Murder in the Neighborhood: The true story of America’s first recorded mass shooting

6 September 1949, East Camden, New Jersey. The shocking true story of the first recorded mass shooting in America. In less than twelve minutes, twenty-eight-year-old Howard Barton Unruh shot thirteen people dead on his block on River Road. Why did he do it? Could someone have stopped him?

The sky was cloudless the morning twelve-year-old Raymond Havens was sent out to get a haircut. He walked across River Road to the barbershop and was just settling into his seat when his neighbor, a quiet, gentle man, Howard Unruh took out a Luger and opened fire on the customers.

The shooting struck panic across small-town America. In the local community of East Camden, schools and stores closed. Little Raymond couldn’t sleep. What led his friendly neighbor to become a killer? While he set about trying to figure it out, Howard’s mother, vilified by the victims’ families, struggled to make sense of the horrific acts her son had committed.

The lives of those that had survived Howard’s killing spree were blown apart and they continue to have repercussions today. Several decades after Howard Unruh shot his deadly bullets, a gunman opened fire in a high school and a young girl hid in a closet – just like her grandfather did that fateful day on River Road.

A compulsive page-turner about a shocking crime that has become a heartbreaking part of everyday life in America,























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