Veteran Kills 12 In Camden NJ 1949

[Mergie Master]

This is a good read. It won a Pulitzer Prize for the author Mike Berger. I'll post some of it and put the link at the bottom so that anyone who wishes can finish reading it. ~ Mergie

Mike Berger's Award-Winning Story


For a distinguished example of local reporting during the year, The New York Times submits the story by Meyer Berger of the mass shootings in Camden, New Jersey on September 6, 1949. Mr. Berger was assigned to the story by The Times City Desk shortly before 11 A.M. He caught the first available train to Camden; personally covered the story and filed approximately 4,000 words. The last of his copy reached The Times office at 9:20 P.M., about one hour before the first edition closing. In the opinion of the editors of The New York Times, Mr. Berger’s story was a brilliant example of thorough, accurate reporting and skillful writing, under pressure. Mr. Berger subsequently received the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting.

CAMDEN, N.J., Sept.6--Howard B. Unruh, 28 years old, a mild, soft-spoken veteran of many armored artillery battles in Italy, France, Austria, Belgium and Germany, killed twelve persons with a war souvenir Luger pistol in his home block in East Camden this morning. He wounded four others.

Unruh, a slender, hollow-cheeked six-footer paradoxically devoted to scripture reading and to constant practice with firearms, had no previous history of mental illness but specialists indicated tonight that there was no doubt that he was a psychiatric case, and that he had secretly nursed a persecution complex for two years or more.

The veteran was shot in the left thigh by a local tavern keeper but he kept that fact secret, too, while policemen and Mitchell Cohen, Camden County prosecutor, questioned him at police headquarters for more than two hours immediately after tear gas bombs had forced him out of his bedroom to surrender.

Blood Betrays His Wound

The blood stain he left on the seat he occupied during the questioning betrayed his wound. When it was discovered he was taken to Cooper Hospital in Camden, a prisoner charged with murder.

He was as calm under questioning as he was during the twenty minutes that he was shooting men, women and children. Only occasionally excessive brightness of his dark eyes indicated that he was anything other than normal.

He told the prosecutor that he had been building up resentment against neighbors and neighborhood shopkeepers for a long time. “They have been making derogatory remarks about my character,” he said. His resentment seemed most strongly concentrated against Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Cohen who lived next door to him. They are among the dead.

Mr. Cohen was a druggist with a shop at 3202 River Road in East Camden. He and his wife had had frequent sharp exchanges over the Unruhs’ use of a gate that separates their back yard from the Cohens’. Mrs. Cohen had also complained of young Unruh’s keeping his bedroom radio tuned high into the late night hours. None of the other victims had ever had trouble with him. Unruh, a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School here, had started a GI course in pharmacy at Temple University in Philadelphia some time after he was honorably discharged from the service in 1945, but had stayed with it only three months. In recent months he had been unemployed, and apparently was not even looking for work.

Mother Separated From Husband

His mother, Mrs. Rita Unruh, 50, is separated from her husband. She works as a packer in the Evanson Soap Company in Camden and hers was virtually the only family income. James Unrah, 25 years old, her younger son, is married and lives in Haddon Heights, N.J. He works for the Curtis Publishing Company.

On Monday night, Howard Unruh left the house alone. He spent the night at the Family Theater on Market Street in Philadelphia to sit through several showings of the double feature motion picture there--“I Cheated the Law” and “The Lady Gambles.” It was pass three o’clock this morning when he got home.

Prosecutor Cohen said that Unruh told him later that before he fell asleep this morning he had made up his mind to shoot the persons who had “talked about me,” that he had even figured out that 9:30 A.M. would be the time to begin because most of the stores in his block would be open at that hour.

His mother, leaving her ironing when he got up, prepared his breakfast in their drab little three-room apartment in the shabby gray two-story stucco house at the corner of River Road and Thirty Second Street. After breakfast, he loaded one clip of bullets into his Lugar, slipped another clip into his pocket, and carried sixteen loose cartridges in addition. He also carried a tear-gas pen with six shells and a sharp six-inch knife.

He took one last look around his bedroom before he left the house. On the peeling walls he had crossed pistols, crossed German bayonets, pictures of armored artillery in action. Scattered about the chamber were machetes, a Roy Rogers pistol, ash trays made of German shells, clips of 30-30 cartridges for rifle use and a host of varied war souvenirs.

