<Archive Obituary> Albert Fish (January 16th 1936)
Bill Schenley
Albert Fish, 65, Pays Penalty at Sing Sing -
Bronx Negro Also Is Put to Death
Photo:
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h112/zerokol82/Albert-Fish-1.jpg
FROM: The New York Times (January 17th 1936) ~
Special to The Times
OSSINING, N.Y., Jan. 16
Albert Fish, 65 years old, of 55 East 128th Street,
Manhattan, a house-painter who murdered Grace
Budd, 6, after attacking her in a Westchester
farmhouse in 1928, was put to death tonight in the
electric chair at Sing Sing prison. John Smith, 41, of
203 West 144th Street, Manhattan, Negro restaurant
proprietor, who was convicted of killing James Wilson
in a fight in the Bronx, preceded Fish in the chair by a
few minutes.
Fish entered the death chamber with his hands clasped
in prayer at 11:06 P.M. He was pronounced dead at
11:09. Smith swung into the chair on a crutch at 11:01
and was dead three minutes later.
The Rev. Anthony Petersen, Protestant chaplain at the
prison, accompanied each condemned man from his cell
to the chamber.
Neither had anything to say before he died.
Fish arrived at Sing Sing last March 25, after his conviction
in White Plains of having lured Grace Budd from her
tenement home on the lower West Side of Manhattan June 3,
1928, taking her to an unoccupied house in Greenburgh and
murdering her.
Smith entered the prison here last June 28. His lower right
leg was amputated years ago.
---
Photos:
http://www.serialkillers.it/images/biografie/Fish_Albert.jpg
http://profiler.hp.infoseek.co.jp/image/fishgrace00.gif
(Grace Budd)
Albert Fish in art:
(Part one)
http://isthistomorrow.com/history/Fish1.gif
(Part two)
http://isthistomorrow.com/history/Fish2.gif
---
Anonymous Letters In Murder Case
_____________________
Arrest After Six Years
FROM: The New York Herald (December 15th 1934) ~
By Our Own Correspondent
New York, Dec. 14
Albert H. Fish, a mild-mannered little house painter of 65,
was arrested yesterday on a charge of murdering a
10-year-old girl named Grace Budd, whose fate has been
a mystery for six years.
On June 3, 1928, the girl was taken away from her home
by a man calling himself "Howard," ostensibly to attend a
children's party. The child's parents had met "Howard"
only once before, but had been charmed by his manners,
and made no objection to the child's going away with him
for the day. That was the last they ever saw of her.
Fish is alleged to have confessed that he is "Howard," and
that he took the child to an empty house at Elmsford, in
Westchester where he killed her and cut up her body. He
hid her head in an outhouse (where the police found it
yesterday) and left the building.
At intervals in the past six years the Budds have received
anonymous letters giving revolting details of the murder of
their child. All of them were in "Howard's" handwriting, of
which the police had a specimen - the original of a telegram
"Howard" had sent to the Budds before he took the child
away. In the course of the search for "Howard" five men
were arrested at various times and each was positively
identified by Mrs. Budd as the abductor. Fish has himself
been in police custody three times since the alleged murder
on charges of larceny; but there was no suspicion that he
was connected with the child's disappearance.
---
The Life & Crimes of One of America's Most Deranged Killers
There are few killers in American history that are remembered
today as being as deranged and fiendish as the seemingly kind
and harmless, Albert Fish. He looked like every child's favorite
grandfather but behind the quiet facade of his silver hair and
mustache lurked a hideous monster who preyed on the young
and the innocent with his horrific "instruments of hell" -- a meat
cleaver, a butcher knife and a saw. He was the self-admitted
molester of more than 400 children during a span of 20 years
and in the words of one of the shocked psychiatrists who
examined him, he lived a life of "unparalleled perversity." Albert
Fish remains one of the oldest men ever executed in the
electric chair but it was a death that came too late for many of
his victims.
