A Missed Meeting, a Broken Fence, and a Gun
On the night of September 5, 1949, 28-year-old Howard Unruh went to the movies in Philadelphia, planning to meet a man with whom he’d been having an affair. Delayed by traffic, he arrived too late.
He stewed in the theater until early morning, returned home to Camden, New Jersey, and discovered a gate missing from the backyard fence—his final grievance in a long list of neighborhood resentments. Hours later, he armed himself with a Luger pistol and thirty-three rounds, and at approximately 9:20 a.m., began a 20-minute shooting rampage that would leave thirteen people dead and three others wounded.
A Planned Revenge Against Familiar Faces
Unruh had been mentally compiling a list of perceived enemies for years—neighbors and local shopkeepers he believed had wronged him. He entered a shoemaker’s shop and killed the owner, then continued into a barbershop, killing a barber and a six-year-old boy getting his first school haircut.
He spared the boy’s mother. He moved quickly, targeting a druggist and his family, a tailor’s wife, and others on his mental list. Most victims were shot at close range. Some were strangers caught in passing vehicles. One young boy survived a bullet wound to the neck; another toddler was killed by a shot fired through a window.
The First Mass Shooting of Its Kind
In the chaos that followed, police surrounded Unruh’s apartment and engaged in a firefight. Unruh, injured by a shot from a neighbor, retreated inside. A local journalist called him during the standoff; Unruh answered and described his actions in flat terms.
After tear gas was deployed, he surrendered without resistance. He later gave full, detailed confessions and was declared criminally insane without ever standing trial. He spent the next 60 years in psychiatric custody in New Jersey, known only as Case No. 47,077.
Aftermath, Records, and an Unmoving Address
Unruh’s Luger was unofficially taken home by a detective and rediscovered decades later. He died in 2009 at age 88, never tried or released. Though largely forgotten outside criminology, Unruh is considered by researchers to be the first modern mass shooter in the U.S. His apartment building still stands in Camden’s Cramer Hill neighborhood.
Some of the stores where the murders took place remain intact. The gate at the back of Unruh’s yard—the one he saw missing the morning he killed thirteen people—was never replaced.
On Labor Day night in 1949, Howard Unruh missed a date at a Philadelphia theater.
Hours later in Camden, a broken backyard gate pushed him over the edge.
By morning, thirteen people were dead in what became America’s first modern mass shooting…🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/wryu72uEVL
— Detective Tiger's Stories (@TigerDetective) June 5, 2025