinn had been drinking were tainted.
Until now Officer Casper Lauer, a German Catholic immigrant stabbed to death just a few months after Quinn's death, was honoured as the city's first officer to die in the line of duty.
But now Quinn's name has been inscribed on the Chicago's Police Memorial and the National Police Memorial in Washington, D.C, giving him the honour historians say he deserves.
And there is a historical irony to the discovery.
Potter Palmer IV, who sits on the History Museum's board, was responsible for getting the museum's historians to decide who was the first officer killed.
He is the great-great-grandson of the late Potter Palmer, once one of Chicago's richest and most influential citizens, who served on the jury that convicted Quinn's killer.