Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Werewolf of Wysteria” Pt. 2 - Albert Fish

Episode Date: July 17, 2017

“The Boogey Man”, AKA Albert Fish, attacked over 100 children, many of them unidentified. A traumatic childhood created a twisted old man, tormented by religious delusions and sick sexual fantasies. Greg and Vanessa explore the kidnapping and murder of Grace Budd, which led to Fish’s downfall, his shocking confessions, and his eventual execution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Albert Fish was known as many things. In his own words, he would have done. described himself as a house painter, a family man, and a Christian. But when his true nature came to light, the world would describe him as the werewolf of wisteria, the Brooklyn vampire, and the boogeyman. Much like a fairy tale monster, fish masqueraded behind his elderly appearance of a kindly grandfather. He would lure children closer and closer, and then pounce, revealing the big bad wolf within.

Albert Fish abused and killed children in 23 states over a span of 47 years, but his most infamous crimes took place in New York between 1924 and 1928. He was a sexual predator, a serial killer, and a cannibal, driven by an array of horrific perversions and mental infirmities that we discussed in depth last week. This week will conclude the twisted story of Albert Fish, And you can decide for yourself. Was he just a man with a deranged mind? Or was his evil beyond humanity?

Was he truly a monster? Hi, I'm Greg Poulson, and this is serial killers. A podcast diving into the minds and motives of the world's most notorious serial killers. This is part two of our profile on history's real-life boogeyman, Albert Fish. If you want to listen to any episodes of serial killers, you can find them all on your favorite. podcast directory. Don't forget to subscribe. You can also listen on our website,

parkast.com, spelled p-a-r-c-a-st-com. A new episode comes out every Monday. Visit our Facebook page, Parcast, to join the conversation. Also back for part two is my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. She'll be helping us examine Albert Fish from a psychological perspective. It's important to note that Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist, but like me, She is fascinated by the psychology of serial killers and has done a lot of research on the subject. Hi, everyone. Last week, we learned that Albert Fish was a serial child abuser and killer. Abused in an orphanage as a young child, Fish developed sexual, sadomasochistic tendencies and was primarily driven by his compulsion to inflict pain on others and to have pain inflicted upon him.

He was also likely schizophrenic, suffering from religious delusions and hallucinations. he claimed that his murders were sacrifices to God. We also learned that Fish only ever confessed to three murders on record with police, but it's estimated he abused over 100 children, killed 15 of them, and ate four. We talked about one of his victims last week, 8-year-old Francis MacDonald, who Fish abducted and murdered in 1924. The details of this crime have similar elements to Fish's next confessed murder, that of four-year-old Billy Gaffney in 1927,

but there are some very profound differences. On February 11, 1927, Billy Gaffney was playing in the hallway of the small tenement in Brooklyn where he lived. He played with his friend and neighbor, three-year-old Billy Beaton. Billy Beaton's father came to check on his son, but found both boys had vanished.

Mr. Beaton rushed around the building, looking for them, worried they had wandered outside and into the street. Mr. Beaton finally found only his son on the top floor of the building. When Mr. Beaton asked him where Billy Gaffney was, his son's response was simple. The boogeyman took him. Of course, no one believed the three-year-old boy. Like the McDonald murder, Albert Fish only confessed to this crime after he was already on death row.

Up until this point, Fish's selection and abduction of Billy Gaffney was very similar to that of Francis McDonald. Fish tended to choose his child victims from poor. neighborhoods. He would wait until that child was unsupervised by adults, then approach. Using some kind of treat or bribe, he would earn the child's trust and get them to go with him willingly. Like Francis, Billy was from a poor neighborhood and was playing with another child when Fish approached them. At first, Fish took both boys with him, but ended up leaving one behind, the younger, Billy Beaton. Vanessa, why take only one boy? Well, it's possible that Fish realized that more could go wrong if he took them both, so

So he made a choice. What made him choose Billy Gaffney over the other boy is unclear. However, after Fish chose his victim, his methods diverge a bit from what he did with Francis MacDonald. The only solid witness the police had was a trolley car conductor. He claimed to have seen an elderly man with a young boy board his trolley on the day Billy Gaffney went missing. According to the conductor, the little boy cried the entire time. The conductor's story was confirmed by the motor man on the trolley. But even with these witnesses, the investigation went nowhere. Billy Gaffney's body was never found.

