The story of Albert Fish. Why is the Brooklyn Vampire considered the worst killer in history? Letter from Albert Fish

Albert Fish

His name was Albert Fish. He chose only children as victims, whom he killed and ate. This man's perversions were so terrible that no one ever doubted that he was mentally ill. Despite this, Fish was found sane and sentenced to death.

At birth, Albert was named Hamilton. Hamilton Fish was born in 1870 in Washington into a very respectable family. However, many of his relatives suffered from various mental illnesses. Hamilton spent his school years at a boarding school, where he first began receiving corporal punishment, as well as observing other students receiving it. It was during this period that his first homosexual contacts began. When he came of age, he moved to New York, where he changed his name to Albert because he was teased at school for “ham and eggs.”

Soon his mother insisted that he get married. His wife bore him six children. She later assured that Fish was a good family man, although his behavior was very strange from time to time. For example, one day he deliberately seriously injured his hand with a nail.

Fish was first arrested in 1903 for robbing the store where he worked. He was sent to prison, where Fish spent two years. But he was destined to go down in the history of criminology not as a robber.

Fish only became a serial killer in the 1920s, when he was about 50 years old. However, the investigation revealed that he committed the first murder of a child in 1910 in Wilmington. Fish also raped boys on multiple occasions, but managed to get away with it each time.

On the morning of July 14, 1924, 8-year-old Francis McDonel disappeared. He was last seen leaving the playground accompanied by a thin, middle-aged man with a gray mustache, dressed in gray clothes. A few hours later, Francis' body was found in the woods. The child was brutally beaten, raped and strangled with his own braces. The police began searching for the “gray man,” as the killer was called. However, the investigation did not yield any results.

On February 11, 1927, 4-year-old Billy Gaffney went missing near his home. The neighbor boy Billy was playing with said that a thin, elderly man with a thick mustache came up to them and took Billy away. The child's body was never found. Another incident occurred on June 3, 1928. This time the crime was somewhat different from the previous two. 17-year-old Edward, who was looking for a job, submitted an ad in the newspaper. He was answered by a man who introduced himself as Frank Howard. Soon Howard came to Edward's house; he was old, thin and with a thick gray mustache. He made a good impression on the family.

“Howard” visited them again, ostensibly to finalize the agreement to hire the young man. On his last visit, he offered to take one of Edward's younger sisters, ten-year-old Grace, to a children's party. After some hesitation, her parents agreed to let her go with a respectable and charming gentleman. Needless to say, they never saw their daughter again.

The police immediately began searching for the missing girl. It soon became clear that there was no such person as Frank Howard. No trace of the child was found and the case was closed months later due to lack of evidence that Grace Budd had been murdered.

Ten years later, Fish, whose brain had apparently become even more foggy, wrote a letter to the girl's mother detailing what he had done to her daughter. He wrote that he took Grace to an empty house that he had previously rented, stripped the child, strangled her, and then cut up the soft parts of the body and roasted them in the oven. He ate the girl for nine days.

The investigation into the case was resumed. This time it was led by detective William King, who very carefully considered all the options. After some time, Albert Fish found himself in the hands of the police.

The exact number of victims of the serial killer remains unknown. He is believed to have killed 7–15 people. Fish raped some of them. During the investigation, he described in detail how he killed children, cooked them and ate them. In addition, he was prone to self-torture: he flogged himself with a whip, burned himself, and beat himself with a stick. During the medical examination of the accused, 27 needles were found, which he inserted into his groin.

Psychiatrists declared the criminal sane. When Fish learned that he would be executed in the electric chair, he said that he found the punishment extremely interesting. On January 16, 1936, the killer was executed.

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Anthony Hopkins's Hannibal Lector terrifies us, but at the end of the day, it's just a movie. The cannibals who live among us are a terrible reality. Their crimes seem especially cruel and vile, and the story of Albert Fish is no exception.

Fish can rightfully be called one of the most perverted criminals: he became a cannibal after he “found” himself in pedophilia. Having already been arrested, Fish admitted that more than 400 (!) children became victims of his inclinations, and he tortured and killed several more. At the same time, the sadist looked completely harmless: a short citizen with an intelligent appearance, who seemed so kind and understanding.

It could never have occurred to anyone that this was just a mask under which a cruel monster was hiding. That is why his crimes seemed completely wild. Even his own execution, according to rumors, became the embodiment of one of his fantasies.

Fish, born on May 19, 1870, seemed destined to become a criminal: the boy was born into a family with a long history of mental illness. After the death of his father, his mother gave five-year-old Fish to a Washington orphanage. There, Albert was constantly beaten and mocked, but he seemed to even like it: the beatings gave him an erection. He received a very mediocre education and learned to work only with his hands, but not with his head.

In 1890, Fish moved to New York, where he began searching for his little victims. Fish’s modus operandi was quite established: first he lured children away from home, tortured them (one of his favorite instruments of torture was an oar studded with nails), and then raped them. Over the years, his passion for violence only grew, and now the abuse of children often ended in murder and devouring their body parts.

In 1898, Fish got married, and for 19 years he seemed like a completely normal family man: a young wife and six children, a marriage like a marriage. However, in 1917, Albert's wife ran away with another man, and then he turned around in full force. To begin with, he began to involve his own children in his sadomasochistic games. One of the entertainments was this: Fish handed the child the same paddle with nails that he used to torture his victims, and asked him to beat him until blood began to flow through his body in streams. Sticking needles deep into the body gave him no less pleasure.

