Morbid - Albert Fish Part 2

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

Congratulations, you’ve made it to part two which means your psyche is STRONG. Albert fish continues to be a wretched individual throughout part two. The gray man continues abducting and murdering two more children, earning him a new name, The Boogyman. Luckily toward the end we’ll inch our way closer to an arrest but boy does it get more and more disturbing along the way. Deranged by Harold Shechter Confessions of a Cannibal by Robert Keller  As always, thank you to our sponsors: HelloFresh: Get 16 free meals, plus three free gifts with code Morbid16 at hellofresh.com/morbid16 Everlane: Go to everlane.com/morbid and sign up for 10% off your first order ShipStation: Use our offer code, Morbid to get a 60 day free trial. American Home Shield: Go to AHS.com/Morbid now to save $50 Thirdlove: Right now you can get 20% off your first order at thirdlove.com/morbid Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is morbid. Is it morbid in here? Yeah. Here we are with part two of Albert Fish, and I hate to break it to everybody, but this is going to be three parts. There's a couple of reasons for that. One, there's a lot of information, and I don't want to just skimp over anything because those old, I'm telling you guys, those old newspaper articles are like, I can't stop. Can't stop, won't stop. Like, I will sit there for hours and just, I keep reading them to John and he's like, please stop. Oh, God.

Like, I need you to stop reading these. He's like, I'm all set with that thing. But then there's, there's another part to this whole, like, I need to spread it out a little bit. As much as I don't want to live in Albert's Fish's world for more than two parts. Yeah. I need to take breaks between finishing these parts. Like, I just need to, like, mentally escape him for a day between.

That's very heavy because, like, you need to sleep at. night without thinking about Albert Fish. And I get like, John has said it. He's always like you, with anything and you know, with anything that I do, I get like consumed by it if I really am into it. So I just won't stop. And I'll sit there and just keep reading articles and keep reading articles and keep reading articles. And John's like, will you just like do a crossword puzzle or so?

Like, just take your brain away from this for a minute because I keep being like, you don't understand and then this happened and did you know that he did this and did you know that like no one talks about this and he's like i didn't know that and i don't need to he's like there's a reason no one talks about this like please stop talking to me about this and so like actually it's really rude of you to continue to bring this to my information it really is so uh it's coming you're going to get the third part this week as well but i just need a quick little you know day break between the two to stop talking about it but uh this is a wild one And it's funny because a lot of people were like, yeah, I never thought you guys would cover this one.

Same. So I did not think this as well. But I knew that I was never going to cover this. I knew he was there. And he was one of the first ones that I read about in my my foray into true crime. I feel like he's always one of the first. Yeah. Which is crazy.

Because it's so rough. Because it's a real dive into. And you stay with true crime. too. Like that's like one of the first things you hear about and you stay, you stick around. Yeah, that's, that says a lot. It does about us, but I figure this, honestly, I also just think these poor kids, their stories need to be told for sure. And this is the last child one I will do for a while. I do have another, unfortunately, another child one that like is on the schedule somewhere,

but I'm going to go ahead and bump that one a little bit just so I can stay. The kid ones are hard and we try to avoid them at all calls. Yeah, I honestly, I have said before I would love to not do any of them, but sometimes it's just compels me to. So when I feel compelled to, I do it, but it's not great. But yeah, here we are. Especially having kids. Yeah, it's hard.

That must have different. It's really hard. But yeah, here we are with part two. Today we're going to be talking about two more kidnappings. Okay. he did. Probably the most famous one, the grace bud one. But we're not even getting to his arrest yet in this one.

Awesome. Because there's so much. A whole part of him just being horrible. I'm going to try to break this up a bit by reading some old newspaper articles. Okay. Like just little snippets because, man, some of them were flowery. And I was like, guys, can you maybe save the slam poetry for like an article that's not about a four-year-old being kidnapped? It's probably like a good practice to go by.

Like it sounds great, but like not a great subject matter to be super, super flowery. When it's like wasn't everybody getting the newspapers back then? Like I don't think these parents need to get that newspaper headline. Exactly. And here are some of the stuff I was like, all right, take it down a notch. Yeah. They get paid by the word. So it gets very flowery.

Yeah, I mean, it sounds great, but bad subject matter. So I think we're just going to get right into it because, again, we're just going to trudge through this together, okay? Okay. It's like jumping into a cold pool. We just got to do it together, all right? You never join me in that. You don't jump into a pool ever. I do not, but now I'm going to. This is not a pool. This is the Albert Fish Pool. Oh, fish pool. See what I did there, water. Oh, ha, ha, ha. So when we last left you guys, we had talked about the kidnap and torture and murder of Francis McDonnell. he was only eight years old

and what we knew was that a man who they referred to as the gray man had gotten away with this which is so understandable looking at Albert Fish you're like yeah yeah he is the gray man that's a gray man right there what's even wilder about Albert Fish is that he's like

like think about ready everybody I'm sorry to do this to you but think about Albert Fish for a second picture him in your head no he's a thousand right yeah at all times since birth he's been a thousand years old he was only like in his 50s when this was happening so when everybody was sitting here being like it was an old man and he was like super grizzled and super frail and he had gray hair and like he was 50 he was like in his 50s

but he was just such an old 50 because like when you're a demon you age so quickly I was literally just going to say like think about what the inside of that man looked like psyche and all his inside was just on the outside but it was wild to me I was like I thought he He was literally 120. Yeah. You could have told me that he was like 92 when all of this happened. And I'd be like, yeah, so crazy. Yeah, absolutely.

Now, the gray man got away with this for years. They did not catch him for the murder of Francis McDonnell until long time later. That's so sad for the family. Oh, yeah. And his mom, like, I can't imagine. Exactly. So actually, he ended up striking again in 1927 in Brooklyn. And remember, Francis McDonnell was in Staten Island.

Okay. Now, the next time the Greyman struck was February 11th, 1927, to be exact. Now, let me preface this particular one. There is a letter involved with this one, not in this part, in the third part. I am not going to read that letter. Yeah. I'm just going to put that out there. I physically cannot read that letter out loud.

I frankly wish I had never read it in any capacity, and I don't recommend you read it either. Okay. To me, it is. worse than the gray spud letter. Oh, wow. To me. Um, or at least on the same playing field. I don't know why it isn't talked about more. Like, I feel like the gray spud letter gets a lot by, which understand, it's a horrific letter. Yeah. But this one when, and maybe if I don't even know if I should call it a letter, but like a confession, I should say, I'm not going to read it. It's just, it's horrific. It's disgusting. And it's written by a man who wanted to fuck with people by writing it.

Of course. I will tell you in less graphic. terms what supposedly happened to this next victim. Okay. I will tell you that in part three. But I literally hope with everything I have and on every fallen star that he just lied and exaggerated what he said happened to Billy Gaffney. I hope he wrote the letter for his own sick enjoyment. I honestly do.

It's entirely possible that he did because he did like writing shit, like shocking shit. And he like to send vulgar letters just to get reaction. Well, that's how he started. Exactly. And the details seem very, like a big escalation to me. I mean, he really, he brutalized Francis McDonnell, for sure. Oh. He, he sexually assaulted him.

I mean, it seems like he, like, raped him. Yeah. He beat him and he killed him. But when you read what he says he did to Billy Gaffney, I don't know how he makes the jump to that. Wow. I don't, Albert Fish is an absolute monster. And it's also just like, I don't answer, but how does it get worse than what happened to Little Francis? Unfortunately, it does.

But Albert Fish is just an evil fuck and nothing is really off the table here. So I fully believe he is capable of what he said he did to Billy Gaffney. Yeah. But again, I'm just really hoping for my own psyche and for that poor child that it didn't have, that he exaggerated. Yeah. That's really all I can say. And trust me, I will, I will. I will explain in as little detail as I possibly can in part three, but here we go.

With that said, let's begrudgingly go to February 11th, 1927 in Brooklyn. Okay. Four-year-old. Billy Gaffney, who was born on Christmas Day. Oh, and I've seen pictures of him already. He was such a cherub. He was playing with his friend who was three-year-old Billy Beaton, so it was two billies just playing together.

Well, billies. They were in the hallways of their tent. tenement house apartment building, which they often just played in the hallways. Parents were in their apartments doing various things and, you know, they had other kids and they were just like doing stuff. Remember shit was different back then. Billy had received a bike for Christmas and he was riding it around the hallways. And he had done that often since he received it. Like, how cute is that?

A little boy named Johnny McNiff, who was actually 12 years old. He was kind of just watching them play. Yeah. He was actually at home alone with him. his infant sister and he was watching his infant sister. He was babysitting. But she was napping in her crib at the time. So he was just being a good kid and kind of like playing with the little boys a little while

and like just listening for his sister, you know, just doing double duty here. And at one point, the baby did wake up. So Johnny said he had gone back into the apartment and he was just rocking her to sleep. What a cute little talk girl. I know. What a little smart. Okay, Johnny. Now he did.

