America’s First Mass Murderer
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For the residents of the small Camden, New Jersey neighborhood of Cramer Hill, the morning of Tuesday, September 6th, 1949 was a day like any other. However, the peace and quiet was something many were still getting used to. With the Second World War having ended only three years ago, the painful memories of wartime anxiety and devastating loss remained fresh in the minds of American society.

Forgetting those four years of conflict was far easier said than done, especially for the countless veterans who had seen frontline combat. While many of those men would return without physical injury, they were nonetheless casualties of war, their minds scarred by the horrors they had witnessed and even carried out with their own hands. Things that none of their friends and family could possibly understand.

This was no less the case for one New Jersey veteran, Howard. However, while most of his fellow veterans ultimately suffered in silence, this young soldier made different choices. By all appearances an unassuming 28-year-old man with a life full of post-war opportunities ahead of him, for Howard, he had never really left the battlefield. The war was still raging inside him. He had come home a different person.

Now governed by paranoia and hatred, Howard Unruh would soon awaken the United States to an as yet unseen side effect of sending their young fragile men into combat. This is the story of an Army artilleryman who became the first mass killer in American history. I'm Luke LaManna and this is Wartime Stories.

Shall ye not do? Neither shall ye walk in their ordinances. Ye shall do my judgments, and keep my ordinances to walk therein. I am the Lord your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and judgments, which if a man do, he shall live in them. I am the Lord. None of you shall approach ten. Howie, I brought you your sandwich and some milk. Hey, Mom. Oh, what are you reading from? Hmm, um, Leviticus 18. Oh, that's, uh... Yeah.

I don't remember what that book was about. What's that book about? You know, I never understood, you know, all the wonderful things that God did in Egypt. And Moses leads them out and they start to complain. You know, there was people that even said they wanted to go back to Egypt because they had better food there. Yes, yes, yeah. People do like to complain at times.

Takes all types. Yeah. Well, speaking of food, listen, you enjoy your sandwich and your Bible, and I'll see you for dinner, sweetheart, okay? Thanks, Mom. Born in Camden, New Jersey on January 21st, 1921, to parents Samuel Unruh and Frida Vollmer, young Howard's upbringing was, on the surface, relatively normal.

In the aftermath of his parents' divorce, Howard, alongside his younger brother James, were left to be raised by their single mother,

Without a father figure in his life, Howard became very close with his mother, with whom he regularly attended church services at their local parish. The Unruh household was one of devout Christianity, with Howard in particular displaying a keen interest in the Bible's teachings. When he wasn't nose deep in scripture or various other books, Howard spent his teenage years building model trains and collecting postage stamps.

While painfully shy and soft-spoken around his peers, Howard did well to endear himself to many of his classmates, who often referred to him as "Howe." In the 1939 yearbook of Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, he was described as a boy who, regardless of his shy demeanor, had made plenty of friends in his graduating year and planned to pursue a career in government.

Despite finding acceptance among some of his fellow students, Howard was occasionally the subject of teasing and ridicule, often called a "mama's boy" on account of his plainly close-knit relationship with his mother. To the untrained eye, Howard Unruh was a normal, generally unremarkable young man, if not a bit quirky and socially awkward. However, beginning from his childhood, there were indeed indicators that Howard was not an atypical child.

In the early years of infancy, Howard was beset by significant developmental delays that kept him from walking or verbally communicating for the first 16 months of his life. As a toddler, he would also endure a lengthy period of toilet training, taking far longer to learn the task compared to most other children his age.

What was more worrisome, however, was that Howard would also experience dramatic mood swings, going from periods of neutrality and happiness to intense sadness and anger without any clear indication as to why. While these symptoms by themselves don't necessarily earmark someone as being dangerous, for Howard they began to culminate into something much darker.

As Howard grew into his teenage years, he began to experience strange desires. Urges, even he knew, weren't normal for boys his age. While his peers were going through the usual norms of puberty, developing adolescent crushes on their fellow classmates, Howard began to feel similarly intense emotions towards his own mother.

Howard wasn't ignorant of the fact that what he felt was wrong, even an evil thought. And yet, despite his best efforts to restrain his unnatural feelings, at the same time he felt a burning resentment growing towards his mother, jealous of the affection she showed towards his little brother James. As the 1930s drew to a close, the emotional turmoil brewing within Howard seemed to mirror the growing conflict in the world at large.

By the time he would graduate high school in 1939, Europe was at a boiling point, once again on the brink of war, the armies of France and Britain mobilizing to meet the encroaching threat of Nazi Germany. Only a few months later, on September 1st, the Second World War would officially begin, as German soldiers marched into Poland.