Instead of finding a place nearby to take the boy, like he had with Francis McDonald, Fish confessed that he took Billy all the way from Brooklyn to a dump in Astoria Queens. This is an interesting change in method for Fish, who was always so mindful about not getting caught or attracting attention. Taking the boy on a trolley and going to another borough 10 miles away was a risky move that produced two witnesses. What do you think made Fish take Billy Gaffney so far away? And why a dump in Astoria?

Well, it could be that Fish wanted to find a place where there was no chance of him being discovered. When he took Francis MacDonald to the woods nearby, he had to give up his plan to dismember the boy's body because he thought someone was approaching. Fish said in his confession that he knew of the dump in Astoria because it was close to a house he had been hired to paint before. It's entirely possible that Fish had places like

these marked in his mind all over the city, secluded spots where he could take his victims and not be disturbed. It's also possible that Billy Gaffney was not the first child fish had taken to this dump in particular. The rest of Fish's confession provides us with some of the gruesome details of what happened once Fish and Billy Gaffney got to the dump. Fish stripped Billy Gaffney naked, tied him up, and gagged him. Fish then left the boy there overnight. He returned 12 hours later with tools. A nail-studded paddle, a knife, and a belt. He proceeded to torture Billy until he died. Then Fish dismembered his body. Fish put most of the body into a sack, waded it down with stones, then threw it into the water. The rest, he took home with him. He prepared the different body

parts in various ways and then made a meal out of them for the next four days. Vanessa, this is the first instance of Fish's cannibalism that we've encountered, this crime is a huge escalation in comparison with that of Francis MacDonald. Right, with this crime, we see more of the sadistic side of Albert Fish. The way he ties up his victim, leaves him overnight, and then returns to torture him, is reminiscent of the Thomas Kedin incident we talked about last week. Thomas Kedden was one of Fish's earliest victims, whom he kept as his prisoner for weeks on end and tortured in 1911. However, he did not kill Thomas Kedden. or cannibalize his body, although Fish admitted he fantasized about doing this.

Instead, he let him go. It seems that Fish followed through on this fantasy with Billy Gaffney. Do you believe this is the first time he ate one of his victims? It's possible, but based on Fish's confession, he very matter-of-factly describes which body parts he liked best to eat, as though it wasn't his first time. There's also the way he describes how he cooked these parts. Fish's exact wording is too graphic to eat.

repeat, but he goes into great detail about the various methods he used. Roasting some parts and putting others into a stew, it's like they were recipes to him, recipes he knew well. Also, from Fish's confession to the McDonald murder, we know that Fish had planned to dismember that boy's body as well, but was forced to flee instead. Fish didn't specify that he was planning to eat the body, but it seems like a logical assumption. So what about cannibalism as a practice? What kind of person wants to eat another person. Cannibalism can be traced back to our earliest ancestors, and it's still practiced today in some cultures, though it's rare. This is why cannibalism in itself isn't considered a psychological

disorder or even criminal. In fact, cannibalism isn't technically illegal today in most of America. Really? Yeah. The only state that has a law specifically against cannibalism is Idaho. However, in general, the process of cannibalizing another person involves others. illegal acts like murder or corpse desecration. That's troubling. Well, in modern society, cannibalism is often shown as being horrific and barbaric, and in criminal cases like that of Albert Fish, it earns that reputation.

But in some cultures and religions, cannibalism was part of their heritage and traditions. A tribe in New Guinea used to consume their dead in order to free the dead person's spirit from their body. Another tribe would cannibalize those suspected of being possessed by an evil spirit in order to take revenge on these spirits. So there are different views on cannibalism that depend on the beliefs of the society, and it's not always practiced with criminal intent. So what you're saying is that it's the criminal motivations of cannibalism we should be focusing on.

Okay, let's talk specifically then about Albert Fish's compulsion to eat his victims. Fish was obsessed with stories about cannibalism. His favorite book was the Edgar Allan Poe novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which involves characters having to eat one another for survival. Fish also collected newspaper articles about Fritz Harmon, who was a German serial killer that murdered over 20 boys and young men. Harmon would bite through his victim's throats,

then dismember their bodies, keeping some of the meat for himself and selling the rest on the black market. According to Fish, this intense interest in stories about cannibalism started when he was a young boy. He claimed his older brother was in the Navy and had told him stories about places in the Far East afflicted by famine.