After his capture, Fish would blame the conditions of his
childhood for his crimes. Although he was related to ancestors
who fought in the American Revolution, Fish was abandoned at
an early age and placed in an orphanage, where he saw and
experienced his first brutal acts of sadism. He had been born in
1870 in the Washington D.C. area and later married and raised
six children. He had minor public education and mostly worked
as a handyman and a painter. It's likely that his psychosis actually
manifested much earlier but according to the testimony of one of
his children, his weird and unpredictable behavior did not begin to
surface until January 1917. It was at this time that his wife ran
away with John Straube, a slow-witted handyman who boarded
with the Fish family. Fish returned from work one day to find the
house deserted and stripped of its furniture.
Mrs. Fish was apparently a bit odd herself. She once returned to
her husband with Straube at her side and asked if they could move
in with the family. Fish said that she could but that her loved could
not and so she agreed and sent Straube away. Days later, Fish
discovered that his wife had actually secreted Straube in the attic
and he lurked there while she smuggled food up to him. Again,
Fish told her that she could stay but that Straube had to leave.
They both departed this time and the family never saw Mrs. Fish
again.
Soon after, Fish began to behave very strangely. He took his family
up to their summer home, Wisteria Cottage, in Westchester
County, New York for outings and they would watch, terrified, as
he climbed a nearby hill, shook his fist at the sky and repeatedly
screamed, "I am Christ!". Pain seemed to delight him. Whether
inflicting it on himself or others, he took strange pleasure in being
whipped and paddled. He encouraged his own and neighbor
children to paddle his buttocks until they bled, often using a paddle
that was studded with inch-and-a-half nails. He also inserted a large
number of needles into his body, mostly in the genital region [1],
and burned himself constantly with hot irons and pokers.
He even answered classified ads placed with widows seeking
husbands. His letters --- 46 of them were recovered and entered as
evidence at his trial -- were so obscene and vile that the prosecution
refused to make them public. Basically, Fish told the lovelorn ladies
that he was not as interested in marriage as he was in their
willingness to paddle him. None of the women accepted his offers.
On night of the full moon, his children later testified, Fish would
consume huge quantities of raw meat. Over the years, he collected
a great amount of published material on cannibalism and he carried
the most gruesome articles with him on his person at all times.
Before he ever turned to murder, Fish was examined several times
by psychiatrists at Bellevue but he was always released and judged
"disturbed but sane."
When and where Fish first became a murderer is unknown. He
confessed to six killing and referred vaguely to dozens more,
although the victims, dates and places were lost to his hazy
memory. He did confess to murdering a man in Wilmington,
Delaware; mutilating and torturing to death a mentally retarded
boy in New York in 1910; killing a Negro boy in Washington also in
1919; molesting and killing four year-old William Gaffney in 1929;
and strangling to death five year-old Francis McDonnell on Long
Island in 1934. The most sensational murder carried out by Fish
was the abduction and horrific slaughter of Grace Budd in 1928. Her
abduction led to a man hunt that lasted for six years. The police
have given up hope of ever solving her mysterious disappearance
until a slender clue, gleaned from an anonymous letter sent to the
girl's parents, led detectives to Albert Fish.
Fish introduced himself to the Budd's in a way that never raised
suspicions with the hard-working family. Albert Budd, Grace's father,
earned a modest living as a doorman but it never seemed to be
enough to adequately take care of the entire brood, which consisted
of his wife, Delia, eighteen year-old Edward, Albert Jr., Grace and
the youngest child, five year-old Beatrice. To help his father make
ends meet, Edward advertised in the May 27, 1928 issue of the
New York World Telegram for a job. His ad read: "Young man, 18,
wishes position in the country," followed by his name and address.
That same afternoon, a nicely dressed Albert Fish answered the
ad and showed up at the Budd home in the Chelsea district of
Manhattan. He introduced himself as Mr. Frank Howard, a farmer
from Long Island who was willing to pay $15 per week to a willing
young worker. The family could scarcely believe Edward's luck and
good fortune and quickly invited Mr. Howard into the house. After
hearing Fish's description of the farm, Edward readily accepted the
position Mr. Howard promised to return the next week and take
not only Edward out to the farm, but his friend Willie as well.
Howard stressed that he had enough work for both of the young
men.