He got her back to sleep. And when he came back out, both little billies were gone. And he was immediately worried. So he began to look around thinking maybe they just wandered away a little bit. And remember, he was not babysitting them. He was not tasked with babysitting them. He was babysitting his own little sister, but he was just being a good kid, just paying attention to them. So he's like, you know, this four and three-year-olds were here, now they're not.

Right. So he went to Billy Beaton's father and who was just coming out of his apartment door at the time. And Billy Beaton's father saw Johnny and he said he looked like very stressed out and like anxious. So he was like, is something wrong? Right. And he was like, yeah, I saw Billy and Billy here, but like they're not here anymore. So immediately they went running around the apartment looking for them. They checked the Gaffney's apartment as well.

They were not there. They went outside around the building. They were screaming their names, getting no response. I can't even imagine the panic. Like we've like quote unquote lost them before. they're like somewhere over there. Literally. But it's like, I can't imagine actually running outside and looking for them.

Oh, I can't. To that point. I can't even imagine. Because even just like in the house, if I'm like, if they don't answer me right away, I'm like, where are you? Exactly. Like I freak out. I can't imagine the panic he had in that moment.

Or like they'll like run to their room and not tell us and then not answer and you're like, oh my God, they're gone forever. And it's like, meanwhile, where the hell would they have gone? Right. Exactly. But they ran up to the top floor as a last resort. and Mr. Beaton saw a little boy standing by the ladder that leads to the roof. It was his Billy.

Okay. So he ran to him. Obviously, he's like, oh, my God. It's like so relieved. And he said, where the hell have you been? And he said, you know, we went up on the roof and we saw some really cool stuff from up there. We saw like the whole city. You're like, don't do that again, little four year old.

Oh, my God, you are three. Like his child is three. Oh, God. And he's, so relieved to see him. And then all of a sudden he's like, where's Billy Gaffney? Billy. And Mr. Beaton was like, where is he? And without even a second thought, Billy Beatton, the three-year-old said, the boogeyman took him. That's what he said. Oh, I have goosebumps running up and down my entire fucking body right now. Now let that sink in for a

second because this response was written off for a while by authorities because they said this is a three-year-old. that's something a three-year-old would say. But he was telling the fucking truth. Absa- fucking mootly. That was not what something a three-year-old, that was just him saying exactly what happened. The boogeyman did take Billy Gaffney. Do you think that Albert Fish called himself the boogeyman to these kids? Yeah.

But he, that fucker looks like the boogie man. Yeah. If I saw that man taking a little boy away when I was little, I'd be like, that was the fucking boogeman. Yep. Like that is for sure. And he was giving an honest answer. He was telling his father exactly what had happened to his friends.

and it is so chilling, I can barely handle it. Yeah, that's terrifying. So immediately police were called and a massive search was underway. Lead detective on the case was Sergeant Elmer Joseph, and they were mainly focused on the idea of him wandering away and not him being kidnapped. Kidnapping was huge back then. But even though Little Billy Beaton said over and over that the boogeyman took his friend,

they were thinking, this is an extraordinarily poor apartment building. None of these people have money. Right. So why the hell would somebody steal a kid without any hope of getting ransom money? Okay. Because back then. That's what it was all about. Why the fuck would you steal a kid?

That doesn't make any sense. They even went as far to say that someone who would just steal a child without that money motive would have to be deranged. Correct. And it was something that they were like, what? Like you'd have to be. There are no deranged people. Inspector John J. Sullivan of the Missing Persons Bureau said, quote, there is no reason why anyone would want to take this child.

The kidnapper would have to be deranged. And this was the thing back then. It didn't make sense to any of them that you would want to kid a kid without getting paid for it. Right. Because kidnapping, it was the depression time. Kidnapping was huge. It was a big problem because people were doing it out of desperation.

Oh, that's so horrific. They were doing it to mostly people they could get money from now. But they were like, this doesn't make sense. And even then the detective said, this guy had to be a sick fuck. And they were right. It's like, why not just explore that avenue then? I think because back then it was so, this wasn't something you think of. Right.

Like this wasn't like, let's explore that avenue. It was like, no, human beings don't do that. You don't steal someone's kid just to torture them. That's not something you do. So it was not just brains were not connecting that. And they were right on the money and they didn't even know it. Even worse, Billy Beaton said the boogeyman was a thin older man with a gray mustache. They never connected this to the thin old man with a gray mustache who had last been seen with Francis McDonald only three years prior in nearby Staten Island.

I was going to say that's not too far. They just didn't connect the two. All they found upon searching the building was Billy's little bike. Oh. Thinking he had probably come into some dangerous situations if he was wandering off. They searched. There were warehouses around, factories around, like, abandoned apartment buildings. They looked all over there.

They even dredged the local Gowanus Canal and they found nothing. A lot of people really clung to the idea that they were like, he definitely fell in that canal. They were like, he wandered away, he fell in the canal. It was really nearby. It was like pretty deep in parts. It was muddy. It was gross. It was just like if he fell in there, you weren't going to find him.

But even one year after his disappearance, there were still people that were like, he's definitely in that canal. Wow. But according to deranged to the book that I'll link again in this part, over 350 policemen, hundreds of volunteer citizens, and Boy Scouts again. Stop. I'm done. We're searching over the next few weeks, and they came up with nothing. Oh, man. Now, Billy's mother was understandably devastated.

This is her four-year-old boy. Yeah. Her health was starting to fade now. She stopped eating. She stopped sleeping. Yeah, I can't imagine. They said she just wept, just all of the same. That's her four-year-old baby.

I don't know how you do anything else. And in fact, two years later, she ended up being admitted briefly to Bellevue Hospital with severe chest pains and a tear duct infection because she had stopped sleeping and was crying so much that her tear ducts became infected. Oh, my God. That's how much, that's how like incredibly. I've never even heard of thought before. She was released and she was okay after, but she never lost hope that her boy was coming back. So heartbreaking. Now, over the weeks, the humanity of all the volunteers who were spending countless hours searching for the boy that they didn't even know most of them was definitely this humanity was countered with the worst of humanity that comes out in these situations.

Of course. The Gaffneys immediately began getting letters from future internet rules because that's what these people are. I realize that like that's how it evolved. Yeah. The people who now write emails are like, anonymously like tweet at you some shitty thing those were the ones that were sending letters through the mails to like to like vulnerable people or just like to piss people off yeah it's save vibe like back then you had to do it through the like postal service so it had to be postmarked and like you could get

caught right as they mostly did but now you can do it anonymously so it's like an it's what a fun evolution we've gone through for everybody's still got an IP address motherfuckers so these future internet trolls uh they would say horrible things like they knew where Billy was or that they had Billy. Oh my God. On February 16th, only a few days after he went missing, they got one that according to derange said this, wait, do not appear too anxious. Your son is in safe hands.

Oh, God. We fought for him, but I got him now. We will get the beaten boy for Billy to play with. So now they're threatening to kidnap. Oh, my God. For Billy is lonesome. Do not show this letter to anyone if you know what is good for you. Again, I say that Billy is safe and that we are experimenting on him.

What the fuck? Yep. Another one said, if you don't stop searching for your boy, we will kill him. One said that they had killed Billy and stuffed him in a cardboard box and put that box into an abandoned apartment in Brooklyn. They gave an exact address. All of it was bullshit. What is wrong with people? There was another one that had a hand-drawn picture of a place in the Bronx River that they said they buried Billy.

It said, I didn't mean to kill him. him, God forgive me. People are so, it says so much about these people and they're like how sick they are. Can you, I, it's really sad that there's always been trolls. Yeah. Yeah, that trolls have always existed in some way, shape, or form. Bridge trolls, internet trolls. And to pick on grieving parents is like, wow.

I don't know how you get worse than that. Like, that's, I was going to say that's lower than low. Yeah, that really is the lowest form. And what is worse is that the people had to, the, the people, the, the people, the, people. The police had to follow up on all these leads. Yeah, of course. They kept having to waste time on these assholes and what they were saying. So they were running around to different places mentioned in these letters. Right. Wasting time, wasting resources. And there is a special place in fucking hell for those kind of people. I'm telling it. Like, it was so infuriating to read all this.

Of course. And again, now they just do it behind a keyboard. But people were reporting sightings of Billy thinking they saw him with this person, with that person. Here. And then, again, and then. hearing rumors that he was with this person, with that person, that a mother who lost her children had kidnapped him and was just like wanted her own baby. Like all this hope was being given to the family that like he's being cared for by somebody who just like, you know, some bereaved mother or something. Right, right. But all of them turned up nothing.

Then a train conductor by the name of Anthony Barone came forward and he said he had seen something strange the day Billy went missing. But he didn't know if it was really something to report. until now when he heard that he had gone missing. Okay. Two blocks from the Gaffney apartment, he had picked up an older man with a gray mustache who had a young boy with him matching Billy's description.

The boy cried the entire ride. Oh. And the man was trying to calm him down, but he wouldn't calm down. Oh, that's so sad. When he got off, the older man asked Anthony Barone for some directions about a ferry to Staten Island. Oh, God. Now, Francis McDonnell was Staten Island.