In these places, people had to eat human flesh in order to survive, and desperate families would sell off their children to be eaten. Fish said that this was what initially sparked his desire to eat another person. But what about Fish's psychology that would prompt this desire? After hearing stories about cannibalism, Most people are not inspired to try human flesh themselves.

Why was that Fish's reaction? There are a few theories that fit with Fish's background. One theory is that being abandoned in childhood could cause a person to want to consume another later on in life as a way to fill the void caused by that early separation. By consuming another person, they ensure that person can never leave them. Well, we know that Fish was traumatized as a child by being left in an abusive orphanage for four years by his mother.

We focused on the effect the abuse he experienced in the orphanage had on him. But it sounds like the act of being left by his mother was trauma in itself. Fish was also later abandoned by his first wife, Anna Fish, in 1917. Could this have triggered him to act on cannibalistic tendencies? It's possible. Before his wife left him, Fish may have only fantasized about eating another person, but never followed through. It could be that experiencing the trauma of being abandoned as he had been in childhood was what triggered him to act on these cannibalistic impulses with Billy Gaffney in

1927. But this theory of being traumatized by abandonment doesn't explain the sexual aspects of Fish's cannibalism. Fish admitted that when he ate the flesh of his victims, he experienced, quote, absolute sexual excitement, and that he would draw out the experience by eating the meat over several days. During that time, Fish said he would masturbate constantly. Well, at this point, if there's one thing we know about Albert Fish, it's that his motivations were primarily sexual, like his sadomasochism. Well, it's likely that Fish's sexual sadomasochism was connected to his sexual motivations for his cannibalism.

One theory is that for criminal sadists, cannibalism is the ultimate show of dominance over another person. To consume someone is to exert total power over them. Combined with the previous theory of abandonment, consuming his victims could. have made Fish feel as though he was exerting total control of them and their bodies, while also forcing them to stay with him. Well, not exactly the most rational thought process, Vanessa. No, it isn't. But given Fish's schizophrenic tendencies, it would have made sense to him.

Do you think his schizophrenia played a part in his cannibalism as well? Oh, absolutely. Many criminal cannibals are diagnosed with schizophrenia. For Fish, in particular, his schizophrenia presented itself as religious delusions and hallucinations. He believed he was making sacrifices to God by killing children. And that same kind of religious delusion presented itself in his cannibalism as well. According to the testimony of Dr. Frederick Wortham, the psychiatrist who spent the most time studying Fish's mind, Fish believed that eating his victim was like the sacrament of Holy Communion.

In his deranged mind, he believed that the act of killing and eating a child was comparable to that of taking part in a symbolic religious right that's meant to spiritually connect one with Christ. Leave it to Albert Fish to take something harmless and innocuous and twist it into something horrific and insane for his own self-righteous purposes. So Fish's cannibalism seems to have been caused by the perfect storm of his traumas and disorders,

being abandoned, his sexual sadomasochism, and his religious delusions. So far, we've only discussed one victim that Fish confessed to cannibalizing, Billy Gaffney and 1927. But in 1928, Fish would act out on this twisted sacrament again on its most infamous victim, Grace Budd. Our story will continue in a moment after a brief message. Own it all.

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On Sunday, May 27th, 1928, an innocuous classified ad appeared in the morning edition of the New York World newspaper. The ad read, quote, young man 18 wishes position in country. Edward Bud 406 West 15th Street. End quote. Edward Budd was looking for a job to support his family, who was desperately poor. The day after this ad ran in the paper, a stranger showed up at the family's apartment.