Fish did not return as promised on June 2, the following Saturday,
but he did send an apologetic telegram, and arrived on Monday
instead. Impressed by his manners, the Budd's greeted him
warmly and invited him to stay for lunch. Fish behaved just like a
visiting grandfather and passed out treats and dollar bills to the
children. He presented two of the bills to Eddie and Willie and while
he had a prior engagement, he promised to return that evening to
pick them up and take them to his farm. However, he had a special
treat for the oldest daughter, Grace, he told her trusting parents. If
they were agreeable to the idea, he wanted to take her to a
children's birthday party at the home of his married sister at 137th
Street and Columbus Avenue. The Budd's readily agreed and Grace
left with Fish, holding onto his hand, still wearing the pure, white
dress that she had worn to church that morning. The two of them
walked off down the street together. The Budd's waved goodbye to
their little girl -- and never saw her alive again.
When Grace did not return home that night with Mr. Howard, the
Budd's were concerned but not overly worried. They assumed that
the party has lasted late and that she had likely spent the night
with Mr. Howard's sister. They tried hard to convince themselves of
this, even into the following morning, when there was still no sign of
Grace. Finally, Albert Budd decided to go to the address himself
and inquire after his daughter. However, he soon found that the
address where Howard's sister supposedly lived did not even
exist -- Columbus only went as far as 109th. This made his next
stop the closest police station, where he was referred to the
Missing Persons Bureau and eventually to veteran detective,
William King. The detectives were suspicious of the situation right
from the start. It did not take them long to find that there was no
Frank Howard with a farm on Long Island. This also meant that there
was no real clue to the abductor's true identity. The man had covered
his tracks well, even going as far as to retrieve the telegram that he
had sent to the Budd's. He claimed that he was going to complain to
Western Union because it had been addressed incorrectly.
Regardless, King and other members of the Bureau started a long
and arduous search for the Western Union copy of the telegram. It
was the only link that he had with Grace's kidnapper and three postal
clerks spent more than 15 hours sifting though tens of thousands of
duplicates with King before they found the one that Howard had sent.
The only clue it provided was that it had been sent from an office in
East Harlem. The idea of searching every home in that part of the city
was first considered and then abandoned as a physical impossibility.
King then focused on another slim link -- a small pail of cheese and a
carton of strawberries that Howard had purchased for Mrs. Budd. He
told her that they were fresh from the farm. Investigators scoured the
East Harlem area until they found the delicatessen where Howard
had bought the cheese and they also found the street peddler who
had sold him the strawberries. The peddler described the man in
detail but could recall nothing else significant about him. That trail
also ran cold...
Grace Budd's disappearance started a widespread search through
New York City that fall, particularly when the detective and the
family went to the media with the story. Grace's photo appeared
on the front page of newspapers and garnered hundreds of tips,
leads and investigation advice from an angry and panicked public.
Thousands of circulars were printed and sent out to police
departments throughout the United States and Canada but with no
results. The Budd's grew more and more despondent as lead after
lead went nowhere. A couple of months after Grace vanished, even
the most dedicated investigators --- with the exception of Will King --
had given up on the case as hopeless.
King was already a legend in New York law enforcement circles and
he was the only investigator who never gave up hope. Not a day went
by when he did not think of Grace and her grieving parents and when he
did not put in at least some time on the case, following up long shots
and making calls. He never let a lead cross his desk that he did not
look into.
At one point, King was sure that he was onto his man when he
received a file on a gray-haired con man and forger named Albert
Corthell, who was on the run for trying to abduct a little girl from an
adoption agency. King tracked Corthell for months, chasing him from
city to city across the country. He finally caught up with him and was
crushed when he found out that Corthell had been in prison in Seattle
when Grace was taken.
Corthell turned out to be one of two strong leads that King pursued
over six long years. Another suspect, Charles Edward Pope, was
also arrested and actually charged in Grace's kidnapping. However,
Mrs. Budd, the principal witness in the case, admitted in court that
she had picked out the wrong man. It turned out that Pope had been
blamed for the kidnapping by his vindictive ex-wife. He was
subsequently released.
Around the same time that Corthell and Pope were being
exhaustively investigated by the police, another gray-haired old
man was arrested in New York and was charged with sending
obscene materials, mostly letters, through the mail. The letters
were sent with Fish pretending to be a well-known Hollywood
movie producer and in them, he offered large sums of money to
women who might engage in sadomasochistic orgies with him.
