Insane killer who in a small American town shot dead thirteen people in as many minutes because he hated his neighbours.

Unruh had a conventional childhood in Camden, New Jersey. He was called up for military service in the Second World War and became a sharp-shooter. He was very withdrawn, very fond of his rifle and of Bible-reading, and not interested in girls.

He served with distinction as a tank machine-gunner in Italy and France. After the war he studied pharmacy, and was enrolled at Temple University, Philadelphia.

Unruh became increasingly withdrawn, and would not even talk to his parents. He imagined the neighbours insulted him, and he kept a notebook in which he entered details of all the imagined grievances. He took his relaxation by practising his marksmanship in the basement. He decided to shut out the world by building a high wall round the yard of his father’s house. On 5 September 1949 he found that someone had stolen the massive gate which was the seal of his achievement.

Later that morning, Unruh emerged armed with two pistols. He visited a neighbour who ran a shoe-repair shop and shot him dead. The barber was next, then the drugstore and tailor’s shop, with pedestrians and car drivers caught up in twelve minutes of carnage which resulted in thirteen dead.

Armed police surrounded Unruh and he gave himself up. He said, ‘I’m no psycho. I have a good mind.’ Medical experts disagreed, and 28-year-old Unruh was declared incurably insane and committed to an institution without trial. He told a psychiatrist, ‘I’d have killed a thousand if I’d had bullets enough.’