Having suffered a fiasco in his family life, Fish turned to writing - he sent letters to women who placed advertisements in newspapers for acquaintance, in which he described exactly how he would like to have sex with them. The messages were so disgusting that they were never made public, although they appeared as evidence at the trial. None of the women answered Fish, which is not surprising: he asked for their hand not for what it is usually asked for, but so that he could be hurt.

Although Fish would not have been able to engage in intellectual work, no matter how much he wanted, he worked well with his hands - the maniac masterfully painted houses and often traveled to other states to work. Some believe that he deliberately chose those where the black population predominated - Fish, they say, thought that the police would put less effort into searching for a missing black child than if a white child had gone missing. Indeed, among his victims there were many dark-skinned children, on whom he tested his “instruments of hell,” as he himself called them: his favorite oar, a meat cleaver and all kinds of knives.

In 1928, Fish came across an advertisement posted by 18-year-old Edward Budd - the guy was looking for part-time work to help his family solve financial problems. Fish, introducing himself as Mr. Frank Howard, met with Edward and his family to discuss working conditions. According to legend, Frank was a Long Island farmer who was willing to pay his au pair $15 a week. The job seemed ideal to Edward, and he immediately agreed to take the job.

Fish promised the Budd family that he would return next week and that he would take Edward with him. He did not appear on the appointed day, but sent a telegram with an apology and set a new date. On June 4, he came to the Baddams, as promised, and presented all the children in the family with gifts. The Budds were fascinated—Frank seemed like a typical doting grandfather.

After lunch, Fish told the Baddams that he would pick up Edward later, but now he had to go to a children's party at his sister's house. The maniac persuaded the couple to let Edward’s sister, ten-year-old Grace, go with him. The unsuspecting parents agreed, Grace, in an elegant dress, left the house with Fish, and the girl was never seen alive again.

For more than 30 years, cannibal Albert Fish hunted children in 23 states of America, remaining elusive. The number of his victims ranges from 4 to 20. From impunity, he lost his sense of fear and wrote a letter to the parents of the girl he killed. And this helped the police get on his trail.

Most likely, Albert Fish, a native of the District of Columbia (USA), was destined to remain forever in the history of mankind as a bloody cannibal. It must be said that many of his relatives had bad heredity - a predisposition to mental illness and more.

Hamilton Fish's mother suffered from hallucinations and sleepwalking. Later, one of the brothers died of hydrocephalus, the second became an alcoholic and degenerated, and Hamilton’s sister went crazy. By the way, in police files he most often went under the pseudonyms “Moon Maniac” or “Gray Ghost”.

On May 19, 1870, in Washington, a fourth child was born into the family of former river steamboat captain Randall Fish. History is silent about whether the elderly father was happy (Fish was 43 years older than his wife!) with this addition to the family. He already had a daughter, Annie, and two sons, Walter and Edwin. Judging by the later life of the youngest son, named Hamilton, his birth was clearly unnecessary. With the difference that in the 19th century, women gave birth a lot and often, having no idea about modern methods of contraception. And abortion was considered a crime.

In 1875, the elderly father of five-year-old Hamilton died of a heart attack, and then life showed the boy that he was really superfluous in the family - his mother immediately sent him to an orphanage. It was there that the future cannibal maniac was born within him. The order in the shelter was comparable to that of a prison. The teachers mercilessly punished the children for the slightest offense, and the older pupils themselves bullied the younger ones as they pleased.

Little Hamilton immediately became the subject of ridicule and bullying - he wet his bed at night for fear of beatings. Because of his cowardly nature, he was nicknamed “Ham and Eggs,” and this nickname followed him for many years. But it was then that Hamilton (he hated his name and wanted everyone to call him Albert) realized that from the beatings he received some particularly pleasant sensations - from physical pain he began to get an erection. This was a reason for new ridicule and bullying from his peers, but the boy did not care about them - he was enjoying himself.

In 1879, Albert’s mother was able to take Albert from the orphanage; she had finally found a job. She didn’t know what was happening to her son, who mentally already lived somewhere there, in his terrible dreams and dreams. In 1882, 12-year-old Albert Fish became homosexual - he entered into a relationship with a boy who delivered mail. Then he had a need
eat your excrement and drink your urine. The mother did not know about all this, just as she did not know that her son disappeared into a public bathhouse on weekends so that he could see naked boys and, if possible, touch them.

Rapist pedophile

Fish arrived in New York in 1890 as a twenty-year-old youth, experienced in all carnal sins. Later, after his arrest, he said that the goal was to engage in prostitution - he wanted to earn money. But unexpectedly for himself, he went into all serious troubles as a pedophile rapist. He worked according to one scenario - he lured small children away from home by deception, and then in a secluded place he first tortured them (his favorite torture was an oar with nails!), and then raped them. Most often, such tortures ended in the killing of the victims and the eating of human flesh.

In 1903, he was arrested for theft and briefly went to prison. Most likely, the mother suspected his sins, or even knew, and therefore hastened to marry her dissolute son. The modest wedding took place in 1898; the wife was nine years younger than Albert Fish. Soon they had a son, named Albert, and then five more children - two daughters and three sons. Family life lasted almost 19 years, until in 1917 the wife ran away from Fish with her lover.

