On Howard Unruh

So Howard Unruh is finally dead. I think I've been waiting for the news all year, ever since his longtime lawyer, James Klein, informed me some time ago that Unruh's health was in very bad shape - evidently to the point of no longer being lucid. He'd spent the last 60 years of his life in various mental institutions, most recently the Trenton State Hospital. And at 88 years old, Unruh was 16 years older than Charles Cohen, who had spent those same 60 years hoping and wishing for Unruh - the man responsible for the deaths of his parents and grandmother as the then-12-year-old hid in a closet - to die. That wish came 6 weeks too late for Cohen, who himself died of cancer on September 4 - and was buried on September 6th, the six-decade anniversary of Unruh's crimes, which became the template for modern mass murder as we know it.

The NYT obit I linked to above is very good - especially for including Meyer Berger's Pulitzer Prize-winning "you are there" account of Unruh's spree, which left 13 people dead in Camden, N.J. - but the Philadephia Inquirer's obit is more immediate, more personal, in large part because it reaches out to Unruh's living victims, like Charles Cohen's wife:

"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...."

....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?"

For some, a bogeyman of sorts will be put to rest, as Unruh is no longer a living symbol of mass horror in a recognizable place. He's no longer the representative of post-war attitudes on justice and mental health, which ruled he was incompetent - a far cry, I suspect, from how his case would have been handled had it happened in the present day. But for me, it's a bit more complicated, as I wrote in a post this past January, the day after his 88th and final birthday:

There are a number of reasons why Unruh's crimes fascinate me. He lives on, sequestered away from the world and likely in severe decline. Before him there were serial murders and mass murders but Unruh essentially created the template for lone gunmen "going postal" or shooting up a school, and for carrying out a grudge with epic, bloody, senseless gunfire. Most of his descendants in mass killings turned the gun on themselves, were shot dead by police, or were sentenced to die in prison - or by the government's hand. And the biggest reasons are that he's never talked publicly since that September 6 morning, and we have no real sense beyond stray appearances at annual reviews as to his current state.

There is no getting around what Unruh did. He ruined the lives of an entire town and ripped families apart with the bullets from his Luger. HIs last reported public words, per the Berger article, were "I'm no psycho. I have a good mind. I'd have killed a thousand if I had bullets enough." But six decades later, I wonder why he's outlived so many - and whether there's anything to glean from it other than the cruel randomness that is this universe, and that it truly is the quiet ones to watch out for.

Now that Unruh has passed, we're left with that very randomness. And it will probably take sifting through what must be a voluminous collection of documents housed at (or at least the property of) Trenton State Hospital to understand, even a little, how and why Unruh was what he was, and why his pathology resulted in crime once terrible and unthinkable, but now, sadly, much less so.

Comments

[Z. Brockway]

So, I'm not the only one who was sitting at the Unruh death watch table. Several years ago I set up a Google news alert to let me know of any news of Unruh. Although I knew nothing of his current physical condition over those last few years, I always had a sense his death was imminent. Why I was fascinated by this story I don't know.

Part of my childhood upbringing was only blocks away from the crime scene, although I don't think I ever heard the story until sometime in the seventies or eighties. I read everything I could find about it, and became a sort of lay expert on the event. I sometimes chastised reporters for getting facts wrong in the occasional history pieces that were written. I caught one south Jersey columnist plagiarizing whole sections from the Wikipedia Web sit entry. And Unruh's being alive and so mute was mystifying.

There seemed something maddening almost about Unruh's silence. In our Oprah world I guess we expect to hear all about it, even hear all about it ad nauseum. But Unruh never uttered a public word, or was never permitted to. You mention the seeming randomness of the whole thing, and that piques more curiosity than normal.

Was Unruh just a random human with a production error -- a screw left loose on the assembly line? Did something in the war experience knock the screw loose? Could one of my screws get loose and lead me to do such a thing? What keeps that from happening from one day to the next with me or people I know? Even if I'm reliably sane, a madman could walk into a barber shop where I'm having my hair cut and shoot me in the head. Or worse, he could shoot my child. If this can happen with such total randomness, how can I feel safe in the world? The Unruh silence seemed to amplify all those questions.

Hitler evokes a similar need to know. You want to grab him by the throat, and yell "Why did you do those thing?" Yet he overruled us by killing himself or having someone kill him, however it actually happened. So even Hitler is not this frightening enigma that Unruh had become.

You alluded to the differences between how the criminal justice system handled the case in 1949 and how it would be handled today. I wrote about that last month suggesting we seemed to understand inherently back then that Unruh was sick.

http://prisonersall.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/not-growing-up-in-america/

Today we scream for retribution and will have none of that mental defect stuff!