Two years later, in December 1941, the determined neutrality previously enjoyed by the United States was brought to an abrupt end when its Pacific fleet was reduced to burning ruins by a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Now thrust into the raging conflict, the American people quickly mobilized for war, Howard Unruh becoming one among millions of young men flooding recruiting offices all over the country.

With the sudden push for any and all able-bodied men to enlist in the defense of their nation, if anyone was going to recognize that Howard was unfit for service in the military, now was not the time. Enlisting in the Army in October of 1942, following his basic training, Howard Unruh found himself in the ranks of the 342nd Armored Field Artillery, a machine gunner aboard one of the unit's mobile artillery pieces.

As the unit wouldn't be sent to Europe until late 1944, once they arrived, many of the men thought they were too late to see any action. However, as Howard and the men of the 342nd quickly learned, the Nazis weren't keen to give up their collapsing Reich without a fight.

In the winter of that same year, the Germans would launch their infamous Ardennes Offensive, punching a massive hole in the Allied front as they surged towards the Belgian port of Antwerp. The 342nd was one of the many units that were rushed into the brutal struggle that would become known as the Battle of the Bulge. It was here that Howard finally experienced his first taste of combat.

While his role as an artilleryman meant that he was usually a few steps behind the frontline action, Howard was not spared the horrors of direct confrontations with the enemy.

On more than one occasion, Howard, alongside his fellow artillerymen, had to fend off German assaults on their gun emplacements with their own rifles. When the German advance in Belgium was finally pushed back, there would be little rest for the men of the 342nd, who were immediately redeployed to counter a German offensive in Alsace, France. From there, Howard would accompany the unit as the fight moved deeper into the heart of Germany.

While physically unimposing and soft-spoken, Howard proved himself to be incredibly capable on the battlefield. As a gunner, his commanders would agree that he performed with mechanical precision, following orders and procedures to the letter. He obsessed over the condition of his personal weapons, taking any opportunity to field strip and wipe clean any lingering dirt or mud.

During one of their many foot patrols and direct encounters with the enemy, Howard gained notoriety within his unit as an impeccable marksman, with every shot from his rifle rarely missing its intended target. While Howard's social awkwardness and apparent emotional detachment meant that he never really formed strong bonds of brotherhood with them, the men in his unit were willing to admit that he was a dependable soldier.

However, as the days of grueling and relentless combat wore on, they couldn't help but notice Howard was now adopting some peculiar and concerning behaviors. Two rounds for torso. Hey, Howe. Got some hot Joe going over here. You want some? Four inches. Brain leakage. I guess not. Say, what's with you, Howie? You're always nose deep in that journal. What you got in there? Letters to your girl?

No. Maybe he's writing a book about us, and he doesn't want us reading what he's saying. Come on, Hal. Don't be such a drip about it. What, you don't want to see any of you telling your girl about giving her the old Howie Howitzer? Now, let me just see this. Hey, give that back. All right, what do we got in here? I said give it back. Hold on, hold on, Hal. I just want to see what's going on in that head of yours. What the...

Howard, what the hell is this? It wasn't at all unusual that Howard kept a personal journal, rarely going a day without cracking it open and scribbling down a few notes. But being the notoriously reclusive soldier that he was, Howard's fellow artillerymen often prodded him for details about what he was writing about or who he was writing to. And one day, after finally getting a glimpse at Howard's closely guarded writings, even the battle-hardened men were taken aback by what they read.

The men of the 342nd Field Artillery were by no means strangers to death and violence, they were surrounded by it on a daily basis. Over the course of the war, however, they now realized that Howard had maintained a catalogue of every single man he had personally killed, and with alarming detail.

Under each listing, he marked the method, time, date, and location of the kill before going on to describe in visceral, gory detail the mangled condition of the corpses. For most soldiers, killing the enemy was simply a part of their job, a necessary evil they needed to emotionally harden themselves against if they were to survive.

In stark contrast, Howard seemed to be relishing the war's unrestrained slaughter, developing an intimate fascination with the act of killing. As this darker aspect of his personality became more and more pronounced, so too did the growing sense of unease against the unit's men who had to sleep next to him. Everyone was hoping for the war to end soon, but no one was quite sure if Howard felt the same.

With the Nazi surrender on May 9th, 1945, much to the approval of both the surviving men and their families back home, the war in Europe finally ended. In July of that year, having now spent three years in the army and less than a year fighting in Europe, Howard's short but eventful military career likewise came to an abrupt halt.