Her escape resulted in a series of new crimes. Now Albert Fish deliberately scoured the states in search of small, gullible victims. Most often in black neighborhoods, believing that the child’s poor parents will not particularly look for him. The maniac's orgies began with the child, at Uncle Albert's request, beating him with that same paddle with nails and sticking needles into his body, and the bloodied Albert Fish was literally dragging himself from this. Then the beaten Albert Fish armed himself with a cleaver and meat knives and killed his “executioner.” This was followed by rape and a terrible cannibal meal.

On July 14, 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDonell disappeared from the playground. Witnesses saw the boy playing with a gray-haired man, with whom he left in an unknown direction. The boy's body was found after several hours of intense searching. It was terrible to watch - the child was brutally beaten, raped and strangled with his own suspenders. The killer was never found then.

Once again a killer with the same signs appeared on February 1, 1927, when four-year-old Billy Gafni, who was playing near his house, went missing. This time the child was not found, neither alive nor dead.

In June 1928, Albert Fish slightly changed the search scenario for victims. In the newspaper he found an advertisement for 18-year-old Edward Budd, the guy was looking for part-time work. Calling himself Frank Howard, Fish met the guy and his family and made a good impression on them. Albert Fish posed as a farmer who needed seasonal workers. The guy and his parents liked the job and were satisfied with the salary. And a few days later Fish came again, bringing gifts for the children - just like a loving grandfather! After dinner, he said that he had been invited to a children's party, and persuaded ten-year-old Grace to go with him. The girl disappeared, and her six-year search was never successful.

At the same time, Albert Fish was busy writing disgusting letters to women who had placed advertisements in newspapers for acquaintance. True, I received no answers - the women were in shock. Later in court, these letters became one of the evidence.

Letter from Albert Fish

The police got on the trail of the cannibal maniac only a few years later. On November 11, 1934, Grace's parents unexpectedly received an anonymous letter, the author of which described in chilling detail how he killed Grace and other children and ate their flesh. Later lines from this letter were quoted in court:

“...On Sunday, June 3, 1928, I addressed you at the address: house 406, Boya West Street. I brought you a basket of strawberries. We had breakfast. Grace sat on my lap and kissed me. I decided to eat it and did it... - wrote Albert Fish. “...Oh, how she kicked, bit and scratched!” But I strangled her and then cut out the soft parts of her body... It took me 9 days to completely eat her meat. I did not copulate with her, although I could have if I wanted. She died a virgin!”

Forensic investigators found a rooming house, the guests of which used the notepaper on which this letter was written, and found Fish. True, he had already managed to move out of there, but the chase overtook him.

After his arrest, Fish literally shocked investigators with the details of his bloody feasts... He savored every detail, as if he was again experiencing the same pleasure. He told me how he cut up children’s bodies, what he used to prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner...

The trial for the murder of Grace Budd began on March 11, 1935 in New York. In court, Albert Fish acted strangely, pretended to be crazy and assured the respected court that he was mentally ill, that he constantly heard the voice of God, who ordered him to kill children. Psychiatrists who examined Fish for sanity were unable to come to a single conclusion. As a result, Fish was declared sane. By the way, on the side of the defense, the 17-year-old stepdaughter of the maniac spoke in court, who told how he taught
them to sadomasochistic games.

The court found Albert Fish guilty and sentenced him to death in the electric chair. And then Albert Fish remembered another murder of a child, eight-year-old Francis McDonell, and testified. A total of 3 murders were proven, although he himself admitted to twenty...

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The envelope in which the anonymous message was sent was used for official mailings by the New York City Taxi Chauffeur Service and bore the special hexagonal emblem of the NYPCBA ("New York Private Chauffeurs' Advancement Association").

