Murder in the Neighborhood /// Part 2 /// 589 | Forensic Files

[Music] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who is still very proud of his Summer Stock here is the
captain well thank you both it's good to be seen and good to see you thanks for listening thanks for telling a friend
[Music] we are still sipping on some heavy boots of lead from the single cut beersmiths
this is one of if not the biggest most complex beers from the good folks over at single cut this Imperial Stout is
Rich with mega chocolate vanilla and coffee in an astonishingly smooth monster of a brew four out of five
bottle caps and let's give some praise and thank you to our friends that helped us out with this week's beer fun filling
up the old garage fridge first up a cheers to Jennifer and Fort Worth Texas a big we like to dip to Taylor in High
Rolls New Mexico next Captain we have a shout out to Jill in Shepherd Montana and a big shout out to Alyssa in
Harrisonville Missouri next we have Jennifer Vaughn in Parts Unknown and we also have Brina sieber and Parts Unknown
everybody we mentioned they went to our website truecrimegarage.com helped us out with this week's beer fun and for
that well we thank you yeah b w r u n beer run if you need more True Crime garage for your earballs go to True
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dollars a month so check that out and Colonel that's enough of the business all right thank you Captain everybody
gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] powered unrew is often referred to by
many authors and reporters as America's first mass murderer he gunned down 13 individuals killing 13 people September
6 1949 in the buildings and businesses that surrounded his home that he shared with his mother during the months
leading up to his murder spree Howard spent less and less time outside the house and became more and more
suspicious of his neighbors who thought he was strange and made fun of him and called him a mama's boy he wrote about
them in what he thought they said about him in his diary marking some names with
with the word retail r-e-t-a-l short for retaliation Howard seemed to be in the mental state that everybody is
out against him and how everybody is wronging him and he didn't necessarily have a hit list but in his diary he kind
of had a Hit List yeah he's like making mental note as well as notes in his diary about all these individuals that
either wronged him in some way and keep in mind some of these grievances are so minute that it's almost like I don't
know that the person would know that they did something to offend him or upset him
and so he he's keeping tally if you will of all these individuals that live near
he and his mother if they wronged him in any way then he's writing retal as in retaliate you know I'm going to
retaliate against this person this in a weird way is just a continual Behavior of what he was doing when he was in the
Army and off it World War II you know he was documenting a lot of things in his diary during that time as well
and it didn't just have to do with his kills or what his wartime victim looked like as when he went up to look at the
face of the man that he had just killed or take something from the soldier's uniform this included things like what
he was eating where they were you know it wasn't uncommon for individuals to keep a diary or a journal of their time
at War too bad Howard didn't have Instagram and write letters back to their loved ones but what was odd was
this behavior of writing about his kills and and the the people that he killed during his time in war when he returns
from war he's maintaining these Diaries but he's not killing anybody at this time it almost looks like he's thinking
about killing some of these people and writing it in his journal and keeping track of these individuals that he
believes have wronged him in some form or fashion well we all know somebody that doesn't think life worked out the
way they wanted to but instead of it being and there their hands that it's the world is out to get them and those
people you could say something as a joke or ingest and they months later bring up
how mad at you they are and you're like I didn't mean it that way I was just joking well this is a
personality trait a character flaw if you will that we have seen in other types of killers that we've profiled on
this show Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber it was said by everybody that examined him
and reviewed all of his Manifesto and his activities and his life after he was apprehended and they all
said the same thing this is a guy that couldn't let things go he would hold grudges this is a guy that if you
wronged him or you did something that he deemed to be wrong he would hold it against you for years decades if not the
rest of both of your lives and it seems like Howard Unruh shared this character flaw with somebody like that of Ted
Kaczynski now Captain often times when we review these stories there are weird situations that you just cannot make up
you can't you don't even often know what to do with them at times but they're so
unique that you have to include them in your telling of the True Crime Story and
this is a bit of a bizarre situation that took place shortly after Howard unrew guns down 13
people and then flees back to his apartment remember we left off yesterday talking about the standoff
between he and the police that surrounded his home now during the course of that standoff we had this
brilliant little news reporter that gets this great idea he had figured out that
it was Howard Unruh or believed that it was Howard Unruh who had gone through the streets and into these businesses
shooting and killing people and I'm guessing that he got this from information off of the people on the
streets these eyewitnesses that we talked about so he has This brilliant idea of you
know what I'm gonna get the scoop the inside scoop I'm going to get my name in the paper and I have a story to tell and
I'm going to call the Unruh household and see if I can get Howard on the phone this is the middle of the police
shootout so the reporter was a one Philip Buxton and he was successful and I will read