The stranger was dressed in a three-piece navy suit and wore a black felt hat. The stranger introduced himself. His name was Frank Howard, and he owned a successful farm in Farmingdale, Long Island. He had seen Edward's ad and was interested in hiring a a farmhand for $15 a week, which was a lot of money in 1928. Frank Howard was introduced to Edward Bud and his friend Willie Corman, two well-built strong young men, both 18 years old. Mr. Howard

ended up offering them both jobs as farmhands, which they excitedly accepted. To the Buds, this was something of a miracle. Here was a well-off, successful man come to save them by giving their son a job that would provide for the whole family. They trusted him immediately and looked at him as being an authority figure. His success made him seem superior to them, as they could barely afford to make rent. Frank Howard returned the next Sunday, June 3rd, in order to take Edward and Willie back to his farm. But he arrived early, and Edward and Willie weren't home. The family invited Mr. Howard to have lunch with them while he waited for the boys. This is when Frank Howard met the Bud's other child, Grace. Grace was 12 years old and was still wearing her church clothes,

her white confirmation dress. Mr. Howard was immediately entranced by Grace, inviting her over to him to sit on his lap. Edward and Willie finally returned to the apartment, but Mr. Howard told them he was not going to take them to the farm just then. His sister was having a birthday party for one of her children nearby, and he needed to go to it before they left for Long Island. Mr. Howard suddenly had an idea.

What if Grace went to the party with him? He would be sure to have her home by 9.5. that night. At this point, Mr. and Mrs. Bud were facing a dilemma. They didn't want to offend Mr. Howard by saying no to him, but they barely knew him. How could they send their daughter off with someone who was still basically a stranger to them? But then again, since he had come into their lives, Mr. Howard had been a blessing to them and their family. Besides, he seemed harmless enough. After a moment's hesitation, they agreed to let Grace go with Mr. Howard to the party. Frank Howard and Grace Budd left the apartment after that for the party

and Grace Budd was never seen again. Of course, there was no birthday party. There was no farm or farmhand position. There was no Frank Howard. It was all part of the scheme Albert Fish had quickly devised after he read Edward Budd's classified ad the week before. At the time, the teen boy had been Fish's intended victim. Fish's original plan had been to lure Edward Bud

to an abandoned house called Wisteriocke. cottage that Fish himself used to live in with his family in Westchester, New York. When he met Edward Bud, though, he was disappointed by how mature and strong he looked. He was even further disappointed when Edward's friend Willie was brought into the mix. Fish had doubts about his ability to overpower Edward, let alone overpower both boys. But ultimately, his compulsion to kill was too great. He thought he could take the boys by surprise and subdue them, despite their size. And so he continued with his plan.

Until he met Grace Budd. Right. Grace was closer in age to Fish's preferred victim than her brother and his friend, so he quickly invented a story about a birthday party in order to lure away his new target, his more alluring target. Before we continue with what happened when Fish and Grace left the apartment together, let's talk about this crazy plan fish came up with. It seems that Fish had been having success with this usual method of abducting his victims, going to a poor neighborhood, finding a child that wasn't being supervised by adults, and luring them away.

But in this case, he assumed a fake identity and told this elaborate story in order to entrap his next victim. And he also interacted directly with the parents and family of this victim, ensuring that there would be witnesses. Why would he change his methods so drastically? This is an escalation for Fish. Based on Waltham's testimony, Fish began to... sexually abusing children in 1887. So by 1928, he had been active for four decades. It could be that his usual tactic just wasn't thrilling enough for him at this point.

So you're saying that this change in his method made the crime new to him again? Like, more exciting? In what ways? Well, by coming up with this lie, it was a new way for him to exert his power over others. By fooling not just his victim, but also his victim's parents, he was outsmarting them, dominating them with his superior intelligence. With this lie, he was controlling the way they saw him and the situation, essentially controlling their perception of reality. Now, that's a lot of power to hold over someone.

Right. This method allowed Fish to hold all the power in the situation. He put himself in control of the whole process of luring away his victim. Instead of having to wait and hope for a child to be unattended by adults, he was active in creating his own opportunity to pursue his target. He wasn't at the mercy of chance here. He could fully plan out the crime from the day it would happen to the tools he would use to where he would take his victim. In all these ways, his method was a new outlet for a sadism

by taking total control over the situation. It's also not the first time Fish has come up with a fake identity and backstory to satisfy his sexual sadomasochism. Fish frequented the classified section of newspapers and found ads placed by women. Fish would then send these women obscene letters. In these letters, Fish would use a fake identity to introduce himself, often saying he was a movie producer.