The symbols of this organization were also present on the sheet of text enclosed in the envelope. Who could use such branded envelopes and paper? Obviously, these could be the services of the Association Board, for example, accounting, personnel services, office... William King went straight to the director of the Association.
The detective managed to achieve understanding and the director of the Association identified a special person who was obliged to help King in everything. Together they began reviewing and analyzing NYPCBA membership forms. William King expected to either find a person matching the description of "Frank Howard" or find a questionnaire filled out in handwriting similar to that of the anonymous author. The drivers' association was very large and numbered several tens of thousands of people; It is easy to understand that viewing so many photographs and profiles could not be a quick thing. King personally met with each member of the Association whose photograph for some reason was not available to the personnel service, or whose handwriting seemed suspiciously similar to that of an anonymous person. Until the beginning of December 1934, King was engaged in this matter, spending a lot of time and effort on it, until suddenly, quite by accident, he spoke to the doorman standing at the door of the Association building. The doorman told the detective that he had left several envelopes and sheets of writing paper with NYPCBA logos in the rooming house he had previously lived in.
King decided to check this message, because without a pedantic study of all possible options for the movement of the paper, the check would lose all meaning.
The furnished rooms that the doorman told him about were located at 200 East 52nd Street.
William King gave the female concierge a description of the “Grey Man” and heard in response that such a person was very well known here. His name was Albert Fish and he lived here for more than two months. Fish left the furnished rooms literally two days before the detective appeared. But Fish promised to show up because he was waiting for a letter from his son, who worked in the Public Conservation Corps in North Carolina. The son regularly sent money to his elderly father and wrote letters, so there was nothing unusual in the fact that Fish was waiting for a letter.
The detective contacted the post office and found out that postal orders of small amounts were indeed regularly sent to the address of the furnished rooms under the name Fish. But the last of them remained unclaimed. Could this mean that Albert Fish, for some reason, wanted to flee the city? Or is his move just a coincidence that doesn't mean anything?
King returned to the 200 block of East 52nd Street and spoke with the concierge again. In order not to alarm the woman, the detective said that he was looking for Fish in connection with the loss of documents and asked the old man to call him when he appeared, leaving his work phone number. The concierge promised to do just that.
Several more days passed. The long-awaited call came on December 13, 1934; the concierge reported that Fish had arrived for a letter and was currently drinking tea with her.
King rushed to East 52nd Street. In the concierge's room he saw a dry, small, nondescript old man with a large gray mustache and gray hair. He really looked like he was covered in dust. The old man was sipping tea and having a leisurely conversation about some trifles. “Are you Albert Fish?” the detective interrupted him sharply.
The old man put down his cup, nodded and rose from his chair. A moment later, with unexpected agility, he rushed at King with a knife. Obviously, the detective was given away by the specific police intonation with which he asked his question.
However, despite the rage, the knife strike did not reach its target; The gray-haired old man was able to see from personal experience that jumping with a knife on little girls and experienced police officers is far from the same thing. The effective blow to the head with which King met him instantly put an end to Albert Fish's aggressive hostility. The detective took the knife from him, handcuffed him and asked the female concierge, shocked by everything she saw, to call a police patrol...
American justice has several very interesting norms that make it possible to clearly and very accurately classify various controversial and conflict situations, which makes it possible to accurately predict the judicial consequences arising from them. For example, the flight of a witness from the scene of a crime is interpreted as his admission of guilt (i.e., in itself forms a crime); an unauthorized attempt to approach a police officer within arm's length is regarded as an assault; passive insubordination after an official warning is qualified as resistance, etc. These norms are not absolute rules and often they are not even explicitly formulated by laws, but the precedence of Anglo-American law (i.e., its reliance on previously adopted judicial decisions) gives grounds for all participants in the process to accurately calculate its outcome and clearly see the mistakes made.
Albert Fish, who attacked a plainclothes policeman with a knife, committed a very serious offense: his attack was unprovoked. He could, of course, insist in court that he accepted a policeman for a “bandit-mafia-racketeer,” but even such people cannot be attacked unprovoked. And even more so you can’t do this with cold steel in your hands. And since the detective didn’t show Fish a weapon, didn’t make a verbal threat, and didn’t even have time to introduce himself (and there was a witness!), it could easily be. calculate what the court's decision will be.
Therefore, Albert Fish, having rested on the floor and having come to his senses a little after a good blow to the head, hastened to enter into negotiations with William King, who had detained him. The meaning of the agreement proposed by Fish boiled down to the following formula: Fish agreed to confess to the murder of Grace Buddha, but King d.b. in return, pledge to never formally charge him with a knife attack. At first glance, such an agreement was meaningless, since attempted murder is always a crime less serious than murder itself. And if so, then it would seem, what was the point in Fish taking responsibility for a more serious crime? But this could only seem so at first glance; jumping with a knife on William King could be proven much easier in court than the murder committed six years earlier. King, of course, understood all this perfectly, but accepted the game offered to him. No sooner had the police patrol arrived than Fish and King hit it off on the former’s terms. Fish demanded that the district attorney formally promise not to charge him with attempted murder of a police officer.
King and Fish went to the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.
At the attorney's office, visitors were already expected: Detective King, before leaving the shelter, said by phone that he was carrying a person who wanted to make a statement regarding the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl in 1928. At the first interrogation of Albert Fish, William King, Detective John Stein, and Assistant District Attorney R. Francis Moreau were present. This interrogation took the form of Fish's free presentation of his version of events, sometimes clarified by leading questions from the police. No record of this interrogation was kept; Formally, the first interrogation began much later (at about 11 p.m. on December 13). The essence of the statement made by Albert Fish was as follows: since 1928, he began to feel an irresistible desire to drink human blood and eat human flesh. The “thirst for blood” haunted him; from about April 1928, Fish began to think about how he could commit a murder that could quench this thirst. He decided to find a young man looking for work through an advertisement in a newspaper, lure him to a remote place, cut off his penis and watch him die from blood loss. Fish believed that meeting him through the newspaper would allow him to maintain complete anonymity. Having seen Edward Buddha's announcement, the gray-haired old man went to look at the candidate for death row. Fish really liked Edward: he was tall, slender and attractive, he probably had a lot of blood. After meeting Edward Buddha, the criminal went to a hardware store and bought three butcher knives, which he planned to use to kill the young man. The fact that Edward Buddha offered to go with his friend did not make any impression on Fish; the criminal was confident in his abilities and had no doubt that he could kill both young men.
The meeting with Grace Budd shocked Fish. The touching innocence of the girl who came from church in a white satin dress struck his imagination and Fish instantly changed his plans. Instead of killing two young people, he planned to kill one girl. The naivety of Grace's parents, who let their daughter go to certain death, amused him and gave him confidence in his abilities. Albert Fish went with Grace to the Bronx, where he boarded a commuter train to Westchester. Telling the police about this, Fish clarified that he bought the girl a one-way ticket.
The trip took 40 minutes. Grace Budd was delighted; she admitted to Fish that she had only been out of town twice in her life. The killer was so absorbed in dreams of what was to come that he forgot the butcher knives wrapped in matting on the train. At Worthington station, Fish and Budd got off the train; the girl remembered that Fish’s bundle was left on the seat, returned to the carriage and took out the matting with the knives wrapped in it.
The intruder took the girl to an empty house known as Wisteria Cottage. Fish had chosen this building ahead of time; it stood apart from the road, few people knew it and therefore retained a fairly good appearance, despite the fact that it had been empty for several years. The unmown lawn and the solitude of the place in which Grace found herself did not alert the girl; She enthusiastically began to pick flowers on the lawn in front of the house, and Fish went inside, climbed the stairs to the second floor and there he stripped naked. Taking the knives in his hands, he called Grace Buddha into the house. The girl with flowers went up to the second floor, saw the naked Fish, screamed and tried to run away. The criminal caught up with her at the stairs and, grabbing her by the throat, strangled her. Fish admitted that he experienced strong sexual arousal during the fight with Grace Buddh, but emphasized that he did not carry out any sexual manipulation with her.
The criminal claimed that after making an incision in the throat of the strangled girl, he pumped the blood into a ladle, which he then threw out in front of the house. He didn’t drink the blood, he was just interested in watching how it flowed from the wound. Using knives, Albert Fish cut out the buttocks, breasts and part of the thighs of Grace Buddha, which he wrapped in newspaper and took with him. He left the body in the house that evening. A few days later, Fish returned to Wisteria Cottage and dismembered the body into small fragments, which he scattered around the building and next to the wall behind it.
Albert Fish was immediately taken to Worthington. Westchester County police were notified that a person was being brought to them to testify about the murder of a child. At Worthington station, Fish and his entourage were met by a dozen police officers and forensic scientists. Fish accurately and without hesitation showed the route of his movement from Worthington station to Wisteria Cottage, which stood quite happily all these years (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3: Wisteria Cottage.

