On a day that should have been filled with the innocent anticipation of the first day of first grade, six-year-old Orris Martin Smith sat in a barber's chair in his Camden, New Jersey neighborhood. It was September 6, 1949, a date that would be forever etched in the city's history as a day of unimaginable tragedy. While barber Clark Hoover was giving the young boy a haircut, a local World War II veteran named Howard Unruh walked into the shop.
In a shocking act of violence that was part of a larger rampage, Unruh shot and killed both Hoover and the little boy.
The killing of young Orris was part of a deadly twelve-minute walk through the 3200 block of River Road in the Cramer Hill section of Camden, which the press would later dub the 'Walk of Death.' Unruh, a 28-year-old who felt his neighbors were making derogatory remarks about his character, had become enraged after finding a gate he had built had been torn down. The morning of the shootings, after a confrontation with his mother, he left his apartment armed with a Luger pistol and began his deadly assault. Before reaching the barbershop, he had already shot at a delivery driver and killed a shoemaker. In total, Unruh murdered thirteen people and injured three others that day.
The wave of terror ended when Howard Unruh was cornered by police and taken into custody. During his interrogation, he meticulously recounted his actions. He was charged with thirteen counts of 'willful and malicious slayings with malice aforethought' and three counts of 'atrocious assault and battery.' However, Unruh was ultimately diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and deemed unfit to stand trial. He was confined to a state psychiatric hospital for the remainder of his life, where he died in 2009 at the age of 88.