Wasting no time in returning the men to their loved ones, he and his estranged wartime companions all received orders to board an ocean liner bound for home. Receiving an honorable discharge, Howard's military service was something he felt he could look on with pride. He had performed his duties well and was awarded a good conduct medal for his troubles. But now, arriving back home in Camden, Howard found himself aimlessly adrift in a world he no longer felt a part of.

The transition back to peacetime living was indeed difficult for millions of returning servicemen. With the rigid military system no longer in place and the best friends they had ever known and bled with now spread all over the country, many veterans struggled to find purpose in a nation that was now trying to move on from the war.

Howard, who had come to seemingly enjoy the chaos and bloodshed of the battlefield, began to spiral particularly hard while trying to integrate back into his old routines. In the years following the war, he found work at a number of blue-collar jobs, but without much of a personal drive to succeed, none of these jobs lasted very long. The same could be said for his attempts at pursuing education.

While he managed to enroll in Temple University's pharmacy school, he barely managed a semester before dropping out. Now 28 years old, Howard was unemployed and living in his mother's apartment, a modest dwelling she maintained with her income working at a soap factory. In his post-war stupor, Howard never attempted to help his mother with the finances, instead spending his days wandering about town and attending church services, something he did more often than once a day.

He also found time to convert the apartment's basement cellar into a makeshift shooting range, where he continued to maintain his marksmanship skills. In the conduct of his usual routine, Howard was also beginning to develop an ever-growing hatred for a number of members of the Kramer Hill neighborhood.

This resentment was part of a developing persecution complex. Howard was now much more short-tempered and a bit of an abrasive character. As with his peers in the military, he was not exactly well liked by everyone in his hometown community. But in Howard's mind, it was more than that.

Perhaps onset by the wartime environment and the many deadly encounters with enemy soldiers, Howard had started to convince himself that even minor disagreements and run-ins he had with community members were akin to personal attacks against him. And few neighbors provoked Howard to anger, quite like the Coens. Maurice and Rose Cohen, a middle-aged couple, owned and lived above the neighborhood pharmacy. They were also the landlords who rented the second upstairs apartment to Howard's mother.

It didn't take long for Howard and the couple to start butting heads, Howard for one becoming annoyed by the Coens' many requests to turn down his loud music. The Coens also weren't fond of Howard's frequent use of their side gate, which offered easier access to the street. In order to reach the gate, Howard would often trample through their private backyard space, what they considered an unwanted trespass onto their property. Each time they addressed the matter with him, seemingly just a small annoyance to the Coens,

it made Howard begin to hate them. The festering hatred went hand in hand with overwhelming paranoia, telling Howard that people were saying things behind his back in order to tarnish his character. Of course, the reality was that people didn't really think much about Howard. He was just another unremarkable war veteran seen wandering about town.

Despite this, similar to his wartime habits, Howard began to create a list, detailing the names and perceived offenses of all those who had wronged him. Of all the names and petty grievances cited, there were a select few that stood out, marked by Howard for retaliation. There was the shoemaker who buried trash too close to Howard's property,

the barber who supposedly put dirt in a vacant yard, clogging pipes and causing Howard's shooting range to flood. Some unknown boy who had stolen Howard's electricity in order to light Christmas trees he sold on the street corner. Of all the names recorded, however, Maurice and Rose Cohen were the most hated of all.

It certainly didn't help matters that Howard supposedly overheard Maurice, in a hushed conversation with a customer, calling Howard a homophobic slur. The spreading of such rumors only worsened Howard's paranoia, who was also convinced that the nearby tailor and his son were spreading similar stories about him. The spiteful words hurt Howard, not only because they could damage his public reputation, but because they were true.

Howard Unruh was indeed a gay man. To live as such in the 1940s was to keep half of one's life in the shadows. America at the time was a society that not only shunned homosexuality, but considered it illegal. And being a devout follower of the Christian faith, on top of all the psychological fallout of being a combat veteran, Howard's mind was further torn between the divided nature of his flesh and his spirit.

Following his usual service attendance on Sunday, the following day, September 5th, 1949, Howard spent several hours installing a new gate for his apartment's backyard entrance. Once finished, he then took a drive over into neighboring Philadelphia. He was going to see a man with whom he had been having a weeks-long affair, the two deciding to next meet in secret at the 24-hour family theater to watch an evening film together.

However, traffic delays set Howard back, causing him to arrive at the theater long after the time they'd agreed to. Unable to contact him, Howard decided to wait, sitting in the auditorium long into the night, hoping that his date would eventually show up. He never did. You've fallen for somebody new. It isn't too easy believing.

