Howard Unruh/Говард Унру

[Shma]

Убийца-психопат прожил свои 88 с Библией в кармане, 60 из них - в психиатрической больнице.
Школьное прозвище будущего убийцы.

"How"

The Woodrow Wilson High School yearbook from 1939 indicated that he was shy and that his ambition was to become a government employee. They called him "How." A check of his records revealed Bs and Cs for things like "health," "courtesy," and "personal impression." There was no evaluation of his intelligence, but his mental alertness was average.

многабукаф

fallbook.blogspot.com/2009/10/breaking-news-mas...

Monday, October 19, 2009
BREAKING NEWS: Mass-murderer Howard Unruh is dead
UPDATE 10/20/09: Sources say Howard Unruh's body has been claimed by an unidentified niece. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

~~~~

Howard Unruh, who has been called (somewhat errantly) "the father of mass murder," has died in the New Jersey mental hospital where he has lived since gunning down 13 people in Camden, N.J., in 1949. He was 88 and spent more than 60 years in the asylum.

He was not, in fact, America's first mass murderer, nor even the first one to snap, pick up a gun and start killing people. He was, however, a rarity, in that he didn't commit suicide after his rampage.

Charles Cohen, a 12-year-old boy whose parents and grandmother were slaughtered in Unruh's angry, 12-minute spree, became the most outspoken survivor of the so-called "walk of death." When Unurh was seeking less restrictive accommodations in the hospital, Cohen campaigned to keep him under the strictest control. He kept artifacts of the killings in an old suitcase and yearned for the day the seriously psychotic Unruh would be dead, so he could bury the suitcase -- and his memory. Alas, Cohen himself died at age 72 less than two months ago and was buried on the 60th anniversary of the shooting.

Ironically, Unruh was a WWII veteran who might now be eligible for a burial with full military rites. No services have yet been announced.

The story of Howard Unruh's rampage and Charles Cohen's extraordinary survival will be part of a 2010 book by Ron Franscell about survivors of mass killers.


www.dvrbs.com/people/CamdenPeople-CharlesSHance...

September 5, 1949

In this photo from the Camden Courier-Post, Detective William Kelly (left) and Officer Charles S. Hance stand ready to fire during he September 5, 1949 standoff between city police and Howard Unruh, who barricaded himself inside his apartment at North 32nd Street and River Road in Cramer Hill after shooting 13 people to death. More than 50 Camden policemen took part in the arrest.
misanthropia777.blogspot.com/2009/10/mass-murde...

Mass murderer Howard Unruh dies at 88
By Joseph A. Gambardello and Barbara Boyer

Inquirer Staff Writers

Howard Unruh, 88, who became the modern face of mass murder when he shot and killed 13 people in East Camden in 1949, died yesterday.

Unruh was never found competent to stand trial after the killing spree. He spent the rest of his life at Trenton State Hospital after being diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic.

He was hospitalized repeatedly in recent years. Authorities said he died of natural causes related to old age.

Unruh outlived many who witnessed his rampage, including nearly all the investigators and Charles Cohen, who spent his life waiting to hear that the man who murdered his parents and grandmother was dead.

Cohen, who was 12 at the time and hid in a closet during the spree, died last month and was buried Sept. 6, the 60th anniversary of the crime.

"It came six weeks too late," a tearful Marian Cohen said yesterday, adding that her husband believed his loved ones never rested in peace while Unruh was alive. "He waited and he waited. We talked about it so many times. . . . I feel his spirit with me."

Cohen said that, once Unruh died, her husband had planned to bury all the paraphernalia he kept of that day and to remember the dead with Kaddish, a Jewish prayer of mourning.

"Our thoughts are with the families of the other victims touched by this heinous tragedy," the Cohen family said in a statement released after hearing of Unruh's death. "We know that our family members and the other victims can rest in peace from this day forward."

Unruh's rampage in the 3200 block of River Road of Cramer Hill unfolded Tuesday, Sept. 6, 1949. At the time, it was known as the "walk of death." The 13 victims included three children.

Eventually, after Unruh exchanged shots with police, officers used tear gas to smoke him out of his apartment.

"I'm no psycho," the World War II Army veteran told police. "I have a good mind."