Yep. He told him how. He gave him the doctor. directions. And he said, the boy was still crying and upset, and the man was very stressed and very fidgety. He was moving his skeletal hands in weird ways, which if you remember, Mrs. McDonald said it stuck with her how he moved his hands. Yeah. They also said, there was also a second witness to this. A man named Joseph Meehan who also worked on the train, he confirmed this entire account and the description of the boogeyman. Now, as in the case of Francis McDonald,

the press was really good at enraging the citizens of the community about this. Oh, God. They were now attacking just older men who were anywhere near children. Good. Grandfathers were being assaulted. Like, it was mayhem. But among all of that, they were actually able to do a couple of, like, pretty good deeds with the misplaced rage. Two pedophiles in two separate areas on two separate days, Louis Sandman and Samuel Bimberg were actually literally luring potential victims. into alleyways and mobs ascended upon them.

Amazing. Beat the shit out of them and they were both arrested by police. Good. So positive things came out of it, I guess. Now, apparently the police department had 15 officers working like consistently on this case. And they were not just officers, but the absolute best officers the department had. Wow. They were really focusing on this.

They worked tirelessly to find Billy Gaffney. The Times Union newspaper ran an article about Billy's disappearance. parents two months after he had gone missing. It is the most overdone article I have ever read. And I have to share an excerpt with you because this writer was just too much. Just going for it. Going for gold. Like they were just going.

I don't know what they were going in a good way or a bad way. This is what it says. One moment, the child was romping happily with his small companion in the corridors of the apartment at 9915th Street where his parents live. In a trice he was gone, vanished. as completely as the flame of an extinguished candle. And apparently the void which swallowed Billy Gaffney is as dark and impenetrable as that which swallows

the leaping tongue of flame from the wax paper. That really is like poetry, but like the weirdest poetry and like the most unnecessary poetry on planet Earth. I was like gone like the extinguished flame. It's like, well, he's not a birthday candle. He's a child. Like, what? Like, vanished as completely as the flame of an extinguished.

extinguished candle. K.K. All right. He's a whole ass person. Oh, and it gets worse because obviously when these things happened, I mean, it happens now, but even back then especially, they would turn to like spiritualism and psychics and hypnotists and they do it now still. Oh, yeah.

Anything. When it gets desperate, it gets desperate, especially for a child. And they started doing things, you know, unorthodox methods like hypnotism. And this article speaks about that. And it says, quote, burly detectives have been thrown into trances, their muscles jerked rigid, eyes staring, and their minds supposedly projected into a realm of shades and shadows, where truths and half-truths are jumbled in a strange chaos of unreality. Here, in this nether Valhalla behind the somber sticks, this borderland where the quick and the dead co-mingle in a strange fraternity of distorted grotesqueries, the question has been asked, where is Billy Gaffney? And only the silence of shades have answered. You're, no.

No, you have to go. Just say that they hypnotized a couple of the detectives and shit got weird. Sash away. Sashay away. Just say that way. Get out of here. We don't need you right now. I can fix it.

They hypnotize some of these big burly detectives and shit got weird. But they have not answered the question of where is Billy Gaffney. Period. The end. Post. Like, damn, you earn that byline, I guess. Too much. Way, way too much.

way, way too much. Like, so extra. It's wild. Now, years passed, and there was no real tips. Oh, years. Psychics got involved, like I said, and they sent police on more wild goose chases, but nothing substantial. I mean, and there was several times where another, because reading this, you're like, okay, is everyone all right? I guess it's like today where they kept finding dead kids around and thinking it was Billy, and it's like, oh, no, this is just another kid that was murdered by, his mom or like murdered by someone else horrible. But it was like every time they would find one that matched his description, they would be like, that's Billy.

And then they go and look and they were like, that's not Billy. Oh my God. So they kept getting this like, oh, of just like, how do you live like that? Stress relief, stress relief, like, oh. And his poor parents were understandably devastated. And luckily Mrs. Gaffney, she did get released from Bellevue, like I said. but she kept his room set up and she put out place settings for him. She said she had to continue to hope.

Yeah. And actually, I found an article that I'm just going to read you really quick. This article is from the Times Union. And it's entitled Ladd's Exmas seat waited him in vain. And it says little Billy Gaffney's mother still hopes. At 9915th Street yesterday, five places were set at the Christmas dinner table, but only four were occupied. The vacant chair was for little Billy Gaffney, whose sixth birthday anniversary was yesterday, but who has been missing from his home since February 1927.

Billy's place was set because his mother, Mrs. Edmund Gaffney, feels assured he will be restored to them when she cannot say. At the table where Mr. Mrs. Gaffney and their two children, Irene 9 and Andrew 4. She says, quote, Billy was born on Christmas Day, Mrs. Gaffney said. it will be two years next February since he went away and it has been a long two years to me. It seems as though the police and newspapers have given up hope, but I have not. I keep thinking Billy is alive and will come back to me someday. That's gut-wrenching. And she maintained that for years.

That reminds me of the Daniel Morecambe case. His mom put a place setting out every single birthday, Christmas, holiday. Oh, that hurts my, and I get it. Absolutely. I would do the same thing. You can't forget about them. Because then you feel like you're just shutting the door. And you're just accepting it.

Yeah. You need hope. Right. Now, I found an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that was very interesting, too. And I, like, started yelling about this the other night. And John was like, can you stop? And he tried to, like, devil's advocate a little bit for me. And I was like, stop it now.

What are these days? This is crazy. And he was like, I'm sorry. So this article said that Anthony Barone, the train conductor, that saw the old man with the little boy crying. He actually quit his job and joined the detectives on the case, which I did find in like the book derange and a couple of other places too. So confirmed. But what's crazy to me is in this article it says they were able to find that man that he saw in the train. And he had been living near the Gaffneys, but when questioned, he had a pretty okay alibi. Who the fuck was that?

Was that Albert Fish? Well, right. I have never heard this. that they talked to this man. Because Albert Fish later said that was me on that train. He admits later that that was him. So do you think that somebody else just confessed or do you think it was him? I think it was, I think it was him. Like, I'm like, that I think, because this guy didn't confess. They just found him and the conductor was like, that's the guy.

And he happened to be living in New York near the Gaffney's, which Albert Fish was. Oh, dude. And they talked to this guy. That happens all the time. Like, think about Edmund Kemper had a literal body in the way. the trunk while talking to police on multiple occasions. It's just so crazy to me, though, that I've never read this, that they talked to him and this guy identified him as the guy on the train and that he had some kind of alibi.

No, because I've never heard that with this case being told either. That's crazy. It's in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. It blew my mind. I was like, what? There's a few things that you've mentioned, though, that I did not know about this case. Old newspapers, man. Like, it's crazy.

I will scream it from the rooftops. But there was even a time where a boy. who resembled and was the age of Billy was seen with an older couple on a ranch in Montana. What? And like, I guess a pharmacist had seen them come in. And she was like, they didn't have a kid before this. So all of a sudden they show up with this four-year-old who looks exactly like Billy Gaffney. So weird.

And she said that the kid, they're in Montana. And she said the kid sounded like he was from Boston or somewhere east. Right. And she was like, so she's like, I thought it was. So she called the police. and they did a big thing where they, you know, they couldn't get up there because of the snow at the time. They ended up finally getting the Gaffney's up there, or at least Mr. Gaffney ended up going there, and met this couple and this child, and he looked at him and said, no, he's not my billy.

Oh. And like hearing that, just like, he must have been going there being like, this is my baby. I'm going to get my billy back. Like these people have been taking care of him. Maybe they didn't know. No, that makes me want to cry. And no. And it ended up being that.

these, this couple had actually adopted this child from some woman in New York. Oh, wow. And they said that it wasn't even an official adoption. She just had like handed this kid over to them and was like, I don't want him. Oh. And these older couple was like, well, we'll take him. Yeah. Like, they just, they were just raising him because they, and they said like they've taken quite a liking to the boy. Oh, you're like, oh, that's good. So it was just bad timing. And they said, and Mr. Gaffney said, he did look like Billy, but he's not Billy. Oh. So years and years passed with several leads that were just dead ends.

No trace of Billy was found. Albert Fish, meanwhile, had struck again. One year after Billy went missing, while his family toiled for years over their little boy, he was already taking someone else's child from them. So at this point, he was still using the classified ads to find potential victims and also just to be gross. in 1927 is when he came across an ad placed by Edward Budd. It said, quote, young man 18 wishes position in country, Edward Budd, 4.06, West 15th Street.

This was common, like people would put ads in the paper, like especially young men being like, I can work on your farm. Yeah. The 18-year-old boy had placed the ad looking to work in the country somewhere. Because, again, these are like city kids. And back then especially like city kids just did not. They didn't see sun. They didn't see anything.

They were just like in a concrete, you know, block all the time. So that's why they wanted to go to the country. And he was also doing this to provide extra help for his family. He was just like a good kid. His parents were Albert and Delia Bud. Weird. So many Alberts. Yeah, because Francis's little brother was named Albert.

