AP Photo
Howard Unruh, one of America’s most horrendous mass murderers, died on Monday at the age of 88. In 1949, after eating a breakfast of fried eggs prepared by his mother in their East Camden, New Jersey apartment, Unruh walked out of their home wearing a tropical suit and a bowtie and killed 10 adults and three children in a 20-minute mass shooting. Unruh, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and never went to trial, was confined in an institution for the criminally insane for a total of 60 years. Using a 9-millimeter German Luger pistol, the WWII vet and pharmacy school drop-out—known for attending church with his mother and reading the bible—killed a shoemaker, a tailor and his wife, a barber, a television repairman, drugstore owner, insurance agent, and several strangers. The most atrocious killing was that of a 6-year-old boy sitting on a hobby horse next to his mother in the barber shop. A psychiatric report claimed that Unruh’s thought his neighbors “were thinking of him as a homosexual.” Unruh spent his time in confinement sleeping, watching television, and collecting stamps.