Key Personnel massacre

The 1972 Cherry Hill shooting is a mass shooting that occurred inside the multi-business Heritage Building in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, United States, on June 21, 1972. The perpetrator, 33-year-old Edwin James Grace Jr., entered the building armed with two sawed-off rifles and shot a dozen men inside the business building after failing to apply for an application with Key Personnel Incorporated, killing six and injuring six others, including the company's president.

Grace attempted to take his own life after the shooting and died after shooting himself elsewhere in the body hours after arriving at Cherry Hill Medical Center. The shooting itself, known as "12 Minutes of Chaos", was marked one of the worst mass shootings in New Jersey's history.

Background The Heritage building, located on 383 Kings Highway North in Cherry Hill Township, houses a total of eight businesses and 16 offices, including Key Personnel Incorporated and the Heil Process Equipment Corporation.

Shooting Shortly after 2:00 p.m. ET, Grace left the Saxony Motel on the Black Horse Pike in Turnersville, New Jersey, with his tan 1970 Volkswagen Type 3 fastback. After Grace entered Cherry Hill Township, he drove to the back lot of the building, parked his Volkswagen, and entered the building armed with two sawed-up rifles with 120 rounds of ammunition. Grace, at the time, wore dark blue uniform pants, a black trench coat, a light blue shirt, a black tie, black shoes, a slight mustache, a Dick Tracy straw hat, a dog tag reading his birth year "1939", a navy-blue blazer with the emblem of the civil division of Essex County, New York court logo on the breast pocket, and a gun belt. Grace graduated from James Madison High School in June 1956.

In May 1970, Grace wrote to the Judicial Conference, seeking reinstatement and the conference double-checked with Howard Tyson, director of the administration of the Civil Court, saying that Tyson did not want him reinstated.

Investigation After the shooting, police officers entered the Turnersville motel room where Grace stayed prior to the shooting. According to investigators, Grace's room was reported as "dingy" with stucco and paneling on the walls. The handles on the chest of drawers were broken, and the mirror was completely faded. Inside the broken chests contains a $63.69 insurance bill that was due 10 days prior to the shooting, as well as two bottles of aspirin gun-stocks, barrel extensions, more ammunition, and two books. One of the two books was titled New Day, Adventure from the Bible and the other being My Way of Life. The clock radio was unplugged and a gray suit hung limply from a wire hanger in the closet. Police also investigated his Volkswagen, that was purchased by Grace in New York, sitting at the parking lot of the Heritage Building. Inside, investigators found a Pinkerton badge on his seat, and a map in his car with large X's over Cherry Hill and Pennsauken.

Police later recovered a card that was written by Grace himself, all taped on a metal frame of the motel's mailbox, that was written hours before the shooting, reading: "Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds, and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul." The word "Invictus" was written underneath the message, with the word being Latin for "unconquered". Despite the shooting not being ruled out as androcide nor motivated by misandry, authorities confirmed that Grace targeted his male employees as an act of workplace revenge over his frustration on his employment agency.