After his arrest, he was committed to the psychiatric ward at
Bellevue for a ten-day observation. While there, the letter writer
claimed that, although his friends knew him as Albert, his real
name was Hamilton Fish and he was a relative of the famous New
York family of the same name. He would tell the same story again
when arrested for Grace Budd's murder four years later. Strangely,
there has never been any reason to doubt that he may have actually
hailed from this prestigious family stock. Fish remained in Bellevue
for nearly 30 days in the winter of 1930. He was polite and
cooperative and the doctors judged him sane, although with
sexual problems that they attributed to dementia caused by his
advancing age. He was thought harmless and was released from
the hospital into the custody of his daughter Anna.Meanwhile,
years were passing in the Grace Budd case and despite
Detective King's ongoing efforts, it appeared that her vanishing
would never be solved. Then on November 11, 1934 -- six years
after she had been kidnapped -- Mrs. Budd received an unsigned
and anonymous letter in the mail. The letter claimed to be from a
friend of someone named "Captain John Davis". According to the
letter writer, Captain Davis was a seafaring man who, on one of
his trips to China, developed a taste for human flesh, namely the
flesh of children, during a famine in the Far East. The letter then
described in graphic terms how Captain Davis, after returning to
New York, had kidnapped and murdered two young boys, had
cooked their flesh and had eaten it. After learning from Davis that
the flesh of children was "good and tender", the deranged letter
writer decided to try it for himself. He had visited the Budd home for
lunch and had taken the girl away with him.
Mrs. Budd sobbed hysterically as the letter went on to detail how he
had taken Grace to an empty house in Westchester, New York. He
let her pick flowers in the garden while he stripped himself naked. He
called her into the house and when she saw the grizzled and naked
old man, she began to scream. She tried to run away, he wrote, but he
caught her, stripped her and then choked her to death. Then, he
dismembered her body and cooked and ate the smaller pieces.
Bizarrely, the letter described how Grace had been killed and cut up
but went to extremes to assure Mrs. Budd that she had not been
sexually molested in any way. "She died a virgin", the writer assured
the anguished mother.
After the horrific letter, investigators went into action, pulling out
all stops to find the monster who had written it. The investigation
was again led by Detective King, who had deferred his retirement
two years earlier so that he could continue to work on the Grace
Budd case. King immediately found "Mr. Howard's" original Western
Union telegram blank and there was no doubt about it -- the
handwriting was the same. "Howard" and the letter writer were one
and the same person. King used a microscope on the letter and
discovered an almost indiscernible design on the flap of the envelope.
It turned out to be the letters N.Y.P.C.B.A. and a quick search
through the Manhattan telephone directory revealed the letters to
stand for the New York Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association,
headquartered at 627 Lexington Avenue. The association gladly
opened its files to Detective King and he spent hours checking the
backgrounds and handwriting of their 400 employees. Sadly though,
he did not come up with a match. Undaunted, he called all of
the employees together and questioned them rigorously. He also
added an appeal for any information the drivers might have that
could help him with the case. He offered immunity for theft of the
letter writing materials and envelopes --- all he wanted was to catch
the sadistic child killer.
After his appeal to the drivers, King retreated to a private office in
the association's headquarters and hoped that his assurances
would pay off. A few minutes later, a nondescript man in a
chauffeur's uniform named Lee Sicowski knocked on the door. He
told Detective King that he had a habit of taking the association's
stationary home with him and using it. In fact, Sicowski explained,
he had left some of the unused notepaper and envelopes in a room
that he had occupied at 622 Lexington. Detectives raced to the
rooming house but there was nothing there. King then urged
Sicowski to think of anywhere else the stationary could have been.
Sicowski then remembered that he had also spent some time in a
cheap boarding house at 200 East 52nd Street. He might have left
some of it there.
