NJ Gun Spree Killer Dies After 60 Year Incarceration

[Libertas1776]

From the NY Times (Oct 19, 2009) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/nyregion/20unruh.html

Howard Unruh, who carried out one of America’s most infamous mass shootings, killing 13 people, three of them children, in a 20-minute, seemingly emotionless stroll through his neighborhood in Camden, N.J., in September 1949, died Monday at a nursing home in Trenton after 60 years’ confinement. He was 88.His death was announced by Warren W. Faulk, the Camden County prosecutor. James Laughlin, a spokesman for the prosecutor, said Mr. Unruh had been in state custody since his arrest.

On the morning of September 6, 1949, began his murderous spree with the killing of his first victim, a local shoemaker.

“I had leveled the gun at him, neither of us said nothing, and I pulled the trigger,” Mr. Unruh told a psychiatrist a month later. “He had a funny look on his face, staggered back and fell to the floor. I realized then he was still alive, so I fired into his head.” Next, he went to a tailor shop looking for the owner, Thomas Zegrino, but instead shot the man’s wife, Helga, 28, who was there alone.Then he entered a barber shop and shot Orris Smith, 6, who was astride a white hobby horse, getting his hair cut as his mother, Catherine, sat beside him.The barber, Clark Hoover, 33, was the next victim. In his confession, Mr. Unruh told how the man had “dodged around the barber chair, making it difficult for me to get a clear shot, but I finally hit him, walked over and then shot into his head.”

Unruh went on to murder 9 more people, including two more children, with most being random targets that happened to "cross his path" (including driving by in a car, stopped at a red light, and looking out a window) at the wrong time.


"After the shootings, Mr. Unruh fled to his apartment, where some 50 police officers converged there and blazed away with machine guns, shotguns and pistols. Mr. Unruh's apartment. A search of his room turned up 700 cartridges, a book called "The Shooter's Bible" and a New Testament Bible."

........................................................................................................................................................
A deeply disturbed SOB is now dead, and the final chapter of a relatively forgotten massacre can be closed, finally.


To paraphrase Mark Twain: History Doesn't repeat itself in America...but it does rhyme. :scared:

[Adsos Letter]

1. Interesting story. The article goes on to note that...

"An Army veteran who had seen extensive combat in Europe with the artillery in World War II" Unruh was also diagnosed "to have paranoid schizophrenia."

I wonder if there was any cause and effect in this particular individuals case?

[Libertas1776]

3. Seems plausible enough,

although it also seems he may have had a number of, for lack of a better word, "mommy issues," living at home with his single, church lady mom. All this on top of constant teasing and apparent "belittling" of his masculinity with neighbors alleging he was a homosexual, which he evidently did not like one bit. I'm sure the psychiatrists spent a helluva lot of time on this case number.

[Myrina]

6. ... was he an early Manchurian Candidate?

I have always believed that the movie was based more on fact than fiction ... because if a writer can imagine it, so can the horrible people in the back rooms of the military.

[Blue_Tires]

2. wow...he lived a good long time after that....

paunchy cops with short short ties and thompsons shows how far away we are removed from that era...the shooter may have outlived everyone else who was there there that day...

[Stevenmarc]

4. Ah the good old days when they knew how to do a perp walk

[bluestateguy]

5. That will save the state some money

All the taxpayer money being spent on his housing, health care and security is now off the books.

[LeftinOH]

7. "I'd have killed a thousand if I had bullets enough." Wow- I never knew about this;

"Guns + Mental Instability = Public Menace" seems to be a timeless phenomenon.

[Libertas1776]

9. "'Guns + Mental Instability = Public Menace'

seems to be a timeless phenomenon."

Indeed.

[FlaGranny]

8. I was 9 when that happened

and I remember it. It happened about 30 miles from my home. I believe it is my first unfortunate memory of a mass murder.