Experts have offered many explanations for Unruh's actions, all fitting what has become the textbook profile of a spree killer: Introverted. Narcissistic. Oedipal. Remorseless.

He had a fascination with guns, which apparently developed during the war. He served with the 342d Armored Field Artillery in Italy, Austria, Belgium, France, and Germany.

His Army commanders told reporters at the time that Unruh was a good soldier who kept to himself. Among recognitions, Unruh held a Good Conduct Medal and two bronze stars on his European medal for his battle participation. He didn't drink, smoke, or chase women, and took orders well, the commanders said.

Unruh's younger brother, James, told reporters he thought the war caused him to snap.

"Since he came home from the service, he didn't seem to be the same. He was nervous. He never acted like his old self," James Unruh said then.

Experts at the time said Unruh more likely had been suffering from mental illness before the war.

He was born Jan. 20, 1921, in Haddonfield. His parents separated and the children lived with their mother, Rita, in Camden.

An average student, he graduated from Woodrow Wilson Senior High School and then worked for Curtis Publishing Co. In 1942, he was employed briefly as a sheet-metal worker for the Philadelphia Naval Base until he enlisted in the Army.

He served with a self-propelled field artillery unit and sometimes served as a tank gunner. In 1945, he was honorably discharged.

He returned to live with his mother in Camden, where the two regularly attended Sunday services at St. Paul's Lutheran Church. Unruh, born-again, participated in Bible study Monday nights as well.

He took college classes briefly and never held a job.

At home, Unruh listened to somber music, Brahms and Wagner, and constructed a range in the basement where he practiced shooting with a cache of guns he collected. Tall and lanky, he was considered weird by teens who teased him. Although Unruh, known as Junior, dressed nicely, he often wore his Army boots and clutched a Bible as he walked the neighborhood.

To get home, Unruh often cut through a rear yard owned by Maurice and Rose Cohen at 32d Street and River Road, where they ran the local pharmacy. He often had run-ins with the Cohens and other shop owners. Secretly, he plotted to kill them over two years.

After Unruh squabbled with Cohens about a backyard gate, he constructed his own gate that was wrecked by neighborhood boys on Sept. 5.

Unruh told police he planned his killing spree as he sat overnight in Philadelphia through three showings of a double feature - The Lady Gambles and I Cheated the Law.

In the morning, he had a dazed look, his mother later recalled. He threatened her with a wrench and she ran for help. Her son left with a 9mm pistol he'd bought in Philadelphia for $37.50.

Police said he walked River Road in a rampage that lasted 20 minutes, shooting through windows, at passing vehicles, and at pedestrians, and entering shops along the way.

Unruh stopped killing only when he ran out of ammunition, then retreated to his apartment. When police entered, they found Unruh's Bible opened to a passage that spoke of wars that would end the world.

Ron Dale, who still lives in Camden, was 8 years old and waiting to get his hair cut when he witnessed Unruh kill one of the victims. His father never let him attend court hearings, fearing Unruh would be released one day and go after those who helped keep him in custody.

"I figured he would die in there [prison]," said Dale, who is being treated for lung cancer and seemed unfazed by news of Unruh's death. "I'm too old to worry about it and too sick to worry about it. What are you going to do?"

In the state hospital, Unruh spent his time reading, including the Bible, watching television, listening to music, and playing cards. He was still regarded as a loner.

He had visitors over the years, including a fellow World War II veteran who died in 2001. Since then, his health steadily declined, and before his death, officials said, he was no longer lucid.

Unruh has no known survivors.
www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/m...
The Story Unfolds

Two people believed they had hit Unruh with a bullet -- the tavern owner and a police officer, but only when Unruh got off his chair after hours of questioning did anyone notice the bloodstain. He had been wounded in his right side but he was uncomplaining throughout the interrogation. He was sent to Cooper Hospital, the same place where the victims were being treated or placed in the morgue.

Howard Unruh in custody