In the letters, Fish would ask if the woman he was writing to would help him take care of his son. His son was in need of discipline, and Fish said he was looking for someone who wouldn't be afraid to spank his son or to punish him in other more violent ways. These letters demonstrate that Fish had practice in creating new identities and backstories for him. himself, and that he did this in the pursuit of satisfying his sexual sadomasochistic fantasies.

Now let's return to the story of what happened once Fish and Grace Budd left her apartment on June 3rd, 1928. According to Fish's confession, on his way to the Bud apartment, he had stopped and left the tools he intended to use to kill Edward and Willie at a newsstand close by. The tools were wrapped in a bundle, so no one would see the old man carrying around a cleaver, saw, and butcher knife. Once he had Grace, Fish retrieved this bundle and the two rode several trains to get to Westchester, New York. When they were getting off at their final stop,

Fish actually almost forgot his bundle on the train, but Grace reminded him about it and even went back and got it for him. Fish then led Grace to Wisteria Cottage, which was set back near some woods. As Grace began picking flowers in the yard, fish went upstairs and laid out his tools in one of the rooms. Then he took off his clothes so that he wouldn't get any blood in them. He went to the window of the room and called Grace upstairs.

Fish first strangled Grace to death. When she was dead, Fish dismembered her body, taking his preferred body parts home with him to cook and eat over the next nine days. It's clear from this account that killing a little girl was different to Fish than killing a little boy when you compare the crimes. We know from his interviews with Dr. Wortham that Fish sexually abused both boys and girls, but that he preferred young boys. This preference stems from his time in the orphanage, where witnessing the abuse of other boys gave him his first sexual feelings. Right. And if you

compare the way he treated as boy victims versus Grace Budd, the difference is evident. Fish abused Francis McDonnell and Billy Gaffney. Billy was tied up and tortured before Fish killed him. Fish also admitted that he had planned to tie up and torture his original intended victims, Edward Budd, and Willie Corman. but he did not assault or torture Grace Budd. Exactly. Fish strangled her immediately and later maintained absolutely that he had not sexually abused her. This was such an important point for him to make that he had said it again and again. Even though he may not have sexually abused Grace, his motivation was still to satisfy his sexual desires by killing her and then consuming her body.

In Fish's mind, though, he did not violate Grace in a sexual way. Do you think Grace Budd was Fish's only female victim that he murdered? It's likely that he did kill other girls. When Fish was arrested, he was linked to several unsolved murders and attempted abductions of young girls. But the murder of Grace Budd was the only crime with a female victim that Fish confessed to. When Frank Howard and Grace Bud did not return that night, Mr. and Mrs. Bud began to worry.

They waited until the morning before they went to the police, and the investigation into the crime began. The Buds couldn't give a clear reason for why they waited until the morning to go to the police. Perhaps it took them that long to be able to face the reality that the trust and hope they had put into Mr. Howard had been tragically misplaced. Grace Budd's abduction and murder set off a chain of events that proved to be Albert Fish's downfall. After Albert Fish abducted and killed Grace Budd, there was a noticeable uptick in its criminal behaviors. Over the summer, after Grace's murder, Fish was arrested. three times on larceny charges in a six-week period. Each time, however, Fish was released.

In November of 1930, Fish was arrested for sending an obscene letter through the mail. According to the indictment, the letter was, quote, of such a vile, obscene, and filthy nature, that to set forth the contents of this thereof would defile the records of the court. In the letter, Fish was once again graphically propositioning a woman to discipline his his misbehaved son. Based on its disturbing content, Fish was sent to Bellevue Hospital for observation. In the hospital, Fish was examined by psychiatrists. The official report the hospital gave the court about Fish described him as being quiet and cooperative and said he had acted normal. It went on to say, quote, there was no evidence of delusional notions or hallucinatory experiences.

His memory, particularly for a man of his years, is excellent. end quote. The report concluded that Fish was a sexual pervert but was not insane. Vanessa, how could the psychiatrists have misjudged Fish so completely? Well, it was the same mistake everyone made with Fish. In 1930, Fish was 60 years old. He appeared to be a harmless elderly man. This is further demonstrated in the hospital's report when the doctors attributed the obscene letters to an early stage of senile dementia in Fish. Fish was an expert at hiding behind his appearance. He was aware. that all the doctors knew about him was from the letter he had sent. The police and the hospital

had no way of knowing the full extent of his criminal nature. In the interviews conducted with Fish, none of his answers raised any red flags. Fish knew exactly what to say to avoid further suspicion. He wasn't going to do anything to incriminate himself. And it worked. Fish was released from Bellevue in January 1931. But whatever act he put up for the doctors didn't last once he got back out in the real world. Fish sent more obscene letters, got arrested again, and ended up in another hospital for observation in August of the same year. He was only in this hospital for 10 days, though, before he was released again. The report from this hospital described Fish once again as quiet, cooperative, and oriented.

