65th anniversary of notorious mass shooting in Camden

CAMDEN, N.J. (WPVI) -- Before there was Columbine or Newtown, there was Camden.

On the morning of September 6, 1949, 28 year-old Howard Unruh, dressed in a suit and bowtie, stalked the 2300 block of River Road in the city's Cramer Hill section shooting and killing 13 people and injuring three.

Among the victims, a 6-year-old boy getting a haircut on a hobbyhorse at the barbershop.

It became known as the "walk of death."

"That was America. Apple pie right after we won the Second World War and it was never expected. What's sad is all the people were innocent," said John Richards.

"My mom and them, they told me to, 'Get away! Get! Come on let's go!," said George Jenkins.

Jenkins was only six when his mother shooed him into the house after hearing gunshots.

Unruh, a former Army sharpshooter who had a target range in his basement, kept meticulous records about neighbors he had run-ins with.

The top entry reads "You dirty bum. I wish you were dead."

About 15 years ago, Action News spoke with one of the survivors of Unruh's rampage.

The late Charles Cohen's parents and grandmother were murdered that day.

"Gunfire happened and when I walked out, my grandmother was holding a phone in bed, dead, with blood coming out of her nose and face," said Cohen.

"He hid in the closet feeling totally helpless and he had to come out and see that horrible scene," said Lori Greenberg, Cohen's daughter.

80-year-old Len Irwin is a volunteer at the Camden County Historical Society, where they keep memorabilia from the notorious crime.

"The reaction was pretty strong, being it was one of the first occasions of a mass murder of that type," said Irwin.

Unruh confessed and was declared criminally insane. He later died in 1988, after being confined to a mental hospital for 60 years.

However the troubled young man from East Camden will forever be remembered as America's first mass murderer of modern times.