Larson retires after 38-plus years with Hudson Police Department

• HPD Lt. Paul Larson, Ret.

HPD Lt. Paul Larson, Ret.

Talk about it

Not quite a throwback to Dragnet’s Jack Webb and “just the facts ma’am,” but Hudson Police Lt. Paul Larson does have a reputation for playing it close to the vest, especially with the press. That said, he opened up to this reporter earlier this week about his more than 38 years with the Hudson Police Department.

Larson, 64, retired on Sept. 9. He was the department’s first lieutenant and second in command to Chief Marty Jensen. He joined the department in March 1973 following a stint in the U.S. Navy as a communications technician and earning a bachelor’s degree in geography and biology from UW-Eau Claire.

Police work wasn’t Larson’s first career choice. He considered officer’s training with the Navy and a teaching career but in the early ‘70s both prospects were less than promising. “The Navy was trimming back after the Vietnam War and teaching jobs were pretty scarce as well. Police work was my third choice but I’m glad I made it.”

When Larson joined the department he was one of seven officers, five of whom had been officers for less than a year. It was a time when the drinking age in Wisconsin was 18 and it made Hudson a popular destination for young Minnesota people as well and kept things interesting for law enforcement. True to his fashion, Larson, who was 26 at the time, would only recall the time as one when “a lot of young people were doing a lot of drinking.”

Larson was a patrol officer for 18 years before being promoted to patrol sergeant in 1991. He became a sergeant in 1993, and the department’s juvenile officer, a position he held for eight years. He became a detective sergeant in 2001 and was promoted to lieutenant in 2004. He also served as chief of the department during periods of time in 2006 and 2007.

He said the biggest change in the job over that past three decades has to be the impact of technology on day-to-day operation. When he started, he didn’t even have a portable radio. “Today we can communicate instantly and share information between agencies, see court records and have immediate access to databases. That has really made an important difference.”

He was instrumental in initiating the union for patrol officers and for sergeants. He is a charter member of the Wisconsin Association of Homicide Investigators and was named Death Investigator of the Year in 2006 by that organization. The Vidocq Society of Philadelphia, a Philadelphia organization of retired investigators who review cold cases, named him one of its investigators of the years in 2004 for his work on the O’Connell/Ellison double murder case.

Larson was in charge of what is likely the most infamous criminal case in Hudson’s history, the 2002 double homicide of Dan O’Connell of O’Connell Family Funeral Homes and intern James Ellison. While he has been involved in many serious crime investigations over the past three decades, he acknowledges that the O’Connell case was one of his toughest investigations because it so tragic and senseless. “They all are tough because they involve families, innocent victims and witnesses in something traumatic.”

Larson said the O’Connell case was part of his every work day for three years. He said while he got assistance in the early days of the investigation, but in the final years, he was on his own for much of the time. “It was very consuming. You had an event that touched the whole community and everyone wanted it solved. There were so many leads and contacts to follow. You had to follow them all if we were going to find the perpetrator. Just a couple of days into the investigation I realized the scope of it and I knew it was going to be a long haul…One of the investigators from the Department of Criminal Investigation told me we had one hellava who-dun-it on our hands.”

The investigation eventually led Larson and his fellow investigators to Fr. Ryan Erickson who served as an assistant priest at St. Patrick Church at the time of the murders. Erickson, who was serving in a Hurley parish in late 2004, committed suicide there just days after being questioned about the murders by Hudson investigators that December. In October 2005, Larson and others testified in a St. Croix County court and made the case that Erickson murdered the two men. While Erickson always denied any involvement in the murders, the circumstantial evidence uncovered by the department and what surfaced in other testimony convinced Judge Eric Lundell that, if he was alive, there was enough to charge Erickson with the crimes.

But if the O’Connell case is the most notorious of Larson’s career, he contends that he has treated all of his cases, from traffic accidents to the shootings in a St. Croix Heights home and a Coulee Road apartment to an armored car robbery and the investigation into a death of an infant baby boy with the same vigilance.

“Every part of the job is important from a traffic stop to a homicide investigation. You do the job every day to the best of your ability,” said Larson. He believes the most important element of his job is keeping the confidence and trust of the public. “They have to know that they can come to us and that we will respect what they say and that their trust will not be violated.”

He said what he will miss most about being on the job are the people he worked with and not just fellow officers. “I can’t say enough about the caliber of people who work for the city of Hudson, from public works to the water department to the fire department to city hall. We are so lucky to have all of them working for us and I will miss working with them.”

Larson and his wife Patricia have two grown children, Heidi and Robert. His son is also a member of the Hudson Police Department. He said he is proud of both of his children and said their career choices were strictly their own. Heidi is works for the Breckinridge, Colo., Chamber of Commerce.

Larson is characteristically tight-lipped about his plans for retirement. “That remains to be seen.”

And on that note, Larson ends his long career with the Hudson Police Department.

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