Archive for October 20th, 2009

Obit watch.

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Howard Unruh finally died at the age of 88.

Unruh is mostly forgotten today; on September 6, 1949, he went on a shooting spree and killed 13 people before he was finally taken down. Unruh never stood trial; he was found to be insane and spent the rest of his life in confinement.

The Times obit does include a link to Meyer Burger’s story for the paper; that story won Burger the Pulitizer Prize for local reporting, and is also reprinted in the Library of America True Crime collection.

Edited to add: Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind has an excellent (and far more thoughtful) post up as well.