This address turned out to be a flophouse but it was here that
investigators struck gold. The landlady, Mrs. Frieda Schneider,
stated that Sicowski's old room was recently occupied by a man
who fit Frank Howard's description. His name was actually Albert
Fish. Carefully, checked the signature in the room register and he
was convinced that the handwriting was the same as that of the
letter writer. However, Fish had recently checked out of the place
but he was in the habit of receiving a monthly check from one his
sons. It was always sent to the 200 East 52nd Street address. King
was prepared to invest a few more weeks in the hunt for the killer and
so he took a room at the flophouse at the top of the stairs, which
gave him a view of the entrance and the upstairs and downstairs
hallways.
He waited for three days and then on December 13, 1934, King
received an urgent call from the flophouse. He had left to return to
the station and file some paperwork when the landlady called -- Fish
was back! When he returned to the house, Mrs. Schneider met him
at the door. Fish had come back a half hour earlier and to stall until
the detective could get there, she had given him a cup of tea and
invited him to sit down. Trying to remain clam, King drew his revolver
and walked into the room where Fish waited. What he found was a
harmless-looking, white-haired old man with a scraggly mustache and
watery blue eyes. He was sipping at a cup of team. Detective King
identified himself and the Fish made no effort to conceal his own
identity. Then, the detective asked Fish to accompany him to police
headquarters for questioning.
King was then shocked and stunned when the seemingly
harmless old man reached into his pocket and lunged at King
with a vicious straight razor in his hand! Fish was no match for the
solidly built officer though and King grabbed him by the wrist and
twisted it until the razor dropped to the floor. He quickly handcuffed
the old man and searched his pockets. To his horror, he found that
Fish's pockets were crammed with assorted sharp knives and razors.
He then turned the man around to face him and stared into his
withered face. "I've got you now," King said triumphantly, ended a
six year manhunt.
At the police station, Fish became more resigned to his arrest
and confessed to succumbing to his "blood thirst" in the summer
of 1928. His original victim, he explained, had been intended to be
Edward Budd, who had placed the classified ad. However, when
he got to the Budd house and saw the size of the stocky teenager,
he changed his mind and set his sights on the more vulnerable
Grace. He freely confessed to kidnapping the girl and taking her to
Wisteria Cottage in a place called Worthington Woods, in
Westchester County. His recall of the day when he kidnapped the
girl was clear after six years, as the old man had probably relived it
in his mind over and over again. He had bought a round trip train
ticket to Worthington Woods for himself and a one-way ticket for
Grace. And he also remembered that when they were changing
trains, he had left a bundle behind on the seat. Grace, trying to be
helpful, ran back and retrieved it for him. Inside of the bundle were
Fish's grisly tools of death -- a cleaver, saw and butcher's knife --
and Grace happily handed them over, never knowing that they would
taste her flesh a short time later. After arriving at Wisteria Cottage,
Fish systematically strangled the girl, beheaded her and dismembered
her body, dissecting her torso at the waist, and then he cut her up and
ate her over a nine-day period. Investigators later reported that Fish
grinned as he described draining her blood and drinking it.
The horrified detectives then made their own trip to Wisteria
Cottage and recovered the skeletal remains of Grace Budd,
buried in pieces beside a stone wall behind the cottage. Detective
King finally had his killer -- but Fish couldn't stop confessing. He
described other murders that he had committed between 1910 and
1934. Much of what he told police turned out to be false or
exaggerated but he still provided enough details to convince the
investigators that he had killed before. Some have even suggested
that he may have killed dozens of people! The detectives were also
chilled to discover that Fish had been arrested in the New York area
six times since the disappearance of Grace Budd on charges that
ranged from petty larceny, to vagrancy, to sending obscene letters
through the post office. Three of the arrests occurred in the three-
month period after Grace had been kidnapped but each time the
charges against him were dismissed. As for the other arrests, he
walked free each time with either a short period of incarceration or a
fine. No one ever guessed that the old man was a depraved killer.
One of the few people not surprised at the arrest of Fish was his
son, Albert Fish Jr. "That old skunk," he said in a newspaper
interview, "I always knew that he would get caught for something
like this." He went on to tell of his father's penchant for raw meat
and how he had come home one day to find his father stripped naked
and beating himself with a heavy board that was studded with sharp
nails. He threw the old man out of his house shortly after. He
concluded his interview in disgust. "I've never wanted anything to do
with him and I'll not left a hand to help him."
