The New York Times/Veteran kills 12 in mad rampage on Camden street

by Meyer Berger

Camden, N.J., Sept. 6 — Howard B. Unruh, 28, a mild, soft-spoken veteran of many armored-artillery battles in Europe, killed 12 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 6-footer paradoxically devoted to Scripture reading and to constant practice with firearms, had no previous history as a mental case, but specialists indicated tonight that there is no doubt that he is a psychiatric case and that he secretly nursed a persecution complex for two years or more.

The veteran was shot in the left buttock by a tavernkeeper, but he kept that fact secret, too, while policemen and Mitchell Cohen, Camden County prosecutor, questioned him at Police Headquarters for more than 2 hours immediately after tear-gas bombs had forced him out of his bedroom to surrender.

Stain Betrays Wound.

The 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 20 minutes that he was shooting men, women, and children. Only occasionally excessive brightness of his dark eyes indicated he was anything other than normal.

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

Maurice 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 ever had trouble with Unruh.

Gave Up Pharmacy Course.

Unruh, a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School here, had started a G.I. 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.

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 Unruh, 25, her younger son, is married and lives in Haddon Heights, N.J. He works for the Curtis Publishing Company.

Last night Howard Unruh left the house alone. He spent the night at the Family Theater in Philadelphia, sitting through several showings of a double-feature: "I Cheated the Law," and "The Lady Gambles." It was past 3 o'clock this morning when he got home.

Prosecutor Cohen said Unruh told him 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.

Takes Last Look at Room.

His mother, leaving her ironing when he got up, prepared his breakfast in their drab three-room apartment in the shabby, gray, two-story stucco house. After breakfast he loaded one clip of bullets into his Luger, slipped another clip into his pocket, and carried 16 loose cartridges. He carried also a tear-gas pen with six shells, and a sharp 6-inch knife.

He took one last look around his bedroom before he left the house. On the peeling walls hung crossed pistols, crossed German bayonets, pictures or armored artillery in action. Scattered about the chamber were machetes, ash trays made of German shells, clips of rifle cartridges, and a host of other war souvenirs.

Mrs. Unruh had left the house some minutes before, to call on Mrs. Caroline Pinner, a friend in the next block. Mrs. Unruh had sensed, apparently, that her son's smoldering resentment was coming to a head. She had pleaded with Elias Pinner, her friend's husband, to cut a little gate in the Unruh's back yard so that Howard would not have to use the Cohens' gate again. Pinner finished the gate Monday evening after Howard had gone to Philadelphia.

Mother Worried.

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. Unruh was on the rampage. His mother, who had left the Pinners' little white house only a few seconds before, turned back. She panted 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.

While his mother lay on the sofa in her housedress and a worn old sweater, coming back to consciousness, Unruh was walking from shop to shop in the 3200 block with deadly calm, spurting Luger in hand. Children screamed as they tumbled over one another to get out of his way. Men and women ducked into open shops, the women shrill with panic, men hoarse with fear. No one could quite understand for a time what had been loosed in the block.

Goes to Shoe Shop.

Unruh first walked into John Pilarchik's shoe-repair shop near the north end of his own side of the street. The cobbler, a 27-year-old man, looked up, open-mouthed, as Unruh went to within a yard of him. The cobbler started up from his bench, but went down with a bullet in his stomach. A little boy who was in the shop ran behind the counter and crouched there in terror. Unruh walked out into the sunlit street.

"I shot them in the chest first," he told the prosecutor later, in meticulous detail, "and then I aimed for the head." His aim was devastating. He had won marksmanship and sharpshooters' ratings in the service, and he practiced with his Luger all the time on a target set up in the cellar of his home.

Unruh told the prosecutor afterward that he had Cohen the druggist, the neighborhood barber, the neighborhood cobbler, and the neighborhood tailor on his mental list of persons who had "talked about me." He went methodically about wiping them out. Oddly enough, he did not start with the druggist, against whom he seemed the have the sharpest feelings, but left him almost until the last.

From the cobbler's he went into the little tailor shop at 3214 River Road. The tailor was out. Helga Zegrino, 28, the tailor's wife, a bride of a month, was there alone. She screamed when Unruh walked in with his Luger in hand. Some people across the street heard her. Then the gun blasted again and Mrs. Zegrino pitched over dead. Unruh walked into the sunlight again.

Boy On A Hobby Horse.

All this was only a matter of seconds and still only a few persons had begun to understand what was afoot. Down the street at 3210 River Road is Clark Hoover's little country barbershop. In the center is a white painted carrousel-type horse, fixed up for children customers. Orris Smith, a blond boy, 6 years old, was riding on it with a bib around his neck, getting his hair cut. His mother, Mrs. Catherine Smith, 42, sat on a chair against the wall and watched.

She looked up. Hoover turned from his work to see the 6-footer, gaunt and tense, but silent, standing in the doorway with the Luger. Unruh's brown tropical-worsted suit was barred with morning shadow. The sun lay bright in his crew-cut brown hair. He wore no hat. Mrs. Smith could not understand what was about to happen.

Unruh walked to "Brux"—Mrs. Smith's nickname for her little boy—and put the Luger to the child's chest. The shot echoed and reverberated in the 12-by-12-foot shop. The little boy's head pitched toward the wound, and his hair, half cut, became stained with red. Unruh said never a word. He put the gun close to the shaking barber's head. Before the horrified mother, Unruh leaned over and fired a shot into Hoover.

Ignores Mother's Screams.