The police search (Fig. 4) was successful; even before sunset, fragments of a human skeleton were found near a brick wall: a skull, a shoulder blade, and pelvic bones. The small size of the parts found suggested they belonged to a child.

Fig. 4: police inspection of the area around Wisteria Cottage.

Forensic experts began a thorough examination of both the estate building itself and the surrounding area, and Fish was taken back to New York.
He was awaiting identification by members of the Buddha family.
Delia Buddh, the mother of the missing Grace, refused to participate in the identification due to a heart condition. Therefore, Albert and Edward Buddha were brought before the district attorney. The girl's father, Albert, was invited first for identification. He didn't even reach the end of the line of 5 gray-haired men, but immediately stopped in front of Fish. “Do you recognize me?” he asked the criminal. “Yes,” Fish answered indifferently, “You are Mr. Budd.” Edward, brought into the room, did not even begin to talk: he rushed at Fish with his fists and had to be taken away by force.
Only after the identification protocol for Albert Fish was drawn up, Assistant District Attorney Marro began the official interrogation of the accused. Already at this first interrogation, Fish formulated the tactics of his behavior that he intended to adhere to in the future. When asked about the purpose of kidnapping Grace Buddhas, he replied: “It’s a kind of bloodlust.” He explained the writing of an anonymous letter to the Buddhas in November 1934 by the presence of “such a mania.” To emphasize his fixation, Fish spoke about the enormous relief he experienced immediately after the murder. “I would give my life for half an hour after what I did,” he said. At the same time, Fish remained true to his original statement that he did not rape Grace and did not sexually manipulate her body. To Marro’s question: “Why didn’t you do this?” Fish replied: “That was not my plan.”

rice. 5: Detective King (left) and his arrestee Albert Fish (center) in front of reporters.

It was clear to anyone that the interrogation of Albert Fish and his confession were only the beginning of a large and very painstaking work to reconstruct the criminal activities of this man. The fact that the criminal’s “track record” is by no means limited to the murder of Grace Buddha became clear from studying the dossier that was opened on him by the New York police already... in 1903 (Fig. 6).

rice. 6: Photo from Albert Fish's file, taken after his first arrest in 1903.