portions of his article not the entire article but it says Howard Unruh wholesale killer was not too busy to
answer the telephone today while he was still shooting it out with police at his
home on River Avenue now keep in mind back in the 40s back in 1949 the news was everything and there were often
papers that were released during the morning and then papers that were released in the afternoon or evening and
a lot of times people would have subscriptions or purchase both the morning and the evening news and so this
is coming from the evening Courier which was the evening newspaper so because Howard Unruh went about his Killing
Spree at the nine o'clock hour that morning it was able to make it into the evening news and that's why our reporter
is saying he was not too busy to answer the telephone today while he was still shooting it out with police Buxton goes
on to say I was about to hang up so he found Howard unruh's phone number in the phone book called The home he's dialing
it's ringing it's ringing and he's waiting for Howard to pick up and he says I was about to hang up thinking my
hunch had been a dud when I heard the receiver go up and the other end of the line hello said a strong clear voice is
this Howard I asked yes said the voice this is Howard what's the last name of the party you
want breathless I strained my ears to catch the sound of shooting but there was only silence it seemed as though the
man at the other end of the line had clapped his hand over the receiver to shut out the sound
then the voice as if stalling for time repeated what's the last name of the man you want
unrue I said who are you and what do you want I'm a friend and I want to know what they're doing to you well they
haven't done anything to me yet but I'm doing plenty to them responded Howard how many have you killed I asked I don't
know yet I haven't counted them but it looks like a pretty good score why are you killing people I asked
Howard responds I don't know I can't answer that yet I'm too busy I'll have to talk to you later a couple of friends
are coming to get me and with that last statement Howard hung up the phone during the middle of the police shootout
he has a conversation with the reporter in which asked why he's killing people he says I don't know yet basically I'm
too busy to have figured that out at this point got my hands full and just as you would expect from Howard Unruh when
the reporter says I'm just wanting to know what they're doing to you meaning the police with the shootout and
everything that's going on Howard's response is that of somebody that's in some kind of unknown competition to
everybody else where he says they haven't done much to me yet but it looks like I'm doing plenty to them so Howard
believes he's winning at this point in this bizarre competition that he's having after Howard is apprehended of
course he's going to be interviewed by police and by detectives and they all kind of say the same thing here captain
that he appeared to be and this is based off of his appearance and his words and
his statements to police that he appeared to be calm and sober and that was bizarre to everybody that
had witnessed the situation he had killed so many people it was very difficult to believe that he would be
calm and sober and we already said yesterday when we talked about some of the statements that Howard Unruh
provided to police shortly after his arrest and in these interviews one of them was his statement of when I came
home last night and found my gate had been taken I decided to shoot all of them so I would get the right one it
seems to me like he had believed that possibly the coins or one of the cohens had taken his gate to get back at him
for any number of these disputes that they have already had but obviously by this statement what we
learn is that he might have been pretty certain that it was one of the cohens that stole his gate but he didn't know
for sure and so he was just going to shoot everybody so he would get the right one the one that had wronged him
the person that had in fact stolen his gate to me it feels like Howard snapped and once it was all over
he was questioning what it was all for and he just seemed to me almost deflated I don't think he was necessarily
maybe in the moment he seemed a little cocky about everything but it seemed like afterwards he's like I know I did
something horrible and I'm gonna now suffer the consequences by spending the rest of my life in jail well he would
ultimately apologize for killing the children that morning but of the adults he said that they deserved it and that
was his statement that he kind of stuck with now speaking of interviews we've talked about the reporter who had the
bright idea of calling Howard Unruh while he's shooting it out with police we had the opportunity earlier to speak
with Ellen Greene who is the author of a Murder in the neighborhood which is a book about this massacre and as you will
hear it was really this interview along with her book that was the inspiration for us covering this case as we simply
didn't know very much about this case at the time of the interview [Music] hello Ellen and thank you for joining us
here on the show could you introduce yourself to the audience yes my name is Ellen J
green I am the author of a book that just came out on April 28th titled murder in the neighborhood it is a
non-fiction piece about the first mass shooting in the United States what they call the first mass shooting in the
United States that happened on September 6 1949. uh Howard Barton Unruh was a 28
year old World War II veteran that woke up one morning and he was quite angry at
his neighbors and proceeded to walk down the block and shot 13 people in 12 minutes but this story is rather
complicated because I'm looking at this Howard unreal person and so he it seems like he snapped and then decided that uh
he was going to go in to take no prisoners mode and gunning people down but we say neighbors but Howard was
living on the second floor above or connected to a drugstore or Pharmacy could could you kind of describe that a little