www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/10/19/us/2009102...

There he underwent surgery for his own wound, but surgeons were unable to remove the bullet. That meant they could not determine who had actually shot him. (While the newspapers offer no answer in later reports, most accounts attribute the hit to Frank Engel.)


Two psychiatrists, Drs. H. E. Yaskin and James Ryan, were assigned to ask Unruh questions while he was still hospitalized at Cooper. What they learned would be compared with assessments by other professionals later, because it seemed clear that, regardless of his past record, he was destined for psychiatric treatment. They (along with reporters looking for Unruh's acquaintances) learned more about his background.

Unruh talking to police at hospital

Unruh was living with his mother, Freda, in a small apartment on River Road. He had a married younger brother living in Hadden Heights and his father, Samuel Unruh, was alive but estranged from the family. (Samuel had come to City Hall when he'd heard about the shootings.)

Howard Unruh school photo, 1939

Unruh had had an ordinary childhood and seemed to have been a well-behaved boy, although reportedly he was quiet and moody. He attended the Lutheran church every Sunday and studied the Bible. When he was of age, he enlisted in the army in 1942 to fight for America during World War II, but most people did not realize that this was not just a patriotic duty for him. It was also an experience of death that he painstakingly documented.


He took excessive care of his rifle and was a brave soldier as a tank gunner in Italy, Belgium, Austria, Germany, and France, taking part in the relief of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge. Whenever he killed a German, he wrote down the day, hour, and place. If he actually glimpsed the remains, he described the corpse in some detail, to the point where a fellow soldier who read the tight-lipped, Bible-reading soldier's diary was quite shocked. Unruh was honorably discharged in 1945. Like many soldiers, he returned home with medals and a collection of firearms.

He decorated his bedroom in the three-room apartment with military pieces. Berger writes that on the walls he had crossed pistols, machetes, crossed German bayonets, and photographs of armored artillery in action. Even his ashtrays were made from German shells.

Unlike other soldiers, he did not try to find a girlfriend and settle down, although for a few weeks prior to his enlistment he had dated a young woman who went to his church but he had ended this relationship by letter from overseas. After coming home, he mostly remained inside his mother's apartment, rarely going out and becoming increasingly more reclusive. She supported them both with her income as a packer for a soap company, although Howard had made and sold several model trains. For three months, he took pharmacy courses at Temple University in Philadelphia, across the river. He also went to church and attended Bible classes.

"I always thought of Howard as a soft-spoken young man," said the pastor of his Lutheran church. "He came to services regularly before the war. After the war, he came mornings and evenings regularly for about a year. About three months ago, he stopped entirely." The pastor's wife called Unruh "the mildest type of man you could meet."

Mrs. Pinnar, who had corresponded with Howard when he was overseas, said when he came back he was different. "He always appeared to be very nervous. He walked very straight on the street, his head rigid, never glancing to the right or left." She thought he was suffering from "war neurosis."

Unruh's brother, James, 25, said that Howard was a "born-again Christian" who had undergone a deep religious experience and had tried to live by the ways of Christ. Yet he'd become "nervous" over the past couple of months, according to statements James made to the New York Times. "He just seemed changed."

Another church member who visited him a month after he stopped going to church said that he exhibited strange behavior, believing that people were making things hard for him. This is precisely what Unruh's mother had been frightened about.

Unruh's primary recreation was collecting guns and target shooting in the basement. Eventually he stopped going out. Without a job, he just sat around the house, often thinking about his neighbors.

He kept a list of grudges against them, imagining how he would get his revenge. He felt that people in the neighborhood were slandering him, talking behind his back. Next to each offender's name he had recorded that particular person's misdeeds. Then he had placed the word "retal," short for retaliation. "I had been thinking about killing them for some time," Unruh commented. "I'd have killed a thousand if I'd had bullets enough."