Fish was examined by teams of doctors and he relished the
notoriety. He described his fetishes and perversions to the
fascinated psychiatrists, telling of inserting needles into his
scrotum (later X-rays revealed 29 rusty needles in his body) and
inserting wool that was doused with light fluid into his anus and
setting it on fire. One psychiatrist in particular, Dr. Frederic
Wertham [2] [3], got remarkably close to Fish before and after his
trial. He later wrote that Fish "looked like a meek and innocuous
little old man, gentle and benevolent, friendly and polite. If you
wanted someone to entrust your children to, he would be the one
you would choose." However, he then went on to describe
Fish as the most complex example of a "polymorphous pervert"
he had ever known --- someone who had practiced every perversion
and deviation known to man, from sodomy to sadism, eating
excrement and self mutilation. He even confessed to Wertham
that he had carried Grace's ears and nose back to New York with
him, wrapped in newspaper. He placed the bundle on his lap as
he traveled by train and quivered with excitement as he thought
about what was inside.
Like the other examining physicians, Wertham judged Fish to be
insane. He said that Fish was a sadist of incredible cruelty, a
homosexual and a pedophile with a penchant for young children.
As a self-employed painter, Fish had skulked around basements
and cellars for 50 years and preyed on scores of innocent children.
He could not begin to guess how many victims the man had claimed
"but I believe to the best of my knowledge," Wertham concluded,
"that he has raped one hundred children, at least."
Fish's attorney, James Dempsey, told the jury at trial, mentioning
the needles and the nail-studded paddles, that they were dealing
with a tragic mental case. "We do not have to prove that he is
insane," Dempsey told the jury. "Rather it is up to the state to
prove that he is sane." Dempsey only had one question for the
lead psychiatrist for the defense, Dr. Wertham, but that one question
about Fish's sanity took an hour and fifteen minutes to read. It was
15,000 words long and covered 45 type-written pages. Wertham only
used three words to reply: "He is insane."
This stunt did nothing to convince the jury though and whether
they believed he was insane or not, they wanted to see the killer
punished. He was found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric
chair. Fish had only one response to this verdict: "Going to the
electric chair will be the supreme thrill of my life."
He came to Sing Sing prison in 1935 carrying a Bible and
handcuffed to another murderer, named Stone, whose forefathers
had also fought in the American Revolution. Dozens of appeals to
save Fish were rejected and he was scheduled to die on
January 16, 1936. As his appointment with the electric chair grew
closer, Fish told reporters that he was looking forward to his
execution. "It will be the only thrill I have not tried," he reportedly
said. On January 16, Fish ate his last meal (a steak) and without
aid, entered the death room and walked briskly to the electric chair.
He climbed into the seat and readily helped the guards fix the
electrodes to his legs. The reporters and witnesses who were
present were aghast at his behavior. He could barely manage to
contain his joy at going to a violent death.
Legend has it that death did not come as quickly as Fish might
have liked. When the switch was pulled, according to the story,
the first massive jolt of over 3,000 volts failed to kill him. Blue
smoke appeared around him but that was all and it has been
surmised that the needles that he had put into his body actually
created a short circuit. Another, prolonged and massive charge
had to be sent through his body in order to execute him -- or so the
story that circulated went. In truth, Fish died just like anyone else.
When the current raced through him, his body surged and his fists
clenched. Moments later, the doctor on duty pronounced that Fish,
the oldest man ever executed at Sing Sing, was dead.
While the old man's corpse was being taken out to the autopsy
room, his defense attorney met with reporters. In his hand, he held
Albert Fish's final statement, several pages of hand-written notes
that he had penned in the hours before his death. To this day, the
statement has never been revealed.
"I will never show it to anyone," Dempsey said. "it was the most filthy
string of obscenities that I have ever read."
[1] http://www.serialkillers.it/images/biografie/Fish_Albert.jpg
(X-Ray of Fish's groin)
[2]
http://www.ccqhumor.com.br/artigos-undeground/imagens/wertham%20foto.jpg
(Dr. Frederic Wertham)
[3] Dr. Wertham is aslo known as comic books "greatest villain."
http://www.fantagraphics.com/blog/uploaded_images/Batlove-784417.jpg