The veteran made no attempt to kill Mrs. Smith. He did not seem to hear her screams. He turned his back and stalked out, hurrying.

A few doors to the north, Dominick Latela, who runs a little restaurant, had gone to his shop window to find out what the shooting was about. He saw Unruh cross the street toward Frank Engel's tavern. Then he saw Mrs. Smith stagger out with her pitiful burden. Her son's head lolled over the crook of her right arm.

Mrs. Smith screamed:

"My boy is dead! I know he's dead."

She stared about her, looking in vain for aid. No one but Unruh was in sight, and he was concentrating on the tavern. Latela dashed out, but first he shouted to his wife, Dora, who was in the restaurant with their daughter, Eleanor, 6. He hollered:

"I'm going out. Lock the door behind me."

He ran for his car, and drove it toward Mrs. Smith as she stood on the pavement with her son.

Latela took the child from her arms and placed him on the car's front seat. He pushed the mother into the rear seat, slammed the door, and headed for Cooper Hospital. Unruh had not turned.

Engel, the tavernkeeper, had locked his own door. His customers, the bartender, and a porter made a rush for the rear of the saloon. The bullets tore through the tavern-door paneling. Engel ran upstairs and got out his .38 caliber pistol, then hurried to the window of his apartment.

Bullet Downs Baby.

Unruh was back in the center of the street. He fired a shot at an apartment window at 3208 River Road. Tommy Hamilton, 2, fell back with a bullet in his head. Unruh went back again to Latela's place. He fired a shot at the door, and kicked in the lower glass panel. Mrs. Latela crouched behind the counter with her daughter. She heard the bullets, but neither she nor her child was touched. Unruh walked back toward 32d Street, reloading the Luger.

Now the little street—a small block with only five buildings on one side, three one-story stores on the other—was shrill with women's and children's cries. A group of six or seven boys or girls fled past Unruh. They screamed "Crazy man" and unintelligible sentences. Unruh did not seem to hear or see them.

Alvin M. Day, Jr., 24, a television repairman, had heard the shooting, but driving into the street he was not aware of what had happened. Unruh walked up to the car as Day rolled by, and fired once through the window. The repairman fell against the steering wheel. The car wabbled. The front wheels hit the opposite curb and stalled. Day was dead.

'Excuse Me, Sir.'

Engel had thrown open his second-floor apartment window. He saw Unruh pause in a narrow alley between the cobbler's shop and a little two-story house. He aimed the .38 and fired. Unruh stopped just for a second. The bullet had hit, but he did not seem to mind. After the initial brief shock, he headed toward the corner drugstore, and Engel did not fire again.

"I wish I had," he said, later. "I could have killed him then. I could have put a half-dozen shots into him. I don't know why I didn't do it."

Cohen, the druggist, a heavy man of 40, had run into the street, shouting, "What's going on here?" At the sight of Unruh he ducked back into his shop. James J. Hutton, 45, an insurance agent, started out of the drug store to see what the shooting was about. He came face to face with Unruh.

Unruh said quietly, "Excuse me, sir," and started to push past him. Later Unruh told the police:

"That man didn't act fast enough. He didn't get out of my way."

He fired into Hutton's head and body.

The insurance man pitched onto the sidewalk, dead.

Cohen had run to his upstairs apartment and had tried to warn Minnie Cohen, 63, his mother, and Rose, his wife, 38, to hide. His son, Charles, 14, was in the apartment, too. Mrs. Cohen shoved the boy into a clothes closet, and leaped into another closet herself. She pulled the door to. The druggist, meanwhile, had leaped from the window onto a porch roof. Unruh, a gaunt figure at the window behind him, fired into the druggist's back.

The druggist, still running, bounded off the roof and lay dead in 32d Street. Unruh fired into the closet where Mrs. Cohen was hidden. She fell dead behind the closed door, and he did not bother to open it. Mrs. Minnie Cohen tried to get to the telephone in an adjoining bedroom to call the police. Unruh fired into her head and body and she sprawled dead on the bed. Unruh, not looking for the boy, walked down the stairs, his pistol reloaded, and went out into the street again.

A coupe had stopped at River Road, obeying a red light. The passengers had no idea of what was loose there and no one had a chance to tell them. Unruh walked up to the car and fired at the strangers, one by one, through the windshield. He killed the two women passengers, Mrs. Helen Matlack Wilson, 43, who was driving, and her mother, Mrs. Emma Matlack, 66. Mrs. Wilson's son, John, 12, was wounded badly. A bullet pierced his neck, just below the jawbone.

After that Unruh went to the home of Mrs. Madeline Harrie and shot the woman and her son, Armand, 16, as they were hanging out blankets to dry. Both were wounded.

Runs Out of Ammunition.

By this time, answering a flood of hysterical telephone calls, police radio cars were swarming into River Road with sirens wide open. Emergency crews carried machine guns, shotguns, and tear-gas bombs.

Unruh had fired 36 shots. He was out of ammunition. He had heard the police sirens. He had run to his own rear bedroom.

Edward Joslin, a motorcycle policeman, scrambled to the porch roof under Unruh's window. He tossed a tear-gas grenade through a pane of glass. Other policemen, hoarsely calling on Unruh to surrender, took positions with their machine guns and shotguns. They trained them on Unruh's window.

"O.K.," he shouted. "I give up. I'm coming down."

"Where's that gun?" a sergeant hollored.

"It's on my desk up here in the room," Unruh called. "I'm coming down."

Thirty guns were trained on the shabby little back door. A few seconds later the door opened and Unruh once more stepped into the sunlight—this time with his hands up.