During the period 1903-34. Albert Fish was arrested 6 times; he was accused of theft, sending obscene letters, and harassment on the street. The antics of this man sometimes seemed so absurd that he was subjected to a psychiatric examination 6 times at the expense of the state budget. Each time the doctors declared him healthy.
In Fish’s testimony, which he gave before drawing up the official protocol, attention was drawn to the criminal’s strange confidence that he could cope with two tall young men. Fish was 165 cm tall and weighed 58 kg - such physical data should be considered far from heroic. Therefore, his confidence that he alone could deal with two strong young men could be based only on one thing - the experience of committing previous crimes. This assumption was indirectly confirmed by the dexterity with which Fish used the knife when Detective King appeared. Fortunately, the policeman’s experience and his personal physical qualities were at a high level, which saved his life. There was another indirect argument in favor of the fact that Fish had to kill before: attacks on children belong to the category of serial crimes, that is, repeated ones. Pedophilic tendencies develop in a person quite early - before the age of 25 - so for 58-year-old Fish, the attack on Grace Budd was hardly the first and only one.
Therefore, the next stage of the investigation should be. become a check on Albert Fish for possible involvement in other crimes against children in New York City.
Meanwhile, events developed with amazing speed. Around noon on December 14, 1934, that is, the day after the arrest of Albert Fish, a certain Joseph Meehan appeared at the Manhattan District Attorney's office and wanted to make an important statement. This man turned out to be a tram driver, who, from a photograph published in the newspaper, identified Albert Fish as a passenger on his tram. Meehan was carrying this passenger late in the evening of February 11, 1927. Joseph Meehan remembered the date by no means by chance; the fact is that the gray-haired passenger even then seemed very suspicious to him. A boy was sitting in the arms of an elderly man... without outer clothing, which in February, even for such a warm city as New York, should be considered very strange. Meehan had a strong desire to turn to the police, but as luck would have it, they didn’t come across him that evening. Therefore, the carriage driver tried to remember the gray-haired passenger and the boy in his arms as best as possible. Without hesitation, he named the stop where the old man and the boy got off as “Rainer Avenue” and assured the prosecutor that he was ready to identify Albert Fish.
The date February 11, 1927 coincided with the time of Billy Gaffney's disappearance. Detective King had previously believed that Albert Fish - the "Gray Man" - was involved in the disappearance of a 4-year-old child; Now the investigation has got its hands on an excellent witness.
Summoned immediately for questioning, Albert Fish was taken by surprise. He never expected the questions surrounding Billy Gaffney's disappearance. At first he tried to deny everything, but when he heard from the police that he had been seen with a child on Rainer Avenue, he sank. Fish admitted to abducting a 4-year-old boy, whom he persuaded to hide with him from adults, and said that he took him to an empty house on Rainer Avenue, where he tied him up and left him alone. No, he did not leave the half-naked child to freeze in the night: Albert Fish went to his home on 59th Street, where he armed himself with a nine-tailed whip and a short knife. Already at three o'clock in the morning he returned to the half-frozen Billy Gaffney and began to whip him with a whip. The beating continued until blood flowed down the boy’s legs. After this, the fanatic cut off the ears of the still living baby and cut his mouth from ear to ear. Finally, Fish gouged out his eyes. According to him, by this time Billy Gaffney was already dead. To quench his thirst for blood, he stuck a knife into the boy’s chest and began to suck blood from the resulting deep wound.
Fish described in detail the subsequent manipulations with the body. For use as food, he separated the child's penis, nose and buttocks; his ears had been cut off earlier; the criminal also took them with him. Next, Fish separated the head and cut off the arms and legs, about 5 cm below the buttocks. He placed the body parts in potato sacks: the head in one, the arms in another, the torso in a third, the legs in a fourth. The criminal stuffed scraps of newspapers, wrapping paper, cardboard, bricks and rubble from the construction site into the same bags. All four bags were drowned by the killer in the North Beach area.
The protocol preserved a detailed description of the food prepared by the gourmet from human flesh. Fish stewed the meat with spices, carrots, turnips, celery, etc. “It was good,” the killer assessed the resulting dish, “I savored the meat for 4 days.” The only thing that upset the cook was that he couldn’t chew his penis, which turned out to be too hard; he threw it into the toilet.
The interrogation on December 14 is significant in that Albert Fish, without waiting for the detectives’ questions, began talking about his own cannibalism. Moreover, he tried to add more disgusting details to his revelations in order to convince others that a normal person is incapable of such things. This development of events indirectly confirmed the detectives’ assumption that the criminal at a certain stage would begin to simulate a severe mental disorder, which would be intended to ensure his release from criminal punishment. If Albert Fish had not pursued such a goal, he would never have talked about his cannibalism without leading questions, and certainly would not have admitted it without indisputable evidence.
The next day, December 15, 1934, another witness came to the police, identifying Albert Fish as a pedophile criminal. Moreover, this person spoke about an incident that was not included in the police reports. Back in 1924 (i.e., 10 years before Fish’s arrest), he tried to deceive the daughter of a witness into the forest. He miraculously managed to intervene and stop the attacker; The 8-year-old girl was not physically harmed. Now she and her father were ready to officially identify Fish, whose photograph they saw in the newspaper. Such an identification was carried out and the case was supplemented with evidence of another crime of the fanatic.

Maniac Albert Fish is considered one of the first officially recognized maniacs in America. This handsome old man abducted, raped, killed and ate children at the beginning of the twentieth century. The exact number of his victims has not been established to this day.

“I always wanted to hurt others and make others hurt me.”

Albert Fish.

A maniac whose name will be remembered for centuries

The future maniac and cannibal Fish was born in Washington in 1870. His father, Randall Fish, a fertilizer salesman, turned 75 that year. He was 43 years older than Albert's mother. The maniac had two brothers and a sister, but he was the youngest. Much later, psychiatrists and researchers would argue that all members of the Fish family suffered from various mental disorders. Most likely, when making absentee diagnoses, scientists tried to find the most realistic, from their point of view, explanation of what turns an ordinary person into a bloody monster. In any case, no reliable evidence of the Fish’s mental abnormalities was ever presented. At birth, the future maniac received the name Hamilton. When he was five years old, his father Randel Fish died on the street from a heart attack. The Fishes didn’t have much savings, and Hamilton’s mother was forced to give him to a shelter. It was there that Fish received the nickname “Scrambled Eggs and Ham”, which was consonant with his name - Nago and Eggs. He could not get rid of this nickname for a very long time. Because of this, he disliked the name given to him at birth. Also, while in the shelter, Fish realized that he enjoyed violence. In those days, many shelters in America practiced physical punishment in the form of spanking. During the punishments, and then the beatings, little Fish got an erection. For a five to eight year old boy, this was unusual and served as an additional incentive to harass Fish.