Mrs. Unruh had left the house some minutes before, to call on Mrs. Caroline Pinner, a friend in the next block. Msrs. Unruh had sensed, apparently, that her son’s smoldering resentments were coming to a head. She had pleaded with Elias Pinner, her friend’s husband, to cut a little gate in the Unruhs’ backyard so that Howard need not use the Cohen gate again. Mr. Pinner finished the gate early Monday evening after Howard had gone to Philadelphia.

At the Pinners’ house at 9 o’clock this morning, Mrs. Unruh had murmured something about Howard’s eyes: how strange they looked and how worried she was about him.

A few minutes later River Road echoed and re-echoed to pistol fire. Howard Unruh was on the rampage. His mother, who had left the Pinners’ little white house only a few seconds before, turned back. She hurried through the door.

She cried, “Oh, Howard, oh, Howard, they’re to blame for this.” She rushed past Mrs. Pinner, a kindly gray-haired woman of 70. She said, “I’ve got to use the phone; may I use the phone?”

But before she had crossed the living room to reach for it she fell on the faded carpet in a dead faint. The Pinners lifted her onto a couch in the next room. Mrs. Pinner applied aromatic spirits to revive her.

Continued Here - -> http://www.journalism.columbia.edu/page/198/199

[Mergie Master]

Back then no one had ever thought about the mental stresses of war and there was no help for veterans who suffered from them. The fact that he played his radio loudly late into the night was probably a sign that he was trying to block out the thoughts and images of war.

I had a friend, Bruce Gunnells, who came home from Vietnam that did similar things. He would often leave his TV blasting all night, or sleep in his closet at night. Bruce caught hell in Nam.

Bruce had a buddy that he went all through basic, AIT and to Nam with. On patrol one day they were lined up along a creek with orders to advance into the elephant grass across the creek at a certain time. Then a few minutes before they were to move out the Shake n Bake changed the order and told them to stay where they were. That order change didn't get to Bruce's buddy who was the last guy on the line so he advanced at the given time....alone!

He got shot down in the middle of the creek by Charlie who was buried up in the elephant grass laying an ambush. When the kid went down he was only shot through his legs. Charlie didn't finish him off, on purpose. He laid there screaming Bruce's name begging for help.

Bruce told me he couldn't stand it. He said there was no way he could just lay there popping off rounds into the grass with his buddy begging him for help. So against orders he jump up dumped his magazine into the grass as he ran, threw down his rifle, grabbed his buddy up and ran dragging him back to the line with him.

His guys were giving him plenty of cover fire but it wasn't enough. Bruce was hit 17 times in his back, stomach and arms. His buddy he was dragging was shot to pieces, killed, which probably kept Bruce from going down or getting hit in the legs since he was dragging him.

Bruce spent over 2 years in a hospital in Japan.

Then about 3 years after he came home Bruce's best friend since he was a kid spilled beer in Bruce's mom's car one night. Bruce told him to clean it up, John told Bruce to kiss his ass. John was the kind of guy that ran his mouth a lot when he was drinking. It costs him several ass whippings over the years. But that night Bruce told John if he didn't wipe the beer out of his mom's car he'd get his gun out and shoot him. John told him to do it or STFU about it.

Fast forward a few hours....Bruce's dad, Henry, said Bruce called him that night from the police department and said, "Dad, I shot Bruce in the eye.". Henry said he thought he meant with a rubberband or something. But it was with a .38. He killed John.

Bruce went to Perry Correctional for 8 years, came home and didn't get into more trouble. But he stayed in the house or in the yard mostly drunk. Died about 6 months ago with liver problems.

War is hell!

[BigBrother]

Damn.

Good post Mergie.

[turbo]

Wow.

That's all I've got.

I can't imagine....

[Mergie Master]

The New jersey shooter just died in 2009.

TRENTON - Howard Barton Unruh, who killed 13 people as he walked the streets of Camden in a psychotic 1949 shooting rampage that was the nation's worst mass murder at the time, died yesterday. He was 88.

Camden County Prosecutor Warren W. Faulk said that Unruh died at 3:35 p.m. in a Trenton nursing facility after an extended illness.

Unruh had been confined in a state psychiatric hospital since the killings, which became known as the "Walk of Death." Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he confessed to the killings and was judged mentally competent but never tried for the Sept. 6, 1949, massacre.