Yeah. And his dad. Oh, yeah, yeah. Weird. And there's a lot of Charleses that come up too. That makes sense. I mean, it all makes sense. Yeah.

But Alberts are like everywhere. I'm like, Jesus. I know. I don't think I've ever met an Albert. And what's weird is like, that's not even his name. His name is Hamilton. The fact is so. Hamilton is so wild to me.

I never knew that. I know. I almost feel like I should just start calling him Hamilton. No. Because he hated that. Oh, well, then. He hated being called him and eggs. So he was like, I don't want to be called him and eggs.

But then I also think of like Lynn Manuel Miranda, Miranda. Yeah. A really good musical. Well, that's what I mean. Bums me up. That's why I don't want to do it. Yeah. So his parents, Edward's parents, were Albert and Delia Budd, and they had five children. Edward, Albert Jr., Beatrice, George, and Grace. They were all living in an apartment in New York, and they had fallen on some pretty tough times. Oh. The father, Albert Bud, was like a hard worker. He was like an insurance guy.

Honestly, like, wasn't, there was a lot of people who didn't have any work at that point. So, like, at least he was able to, like, provide for his family. Yeah, I was trying to do something. Definitely tough. And they were all living in a very small area together. So this ad ran in the New York World paper on May 27th, 1928. On May 28th, the day after it ran, a man showed up at the Bud apartment. Oh, I bet he did.

When Delia Bud answered the door to Albert Fish, he introduced himself as Frank Howard. Okay. Frank Howard had read the ad, put in the paper by Edward, and he was ready to inquire about his services on his farm. Yeah. He told Edward that he had a huge farm in Long Island, like tons of animals. It was beautiful. He had a bunch of people working for him, but he had just lost a couple of farm hands. And he played the pity card by telling this family that his wife had left him alone with his six kids, which like is true. I was going to say accurate. But like also like no one gives a shit about you, man. Yeah, you're terrible. Now he offered Edward a great paying job on this farm. I'm sure he

fucking did and he even agreed to take on his friend will or his friend willie as a farm hand too because his friend willie was there and i guess his friend was like i want that too so he was like sure you know what i can take you too and in his head he's like cool i'll kill them both oh god that was his plan yeah like this whole thing he left saying he would come back saturday to get them and bring them out to the farm and the family was ecstatic yeah thinking this was edwards big thing he was going to get money he was going to get to be outdoors it was happy for everybody And Frank Howard had like charmed the fuck out of them. Like he came dressed to the nines.

He looked like he had money. He was chatting away with them just being real sweet. Isn't it so scary how like deranged motherfuckers can just put on? Just turn it off. Like put their face on and they're like, oh, I'm just a regular old guy. Oh, and you can see he does it to doctors too. He's one of those. It's so scary.

Like an Edmund Kemper kind of guy. He ended up pushing the day that he was going to picked them up from Saturday to Sunday. Nobody's really sure why, but something came up. I'm assuming it had something to do with the fact that he was only planning for one and he ended up agreeing to two, so maybe he had to change his plans a little bit. Now, he sent a handwritten note via a messenger, being like Western Union messenger, to say that he had to change the day from Saturday to Sunday.

That's important. Remember that handwritten note. But Sunday, June 3rd, 1928, he bought a pailful of like pretty cheeses and strawberries to the bud residence when he showed up. Uh-huh. On his way to pick up their son and, you know, bring him somewhere to torture and murder him, he had also left a package with a store owner on the way to their house because he couldn't carry everything.

And the store owner was like, you can leave it behind the counter. It's cool. Wow, a nice person. Imagine that. Yeah. And the package contained his implement. of hell wrapped in a wrapped in a package.

My goodness. And this guy had no idea. He just put it behind the counter and was like, you can pick it up after. Imagine looking back on that later. Yeah. Now the buds were entranced again by this kind, seemingly well-off older gentleman. He brought them strawberries and cheeses, so sweet, so nice. They invited him to stay for lunch.

He sat and ate lunch with them. These parents. He ate lunch with them. Oh, yeah, ate with them while he's sitting there waiting to take their child away so he can torture and eat him. Oh, my God. And he's telling them about his fictional farm and what he would do, you know, what he would be having their child do for him there.

And at one point, he mentioned how sorry he was for having to push the day to Sunday. Because he was like, I'm sorry that I told you Saturday. Right. Like you must have been psyched. And then I kind of like, fuck with you. Yeah. And then he was like, hey, that note that I sent, does Edwards still have it or did he throw it away?

Uh-huh. And I guess Albert Bud was like, I don't know. I think it's like right up on the mantle there. I think he just like stuck it there. Right. Albert got up, Albert Fish, got up, grabbed the note and put it in his pocket. Dude. And Albert Bud said, he thought it was weird, but in like a very like innocuous way.

He was just like, why would you? Yeah, you're not really going to say much about it. But he said afterwards, after everything, he said that one move keeps ringing in his ear. as like, holy shit, like he was showing me who he was. Yeah. I couldn't even see it. And he was making sure to erase any part of him in that apartment. Now, during lunch, 10-year-old Grace Bud came home.

No. She had been playing with friends after church. And she was dressed in what she had worn to church that morning, a white silk dress, white shoes and white tights and pearls around her neck. Oh, little cutie. As soon as Albert Fish saw her, she was his victim and not her brother. No. He immediately changed his mind.

Nope, that's it. That's so interesting that he went from like killing young boys and like mostly targeting boys to molest and like mutilate. Sorry, I couldn't think of the word. And then all of a sudden just changed. Yeah, he just switched. It's a very odd, very odd switch. Yeah. And the fact that it happened spontaneously.

Instantly. Like no planning involved is really wild. And the fact that he like gave up the idea of killing and torturing to people. Yeah. for just one person. And that, as we'll see, he really thinks on his feet here with how to get her out of the house. Because obviously he wasn't going to be able to, this changes everything. Of course.

He had just promised to take their son and his friend away. What is he going to do now? Never mind. Yeah. So what? Okay. So what? So he is, he immediately started talking to Grace.

He was asking her questions about school and her interests and her friends, acting like an old grandpa and saying you remind me of my grandchild. Oh, what a disgusting pig. At one point, she sat on his lap and he gave her some coins to buy candy for her and her sister Beatrice. So she ran off to buy candy. He then just pivoted. He said, he told Edward, you know what, I'll be bringing you guys to the farm later. Because I have to run really quick to my sisters.

My sister's having a birthday party for my niece. And she sent me word of this last night. And he's like, and I, since I was going to be in the area anyways. I was going to be stopping there. That's why I'm so dressed up because I wanted to show up in nice clothes. Uh-huh. And he said, wow, you know what?

This is going to be a kids party with lots of fun things to do. Would Grace want to join me? My niece is her age. It's her 10th birthday party. Oh, my God. And they were like, um, okay. Like what? And I guess the, like, I think Delia Bud was a little like, uh, but was like, do I say,

know like this is my son's employer now yeah he's talked about having six kids like I don't want to offend him but like I don't know right this is weird and it's 1920 something and shit's weird now and like I don't know but I guess Mr. Budd was like you know what like let the kid have fun oh she never gets out yeah just let her have fun like whatever he's like it's literally the great fucking depression let her go to this rich man's niece's birthday exactly yep and when they didn't what they didn't know was that so he said, one of them asked, where is it? Yeah, duh. And he said, oh, it's 137th Street in Columbus Avenue.

That's where it's going to be. So they were like, cool. That works. Like, that's a thing. What they didn't realize because, like, they never really ventured out much, is that Columbus Avenue ended at 110th Street. Oh. He just gave them a complete bullshit address that didn't exist.

And imagine if they had actually known that to. Then they would have been like, get the fuck out of my house. That would have been the first thing, but they didn't know. I wouldn't know either. I don't even know what street is like next to mine. Exactly. I'm so bad at that shit. All they were used to doing was like the dad went to work.

The mom was taking care of kids. They went to church. They didn't go places outside of their little bubble. Right. Now, she left with Frank Howard wearing her Sunday best, a coat with fur collar and trim, like faux fur collar and trim, with a rose on it and a gray hat with blue ribbons. Oh, stop.

They left together. and on the way he picked up that package, his implements of hell, and they walked down the street together. And Delia Budd went outside the door and waved and watched her child walk away with this man. No, no, no. Grace did not return home that night. Her parents immediately panicked. They reported her missing right away, and the search was on immediately.

Neighbors were interviewed. Police went to where the farm was supposedly located. It didn't exist. They went and talked to everybody in that area. They immediately tried to trace that telegram that he sent, the one that he had put in his pocket upon his return to their home. Albert Budd made sure he told the police about, or excuse me, yeah, Albert Bud made sure he told the police about it. And he was right to because he was like something, can you trace that? That was weird. Like he took the original, but there's got to be a copy when it was sent.

Right. And they were able to trace it as coming from the Western Union office at 3rd Avenue and 103rd Street in Manhattan. Okay. They were also able to track down where he bought the cheese and strawberries from on his way there. It was really impressive. It really was. They did a good job. Yeah.

