Who could imagine that behind the face of a sixty-five-year-old man was hiding one of the most ruthless cannibalistic serial killers of the early 20th century in the United States. To his credit, he has the sexual abuse of at least one hundred children - he himself admitted it once he was arrested -, the murder of three of them and the attempted murder of two more people.
According to his psychiatric report, Albert Fish had a sadistic and masochistic personality, characterized by a tendency to castration and self-castration, homosexuality, exhibitionism and voyeurism, pedophilia, fetishism and hyperhedonism. He took pleasure in practicing coprophagy (ingestion of feces) and cannibalism. This pedophile and 'grandfather murderer' was nicknamed by the public "the Werewolf of Wysteria", "the Vampire of Brooklyn" and "the Man in Grey" because of the color of his suit.
A double life: sadism, masochism and prostitution.
Hamilton Howard Fish was born on May 19, 1870 in Washington. After the death of one of his brothers, he decided to change his name to Albert, possibly to forget one of his nicknames, Ham and Eggs, which had caused him so many problems in one of the orphanages where he spent much of his life. his childhood. Since his mother could not support the family - his father (forty years older than his wife) had died - he placed the child in a center where he suffered constant mistreatment and abuse. He alone was five years old.
However, Albert was not trying to escape these punishments. Quite the opposite. The little boy longed for that moment to come. He felt pleasure with each beating, he even managed to reach orgasm. That's where his masochistic tendencies began.
Reports at the time described Fish as problematic and with a strong tendency toward pain. He inflicted cuts and blows on his body, and also inflicted them on other colleagues, collected press clippings where crimes were discussed, and admired those who were called cannibals. We can say that he identified with the fact of eating human flesh.
Some experts point out that this character was forged due to the childhood he lived and above all to the two generations of psychiatric illnesses that several members of his family had suffered: up to a total of seven people in his most direct relationship, including his mother, that they heard voices and had strong hallucinations.
Once he graduates from school at the age of fifteen, he begins to frequent public bathrooms to see naked young people and have sex with them. She ends up working as a prostitute with men and raping some of them for much of the day. The rest of the time she acts as the perfect husband and father. That double life began in 1898, when he married a woman nine years his junior with whom he had six children.
Apparently, Fish was dedicated to painting houses and decorating interiors, but that was only a ploy that served him to establish contact with young people. He never repeated in the same place. He constantly traveled throughout the country. He was in twenty-two states, where he committed a multitude of perversions with minors. When problems started he left. And so for years.
That obsession with pain led him to self-inflict punishments and mutilations. He stuck pins in his pelvis and genitals - in an X-ray they found almost a dozen -, he covered his naked body with rose bushes full of thorns and he was even caught masturbating in his room while hitting his back with a stick with nails. The suggestion that those acts provoked in him made him clouded by the idea of sin. He suffered from all kinds of religious hallucinations and only atoned for his guilt through physical punishment. He took that dogma to the extreme, claiming on multiple occasions to be Jesus Christ or Saint John, and that the Almighty was the one who ordered him to commit said human sacrifices.
It was logical that the authorities decided to admit him to a psychiatric center. However, and although he was hospitalized three times, they let him out because it was not proven that he was “crazy.” It seems that the psychopathic personality of a sexual nature that Fish suffered was not enough to keep him in a center. In addition, he was arrested eight times for committing various scams, robberies and sending obscene letters to women who advertised in the newspapers to find a partner.
One of her predilections was to look for black boys with whom to practice his terrible sexual fantasies. However, the first victim to disappear was white. It was about a boy named Billy Gaffney who, on February 11, 1927, was kidnapped by Fish while playing with two other friends outside his house. When the oldest realized that the little one was missing, another of the children told him that the “bogeyman” had taken him, an old man with a thin build, with gray hair and mustache. That was the description they first gave of the “murderous grandfather.” Billy's body was never found.
