Read Delivered from Evil: True Stories of Ordinary People Who Faced Monstrous Mass Killers and Survived for Free Online Page A

with every fiber of his being. Thirty-two silent years had passed, but now he was going to speak in a desperate attempt to keep the killer Howard Unruh where he belonged until he died: behind bars.
    Before Unruh’s hearing, Charles sat his children down and told them the whole harrowing story. Then he picked up the phone and called a reporter.
CATHARSIS
    In the courtroom, Charles saw Unruh for the first time since they’d crossed paths in the Camden police station on September 6, 1949, less than an hour after Charles’s parents and grandmother were slaughtered.
    Now Unruh was a stooped, shambling old man. His belly hung low and his hair had gone white, but his dark eyes were still empty. He was sixty-one, but looked much older. He sat, pasty-faced and sedated, at his lawyer’s table, more pathetic than sinister.
    Charles trembled. He was a tinderbox of rage, hate, and fear, awaiting only the spark that would set the flame that would consume him. From where he sat, it appeared the world now pitied the monster and had forgotten his victims. He felt every possible feeling of hate a human can have for another human. He didn’t just want to hurt Unruh; he wanted him to suffer.
    The hearing began with psychiatrists who had studied Unruh. They painted a portrait of a submissive, compliant patient who was heavily medicated and not a significant threat to himself or fellow inmates. A 1980 psychiatric report noted he was “suffering from a malignant, progressively deteriorating schizophrenic illness …over the years, his mental condition has deteriorated greatly. His physical condition has also deteriorated, and he has aged far beyond what would be expected merely by the number of years that have passed.”
    The same report also noted Unruh’s unsettling response when he was asked if he could ever commit such a crime again.
    â€œI hope not” is all he said.
    When Unruh himself was called to testify, as he stood up, his ill-fitting, state-issued pants dropped to his knees, revealing his long, old-fashioned boxer shorts. The gallery was momentarily sorry for the oblivious old man, who simply pulled his trousers up and proceeded to the witness stand.
    Speaking in a quiet, raspy voice, Unruh slowly and tersely answered questions from his lawyer, James Klein, just as he’d answered the prosecutor’s questions thirty-two years before.
    â€œDo you believe you are suffering from a mental illness?” Klein asked.
    â€œI was.”
    â€œHow about today?”
    â€œI don’t think so.”
    Charles watched Unruh’s face intently. It was vacant of any emotion.
    â€œWhat are your goals ultimately? What would you like to see happen to yourself?” the lawyer asked.
    â€œI would like to be transferred to a civil ward at Ancora [another state hospital], then receive treatment to prepare me for the street,” Unruh replied.
    â€œYou think you need some preparation before you go to the street?”
    â€œI don’t, but the doctors do.”
    The prospect of Howard Unruh roaming the streets again chilled Charles, who sat with Marian in the back of the courtroom, his every muscle tensed. Unruh wanted to be closer to his ailing mother, whose companionship he’d enjoyed for more than sixty years. Charles seethed. When he wanted to visit his mother, he had to go to a cemetery.
    After fifteen minutes, Klein rested, and the prosecution had no questions. But the judge asked the question everyone wanted to hear.
    â€œMr. Unruh, do you have the feeling that you want to hurt anybody?”
    â€œNot anymore.”
    â€œHow long ago was it that you stopped having those feelings, if you did have them?”
    â€œEver since I was sent to the Vroom Building.”
    Ten minutes later, the judge ruled. Howard Unruh, he said, remained a threat to himself and the public, and more freedom was likely only to mean more risk to innocent people.
    Charles Cohen had gotten his way this