And they also, because what he had said to them was that that cheese and strawberry was from his farm. Right. That's what you told them. But they tracked them down to on the way to their house. So they said that it seemed to them that he was pretty local because he kind of knew where to buy these things. And it wasn't like, there were weird things to buy. They got the same treatment. And unfortunately, as the Gaffneys, the buds did, the horrific fake letters immediately, saying all manner of horrible things about their missing child.

One said, my dear Mr. and Mrs. Budd, your child is going to a funeral. I still got her, Howard. Oh, my God. Interestingly, and this is, I haven't heard this either. Grace had walked by some friends with Albert Fish as he led her away from her home and family. These kids were Loretta, Jimmy, George, and Philip. They all said that when she walked by them with this man, they saw her. I think they interacted with her for a second.

Yeah. And when they got to the corner, all four of them said they saw another waiting person. And they said that they saw this on the corner. Grace had gotten into a car there with him. It was a blue car with yellow Pennsylvania license plates. Huh. A teenage girl, Margaret Day, who was working in the area, at the same time, said she also saw this. I've never heard this before.

I haven't either. And to this day, I don't know what that was. And that's like huge if he was working with another person. Yeah. There's a lot of things about Albert Fish that I question. A lot of it is he's a demon. He's an absolute fucking monster. But in what ways?

I don't know exactly what ways he technically, physically, what he did. I don't know what he did and what he didn't do. I think what he did do is he was a rape. I think he was a pedophile. I think he was into pain, mainly on himself. But it seems like he liked to talk about pain in kids. But then he treated his own kids differently. It's weird.

And then like all we have is his confessions mainly to say what happened here. And he loved to bullshit and he love to exaggerate and he love to shock people. So I don't know how much he exaggerated here. If this is, these letters are what he wished he could do. Right. And that he did do vile things. He did rape and he did murder. And he killed kids and he scared kids and he tortured kids for sure.

I just don't know what to what extent the reality is. So looking to the other side of that then, do you think he was trying to like get these kids for somebody else too? That's the other thing. I don't know if there's someone else here. I mean, based off of this. like eyewitness kind of event. Yeah. And the other thing is, he's a frail motherfucker.

Right. I mean, I'm not saying he can't because he looks frail, but sometimes people look frail can fuck you up. Yeah, of course. And if he's in that mode, which it seems like he gets into like demon mode, like animal. It could totally change into like superhuman strength kind of thing.

But it's like, it's weird to me that he was planning to take on Edward and his friend who were 18 years old. And from what I have read about them, especially Edward, he was stocky, like short, but he was built like a fucking like tank. Well, I mean, if you're strong enough to be a farmhand, like, that's manual labor. You must be ready for that in some capacity. So I'm like, is there someone else here? Is there a younger person here that is at least involved and got out of here, Scott Free?

There was no deathbed confession. There wasn't because he was executed. So it's like, I don't, I don't believe. I don't know if I believe he's alone in this. I think he's a big part. I mean, I think he's Albert Fish. And I think he is, like I said, a rapist, a murderer, a torturer, a pedophile. The worst of the worst.

I don't know if there's someone else involved here. That's so, so interesting because I've never heard that point be raised before. Yeah, it's weird to me. I'm like, I don't, maybe I'm like crazy and maybe I'm just like reaching for Strath. No, I don't think it feels like it's a possibility. It is. Yeah. I mean, obviously, like, he could have just, like, had a friend in the area that, you know,

pick me up here. Yeah, but it's like, where's that friend? Why didn't they come forward and be like, what the fuck? Yeah. Like, I saw that kid. It's weird. It is. It's a very weird thing.

I think it's just one of those things, too, that we might never know. We might not ever find out. I hope we find out. I would love to dig deeper into this and find who the fuck that is. I mean, whoever it is, you can assume, like, they never gave a deathbed confession. I would assume. Because you would think they'd be dead by now. It's like someone's got to know something.

Yeah. Come on. Who knows? Who knows something? I mean, people are like 104. Well, actually, they got to have family members. Family members. That's true.

Younger family members. Yeah. Was your dad doing something? Did he say something sometimes about this? Was your brother weird? Was your brother weird? Was your cousin of creep? Was your grandpa weirdo?

Huh? Was he talking about this? I know. Come on. Someone said something. I know there's another person involved here. Yeah. Be sure with the shield.

Well, another woman, Mrs. DeMille, and this is going to add fuel to this fire. Oh. She came forward and said that her son the day before, I think it was the day before the Bud's, the Grace Bud abduction, she said her four-year-old son, Desmond, was almost abducted by an older couple who was joined by a younger man while he was right. his bike outside of their apartment. She was inside cooking dinner. She happened to see it. She caught them as they were leading him away down the street. And one of them was carrying his bike. Like they were taking him away. Oh my god. She caught them and they claimed we were just going to go

buy him a bell for his bike. Like calm down bitch. No you weren't. And it's like that's my no. That's my whole ass child right there. And also it was a Sunday night and she was like where the fuck are you going to buy a bell? Yeah, everything's closed. She asked them that. She was like, Where are you going to buy a bell at Sunday night? Right. And I guess they were just looked at her and rushed away. That's creepy. Who the fuck were they?

But also you were just saying, you know, like kids were turning up dead all over the place. It's true. People were horrible. This was on the same kind of street where it's like tenement housing and stuff. Yeah. What were they going to get out of that? Right. And it's like, and then they just in the description she gave of the older man in this scenario.

Was it like Albert? It matches the bud's description of Frank Howard. Okay. I mean, that's fucking weird. And there's a young guy working there. An older couple and a young guy. And a younger guy. So by a couple, we can assume they meant man and woman.

Yeah, they said I think it was an older woman and this older man. And I'm like, who's that? Yeah. Because they never found those people. Weird. Who's that? Like, what's going on here? And it's in the same area, like the day before this.

And who's the young man? What the fuck? Who's that young man? I got to know. But either way, nothing came out of that. And Grace's photo was placed everywhere. And she was, what a fucking cutie. I can't even like look at pictures of her because it's like Leslie and Downey.

It really is. It reminds me of that. And she's 10 years old. It's the same kind of thing. But even like you see, there's only like one photo of Billy Gaffney. And even that picture. Oh my God. What a little muffin.

Like literally the definition of a cherub. Oh, the like a little fucking cherub with the cheeks. And Francis McDonald, like, again, there's not a lot of pictures of them, but holy shit. They're all such cutie-patooties. Like a pencil drawing, I think, of Francis McDonald. And I was like, I literally almost started crying. Yeah. They're just like such sweet little kids with their whole lives ahead of them.

Yeah. And just taken from their parents. Fucking monster. But her photo was placed everywhere. Right. And it was all over newspapers. It was on the subway, grocery stores, restaurants. Like, anywhere you went, her page.

They were putting these pages everywhere. Good. And it was also sent to several. law enforcement agencies around the country because they were like making this net wider because they were like, who knows where he could have taken her. And this is how the warden at a prison in Florida received it. Huh. And he called the police with a possible tip.

He said there was a former inmate of his by the name of Albert E. Courthale. Uh-huh. So another Albert who he thought could possibly be their guy or they should at least look into it. This guy was a con artist and not a murderer. but he would hire young girls to pretend to be his daughters for his scams. Bye. And he thought maybe that was the motive. He was like, maybe this could point to her even being alive.

Right. Because he's not a murderer as a, hopefully. So this was told to the police in Brooklyn, and then they immediately got another call from a guy named William Vedder. And he was the assistant superintendent of the Brooklyn Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. and he said a few days before Grace was kidnapped, he had an older guy with a gray mustache come in and inquire about adopting a six-year-old girl. Oh? He said the guy was weird and he wasn't getting a good vibe from him. So he was like, why don't you come back and we'll do another interview?

Yeah. But like, get the fuck out. Get the fuck out of here. Right. And the guy never came back. Go on get. And he never came back. So he was like, so they showed him a picture of Albert Courthell, this in this former inmate and

Florida. And he said, yeah, that's him. Stop. So now they show the buds this picture of Albert Cordell. And Delia said, without a doubt, that is Frank Howard. Okay, so is Albert Cordell the same person? No. What? But Albert Budd and Edward.

So the Bud's, you know, the father and son. There's so many Alberts. There's a lot. Albert Bud and Edward, the brother and father of grace. They were not so sure that that was Frank Howard. They did not have as positive of a identification. And it's hard because, like, the, I'm sure she wants to find him. Desperate.

She's just desperate to find him. Right. And unfortunately, it makes her a very unreliable witness later. Of course. But an arrest warrant for Albert, court hell was put out, but he was nowhere to be found. Interesting. Now, a detective with the missing persons bureau that went by the name of Detective William F. King, he becomes like a big part of this case. He was assigned to the case at this point.

and he became like obsessed. He was like, I'm going to find this kid. Good. Now, while trying to locate Albert Corte hell, police got wind of another potential suspect. Huh. So a Florida woman called the police and said she had recently married a man named Charles Howard, and he had scammed her. He had stolen her money, and she was pretty sure he was also the kidnapper of Grace Budd.