bit because it sounds like a unique uh living situation yeah it was a twin building that was on the corner of 32nd
and River Road and there was store fronts facing third facing River Road um one was a pharmacy the other was
empty there had been a number of businesses in there but at this time it was empty and above those stores were
families and one family was the Cohen family the mother father uh 12 year old boy and the grandmother and on the other
side um with a common wall was Howard Unruh and his mother there was a lot of conflicts between the unroos and the
cohens um and it had you there's a map in the book that kind of shows the layout of
the neighborhood and what the Crux of the problem had to do with the access to the backyard the cohens had prohibited
Howard and his mother from using the gate to get the 32nd Street um and so they had to cross this lot and
it created a lot of conflict between them what do you know about Howard's days spent serving this great country in
World War II so I did a lot of research and it was hard because a lot of those war records are gone but I did come upon
a memoir by somebody that was in his unit um he served in the Battle of the Bulge
you know he described in his hospital records of having to shoot prisoners of War of having seen uh these these people
that were really children at the time German soldiers that were being killed it affected him greatly and he talked a
lot about that later there is a thought that when he started the rampage that morning he had a kill
list of people that had been bothering him and he started out with the intent of just finding those people and killing
them but at some point as very clear in the whole episode when he started to spiral that he just went into war mode
and he said he felt he was back in the military and he just started shooting random people
including three children yeah I saw that we have victims as young as six and two
years old is that correct yes he was walking down the street and he there was an apartment building with a big window
facing 32nd Street and he saw movement in the window and was really agitated at that point
and just shot through the window and hit the two-year-old in the head yeah he shot what a 16-17 people killing
12 of them yes there were three that were wounded 13 killed and he's 27 years old at this time
yeah 28 28 and uh he's living with his mother I found a newspaper article that described him as a and maybe I'm
confusing him with one of the victims there was a pharmaceutical student involved in this it looks like the
cohens were were druggist that they owned the River Road Pharmacy could you tell us a little bit more
about the the people the casualties yes so uh the pharmacist was Maurice Cohen that owned and operated the
pharmacy and lived upstairs and his wife Rose Cohen the grandmother Minnie Cohen
and then they had a 12 year old son Charles Cohen Howard Unruh was at one time a pharmacy student at Temple
University but he dropped out at the time of the incident he wasn't really doing much with his life he was living
with his mother he wasn't working he wasn't in school he really did not like the cohens there was so much conflict
between the families about this gate and about other things and you know there Howard later in his Hospital records
talked about the fact that he was gay and that he was going into Philadelphia and he was seeking the company of men
his mother was extremely religious didn't know anything about this people kind of sensed in all the interviews
that I did with the with people that are still um are alive that they knew he was
gay and they tormented him it was illegal at that time to be gay so they actively would call him names Nancy boy
queer throw things at him it made it life very difficult he particularly said that the cohens were picking on him that
they were calling him names that was his primary target and he had actually purchased a machete
at some time before this incident and when asked by the detectives what he was going to do he said he had intended to
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[Music] foreign [Music] so these people and I'm not trying to defend Howard at all here I want to be very
clear about that to the audience because certainly these actions are not warranted at all so these people are
picking on him and teasing him after he risks his life serving the United States
defending our country and our freedoms in the greatest World conflict in the history of of our you know current uh
time period it's just it's I mean it's and I get it I get it it's 1949 and it was a much different world and Society
back then and as you pointed out just now it's even difficult to believe that at one time it was illegal to be
homosexual and so it's just it's one of these things when you look at it through the lens of of current day it's
just uh it's a really bizarre scenario yeah and and in the book it outlines all of the
people in the neighborhood it kind of gives a glimpse of every uh what was happening with the people in the
neighborhood um he had a very difficult time you know they would tease him about not being
able to use the gate that he and his mother had to walk through this a lot they would taunt him they would call him
names they would throw things at him um they would jump in his way when he was walking they would mock the way he
he had a very erect posture instead of very straight and they would imitate him um to the point that even coming out of
his back door to try to get to the street it would start it's a very congested neighborhood the houses are
all kind of connected there isn't a lot of space so I don't think he had any way
to escape any of that yeah I'm looking at pictures of this area and it looks like people just kind of living on top
of one another that's how close they were and yeah a photo of Howard here you described the way that he the way
that he stands his posture the way that he walks and the picture I'm seeing here
he he is standing exactly as you described and he he likely is taller than the police officers that are surrounding him
this is after he is apprehended but uh just his posture probably makes him look taller or appear to be taller than than