Vanessa, what's going on with Fish during this time? In a three-year period, he was arrested five times and sent to two different hospitals to be observed. Up until this point, he was so careful to avoid attention. What changed? Well, Fish's age, for one thing, this was a man who had numerous psychological disorders that were never treated. This means they were likely getting worse. But it seems that the main turning point in Fish's mental health was the murder of Grace Budd.

This crime was the only one fish seemed to show any sign of remorse for. After his eventual confession, he said on several occasions that after he had killed her, he wished he could go back and trade his own life for hers. He also admitted to going back and visiting the cottage where he killed her several times. But then at a certain point, he couldn't even bring himself to do that. So what was it about this crime in particular that affects him this way? Well, we discussed how Grace Budd's abduction and murder was different for Fish in a lot of ways. For Fish, this was a whole new experience for him.

And even though he may have later expressed remorse, it was likely a high point for him. Right. He had managed to fool an entire family to the point where he was able to take their daughter with their permission. He executed his plan perfectly, and then he got away with it all. It seems that Fish was feeling invincible after he pulled all of this off. Even though he was caught and arrested for the other crimes, he was let go each time. No one even thought to connect him to what happened to Grace Budd. No one knew except for him. But Fish did not like the time he spent in the hospitals.

He didn't like being kept there by the doctors unable to leave until they allowed him to. No, no. He wrote this to his daughter from Bellevue. Now, Annie, do this for your poor old father. Write a letter to Dr. Gregory, Bellevue Hospital. As soon as you get this, ask him in God's name to send me back to court. You know the sooner I get my sentence, the sooner I am back home. In the hospital, he found himself in a situation where he was once again in an institution

under the total control of others, much like when he was in the orphanage as a boy. So then it makes sense that for the next few years, Fish stayed out of trouble. According to his son, Albert Fish Jr., who lived with him during this time, his father actually seemed normal once he got out of the second hospital.

Yeah, it's likely that whatever sense of superiority Fish had been feeling had worn off when he was in the hospital that second time. Some sense of reality returned to him, and he got his act together as best he could, at least in the eyes of the law. But that didn't last long. In June of 1934,

Albert Jr. noticed a change in his father's behavior. His father began to crave raw meat and would insist that his son eat his meat raw as well. Fish also had terrible nightmares, screaming out, bud, bud, in his sleep. Albert Jr. would have to shake him awake, but had no idea about the significance of that name until later. Albert Jr. also found his father

his weird collection of newspaper clippings, as well as his collection of needles. On top of all that, Albert Jr. even witnessed his father beating himself with a nail-studded paddle while masturbating. And these are just the episodes that Albert Jr. witnessed. Fish was most likely engaging in these behaviors in secret the entire time his son lived with him, but whatever ability he had to hide it from Albert Jr. vanished. Fish was losing touch with reality and was most likely experiencing psychotic episodes due to his schizophrenia, combined with his advancing age, Fischer's compulsions, and true self were closer to the surface than ever.

Well, it turned out that it wasn't just Fish's mental infirmities that were catching up with him. The law was about to as well. Our story will continue in a moment after the break. And now, back to our story. During the six years since Cray's Bud was taken, Detective Will King had kept the investigation to find her abductor alive. For all those years, he determinedly chased down any lead that came up with no success, but he kept at it.

He would often plant fake stories about the progress of the investigation in the newspapers in order to try to scare up new leads. Detective King did just that on November 2nd, 1934. He planted a fake bit of news in New York City's most popular gossip column at the time, called On Broadway by Walter Winchell. I checked on the Grace Bud mystery. And it's safe to tell you that the Department of Missing Persons will break the case, or they expect to, in four weeks. They are holding a koki now at Randall's Island, who is said to know most about the crime.