Why, though? And they were like, holy shit. So they figured this was actually pretty decent because con man, Albert Courthell had a ton of aliases, and one of them happened to be Charles Howard. Whoa. What are the fucking odds? Thank you. And so investigators were like, okay, this might be Albert Courthale.

Yeah. Because he's a scammer. Hi. And that's his fucking alias. So King and a bunch of other detectives went down to Florida, and they were able to apprehend Charles Howard very quickly. Good. They brought him back to New York on grand larceny charges from stealing from his wife,

but they were really looking at the kidnapping thing. Yeah. Unfortunately, this guy was a legit Charles Howard. That was his name. Oh, no. He was not arrested this random ass man. He was apparently was a scammer and they were able to charge him with grand larceny because he did steal from his wife.

But he was not Albert Courthale. He was just a guy named Charles Howard and it just happened to all connect. I mean, the way that like in the investigation and just like search for Albert Fish turned up so many other delinquents, you're like, at least some good stuff came out of it. Right. But also bad stuff that you're like, damn, this is a lot of bad. Right. You're like, this is so bleak. Well, and unfortunately, Delia Budd identified him as Frank Howard as well.

Oh, no. She was just wanting to find the person. And I think by now this was like the third person she had positively identified as him. Yeah. But this Charles Howard guy ended up having an airtight alibi for the kidnapping thing. He was nowhere in the, he wasn't even in the state. He's like, I'm a scammer. Not a weirdo. I steal money.

I don't kid. kid. Thank you. But unfortunately, Delia Bud wasn't a great witness anymore because, again, she just is eager to find her child and the person who stole her. I totally get. No, Edward Budd, the son, the brother of Grace Bud, actually identified Charles Howard as the kidnapper as well, which is interesting. That is. According to the Ironwood Daily Globe from Michigan of all places, like this, there was so funny where articles came from about this. I'm from Michigan. I'm from Michigan. I'm from Michigan. Weird that that came back.

It said that, quote, or Edward said, quote, he looked very much like the man who stole my sister. Okay. Now, September 3rd, 1930, another woman contacted Detective King. Damn. Instead, her estranged husband was the guy they were looking for. So he was 68-year-old janitor named Charles Pope. Even crazier, she had an entire tale about how one day, so they were living a part. They did not have a great marriage. Living apart, he had sent her a telegram asking her to meet him

on a corner somewhere the day that Grace was kidnapped. And she met him and she said with him was a girl. She looked to be about 10 to 12 years old. She had short, bobbed dark hair like Grace. She was wearing a white dress. Wow. Babba-ba-ba. And he said, can you look after this little girl for a couple of days while I do something out of town. And like, don't ask me any questions. And she was like, what the fuck? No. She was like, I hate you. And I don't know what this is all about. Getting involved in this. So he just said, like, fine. Like, I'll just take her back with me and left with her. This lady said when they left, he said, she said the girl gave her a look. She will never forget. Oh. Now this was two years after the fact, mind you. She's contacting the police two years after she said this happened.

ma'am she's letting police know this now two years come on her excuse the news wasn't mentioning grace a lot anymore and she forgot the whole thing happened you forgot you literally just said you'll never forget the look on her face and then moments later said well i forgot no what i meant by that was like i'll forget for a while but then like whoa once it's girlfriend once he pisses me off i remember now come on yeah she said she literally forgot the entire thing about her husband calling her to the corner with a strange child. Do you think this was even real? No, of course it wasn't.

Right. She only remembered this wild tale about her elderly estranged husband having a random little girl in his possession because she read about Charles Howard and his wife accusing him of being the kidnapper. Oh, okay. She even visited the Bud family and told them to their faces and confirmed that the girl she had seen with her estranged husband was their child. No, fuck this lady.

This woman's a bitch. She's a cunt. And they arrested Charles Pope the next day, because this is a wild tale. Yeah. And to them, this matches Grace Bud. She's saying it's the day Grace Bud went missing. Who, his description matches Frank Howard. She went to the Buds, showed a picture.

She confirmed that was the girl she saw. Stop. What an, oh, she's a beast, this woman and like not the good kind. So they put Charles Pope in a lineup and Delia Bud positively identified him. This is the fourth one. Now, this one makes more sense to me. I mean, they all make sense because she's a grieving mother who just wants to find her fucking kid. Yeah.

But this one, she was really set up for. Now, he was questioned Charles Pope for four hours and he denied everything. He was like, I've never met Grace Budd. Right. I've never known she existed until she was kidnapped. I had certainly not been in her presence that day. No one else will tell you I was. Like, absolutely not.

He was seemingly, the detective said, genuinely. shocked that this entire tale had been told about him. I'm sure. Like, it wasn't one of those that he's like, oh, she's lying. He was like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, these are very big stakes here. Which to me always says something. Whenever you see like an interview with a suspect and they're like, well, this person says that they saw you do this and they're like, ah, they're lying. You're like, you're lying. You're like, you're lying. Yeah. Because if that didn't happen, you'd be shitting your pants. I didn't fucking do that. Oh, my God. Because if somebody says something that I didn't do, I get so angry. I'm like, fuck you. I didn't do that. I never said. And this is such a wild tale to tell that if you heard that, you'd be like, are you kidding me? No, I didn't have a child in my possession at any point. Right. So he was shocked and he said it was truly unbelievable. And detective said he seemed to be telling the truth. Okay.

But his wife, Jesse, Pope, was also really convincing and had some details. And he matched the description of Frank Howard and now Delia Budd is saying that he is Frank Howard. Oh, God. So it turned out, police found out, that his estranged wife, Jesse, had actually had him committed at one point in the last few years. Are you kidding me? In order to try to steal his inheritance he was getting from his father. This lady sucks.

According to everyone who knew him, including doctors, who released him and said he was completely fine, he was sweet, he was gentle and not even slightly violent. Oh, I feel so bad for this guy. He had zero police records, not even petty crimes. He didn't even have a traffic ticket. He had nothing. So things, immediately everyone's like, well, this lady just wanted to fuck over her strange husband in like a real way. That sucks about that is that there probably were people that believed that he actually

did it. Now his reputation is tarnished forever. Sure. I mean, when the mother of the child identifies you, that's it. Yeah, like, you've got that on you. He could have been killed. Well, and then as everybody's like, Jesus, this woman is a demon. What the hell?

things got a little weird for a minute. Okay. So they searched, they had to throughout this thing because they're having to do their due diligence here. This guy seemed like a good suspect at one point. So they had to search this old farmhouse he owned at one point. And there was a garage off this farmhouse. And in the summer of 1927, Grace had actually participated, like, so that same summer, she had actually participated in this thing.

It was the New York Tribune's Fresh Air Fund. And it was a program for underprivileged kids. And it would get them into the country to spend time outside. And it was for city kids. Okay. Just to get them in the fresh air and like get them in the country, getting them like picking wildflowers. Cute. They hang out with like, I guess this family will sponsor them and they can stay in their farmhouse.

And it's like this whole thing. And it was like this cute thing. It's like it all went out well. Nothing ever came of this particular program like no one was kidnapped or. Good, good. Anything. But the place where she had stayed for that program was very near this abandoned farmhouse. Oh, wow.

That was owned by Charles Pope. Now, they found weird shit in that garage. In his garage. Yeah. They found a container that had brown locks of hair in it. And it was tied with white ribbon. And it was child's hair. And Grace had brown hair.

How could they tell that it was child's hair? They could just tell, I don't know how, but they were like, this is clearly child's hair. I think it had like a little curl to it and it just seemed like a lock of child's hair. They also found children's white stockings, which Grace was wearing white stockings when she left that day. There were also toys and other kids trinkets in this container. Uh-huh. Doesn't sound great for Charles when they find that. Did his wife put all this there?

Well, this whole thing fell apart really quickly because at first you're like, oh. And even Delia Budd who saw those stockings. was like grace was wearing stockings like that uh-huh well those items they were items from his own child's and his grandchildren oh the locks of hair were from his child's first haircut oh and he was like i literally kept them he's like i'm just fucking sentimental things he was like don't you just like don't you keep your kid's first haircut like yeah everybody does like my kid has brown hair you can like there are women out there with jugs of teeth well not jugs hopefully but like jugs of teeth Well, the entire jugs.

Just some jugs of teeth. Gallon jugs of teeth. It's totally normal. And it's adorable. It's fine. God. It's so sentimental. It is.

No, but you know what I mean? Whomst among us doesn't have a jug of teeth. So I don't find anything wrong with this. What a misspeak. If you are out there saying you don't have a jug of fucking teeth. You're a liar. You're a liar and you don't belong here. Get the fuck out of my face.

No. But you know what I mean? I do. I do. Little trinkets of teeth. Yeah. Little trinkets. A little trickets.

A little tricket. And I get it. In our little baby box that we have for the babes, like, remember, we kept their little pieces of their hair from their first haircut. Yeah. And guess what? I'm sure you'll fucking save their teeth too. Exactly.

