On the morning of September 6, 1949, Howard Unruh, a 28-year-old resident of Camden, New Jersey, killed thirteen people in a few minutes in the East Camden district. Twelve died that day and a thirteenth the following day. At the time it was the deadliest killing of its kind by a single person recorded in the United States. Unruh was taken into custody the same day and admitted responsibility to the Camden County prosecutor. He was never tried. After a period of psychiatric examination he was pronounced insane, the criminal case did not proceed to trial, and he was committed to a New Jersey state psychiatric hospital for the rest of his life. He died in October 2009 at the age of 88.
Unruh was born in 1921 and was a Camden native who grew up in East Camden. He finished high school in Camden in January 1939. He served in the United States Army in Europe and was honorably discharged in 1945. After his discharge he began a pharmacy course at Temple University under the veterans' education program but stayed for only three months. He was 28 when the killings took place.
Those who knew him in the neighborhood described a quiet, well-dressed man about whom they otherwise knew little. Employers called him quiet and diligent, and one said he "never caused anybody any trouble". He was a regular churchgoer, and a Bible-class teacher called him "a genuine Christian".
The killings took place in the Cramer Hill section of East Camden, a working-class neighborhood in which many families knew one another.
The thirteen people who died were John Pilarchik, Clark Hoover, Orris Smith, James Hutton, Maurice Cohen, Rose Cohen, Minnie Cohen, Alvin Day, Thomas Hamilton, Helga Zegrino, Helen Wilson, John Wilson and Emma Matlack. Five were men, five were women and three were children. Some were known to Unruh; others were strangers. Others were wounded, and they are the subject of the separate assault counts. One survivor, a boy at the time, later spoke publicly about the events and about violence and mental illness, and as an adult he opposed Unruh's transfer from the state hospital.
The first reports spoke of twelve dead. A thirteenth victim, a child, died the next day, and the murder charge was raised accordingly.
The effect on Camden was lasting. A former director of the Camden County Historical Society said that the event "robbed them of their essence". A witness recalled that mothers called their children in from the street. Police said they believed it was the worst mass killing in a city in the nation's history. The city's police chief had retired shortly before and an acting chief was in post. A business operator who later moved into the district said that life "has to continue".
The county prosecutor took Unruh's statement, which he called "a horrible, revolting narrative". The statement remains sealed, and a later request to review it was refused. More than forty sworn witness statements were collected in 1949 and are held by the Camden County Historical Society.
The case brought national attention to the city. The reporter Meyer Berger received the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for a 4,000-word story on the killings.
Unruh was booked on twelve counts of murder, and the charge was raised to thirteen after the thirteenth death. The Camden County prosecutor took his statement, in which he admitted responsibility. The formal charges that followed were thirteen counts of "willful and malicious slayings with malice aforethought" and three counts of "atrocious assault and battery".
Psychiatrists began to examine Unruh on September 7, 1949, the day after his arrest, and he agreed to enter a New Jersey state psychiatric hospital for evaluation. The examinations continued for about two months. On October 7, 1949 the Camden County prosecutor released the psychiatric reports, which found Unruh insane. A judge of the Camden County court declared him "mentally unfit for trial" about a month after the arrest. By mid-October the order that sent him to the hospital had been made permanent. He was "pronounced insane", was "immune from criminal prosecution" and was committed to the hospital for the remainder of his life. He was "deemed incompetent to stand trial".
No jury ever heard the evidence. The finding was one about Unruh's capacity: he was held unfit to be tried, so no trial took place and no verdict of any kind was returned. For that reason the case produced no verdict, no sentence in the usual sense, and no appeal on the facts. The commitment was an order of the Camden County court that placed him in the state hospital for life. The murder indictment was kept in place so that, if he were ever cured, the charges could still be pursued.
The question before the Camden County court in 1949 was not whether Unruh was guilty but whether he could be tried. The New Jersey Supreme Court stated the rule in the same year, in State v. Auld: a person "unable to comprehend his position, to consult intelligently with counsel and plan his defense cannot be put to trial". Partial insanity or low mental ability does not by itself stay a trial; the separate test of criminal responsibility asks whether the accused could appreciate "the nature and the quality of his act" and the difference between right and wrong.
Where the accused's mental condition is raised, the court settles the question at once, either itself or by submitting it to a separate jury. The inquiry is a collateral proceeding on the indictment and is treated as civil in character, not as a step in the criminal trial. It does not end in a conviction or an acquittal, so the rule against double jeopardy does not apply to it. Under the 1947 State Constitution the Legislature could authorize the trial of the issue of mental incompetency without a jury, and where a jury was used a verdict of ten of twelve jurors sufficed.
The statute that governed the inquiry allowed the judge, or a jury, to decide both whether the accused was sane at the time of the hearing and whether he was sane when the offense occurred. A finding that he was sane at the time of the offense "shall not preclude the accused from interposing the defense of insanity at any subsequent trial of the offense charged". The statute descends from the 1847 act that created the state asylum, and its purpose is to end the criminal proceeding while the accused is unfit for trial. At common law the person found insane was committed to an institution for the criminally insane until his sanity returned, and only then could he be tried. That is the structure of the Unruh case: a commitment without a trial and an indictment left standing.
In 1964 Unruh petitioned to have the indictment dismissed on the ground that he had been insane at the time of the killings, and then withdrew the petition. In the same year a Camden police detective gave a sworn affidavit about the events of September 6, 1949.
Throughout the decades that followed, the order was reviewed each year by a judge. In 1999 his status was "argued every year during a mandatory hearing, about whether he could or should live elsewhere", and a judge signed a new confinement order every year. He was never granted a discharge, and he did not obtain parole. In the 1980s there was a proposal to move him to a minimum-security state hospital, which a survivor of the events fiercely opposed. By 1993 he had been moved to a less restrictive unit of the state hospital.
Unruh remained in the state hospital for sixty years. He sought transfers to less restrictive facilities and was opposed each time by survivors of the event and by relatives of those who had died; his requests were denied. At his death he had been held in a New Jersey state psychiatric hospital since 1949.
Howard Unruh died on October 19, 2009, aged 88, in New Jersey. The Camden County prosecutor announced his death the following day. He had never been tried, and the 1949 indictment had never been disposed of by a court.
No court returned a verdict of guilty or of not guilty. The thirteen murder counts were never tried, and there is no finding of guilt.
1921: Howard Unruh is born in Camden, New Jersey.
January 1939: He finishes high school in Camden.
1945: He is honorably discharged from the United States Army.
September 6, 1949: Thirteen people are killed in the East Camden district of Camden, New Jersey; Unruh is taken into custody the same day.
September 7, 1949: A thirteenth person dies; the murder charge is raised to thirteen counts. Psychiatric examination begins.
October 7, 1949: The Camden County prosecutor releases psychiatric reports finding Unruh insane.
October 1949: A Camden County judge orders him committed to a New Jersey state psychiatric hospital for the rest of his life.
1950: A reporter receives the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for a story on the killings.
1964: Unruh petitions to dismiss the indictment on the ground of insanity at the time of the killings, then withdraws the petition.
1993: He is moved to a less restrictive unit of the state hospital.
1999: The yearly mandatory hearing on whether he could live elsewhere is still held.
October 19, 2009: Howard Unruh dies in New Jersey, aged 88.