Despite Unruh's claim that he had pondered all of this while at the movies, many people believed that the damage he saw to the gate when he came home from the theater was the final straw. Freda Unruh had sensed that morning that something terrible was going to happen. As she left the Pinnar's home that morning, according to them, she heard gunfire at a distance and went back in, crying, "Oh Howard, Howard, they're to blame for this." She asked for a phone to call the police, but before she reached it, she fainted. (Some accounts say a doctor revived her and took her to her sister's. Others say that the Pinnars revived her and she went back out.)

In sum, Howard Unruh appeared to be a quiet man who developed suspicions but kept them to himself, letting them simmer and grow into paranoid delusions. Now his fate was in the hands of a team of mental health professionals.

www.dvrbs.com/camden/CamdenNJ-HowardUnruh.htm
HOWARD UNRUH

First, let it be understood that this page is in no way an attempt to glorify Howard Unruh or the terrible things he did on September 6, 1949. If anything however, this page stands as evidence for each of us that "there but for the grace of God go I."

Howard Unruh has been described as "an odd, withdrawn 'mama's boy' in his neighborhood". He grew up in East Camden, attending Cramer Junior High School and graduating from Woodrow Wilson High School in January of 1939.

Unruh served in the United States Army in Europe, and saw considerable combat. After returning home he became increasingly withdrawn. On September 6, 1949 the schizophrenia that had been manifesting itself unknown to his own family and his neighbors overtook him, and he killed 13 people in a shooting rampage that has been inaccurately described as "America's First Mass Murder".

Howard Unruh was never brought to trial, his mental condition being apparent to those who apprehended him. Sent to Trenton State Prison shortly after his arrest, he has been confined to a maximum security hospital for the criminally insane, and will remain confined for the rest of his life. This may well be considered one of the few times that the criminal justice system in New Jersey worked by its very un-involvement in the proceedings.

If there is any possible "silver lining" that can be found in this sad affair, is that the Unruh affair may have spurred the federal government to put additional resources into mental health care for the veterans that came home from World War II. Howard Unruh's rampage was arguably the culmination of a chain of events that had been taking place since the middle of World War II, evidenced by a series of suicides and suicide attempts by soldiers home on leave and discharged veterans.

Howard Unruh - 1939 High School Yearbook

www.dvrbs.com/ccwd-WW2/WW2-ThePriceOfFreedom.ht...
At the end of hostilities, hundreds of thousands of men and women came home. Most made a successful readjustment to civilian life. For others, the return home was harder, and the psychological problems of certain returning veterans began to attract the attention of the government. Probably the most notorious case would be that of Camden NJ native Howard Unruh, a combat veteran who developed paranoid schizophrenia, was not diagnosed, and went on a shooting rampage that left 13 people dead. The Veterans Administration reacted to the evident problems of America's veterans by enlarging the psychological and psychiatric services in its system of hospitals. For some, help came far too late.
www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2259445544&v=wal...
Howard Unruh fan club
www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=...
Birth: Sep. 17, 1946
Death: Sep. 6, 1949
Camden
Camden County
New Jersey, USA

Murder Victim. Thomas was the ninth of thirteen persons killed by mass-murderer Howard Unruh in East Camden, New Jersey. Thomas was the nephew of entertainer Kay Hamilton and grandson of Joseph Hamilton, Camden's famed minstrel man. (bio by: Joann Genzano DeCastro)

Burial:
Calvary Cemetery
Cherry Hill
Camden County
New Jersey, USA

Maintained by: Find A Grave
Originally Created by: Joann Genzano DeCastro
Record added: Sep 29, 2003
Find A Grave Memorial# 7931561



И, кроме всего:
www.thex-files.ru/files/titlesnames.htm
4X02 Unruhe (Беспорядок)
По-немецки - "волнение", "беспорядок". На самом деле главным источником вдохновения было имя известного убийцы-психопата Говарда Унру (Unruh).

@темы: asylum, имя, X-Files, массовое убийство