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

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[Music] crime Howard unre is often referred to by many authors and reporters as America's first mass murderer he gunned
down 13 individuals killing 13 people September 6th 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 and what he thought they said about
him in his diary marking some names with the word retail r 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
ret as in retaliate you know I'm going to retaliate against this person this in a
weird way is just a contined behavior of what he was doing when he was in the Army and off at 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 solders 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 in their hands that it's the world is out to get them and those
people you could say something as a joke or in justest and then 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 and 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 kazinski the unibomber it
was said by everybody that examined him and reviewed all of his Manifesto and his activities in 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 unre
shared this character flaw with somebody like that of Ted kazinski 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 unre guns
down 13 people and then flees back to his apartment remember we left off yesterday talking about the
standoff between he he and the police that surrounded his home now during the course of that standoff we have This
brilliant little news reporter that gets this great idea he had figured out that
it was Howard unre or believed that it was Howard unre 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 so he has This brilliant idea of you know what I'm going to 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
unre 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 buckton and he was successful and I will read portions of his article not the
entire article but it says how unre 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 unre went about his Killing Spree at the 9:00 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 buckton goes on to say I was
about to hang up so he found Howard unr's phone number 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 unre 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 in 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 I'm 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
unre 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 in this is based off of his appearance and his words and his statements to police
that he appeared to be be calm and sober and that was bizarre to everybody that had witnessed his 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 unre 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 Cohen 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
going to 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 talked about the reporter who had the bright idea of calling Howard unre while
he's shooting it out with police we had the opportunity earlier here to speak with Ellen green 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 [Music] interview 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 6th
1949 uh how are Barton unre 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 unra person and so he it seems like he snapped and then decided that uh
he was going to go into 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 storefronts facing third facing River Road um one was a pharmacy
the other was empty there had been a number 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 unre and his mother there was
a lot of conflicts between the unus and the Cohen 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 Cohen had
prohibited Howard and his mother from using the gate to get to 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 Justice finding those people and killing them
but at some point it's 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 6 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
2-year-old in the head yeah he shot what 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 it looks like the Cohen were were druggist that they own 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 Cen Howard Andrew was at one time a pharmacy
student at Temple University but he had 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 Coen 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 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 call him names Nancy boy queer
throw things at him it made 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 decapitate all
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when you Angie that [Music] so these people and I'm not trying to defend Howard at all here I 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 a 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 what was happening with the people on 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 lot they would taunt him they would call
him names they would throw things at at him um they would jump in his way when he was walking they would mock the way
he he had in a very erect posture and stood up 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 a photo of Howard here you describe 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 uh a therapist in a
maximum security Correctional Facility doing assessments for the courts doing um therapy sessions with the inmates
also during that time I was writing I have four books that I written before this one what are those titles the very
first book is a 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 here's suspense so this is your first true crime yes how do you think that your
background H how were you able to apply that your expertise on that level to your research and 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 respon 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 banado 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 uh 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'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 when I could have gone up to actually interview him no I
never met him interviewed a ton of people that did interview him though now in your days at the uh 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 I had two small
children when I started there they were really infants Toddlers and trying to manage that and I compartmentalized all
of that because it was very difficult I 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 247 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 want to dance in the blood or stand in the Doom and Gloom
for too long uh 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 um book aure saying hey I
think these would be great and I think that I'm a little warped from what I do they were like n 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 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 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 pock marks 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
at the back door and um taking him in there was 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 didn't seem to be part of his psyche no 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 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 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 H how much
time we talking 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 dis shoveled 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 9mm Luger okay and the funny part about the Luger is
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
a horrible tragedy and this is probably something that could have been prevented
I don't know that 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 think 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 stand 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 um 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 was a coincidence there was no relation whatsoever now given your
background and applying it to what you've learned of of this case and about Howard uh in your research and speaking
with other people what would your evaluation be and and and we all know youve you did not speak with him face to
face so we have that hurdle to get over but what would have 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 this Harry Rosell that 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 intentionally 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 there a psychiatrist that looked at it that said he had a personality disorder um that he
was just antisocial 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 a artistic
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 yester year especially ones
that are decades and decades old it's very commonplace for Society did 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 P TSD 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 were poor Ed 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 247 with these boots
on yeah I don't I don't know why he wore them I don't know if he felt more comfort able in them he was waiting for
combat whether he felt he was at war with everybody in the neighborhood but um 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 it 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 nonfiction 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 that 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 a different format that true crime people are used to reading where it's more just
um 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 LJ green.com um it's available on Amazon perfect thank you so much uh for your
time today thank you so much for having [Music] me 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 unre killed 13 people injured
three those killed their ages range from as young as 2 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 Jay Cohen age 39 his mother Minnie Cohen who was age 63 and the doctor's wife roseco in age 38 Howard
Barton unre 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 unru killed all these
people Howard unre absolutely was a mass murderer and while many have called him
the first in America as you heard there from Ellen green 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 Miss 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 kind of term and as you heard
Miss green he certainly didn't hit all the markers for a typical schizophrenic individual and so he is given 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 p 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 to police to detectives to law enforcement and so
they send him off to Cooper Hospital for treatment and to be evaluated and eventually he's diagnosed to be paranoid
schizophrenic by psychologist 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 80 8 years old passing away October 19th 2009 at the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital in Trenton
New [Music] Jersey 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 beautiful listeners well 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 unra shot 13 people in
less than 12 minutes on his Block in East cam in New Jersey Ellen green uncovers the chilling true story of
Howard unra the quiet odd ball 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 true Crim garage.com and when you're there make sure you sign up for our
mailing list we'll see you next week until then be good be kind and don't live [Music]
[Applause] you can start your day off right when you find a professional on Angie to get
your plumbing right first connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well
visit angie.com you can do this when you Angie that

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

Part 2 of 2

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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.

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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.

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Brief Summary

Howard Unre, America's first mass murderer, killed 13 people in 1949 due to paranoia and grievances against his neighbors.

Key points

America's First Mass Murderer. Howard Unre gunned down 13 individuals in 1949, marking a tragic milestone in U.S. history.
The Call During Chaos. A reporter managed to call Howard during the police shootout, capturing his chilling responses.
Interview with Ellen J. Green. Author Ellen J. Green discusses her book on the first mass shooting in the U.S.
Murder in the Neighborhood. Ellen J. Green discusses her book about America's first recorded mass shooting.
The Calm Confession. The suspect provides a meticulous account of his actions, almost like reciting from a diary.
Mental Health Diagnosis. After evaluation, the suspect is diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, avoiding prison time.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

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

Howard's perspective during the standoff.

11:32WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

70/ 100High tension

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