Four years later, in 1879, Albert's mother was able to get a government job and took her son. But the experience at the orphanage changed the future Boogeyman forever. He was only 12 years old when he entered into a homosexual relationship with a postman boy who delivered telegrams. Around the same time, Fish began visiting public baths, where he could freely view naked bodies. He was especially attracted to boyish bodies, between the ages of 7 and 12.

Maniac and his prison “experience”

In 1890, Fish moved to New York. Immediately after the move, he changed the name Hamilton, which he hated, to Albert. He later said that he moved to become a prostitute. Whether he was a male prostitute is not known for certain. But it was possible to establish that after his arrival he began to regularly rape little boys. The maniac chose his victims among street children, of whom there were a lot on the streets of New York at that time. They did not try to report it to the police, and therefore the police were not aware of Fish’s art. However, Albert's mother suspected something and decided to urgently marry her son. In 1898, Albert married a 19-year-old girl chosen by his mother. From this marriage the Boogeyman had six children, four sons and two girls. But he continued to hunt for children. In 1903, Albert Fish was caught stealing from a warehouse, where he worked as either a loader or a storekeeper. He was sentenced to two years in prison and sent to the famous Sing Sing prison.

Albert was very popular in prison. In those days, homosexuals still tried not to advertise their preferences. And so the hardened prisoners, who had not seen a woman for decades, had to rape their weaker cellmates. And here there is no need to force anyone, Albert was always in favor.

Freeing the Boogeyman

After leaving prison in 1905, Fish became quiet for a while. Or maybe he didn’t calm down: in those days there was no global information technology, and therefore no one found out about some crimes. He committed his first murder, which Fish is charged with, in 1910. The victim was nine-year-old Thomas Bedden from Delaware. The next murder occurred nine years later. Fish, according to police, stabbed to death a mentally retarded boy in Virginia. The fact that it was the Boogeyman who committed both of these crimes is quite controversial. But now it is too difficult to verify this.

But the next crime directly indicated that it was the maniac Fish who committed it. On July 14, 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDonnell disappeared. The boy's friends said that he left with an elderly, thin man with a gray mustache. The police began searching for the Gray Man, one of Fish's nicknames given to him by the police because of the color of his coat. But in those days, the police had no experience in investigating such unmotivated crimes. And the investigation led nowhere. On February 11, 1927, four-year-old Billy Gaffney disappeared. Gafni's three-year-old friend, also Billy, witnessed the abduction. He said that while they were playing not far from their house, a sort of “boogie man”, the Boogeyman, approached them. Why "boogie"? “He was so fabulous, not scary at all,” the child said. Well, a real “boogie man.” What a three-year-old child meant by the concept of Boogeyman is not so important. Most likely something good. But it was he who defined true horror in all its ugly glory. And the little witness also described the Boogeyman’s gray mustache, which he even allowed to touch. There is no doubt that today's police would cling to the gray mustache and be able to connect the Gray Man with the Boogeyman. But the experience of the police officers of that time took its toll... The maniac committed the most famous kidnapping and murder in June 1928. 18-year-old Edward Budd placed an advertisement in a newspaper looking for work in a rural area and indicated his address. That’s where 58-year-old Fish came. It is quite possible that he wanted to kidnap the young man. However, when he arrived, he saw Edward’s ten-year-old sister, Grace. And his plans changed. He spent several hours with the Budds, promised to hire Edward, and left. He returned, as promised, in a couple of days. He told Edward to pack his things and he would come pick him up later. And while Edward is getting ready, Fish, he introduced himself as farmer Frank Howard and convinced Grace’s parents to let her go with him to the holiday. Like, his niece, who lives not very far away, just has a birthday. The trusting Budds let the girl go and never saw her again. By the way, two years after Grace’s disappearance, the police arrested a certain Charles Edward Pope. His wife reported to the police that it was he who kidnapped the girl. Pope was jailed for four months. But his guilt could not be proven at trial. But it turned out that Pope was going to divorce his wife and even moved out of the shared apartment. Women's revenge?