It seems fitting that an elaborate lie was used to kidnap Grace, and another elaborate lie was what led to her killer's capture. Although Fish never said he read this piece of gossip, it is more than likely that he did, based on what happened next. On November 12th, 1934, 10 days after this ran in the paper, Grace Bud's mother, Dealia Bud, received a letter in the mail. Dealy was illiterate, so Edward Budd read the letter for her. That letter is one of the most chilling pieces of writing in history. On Sunday, June 3, 1928, I called on you at 406 West 15th Street. Brought you pot cheese, strawberries.

We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party, you said yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off.

When she saw me all naked, she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mama. I choked her to death. Then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, cook and eat it. It took me nine days to eat her entire body. Edward Budd took this letter straight to Detective King, who matched the handwriting to a telegram the fake Frank Howard had once sent to the butts. He knew this letter had come from Grace's killer.

The envelope the letter was sent in was a piece of stationary from a local chauffeur's association. From this point, King followed Lee. after lead that turned up to finally find fish at a boarding house. King arrested Fish, and Fish confessed to writing the letter and to killing Grace Punt. After his confession, Fish even led detectives and police to hysteria cottage, showing them where they're likely to find Grace's remains. Vanessa, firstly, why would Fish send this letter at all? Well, it's likely that Fish read the piece of fake news in the gossip column.

Maybe he felt paranoid that the police were already onto him, that they knew what had happened to Grace, and he wanted to take ownership of it, of the story and of the crime before they did. He wanted to show that he knew the truth. But why send that to the mother? Why not to the police? Well, Fish didn't have the personal connection to the police

that he had to Mrs. Budd. He also put the blame for what he did to Grace onto Mr. and Mrs. Bud on several occasions. He would say that he hadn't actually kidnapped Grace because he had her parents' permission. He would also say that if they hadn't let him take her that day, Grace would have been safe, essentially saying it was their own fault for not taking good enough care of their daughter. He even points out in the letter that she allowed him to take Grace,

like she was complicit in it. Right. So the letter is an attempt to inflict pain on Mrs. Bud and almost wash his hands of the crime. He's putting the responsibility of Grace's death on her mother and diverting blame from himself. So what about Fish's subsequent confession and cooperation with the police? Is this out of remorse? or another instance of him demonstrating his power. Well, it was Fish's way of taking control of the situation that he was definitely not in control of. In a letter he later wrote to Detective King, he says,

You know as well as I that if I had not written that letter to Mrs. Bud, I would not be in jail. And I not led you to the spot, no bones would have been found, and I could only be tried for kidnapping. Fish did not want to be caught. He did not want to go to jail or go to trial. trial, he did not want to be sentenced to death. That's clear from all of the actions he took when he was arrested, including hiring the best defense attorney he could find, James Dempsey.

James Dempsey took the case and immediately hired several psychiatrists to study Fish. His goal was to have Fish be ruled not guilty by reason of insanity, so that he would go to a mental hospital instead of the electric chair. But despite Fish's obvious mental problems, proving his insanity wouldn't be easy. The prosecution's goal was to uphold the conclusion of Bellevue Hospital that Fish was sane. They hired their own team of psychiatrists to do just that. So let's take a moment to talk about the insanity plea. Vanessa, what does it actually mean to plead insanity?

Well, the insanity plea is entered by the defense when they feel they can prove that the defendant was suffering from a kind of mental disorder that made them unable to control their actions. In the case of Albert Fish's trial, the main way to demonstrate this was to prove that Albert Fish did not know the difference between right and wrong when he murdered Grace Budd. We've talked extensively about the findings of one of the psychiatrist Dempsey hired Dr. Wortham. Fish happily cooperated with this doctor, filling him in on every detail he could remember of his depravity. Vanessa, Fish never told anyone about his crimes before this. Why suddenly open up to someone now?