what he would be height wise now a couple weird things and and you know this case really well but before we get
to the weird things could you tell us a little bit more about your background we
know you are the author of this this very intriguing book can you give us a little more about your background Ellen
yeah for the past 20 years I have been a therapist in a maximum security Correctional Facility doing assessments
for the courts doing therapy sessions with the inmates also during that time I was writing I have four books that I've
written before this one what are those titles the very first book Is standalone book called The Book of James and then
there's a Trilogy Twist of faith Absolution and Silent Redemption I want to say none of this has anything to do
with religion even though they have religious titles right there's suspense so this is your first True Crime yes
how do you think that your background how were you able to apply that your expertise on that level to your research
in your writing of the of of this book murder in the neighborhood well you know it was very interesting because I was
able to get a hold of all his Hospital records and so I was able to go through and look at his testing and his IQ and
and his responses during the sessions now it's different than seeing a person obviously face to face where you can ask
them whatever you want you just have to take whatever was asked and the answers and you're not getting any inflection or
you know the body language with that so that was kind of intriguing and I was working with a psychiatrist Dr Peter
brancato who's a forensic psychiatrist who went through the records with me to try to help paint a portrait a
three-dimensional picture of what this man was from what we were seeing on the page and Howard he lived and was you
know obviously uh incarcerated but he lived till 2009 so did you did you ever cross paths
with him before any of your research have you you've never you've never met him or no and I was kind of upset
because I got the idea to write this book and he passed away and I was like why didn't I do this 10 years ago and I
could have gone up to actually interview him no I never met him I interviewed a ton of people that did interview him
though now in your days at the maximum security facility do you have any stories you want to share with us from
from your time there well I'm actually working on another book called The many faces of murder about just about the
experiences of working with these murderers and seeing these people and then coming home yeah I'm married I have
to I have two small children when I started there they were really infants Toddlers and trying to manage that and
how I compartmentalized all of that because it was very difficult I would see a woman who brutally brutally killed
her child and filmed part of it and then I would leave oh it's time to go clock out I have to go home and pick up my son
from daycare I don't know what I've done with all of that I think you find a way
to put it in a separate compartment otherwise it's going to take over your whole life yeah doing what I do it's
true crime 24 7 and I've had to figure out a way to like you said put that in its own little box but at the same time
it does make me I think appreciate the smaller moments more than I might have with not having this experience and so
it's a it's a unique uh situation you don't don't want to dance in the blood or stand in the Doom and Gloom for too
long as it will it could it's a it's a quick drive to Crazy Town as they say but um yeah the funny thing
is when I was finished the book and I was looking for photographs and I had the original file from the Philadelphia
Inquirer which had a lot of the crime scene photos and I submitted them all to book a chore saying hey I think these
would be great and I think that I'm a little warped from what I do they were like nah we can't put those in there
Ellen they're a little graphic so I I do think it's changed me a little bit my perspective there's a couple
weird things that I noticed and maybe you could clear them up and again we're looking at 1949 so things are completely
different back then but it appears to me that that after the the shootings that there was some kind of standoff that he
he had maybe barricaded himself inside of I guess it was his home his apartment yeah so after the last stop he shot the
heck he went into the Harry home and fired nobody got killed there they were both wounded in the arm he retreated
right through his backyard went into his house and and just stayed there you know
whether he went to lay down whether he was uh looking out the windows but the police didn't quite know what was going
on there was a lot of Confusion And so all these police cars showed up he had barricaded himself and they were firing
at the building so if you go and you walk down the street and you look you can still see the pockmarks of the
bullets from the police firing it's amazing that he did not get killed and somebody asked me do you think he wanted
them to kill him no he did not he put out a white flag out the window and said I Surrender
and remarkably they let him come down peacefully there's pictures of him being arrested I think in the book of the back
door and um taking him in there's no scuffle there was no nothing A lot of times these types after a mass shooting
will commit suicide turn the gun on themselves you don't think that that was part of his quote-unquote plan no it
didn't seem to be part of his psyche no it I don't even think it occurred to him
he felt like these people had bothered him they stole the gate which is a huge part of this story that he had put in
this gate so that he could have access to the yard without going through this lot and somebody had ripped it out the
night before and that was the last straw and he felt to his last interview that these people deserved what they got and
and it he had no remorse no thoughts of hurting himself no suicide attempts in his whole entire life there's not even
any reports of depression and he was quite matter of fact about it you know I'm sorry I killed the children he