The maniac sent a shocking letter

And six and a half years after Grace disappeared, in November 1934, her mother Delia received an anonymous letter. This letter, which the maniac sent, became the most famous of all the messages of maniacs. The Boogeyman outlined too shocking details in his message. This is what the letter said: “My dear Mrs. Budd! In 1894, my friend sailed as a sailor on the steamship Tacoma under the command of Captain John Davis. From San Francisco they sailed to Hong Kong, China. On arrival my friend and two other sailors went ashore and got drunk. When they returned, the ship had already left. There was a famine in China at that time. Meat of any kind cost from $1 to $3 per pound. Since the poor suffered the most, all children under 12 were sold for food in order to save the elders from starvation. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe on the street. You could walk into any store and ask for a steak, and they would cook it for you. You would be given pieces of the body of a boy or a girl if you only wanted a cut of such meat. The butt of a boy or girl is the most delicious part of the body, it was sold at the highest price. A friend who stayed there acquired a taste for human flesh. Upon returning to New York, he captured two boys - 7 and 11 years old. Hiding them in his remote home, he kept them tied up in the closet. Several times a day he spanked them to make the meat tastier. He killed an 11-year-old boy first because he was fatter and had more meat. The smaller boy repeated this path. At that time I lived at 409 East 100th Street. A friend told me so often about the taste of human flesh that I decided to try it in order to form my own opinion. On Sunday, June 3, 1928, I addressed you at 406 West 15th Street. I brought you a basket of strawberries. We had breakfast. Grace sat on my lap and kissed me. I decided to eat it. I offered to take her to the holiday. You said, "Yes, she can go." I led her to an empty house in Bestchester, which I had chosen ahead of time. When we got there, I told her to stay outside. She collected wild flowers. I went upstairs and took off all my clothes. I knew that if I started doing what I intended, I would stain her with blood. When everything was ready, I went to the window and called her. I then hid in the toilet until she entered the room. When she saw me naked, she screamed and tried to run up the stairs. I grabbed her, and she said that she would tell her mom everything. First I stripped her naked. How she kicked, bit and tore! I strangled her and then cut out the soft parts to take to my rooms. Cook and eat... It took me 9 days to completely eat her meat. I did not copulate with her, although I could have if I wanted. She died a virgin."

The maniac told his lawyer that he had raped Grace. But the police did not confirm this statement. In general, as psychiatrists noted, Fish was simply a pathological liar.

The maniac made a fatal mistake

Grace's parents did not believe in the reality of what the maniac described. They thought that someone was playing a stupid and terrible joke on them. But the letter was still delivered to the police and fell into the hands of the chief investigator, William F. King. And the policeman didn't think it was a joke. He also immediately noticed that the letter was sealed in a branded envelope. But the envelope was clearly recognizable as the hexagonal emblem of the New York Teamsters Private Benevolent Association. Such envelopes were produced not in millions, but in small batches. King ordered a thorough survey of all employees of the organization regarding the misuse of envelopes. The doorman admitted that he took several envelopes for his own needs. However, he did not have time to use them all. I forgot a few in the furnished rooms I recently moved out of. The owner of the rooms said that after this doorman, the room was rented by an elderly, thin man with a gray mustache. She also said that the guest receives money from his son. Having moved out a few days ago, he did not receive the latest transfer. And he must come for him. King decided to personally meet the suspicious grandfather. In those days there were no special forces, and the police sometimes went alone to arrest criminals. That's what King did. Albert Fish, as soon as the investigator introduced himself and offered to go with him, attacked King with two straight razors in his hands. But the policeman tied up the maniac and took him to headquarters. There, the Boogeyman immediately confessed to killing Grace. And the girl’s mother and brother identified him. But the police decided to try other disappearances on Fish. His photograph was published in the newspaper. And soon the trolleybus controller contacted the police and identified Fish as the man who was traveling in his vehicle with a little boy on February 11, 1927. The witness stated that he remembered the strange couple because the boy was without a jacket, crying and constantly calling for his mother. It was the day Bill Gaffney disappeared, whose body was never found. The boy's mother turned directly to the freak and asked the maniac to tell about her son. Here's what the Boogeyman had to say about Gafni's murder: “I brought him to Riker Avenue. There is a secluded house there, not far from the place where I met him. I took the boy there. Stripped him naked, tied his hands and feet, gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I found in a landfill. Then I burned his clothes. Threw his shoes in a landfill. Then I went back, at 2 o’clock in the morning I boarded a trolleybus to 59th Street and from there I walked home. The next day, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, I took a tool - a good heavy cat-o'-nine-tail. Made it at home. Short handle. Cut one of my belts in half and cut the halves into six eight-inch strips. I whipped his bare bottom until blood ran down his legs... He soon died... I brought 4 old potato sacks and collected a bunch of stones. Then I cut it. I had a traveling bag with me... I came home with my meat. I had the front of his body, I love the best... In four days I ate all his pieces.”

Execution or double pleasure

After Grace’s mother’s letter, most psychiatrists began to declare that Albert Fish was insane and could not be tried. Apparently, this was precisely the verdict that the maniac sought by depicting his “exploits.” The maniac also claimed that he deeply believed in God. And even when he ate his victims and drank their blood, he simply performed the rite of communion. – When you come to church and accept prosphira and wine from the hands of the priest, what does he tell you? - said Fish. “Here is the flesh and blood of Christ,” says the pastor. Didn't I do the same thing by eating flesh and blood? But although psychiatrists were inclined to think about insanity, Fish still appeared before the jury. It is quite possible that this was a political decision. One way or another, but on March 11, 1935, the trial began, ending ten days later with a death sentence. After hearing the verdict, the maniac exclaimed: “What a delight - to die in the electric chair!” This will be the highest pleasure - the only one that I have not yet experienced!

He really was a masochist and did not exaggerate at all that he enjoyed pain. In particular, this fact is known. When on January 16, 1936, Albert Fish was chained to the electric chair in the Sing Sing prison he was already familiar with, they could not immediately pass the current through his body. The switch had to be turned on twice before the doctor declared death. The reason was revealed during the autopsy. It turned out that Fish had inserted several dozen needles into his own body. 27 of them were found in the groin area alone! This metal prevented the normal flow of electric current. But this same metal brought unbearable suffering to Fish. It seems that the maniac received full “pleasure” from the double execution.

Photos of maniac Albert Fish:

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