US mass murderer dies in prison

Howard Barton Unruh, who killed 13 people as he walked the streets of Camden, New Jersey, in a psychotic 1949 shooting spree that was the worst US mass murder at the time, has died at 88.

Camden County Prosecutor Warren W. Faulk said Unruh died in a Trenton nursing facility after an extended illness.

Unruh had been confined in a state psychiatric hospital since the killings, which became known as “the Walk of Death”.

Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, he confessed to the killings and was judged mentally competent but never tried for the September 6, 1949, massacre.