didn't know that he had killed the children when he started spiraling I'm sorry I killed the children but the
people that deserved it deserved it how long was it after the shooting that he's
apprehended we know that he barricades himself and and then he waves the White Flag but how much time
probably between half an hour and 45 minutes and what's so bizarre here is you know
we're expecting to see you hear this story and then you go and you want to look at a picture of of the the
situation and of the perpetrator and I'm looking at a picture of the perpetrator
and you expect to see this disheveled crazed madman right and here we have this very clean-cut well-dressed he's
wearing a Blazer and a bow tie yes during the commission of these murders and and and as he's apprehended yes
he got dressed up for the event he put on his best brown suit his white shirt his bow tie but he had his combat boots
he always wore his combat boots what type of gun was it he used a nine millimeter Luger
and the funny part about the lugers after his arrest one of the police officers took it home never booked it
into evidence and apparently nobody at the prosecutor's office looked for this weapon and it was found by the officer's
children after he died in 1990. they were going through some things and found this Luger and a bunch of evidence
envelopes and these shell casings and they turned it all back in unfortunately I mean obviously this is a
horrible tragedy and this is probably something that could have been prevented I don't know the the State of
Mind of this individual I can't speak to that but it sounds like he was he was picked on quite a bit and he really felt
that these people had wronged him it looks very much to be a Revenge Type killing and if anybody that got in the
way of or stood in the way of him carrying this out was going to be collateral damage obviously that officer
knew that this unfortunately A Dark Day history that we would like to to not have in the first place but he knew that
this was kind of a moment in history I'm just surprised the prosecutor's office they had all these murder indictments
against him even though he was not incarcerated not one day they had the murder indictments I'm just surprised
they didn't notice the weapon was missing so where do they send him after he is convicted so he went to well he
was never convicted he was never tried he was never nothing these all the murder indictments were dropped so what
happened was the district attorney at the time Mitchell Cohen made a decision to have him sent to a psychiatric
hospital instead of to jail now they could have had a psychiatrist evaluate him while he was incarcerated which is
the usual process for whatever reason he bypassed the usual system and sent him right to the hospital for further
evaluation I think the reason for that was just the extent of the crime the thing people just didn't do that they
thought he must be insane so once he got to the psychiatric hospital they were waiting for the psychiatrist
to say that he was sane and could stay in trial so he was just being held at Trenton psychiatric hospital
and he never got out they just they and in 1980 they just dropped the murder indictments against him
so they he never stood trial he was the indictments were dropped and he was just
held on a psychiatric commitment until he died now you've repeated a couple names there we have some cohens that
were victims we have the prosecutor with the last name Cohen is that just purely a coincidence that
there's no relation whatsoever now given your background and applying it to what
you've learned of of this case and about Howard uh and your research and speaking
with other people what would your evaluation be and and and we all know you've you did not speak
with him face to face so we have that hurdle to get over but what what if your evaluation been of from what you've been
able to gather you know I wrestled with that because he had relationships he had
relationships with his Harry Rosella visited him to the day he died um there are letters between the two of
them he didn't exhibit any real symptoms of schizophrenia though he was diagnosed
as schizophrenic he didn't hear voices he wasn't delusional there was no break with reality the only thing he had was
he was paranoid that he felt um that people were potentially trying to harm him or thinking bad things about
him but given the snapshot of what was happening on that block when he was living there some of that was reality
based um I don't know whether he was their psychiatrist that looked at it that said
he had a personality disorder um they was just anti-social with some paranoid coloring to it
um there was a thought on my part maybe he was on the spectrum that he might have had uh autism that he was on the
higher functioning autistic scale and that's why people were picking up that there was something off about him that
he was the target of all of this so I'm not quite sure he's certainly a really interesting case for people to look at
and I think people could look at it and everybody could come up with a different
opinion I think what's clear is he did not hit all the marks for classic schizophrenia
and you're so right when we look at these cases from yesteryear especially ones that are decades and decades old
it's very commonplace for society to just go all right only a crazy person would have done what he did so there's
your evaluation right there that's enough proof for all of us let's put them in the uh looney bin so to speak
and and lock lock them up and throw away the key I think your evaluation is very
interesting and intriguing and certainly in 1949 I don't think that we had a good understanding if much
understanding at all regarding things like PTSD and he very likely could have not likely it's just it's it's even
probably highly probable that he had some form of PTSD from his time in the war would you agree oh yeah absolutely
and you know at the time there were no there was a Veterans Affair Administration but there were no real
treatment for these veterans that were coming back and you say that from what you found it appears that he always wore