However, the only murder for which Fish could be tried was that of Grace Budd, a girl of only ten years old. He committed this crime thanks to her apparently kind and peaceful face, and, of course, her power of conviction.
Tedd, the girl's older brother, published an ad in the newspaper in which he asked for a job opportunity. The criminal read it and went to the family address with the excuse of offering him a job. It was there that he met Grace. He ended up becoming obsessed with her, so he hatched a plan to get her parents to agree to let him accompany him to her niece's birthday party. Previously, Fish had managed to establish a good relationship with the Budd family, with whom he shared a morning of chat and breakfast.
Grace's parents gave her the go-ahead and Grandpa promised them that they would have her back before nine at night. They never returned. From there a desperate search began throughout the region, but they were unable to find the whereabouts of the girl or her kidnapper.
Six years after Grace's disappearance and with hopes already broken, the family received a letter from Albert Fish in which he told them what happened that afternoon and what he did with his daughter. Her words left her mother in a state of shock and it was her son Tedd who had to finish reading it. Unable to believe what they had read, they handed the letter to the police. The content was terrifying:
“On Sunday, June 3, 1928, I knocked on her door at 406 West 15th Street. She brought cheese and strawberries, and we had lunch. Grace sat on my lap and she kissed me. I decided to eat it. Under the pretext of taking her to a party, I asked you for permission, to which you agreed. I took her to an empty house she had previously chosen in Westchester.”
“When we got there, I told him to stay outside of it. While she was picking flowers, I went upstairs and undressed,” the letter continues. “I knew that if she didn't do it I could get her blood on my clothes. When everything was ready, I looked out the window and called her. Then I hid in the closet until she was in the room. Seeing me naked, she started crying and tried to escape down the stairs. I caught her and she told me that she would tell her mother.”
“First I undressed her. How she kicked her, she scratched and she bit me! But I suffocated her to death. Then I cut it into small pieces so I could take the meat to my room. I stewed her rich and tender bottom. It took me nine days to eat her entire body. I did not rape her, although I could have if she had wanted to. She died a virgin.”
At first it was thought that what the letter said was not real and that it was the work of a sadist, but detective William F. King realized that there were details that only Grace's kidnapper could know. A key clue came to them in the form of a symbol.
The envelope of the letter had a hexagonal insignia printed next to the initials of a charitable association. Once the place and the criminal were found, the police went to Albert Fish's home. They arrested him on December 13, 1934.
During the interrogation, the Brooklyn Vampire explained in great detail what he had done with the girl. He claimed that after killing her, he cut off her head with a knife and the rest of her body with a saw. “I'm not crazy, just eccentric. Sometimes I don't even understand myself,” he said.
He confessed to several more crimes. For example, that of a four-year-old boy whom he flogged to death by cutting off his ears, nose and eyes, whose blood he drank and whom he dismembered and then made a stew.
He also told what happened to a homeless man whom he forced to perform sadistic, masochistic and coprophagous acts for several weeks. He stabbed his buttocks to drink his blood and tried to cut off his penis, but he gave up due to the young man's screams.
During the trial, which took place on March 11, 1935, Albert Fish narrated with a smile on his lips all the depravities he had committed with about a hundred children. And although he claimed to have killed at least fifteen, the only murder that the police were able to prove was that of Grace Budd.
Ten days after the hearing began and several psychiatrists took the stand to explain Fish's ruthless personality, the jury found him guilty and the judge sentenced him to die in the electric chair. The execution took place on January 16, 1936.
Among the journalists gathered there was the Daily News reporter who wrote: “His teary eyes flashed with joy at the thought of being subjected to a much more intense heat compared to that which he usually burned to satisfy his lust. He asked if he would be conscious at the time of his death. He said it was the only pleasure he needed to taste: her own death, the delicious pain of dying.
Three minutes after the electric shock, his death was certified. That was the last shiver of him.
Did you know the story of Albert Fish? In the photos you can see part of the real events.
2 comments
Abuse begets abuse. Some people just evil