I did their first haircut, by the way. Like, shit is weird. Yeah. Like when you cut that first curl off, like that curl is mine now. I'm keeping it forever. Thank you. But that's what he was like, I kept my kid's hair. Like, I'm sorry.

That's weird. Get the fuck out of my face. Whatever. And then he said all those little trinkets were like for my grandkids or from my grandkids. And he said, and I also run tenement housing buildings. And sometimes the people who live there will give me like hammy downs for my grandkids. So he's like a lot of times I just put them in this bucket if they're not useful. But I think maybe later.

Yeah. If they have more grandkids, which I guess he had a lot. He was like, I can give them those. He's like, this whole operation is actually wholesome as fuck. He's like, this is literally the purest shit that's ever existed. Like it's, but that shows you how quickly you could, I mean, I immediately when I read that, I was like, that is sinister as fuck. There's no way you're going to convince me that's not.

It's so funny. It's very, it's giving girl in the house across the street from the window with the face and the eyes. It's like that. Like, it really is. It's amazing. I literally picture Kristen Bell in my head right now just going, bingo. And that's, you can look at it one way.

Yeah. Sinister. You could look at it and literally go big-go. And then you turn the other way and you go, oh my God, that's the most wholesome shit I've ever seen. Exactly. And then Delia Budd even came forward and said, you know, those stockings weren't hers. They looked like hers, but they weren't hers. Right.

Like I can tell you. And she said, I only identified him as the guy, as Frank Howard, Delia Budd said this on the stand later. She said, I only identified him as him as the guy because his ex-wife, his estranged wife, Jesse there, had come to me, had told me, like, I had seen your child. Like woman to woman. And then we talked about the description of her ex-husband and Frank Howard. And she was like, she convinced me that that was him. So when I saw him, I recognized him.

I said, yes, that is him because I had heard her talk about him so much. Can you imagine for just one second being this woman and how. having to go identify these people every time. I'm sure every time she was sitting there working herself up thinking this is going to be the day. I'm going to see it. This is going to be the day. And your brain can play crazy fucking tricks on you. Think about falling asleep at night and you fucking think that the boogeyman is in the corner.

And obviously he's not. You're going to look at this man and go, yeah, absolutely. That's the guy. And that's the thing. And it's like she just wants to find him. And of course our mind's going to go, yep, that's him. Uh-huh. He's got your kid.

Let's find grace now. Right. And it's like, and then when this. crazy, this asshole. Yeah. Jesse Pope there goes to this grieving family and convinces them just to fuck over her estranged husband who she wants to steal money from? It's like, that's wild.

Ma'am, you should be the one committed. She should be in prison. I mean, that's insane. And she admitted it. The wife finally admitted it that she had done this whole thing just to get his money. That's so fucked. So still, he was going to trial. though because they couldn't I mean they had a little bit of circumstantial here yeah and at this point

she hadn't completely admitted that she had fucked everybody around so he was still going to trial for the kidnapping of grace bud also what is she getting out of this other than being a kid i think she just hated him and she was like i just want to see him suffer meanwhile he seems like a very sweet gentleman well and even his sister who he lived with when he was estranged from his wife she said she was like i don't know why she hates Charles so much, I can't figure it out. She was like, this woman just has like hate. Like vengeance. And she was like, she just wants his money and she's mad that he doesn't make enough money.

Like, it's literally the Great Depression, ma'am. She just seems terrible. But yeah, it went to trial in the press. If you look at old newspaper articles, they were convinced he was the guy. Wow. He was railroaded in the press. And two weeks before the trial began, they finally found old Albert Court Hell. They finally found him.

Oh, my God. And they extradited him to New York. So now they have two suspects. Oh, shit. One, they are putting on trial. The other one, they're like, oh, shit, we forgot about that. Could be this guy. Morbid.

So Delia and Albert Budd picked him out of a lineup and said he kind of looks like the guy, but we're not positive. So this wasn't like, boom, that's him. They were like, we're done with that. He kind of looks like him. I don't know. They're like, why are you just showing us every guy that looks like this guy? And after trying really hard to gather anything, they couldn't come up with even one thing to connect actual Albert Court hell with this case.

Okay. He was a scammer. Sure. He was fucked. He would hire young girls to pretend to be his daughter so he could scam people. Real weird. He hadn't murdered anyone as of yet. He wasn't accused of raping anyone as of yet.

And even he was like, no, like didn't do this. And there was nothing to connect him. Right. Nothing. But Charles Pope was actually finally. released. His trial only lasted like a minute and a half. It was like the most ridiculous. It wasn't even a real trial. That's so crazy. Everyone said it wasn't him. Everyone who knew him was like that is not him. Like his wife is just a terrible person. And yeah. And that he had come to,

in the fact that she had come to the bud house and basically used them. Yeah. Came out. She admitted it. She's a demon. And he was finally freed on February 6, 1931. But now they're back to square one. They've gotten nothing. They had their cup runneth over with suspects at one point, and now they've gotten nothing. There was a hole in my bucket, dear Eliza. But while this was happening in the courts, the real Albert Fish, the real Frank Howard, was being admitted to Bellevue Hospital for the second time in a couple of years. Huh.

This was on December 15th of that same year, and he was arrested for his habit of sending disgusting letters to people through the mail. Dude won't quit, which makes me wonder, again, was this, did he just like doing this shit? And like he didn't really go that far? I believe, like I said, I definitely think he murders, he rapes. He's a fucking terrible person. But I just really need to know the extent. Yeah. I need to know if that's true.

The letter he was arrested for this time was said in the arrest papers to be, quote, a letter of such a vile, obscene, and filthy nature that to set forth the comment. Contents thereof would defile the records of the court. Wow. They wouldn't even put the letter in the records. Wow. Does that tell you something? Because he's just sending this letter not doing anything to somebody.

Right. But just sending filthy, horrible shit in the mail. Like, I think he just likes doing this. And he's a murderer and a rapist. Uh-huh. There's so much unknown about it that it makes me crazy. Now, a doctor asked him how he began doing this. like, why do you do this?

Yeah. And he said he basically, he's like, I started a long time ago, but I really got into it when I started working as a painter in Harlem in 1929. And he said, he said, while he was painting, he was like on a crew painting a sanitarium in a Harlem. And he said, the workers found a huge pile of dirty letters. And they read them aloud for fun. Uh-huh. And he said, this made him want to do it, but to non-consenting victims instead of somebody that actually

wanted to, like, write dirty letters with you. Yeah. Which is, like, just find somebody who wants to write dirty letters with you. Like, get a dirty pen pal. The OG sexting. Yeah. Get a dirty pen pal. Get yourself a filthy-ass pen pal, and you guys can have a blast.

Filthy-ass pen pal. I need somebody to text their romantic partner. Like, do you want to be my filthy pen pal? Excuse me, filthy ass. Like, just, if you both are consenting adults and you want to talk to the filth with each other, By all means, do it. Christina said, let's get dirty. There you go.

Hello. Listen to Aguilera. But he liked to do it with people who are non-consenting, and they were victims. Not okay. Now, according to deranged, he was diagnosed as suffering from, this is going to be crazy to everybody, sexual psychopathy. What? But his notes for this stay in Bellevue were that he was quiet and cooperative.

And most interestingly, it said he had, quote, conducted himself in an orderly and normal manner. I don't know about that. This is very different from those frantic and worrisome movements, like hand movements that everyone described from him. Yeah. Mrs. McDonald in particular said she was like very troubled by his anxious movements with his hands. Like it freaked her out.

She said she would never forget them. So that's strange to me that he could just turn that off. Right. And not be anxious at all. Well, maybe it was like when he was not about to murder somebody. Yeah. It's like is that just his like tick? Yeah.

But they also wrote in this report that there was, quote, no evidence of delusional notions or hallucinatory experiences. It is true that he shows some evidence of early senile changes. This condition, however, is quite slight at the present time and has not impaired his mentality. His memory, particularly for a man of his years, is excellent. Huh. They literally said that the letter writing was just what men do when they get old and senile. Yeah, I know so many old men that just raised.

unconsenting, disgusting letters to people. Like old men, am I right? Yeah, grumpy old men. Like, you know, need I remind you real quick? Let me just quickly remind you that what the doctor, and let me remind that doctor, too, from the grave, that you're telling me this is just what old dirty men do. Yeah. They're just old and they're dirty.

Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. You get really yucky when you're old. Let me just remind you that the affidavit for that arrest said, a letter of such a vile, obscene, and filthy nature that to set forth. the contents thereof would defile the records of the court. He's just an old man. Just dirty old man. Like, what?

No. No. What, sir? They then contradicted this and said that he didn't actually seem to be suffering from any mental disorder, but they were like, he's super old and he's senile kind of, but like, not, no. Mentally he's all right. And it's like, but you just said he's senile, which would indicate that he, that mentally he is,

there's some kind of decay there happening, even if it's slow. Uh-huh. Nope. They actually said he was quite sane. After 30 days, he was released. He was released after 30 days to his daughter, Anna, actually. Poor Anna. Poor Anna.