his combat boots the people that reported him talking about him and I found this film of people that were
interviewed in 1979 and that was very helpful all yes they said he always wore his combat boots that would go very much
along the lines of the paranoia that you you spoke of it's it's like it's like he's waiting for the war or some kind of
conflict to break out and he's making sure that he's ready at all times 24 7 with these boots on yeah I don't I don't
know why he wore them I don't know if he felt more comfortable in him he was waiting for combat whether he felt he
was at war with everybody in the neighborhood but it's pretty consistent that he wore them continuously
and it's probably likely that he does himself didn't know why he was wearing them all of the time it's a it's a crazy
story it's a very tragic story um but uh an intriguing one at that and it does look like this is one of the
first recorded uh American mass shootings yes is there anything else that we should
know about the book or about you or about uh Howard unra or anything else before we wrap up here today Ellen no I
think it's a complicated story and I did the best that I could to put it on the page to try to bring that neighborhood
to life I did consider writing it in a straight non-fiction documentary kind of style and I played around with it and
then I decided that I was going to do this in a more creative non-fiction way though it's all completely I spent two
years doing research on this and it interviewed hundreds of people so it's all fact based but I wanted it to read
more like a novel than maybe a different format the True Crime people are used to
reading where it's more just newspaper style fact uh you know non-fiction based well the book is called Murder in the
neighborhood the true story of America's first recorded mass shooting by Ellen J
green thank you so much uh Mrs Green for speaking with us today is there a website or anything that anybody would
need to know to uh to find this good book yeah ellenjgreen.com um it's available on Amazon perfect
thank you so much uh for your time today thank you so much for [Music] ahead one of the Privileges of being a
part of True Crime garage is we get to talk to experts on these cases fascinating people who have great
insights into these fascinating cases now as we've already said here Captain unru killed 13 people injured three
those killed their ages range from as young as two years old up to 68 years old now we do know that some of the
Cohen family if not all of the Cohen family was a target for Howard and he killed three members of the Cohen family
Dr Maurice J Cohen h-39 his mother Minnie Cohen who was age 63 and the doctor's wife Rose Cohen age 38. Howard
Barton Unruh was and has been labeled as a schizophrenic spree killer and family
Annihilator now as explained yesterday spree killers and serial killers fall into their own categories per the FBI
and just general definitions that we've applied to those titles over the years and decades since Howard Unruh killed
all these people Howard Unruh absolutely was a mass murderer and while many have
caught called him the first in America as you heard there from Ellen Greene he most certainly was one of the first and
labeled this by many an author and reporter but he was just one of the first he actually wasn't the first in
America also as you heard there from Ms Green the schizophrenic portion part is certainly Up For Debate and probably
just wrong we need to keep in mind this is 1949 and things were really looked at
very differently back then than they are today and this is a situation where he kill goes out and kills 13 people
probably intended to kill upwards of 20 or so people and when this is reviewed by Society in that day the person has to
be crazy there's no other explanation for it back then and they have to give some kind of term and as you heard Ms
Greene he certainly didn't hit all the markers for a typical schizophrenic individual and so he is given the this
label and kept this label all of these years and in fact that what that is what leads him to not being actually charged
in these cases you know he never has to go to court for all of these people that
he killed and after he's arrested he basically gives a very meticulous account and detailed account of his
actions it's almost like he's reciting things from his diary from war and so he's able to give a calm and sober
meticulous account of his actions from earlier that day two police two detectives two law enforcement and so
they sent him off to Cooper Hospital for treatment and to be evaluated and eventually he's diagnosed to be paranoid
schizophrenic by psychologists and he's deemed to be insane and so therefore he does not ever really spend any time in
an actual prison and he doesn't have to go to court and face these actual charges he goes off to
the Trenton psychiatric hospital where he remained there until his death in 2009.
and he lived to be 88 years old passing away October 19 2009 at the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital in Trenton New
Jersey [Music] you could pick anywhere to be but you join us each week and that's why we love
you thank you so much for the support we couldn't do it without you Colonel do we
have any recommended reading for the beautiful beautiful beautiful listeners why yes we do captain of
course we heard true crime author Ellen J green here with us today talking about
her latest and greatest book murder in the neighborhood the true story of America's first recorded mass shooting
28 year old Howard Barton Unruh shot 13 people in less than 12 minutes on his Block in East Camden New Jersey Ellen
Greene uncovers the chilling true story of Howard Unruh the quiet Oddball who meticulously plotted his revenge on the
neighbors who shunned him and became one of America's first mass Killers check out murder in the neighborhood by Ellen
J green you can find that great title and many more on our recommended page at truecrime garage.com and when you're
there make sure you sign up for our mailing list we'll see you in next week until then be good be kind and don't
blame [Music]