Oh, Howard. Oh, you scared me. Do you enjoy your breakfast, sweetheart? Howard? Howard? Howard? Sweetheart, what are you doing? Howard? Howard? Howard? You're scaring me. Please put down the wrench. Howard? Howard? Howard?

Feeling dejected, Howard returned home in the early hours of September 6th. To make matters worse, he then discovered that the gate he had painstakingly installed earlier had been taken down. The gate, what he viewed as a definitive barrier between his own safe space and the outside world that he knew hated him, had been ripped away. On seeing this, something in Howard's mind snapped.

He saw the faces of everyone who had wronged him, especially Rose and Maurice Cohen. Surely, they were to blame for this. Howard seethed. The war, the adjustment to life afterwards, losing jobs, the rumors, the altercations, the paranoia, the rejection, it was all just too much. A long-suppressed rage had now become thoroughly unhinged, and his mother would be the first to find out.

Around 8:00 AM on September 6th, Howard's mother, Freda, was in the kitchen, cleaning up the dirty dishes left by her son after finishing breakfast. Sensing a presence looming behind her, she turned to find Howard, staring at her intensely, his eyes cold and transfixed. Clenched in his white-knuckled fist was a wrench. Howard approached his mother. He looked possessed.

She was terrified, frozen in place, watching as her own child raised the weapon high above his head. But the blow never came. Now pleading with her son, Frida could see the conflict in Howard's eyes. He couldn't bring himself to do it. Seeing her moment to escape, convinced that her son had finally reached a breaking point, Frida ran from the kitchen, taking refuge with a nearby neighbor, leaving Howard alone in the apartment.

As she began frantically explaining to the neighbor about what had just happened, they suddenly heard a series of gunshots. Knowing what was happening outside, Frieda Unruh fainted. Arming himself with a semi-automatic Luger pistol, extra ammo, and a tear gas pen, Howard proceeded to continue fighting a war he had never really left. In his deranged mind, his unarmed neighbors were nothing less than enemy soldiers.

After missing his first series of shots taken at a nearby bread delivery man, Howard marched into the shoe repair shop where he confronted the 27-year-old cobbler, John Polarczyk. Without a word, Howard shot John in the chest, the man collapsing as a young boy ducked for cover behind the shop's counter. Standing over Polarczyk, Howard fired one more into the man's head, killing him instantly.

From there, Howard left the shop, his next unfortunate targets located only one door over. Stepping into the barbershop of 33-year-old Clark Hoover, Howard found the man trimming the hair of 6-year-old Orris Smith. The boy's mother sat watching on a nearby bench. As Howard raised his pistol, Clark instinctively moved to protect the young child, placing his body in the path of the bullet soon to come.

His heroics, however, would be in vain. Howard's first shot struck the boy in the head, the following shots hitting Clark, the two of them tumbling to the ground. Howard then lowered his weapon, paying little attention to the screams of Mrs. Smith as he made his way back out onto the street, the neighborhood now becoming aware of the unfolding massacre.

As he calmly walked to his next target, Howard fired at whatever movement he saw, including behind windows. He fired several rounds into the glass of an upper apartment and the front facade of a tavern. He reloaded his weapon, his cold eyes now staring at the front door of Rose and Maurice Cohen's pharmacy.

Before he could make entry, 45-year-old insurance man James Hutton exited the pharmacy, freezing in the doorway as he was confronted by the appearance of a disheveled-looking Howard holding a gun. Howard politely asked if Hutton could step aside, however, the stunned man seemed too frightened to move.

Howard, with total indifference, raised his Luger and shot the man, then stepping over Hutton's lifeless body and into the pharmacy, where he laid eyes on his primary targets. Rushing up the stairs, he saw Maurice and Rose Cohen sprinting towards their upstairs apartment. Grabbing their 12-year-old son Charles, Rose pushed him into a closet, then attempting to hide herself in another closet across the room.

Three gunshots suddenly rang through the apartment, slamming into the thin wooden closet door. Young Charles watched through a crack in his closet door as Howard walked into the room, opening the other closet to now find the limp body of Rose, who he then shot once more at point-blank range. From there, Howard stalked through the rest of the apartment, gunning down both Maurice and Charles' grandma, Minnie, who was on the phone attempting to call the police.

The young boy, quietly sobbing in the closet, was the only Cohen to survive. Once again stepping out onto the streets, Howard ignored the incoming sounds of distant police sirens. His eyes landing on a pair of cars stopped at a red light.