Fish realized the insanity plea was his only hope to avoid the death penalty, and he was smart enough to comply and provide Wirtham with as much detail as possible. Fish succeeded in convincing Worthing of his insanity. Wortham believed that Fish's perception of reality was so skewed that he had no real idea of right versus wrong. After all, Fish used to justify his killings by saying if they had been wrong, an angel would have stopped them. Watham would attempt to demonstrate this irrational thinking to the court in his

testimony. Fish's trial for Grace Budd's murder began on March 12, 1935. James Dempsey did his best to prove that Fish was insane, having Dr. Wortham testify to all the horrible things that Fish confessed to. But the details of this testimony were considered so shocking that women were led from the courtroom before it even began. Dr. Wortham had to pause throughout his testimony to allow the remaining spectators and jury to recover. However, when Dempsey came up against the psychiatrists hired by the prosecution, he met a stone wall of doctors claiming Fish was sane. According to these doctors, Fish's disorders weren't that uncommon, that plenty of people were sexual perverts who weren't murderers. They claimed that Fish was fully aware of his actions and that his mental condition did not impair his sense of right and wrong.

Dempsey met the most resistance when he tried to bring up the topic of Fish's cannibalism. To Dempsey, this would be the most telling example of fish as being out of touch with reality. Dempsey questioned Detective King about this, but King maintained that Fish had never confessed to eating his victim. And in fact, he hadn't. Right. Although Fish had written about his cannibalism in the letter to Mrs. Budd, the police never questioned him about this, and Fish never admitted to it. It's possible that the police didn't believe this detail in the letter, the same way they didn't believe that Fish had stuck needles into himself like he said he had.

To the cops, getting the story about the kidnapping and murder were all they needed for the arrest and trial. The rest was trivial. Only Dr. Wortham could testify to the fact that Fish ate some of his victims, including Grace Budd. After Wortham's extensive testimony on Fish's depraved thoughts and actions, the press took a poll among themselves and decided unanimously that Fish indeed was insane. However, the jury concluded otherwise. And how do you find the defendant? Guilty or not guilty?

We find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment. And so in the eyes of the court, Albert Fish was ruled sane and therefore guilty. However, when asked by a reporter about the verdict, one juror admitted that they had believed Fish was indeed insane, but they wanted him to go to the electric chair anyway. It seemed that Dempsey had done too good of a job painting fish as a monster. This death sentence led Fish to confess to the murders of Francis McDonald and Billy Gaffney. Now, Vanessa, why confess to these crimes at this point? After his arrest, Fish was questioned by detectives about other unsolved murders and cases of missing children. These detectives were able to link Fish to being in the area at the time these crimes were committed.

Other witnesses came forward with stories about Albert Fish. they had seen his face in the papers and remembered him as the man who had attempted to abduct their child. The two crimes that Fish had been most substantially linked to were that of the murders of Francis MacDonald and Billy Gaffney. These were crimes that had witnesses, Anna McDonald, who saw Fish on her street on the day of Francis's disappearance, and then the two trolley car workers who saw Fish with Billy Gaffney. But even with these witnesses, Fish denied these murders and any other crimes. So then why suddenly change his mind? Well, once Fish was already on death row, he must have felt there was no point in denying them anymore.

And plus, he could get one last thrill from reliving these two kills again and demonstrating how he knew the truth all along. It was his last chance to be in control of anything before he was killed. In the end, despite all of his monstrous nicknames, the werewolf of Wisteria, the Brooklyn vampire, it didn't take a silver bullet or wooden stake to kill Albert Fish. On January 13th, 1936, Albert Fish died like any other man eventually does.

However, he left the world in a much more horrific way by electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York. And that concludes the story of Albert Fish, history's real life, flesh and blood, boogeyman. Thank you for listening to Serial Killers. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends. Don't forget to subscribe to Serial Killers on iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or any other podcast directory,

or through our website, Parchast.com. That's P-A-R-C-A-S-T dot com. A new episode of The Serial Killers comes out every Monday. Join us next week as we delve into the mind of the Casanova Killer. Please let us know what you think and join the conversation on our Parcast Facebook page. You can tweet us at Parcast Network. That's P-A-R-C-A-S-T network. Have a killer week.

Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler and developed by Ron Cutler. It is a production of Cutler media and is part of the PARCAST network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Ron Shapiro, with production assistants by Joel Stein and Maggie Admeyer. Serial Killers is written by Catherine Lewis and stars Greg Poulson and Vanessa Richardson. The amazing cast of voice actors includes, by alphabetical order, Nicholas Masu and Steve Pinto. A beloved 75-year-old man, washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed.

Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed, and there was a fool of blood. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season

two is out now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.