Murder in the Neighborhood /// Part 2 /// 589

Part 2 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

With school and workplace shooters such a hot topic these days, this week we thought we would look back on a mass shooting that took place in the good old days. As you know, we here in the Garage would never claimed to be able to solve some of our nations most devastating problems but we will try to understand them. Better understanding of very important issues can help and lead to creating solutions. Now, we have to remember that the good old days weren’t always good and it certainly was not a good day when Howard Unruh decided to “get even” with some people in the neighborhood. This week in the Garage we try to beat the heat by cracking a few cold ones and talking about murderer so cold that you will have a hard time believing that you had not heard of this guy before.

Beer of the Week - Heavy Boots of Lead by SingleCut Beersmiths

Garage Grade - 4 out of 5 bottle caps

This week’s recommended reading is Murder in the Neighborhood: The True Story of America’s first recorded mass shooting by Ellen J. Green. A special thank you to author Ellen J. Green for joining us in the Garage to discuss her fascinating book and for inspiring this week’s episodes.

Our show - True Crime Garage “Off the Record” is available only on Stitcher Premium. For a FREE month of listening go to http://stitcherpremium.com/truecrimegarage and use promo code GARAGE

Brief Summary

Howard Unruh killed 13 people in 1949, driven by paranoia and revenge against neighbors, discussed with author Ellen J. Green.

Key points

America's First Mass Murderer. Howard Unruh killed 13 people in a shocking spree in 1949, marking a grim milestone in U.S. history.
Bizarre Phone Call During Standoff. A reporter called Howard Unruh during his shootout with police, capturing chilling responses.
Ellen Greene's Unique Perspective. Ellen Greene shares her experiences as a therapist in a maximum security facility.
The Aftermath of the Shooting. Unruh barricaded himself after the shooting, leading to a tense standoff with police.
The First Recorded Mass Shooting. Howard Unruh is labeled as America's first mass shooter, killing 13 people.
Murder in the Neighborhood. Ellen Greene discusses her book about America's first mass shooting.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

They haven't done anything to me yet, but I'm doing plenty to them.

Howard's response during the police standoff phone call.

10:30WatchOct 22, 2022

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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