Now, only six months later, he was back at it again with the letters. He was picked up for this again. And when he was arrested at his home, they found a bunch of letters just waiting to be sent under the mattress. He had just written a shit ton of them. Loves to put stuff under the mattress. loves that mattress shit. That mattress life is for him. The mattress shit.

He's like, it reminds me of like a terrible version of like the total antithesis of Lane Kim from Gilmore Girls like hiding everything under the floorboards. Oh, love that. But like Lane Kim's the best. Oh, forever. But he also had that, they found that DIY cat an eye tails. They found that paddle with the nails in it. And they also found in Ready Guys, this is going to be gross. So I'm just trigger warning, trigger warning.

Really gross. This is going to be gross. I'm not going to go into graphic detail, but it's gross regardless. There, I gave you a warning. You can skip like 15 seconds and you'll be fine. They also found food items like carrots, which when the police were like, why are these in your drawer? They're like decaying. And he goes, oh, I stick those up my ass.

He had poopy carrots in his drawer. Sure did. Pooh-poo carrots. Normally I don't like to, these kind of things, I'm like, I don't want to share that. But honestly, Albert Fish, I feel like to get the full picture, I got. to give you a little bit of it. And that was just something that I was like, can you imagine being a police officer? And it said in deranged, it said that he, like the police officers very much knew what those like,

what else were just like for. But they were just like, bro. And I guess and he just like snarled it at them like, this is what I do with them. And they were like, oh. He's like, those are my dildo carrots. Like imagine being that detective. And you're just like, what do we do here? What do we do?

Yeah. So to Kings County Hospital this time he went. Oh, man. And he looked, he was quiet and cooperative there again. Yeah, I bet they didn't serve carrots with lunch. He was released before even two weeks. And they said he was sane, totally fine. Now, when he returned home to be cared for by his poor children again, he started having

crazy night terrors. I bet. And his son, I think his son, Albert Jr., I believe it was, said that he would literally wake up like screaming like a wild animal. And he said his father had never had night terrors. He had never known him to do this. So you said when he would go in there, he was just like thrashing. He would wake up like sweating and like wide-eyed later.

You got something on your conscience? Exactly. Later, he would say that every single night after he kidnapped Grace Budd, she came to him at night. Good. And I'm so glad to hear that. Good. Because he, to me too, this shows you something's different here. Because he, none of those other ones bothered him like that.

Yeah. So was someone else involved? Right. With some of these? And this was one maybe he did by himself. And this was the one that stuck. Or was it because she was a little girl? Yeah.

I don't know. What's stuck with him about like all these children should be haunting you? Yeah. But why is it just grace? I mean, I'm glad. I'm glad she came back. It is interesting. I'm going to fuck with you forever.

Like good for grace. Yeah. But like, it's strange. And it adds more like lore to his like, hmm, is someone else involved? What happened here? It almost makes me think that somebody else was involved with Grace's murder. Yeah. Because then she's kind of like he, he feels guilty for not stopping it, I feel.

Maybe. Like potentially. I don't know if he has that though. I don't know. I don't know. I don't think. I feel like he doesn't have that capacity to feel guilty about not stopping it. Yeah. To me it points more to he may be participated in the other ones.

but this one was maybe one he because it was spontaneous. Huh. So I don't know if maybe like, because that's the other thing about this is like, who was that person that showed up in the car if this was like spontaneous? Were they thinking that Edward was going to be coming? Because he did. I mean, he was saying when he was coming back to pick up Edward, he was going to get a car. Okay.

So it's like, maybe that was just a car. Or was this a town car? Like what kind of, but it wasn't. It wasn't a town car. It was like a blue car or something like that. I don't know. And it was from like Pennsylvania. Right.

But it's like, did this person not know that Gracewood? Did something go wrong here? Was I? Who knows? It's just strange that this one, something bothered him at all. Right. Because it's like something weighed on your conscience or just, what was it? Very weird.

Now, he's going through this and it had been six years at this point since Grace Budd was kidnapped and nothing had come of it. After all that like craziness and how they had like way more suspects than the even needed. Now they got nothing. And it's been six years in Albert Fish, aka Frank Howard, was going through the newspaper and he saw an article about Grace Budd's kidnapping. And it had the parents' new address in the article that they had moved. But why would they say their address? Like why would they print that in the paper? Back then, man, they were just like willy-nilly. But he decided to write them a letter. Six years later is the time. So November 12th, that letter arrived at the Bud home. Now, interestingly, Detective King

did this thing and he really stuck with it for the six years. He put fake details about the bud case in the paper a lot. Okay. He would have them run an article and he gave them a bunch of fake shit. Okay. And he would see if he could get the real kidnapper to come out of hiding. And this was like a relatively new tactic. Like they didn't do this all the time. But it was a great way to also discount fake confessions and tips. Because if somebody called in with that article in mind being like, oh, yeah, and then I did this. He was wearing a clown nose when he showed up. It's like, yeah, okay, I know you're a bullshitter.

Now, it worked all the time with this case. They were able to get rid of a bunch of tips. But Delia Bud, and just like keep that in mind. Yeah. Delia Bud could not read. Okay. So her son, Edward, read this letter when it came. She was sitting in front of him as he read it, and she said his face was unlike anything she's ever seen.

And he was like, she was like, what does it say? And he just ran from the room and took it directly to the police. Oh, wow. So did she never have to hear what was in the letter? Honestly, I don't know if she heard the entire contents of the letter. But he, again, I'm not reading that letter. You can find that letter. Yeah, go Google it if you want.

That letter is in deranged. Again, I'm going to like direct you over there. Link it. Because you should read that book if you want to know a lot more details about this case, like things that I wasn't going to say out loud. And he did like an amazing job with like telling the history of this time period and these locations and these families and everything. So it goes really far into all these like wild goose chases and stuff.

So I really recommend it. But it's a hard read. It's very graphic. But the entire. the letter in its entirety is in there. So he began the letter with my dear Mrs. Bud, which I'm immediately like, I want to kick you in the teeth.

Get fucked. And started to explain to her that he had a friend when he was younger, who was on a steamer ship that went to China. And he said there was a famine there at the time, and he told this horrific tale of these underground meat markets that used young children as meat. This man told Albert Fish, apparently, how delicious children were.

and that when he came back, he had taken to kidnapping children in America, and he would torture and eat them himself. Albert was so fascinated and entranced by this bullshit story that probably was not told to him, that he made up his mind to try it himself. So he decided to start the letter out by explaining that. Okay. In graphic detail, by the way.

The next bit is an exact verbatim part of this letter that I will read. on Sunday, June 3rd, 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. I'm going to stop there because after that I literally can't read it out loud.

No. Nope. What he did is he then explained that he waited in a room naked for her while she was outside picking wildflowers. He called her in. He attacked her when she tried to run while she was saying she was going to tell her mama. And he wrote that in the letter. No. He strangled her.

He, according to him, cut her into pieces, cooked those pieces and ate her for days. He also made sure to tell her mother that he never raped her. And he stated, quote, she died. virgin most horrific letter like i'm telling you this letter is like i it will change you as unable to be explained and and that was me railroading over it it's so much worse now this was a real letter and the detectives knew this as soon as edward brought this to the police station they were like this is it this is the real frank well and even like referencing the strawberries and the cheese. Exactly. You nailed it because we know that he had put the fake shit into the articles.

There was none of that, but that strawberry and cheese thing he had never put into an article. So boom. And it was the shit only he would know. This guy had also written down an address that he had taken her to. He wrote down the actual address of the place. And they immediately went and got a handwritten, that handwritten telegram that was at Western Union. They got that photocopy of that. And they put it next to each other. The handwritten. writing was identical. I'm sure. And everybody, they stayed, they were like, this is identical. It's Frank Howard. This is him. And that is where we are going to leave you today. They now know this is Frank Howard. And now they just have to find Frank Howard. And don't worry, they find Frank Howard. Oh my gosh. The fact that we have a whole other install. But this is all I can do today.

That was a, I mean, that was, I can't talk about it. I got to tell you, that was like more than enough. So good job. Oh, thank you. No problem. This is a really, this is a tough one. Yeah, I think you should do something haunted after this because I do, I think I already warned you guys, but just like another quick warning, my next case is like not as terrible as this because I don't even know what's as terrible as this, but it's horrific. Yeah, and we still got, we still got part three.

So part three, we will talk about him being arrested finally, his confessions in the trial. in his eventual execution because the boogeyman is gone, my friends, but who knows? It's a lot. Well, and the confessions are something. Again, I'm not going to read them like verbatim because some of them are just like way beyond my capacity to say out loud. So, but I will, I'll give you all the information I can as best as I can. But I got to stop there because two missing kids and two horrific, like murder. I just, I'm out.

I gotta go look at a sun, a sunset or something. I gotta go look at the sun. I just got to stare directly into the sun after this. I used to go throw the carrots out of the fridge, so I'll talk to you later. And with that, we hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. I literally don't have to tell you about to keep it. That's weird.

That's like so, just you already know. I apologize, everybody.