I am strangely relieved that Unruh is dead. My news alert let me know within a couple of hours. The Philadelphia Inquirer published it first. I immediately called my mother, still living in south Jersey; she had heard nothing. She too was relieved.

Eventually, I'm sure we will hear all sorts of things supposedly derived from that "voluminous collection of documents" at Trenton State Hospital. But I don't expect any real answers. At least at this point, the worm is off the hook, and we know exactly what we're looking at. The temptation to bite has passed.

[R. Bennett]

I am amazed by comments like ..."a screw left loose on the assembly line? Did something in the war experience knock the screw loose?....Here's a clue: When you hand someone a gun and ask them to shoot at anything that moves, what do you think will happen? War is heinous, Unruh's mass murder, despicable and vile, and a national legacy to train young men to shoot other young men deserves credit as well. Most veterans did not do this when they came back, you say? Witnessing a death is a traumatic, indeed. Participating in mass murder in a wartime situation is hard for anyone to forget but we ask young people just out of high school to kill, and then go home and become a productive citizen. This is hypocrisy of the highest order. This in no way excuses Unruh's actions. He was a vile coward. At the same time, we tolerate the government trumping up charges to start wars and sending young people into harms way to create more people like Unruh who may not be the most stable individual (How many are at 19 years old?)and have nothing to say except "Support The Troops". Let's not be surprised when our veterans come back with a "screw loose"

[carl brookins]

Irony is abroad in the land

[Jean Cole]

Very interesting story. I had never heard of Unruh. Seems to me his paranoid schizophrenia, rather than war, led to the shooting rampage. It explains why he kept a diary of what neighbors were allegedly saying about him and why he killed indiscriminantly after someone stole his gate. The saddest fact was the 12-year-old boy who hid in the closet while Unruh fatally shot his parents and grandmother. All of these years, he wanted Unruh to die so he could put the matter, and the memorabilia he had collected, to rest. But he died a month ago – before Unruh. His entire life was spent waiting to let go. Very sad. Unruh was alive all of these years but it couldn't have been much of a life.
Anyway, thank you for writing about Unruh and his victims.

[Edward C. Stengel]

I, like Jean Cole, had not heard of Howard Unruh for most of my life, and I'm now 64 years old. I only heard of him when I was 63,
doing a search one day of mass murderers. I must say that Howard
was the first, and to me the most amazing, which sometimes happens
when you're the first. He was America's best kept secret. We all
heard about Charles Starkweather,Richard Speck, Dick Hickock and
Perry Smith ("In Cold Blood", Charles Whitmore (the Texas tower
sniper), the Columbine boys (Clebold and Harris), the work-place
shooters and family murderers, and of course the Virginia Tech shooter who set the record of 62 victims, 33 of whom died. But Howard was unique. He outlived them all, was incarcerated before
the age of television, and spent 6 decades sitting in a cell in a
psychiatric hospital. I tried to find out what he did all those
years, and about all I found out was he read, watched TV, listened
to music, played cards, and slept. I never heard a word about any
friendships or close associations of his, except one veteran who
visited him for 16 years said he remembered the anniversary of the
shooting - Sep. 6, 1949 - every year and he said he was sorry he
did it. I'm sorry for all concerned, but I can't help but admit I'm
going to miss old Howie. He was one of a kind.
was a veteran who vis

[KFS]

Can I be the only one who would rather hear more about the VICTIMS than the perpetrator?

It may be, as noted above, a product of our Oprah world but I would like to know how the mother who watched her six year old shot in front of her in a barber's chair fared?

Somehow the most chilling to me was the two-year old baby shot through a window? How chilling that your child wouldn't be safe in your own living room. It also points out how we often think our walls (figuratively and literally) can protect us even when the truth shows they won't.

There is precious little to report on how the survivors moved on. Apparently through the 50's, 60's and 70's no one bothered to go back and interview those people?

"Look at me!" the perpetrator says and, sadly, we all do. They overshadow the victims and become "famous" for their crimes.

[russ Harrington]

Russ Harrington I read it in 1949, I was 19 & it was the first item I ever read like this,the item said the local kids called Unruh a pet name"old sophisticated" In the item I read one naborhood teen said "old sophisticated is shooting people", I remember it clearly 65 yr. later & the name "Unruh" in nat. news lately, caused me to look up this name. Thank you for the well done Item, Russ.

[Allison]

I would like to correct one error in your story. Charles Cohen (my grandfather) did not die of cancer, but of a severe stroke that left him in a coma for several days before he passed 9/4/09. today is the first anniversary of his death. My Pop-Pop was an amazing man and he lived a very full life. He loved his children and grandchildren and I miss him every day.