In a series of well-aimed shots, four more people were then murdered: 24-year-old war veteran Alvin Day, 37-year-old Helen Wilson, her 68-year-old mother Emma Matlack, and Helen's 9-year-old son John. Leaving the intersection, Howard made his way to the tailor shop, intending to kill Tom Zagrino. Instead, he found Tom's wife, 28-year-old Helga, who then begged on her knees for Howard to spare her life.

He did not. On exiting the tailor shop, movement in an upstairs window again prompted Howard to shoot, the one bullet he fired killing a toddler, two-year-old Thomas Hamilton. After one final stop on his walk of death, wounding another mother and her son, Howard, now low on ammunition, retreated back to his apartment, an army of police officers now closing in.

Over the course of his 20-minute rampage, Howard had murdered 13 people and severely wounded three others. Come on, come on, pick up, pick up. Uh, is this Howard? Yes, what is the last name of the party you want? Uh, Unruh. What is the last name of the party you want? Uh, Unruh.

I'm a friend. I want to know what they're doing to you. They're not doing a damn thing to me, but I'm doing plenty to them. How many have you killed, Howard? I don't know yet, because I haven't counted them, but it looks like a pretty good score. Why are you killing people?

At this time in American history, protocols for active shooters and mass killers had yet to be established by law enforcement.

Such senseless violence like this had never been seen before. With no set strategy to follow, a chaotic gunfight erupted in Kramer Hill, 50 police officers now trading fire with the killer who was barricaded in his apartment. The gunfire drew the attention of people all over town, who soon descended on the scene to watch the unfolding standoff, with little to no crowd control.

In the midst of all of this, enterprising journalists, eager to get the scoop, set about gathering details of the day's bloody events, and about the man responsible for all this chaos. Across town, the offices of the Camden Evening Courier were buzzing with activity, its journalists clambering to find leads who could provide information about the massacre.

The paper's assistant editor, Philip W. Buxton, went so far as to track down Howard's name in the phone book, leading to a phone call to his apartment during the shootout with police. What resulted was a morbid and eerie discussion with the killer. During the brief conversation, often interrupted by gunfire, Howard told Buxton that he didn't know why he was killing people, though he had amassed a good score by the looks of it.

After another burst of gunfire in or near Unruh's apartment, the conversation ended, Howard telling Buxton that "some friends" were coming to get him before hanging up. It was around this time that law enforcement devised a plan to finally put an end to the standoff. Climbing onto the low roof at the rear of the building, policemen lobbed tear gas grenades into Howard's apartment.

His eyes and lungs now burning, Howard Unruh finally surrendered, emerging from the looming smoke to be greeted by armed officers and a furious crowd of citizens calling for his execution. As an officer slapped a pair of handcuffs on the stoic killer, he asked Unruh, "What was wrong with him? What was he? Some kind of psychopath?" With eerie calmness, Howard replied, "I am no psycho. I have a good mind."

Despite Howard confessing his guilt to authorities, he would never see the inside of a courtroom. In the eyes of the law, Howard was little more than a paranoid schizophrenic, his lofty mental state thus making him unfit to stand trial. And so, not able to condemn Howard to the electric chair, the state sentenced him indefinitely to the maximum security ward of the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital.

In the years that followed, the decision would become controversial, as Howard displayed none of the telltale signs of schizophrenia, such as auditory and visual illusions. While many have attempted to diagnose Howard, few have come up with a solid answer, often concluding that he had a severe personality disorder.

Regardless, Howard would live out the rest of his days inside the hospital's walls, never once expressing remorse for the lives he so senselessly destroyed on that fateful September day. Interestingly, while it of course bears no real weight on his personality, the name Unruh is a Germanic name derived from the Middle High German word Unruh, meaning restless or troubled.

Although it eventually became a surname, it is believed to have originated as a nickname given to someone who was restless or had a turbulent nature, something that fits Howard to a T. At the age of 88, before his passing in 2009, Howard, in the company of a journalist, reflected on his crimes and legacy as America's first mass murderer.

He was undeniably the first in a long line of killers that have plagued America to this very day. On this note, he offered one final, chilling remark: "I'd have killed a thousand if I'd had enough bullets."

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke LaManna. Executive produced by Mr. Ballin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt. Written by Jake Howard and myself. Audio editing and sound design by me, Cole Lacascio, and Wit Lacascio. Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham. Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan. Mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone. Production coordination by Avery Siegel. Additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden. Artwork by Jessica Clarkson-Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picotta. If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com. Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.