ALBERT FISH: BIOGRAPHY AND VICTIMS - ARTE - 2024

Albert Fish (1870-1936) was an American-born cannibal and serial killer whose victims were solely children. He is known by the nicknames "The Gray Man", "The Killer Grandpa", "The Werewolf of Wysteria" or "The Vampire of Brooklyn". He confessed to four murders and to having sexually abused more than 100 children. However, it is suspected that he may have committed many more murders than he alleged.

He went down in history for being one of the most cruel criminals. He spent years abusing children and adolescents, some of whom he kidnapped, tortured, dismembered, and cooked to eat. During his arrest and subsequent trial, no one could believe that behind that old face, apparently fragile and with shy eyes, a completely macabre being was hiding.

Albert fish

Before starting with his life, you can begin to understand the personality of Albert Fish with some of his phrases:

Childhood and early years

Albert Fish, whose given name was Hamilton Howard Fish, was born on May 19, 1870 in Washington DC He had three brothers and he was the youngest of all. His father, Randall Fish, was captain of a river boat, but by 1870 he was engaged in the manufacture of fertilizers.

Fish Sr. died of a myocardial infarction when Albert was just 5 years old. Her mother was 43 years younger than her husband, and when he died leaving so many children in her care, she had to take some measures.

Orphanage

In 1875 his mother sent him to an orphanage because she could not care for him. There began a life of calamities for Albert, being the place where he discovered and developed the personality of a psychopath and sadomasochist.

And it is that since his arrival at the orphanage he began to be mistreated, where he was constantly whipped, beaten and humiliated by his companions. However, in that environment he not only discovered that he liked pain, but that he was even turned on by blows.

Obviously the environment in which he grew up was not healthy at all, but his problems really went beyond the environment. There was a history of mental illness in his family. Her mother had hallucinations and claimed to hear voices in the street. One of his brothers was insane and another was an alcoholic. In addition, two of his uncles had been interned in psychiatric institutions.

Back with his mother

By 1879, when Albert was 9 years old, his mother's financial situation changed thanks to her being able to get a job. The woman got her son back and it was after that that the killer changed his name from Hamilton Fish to Albert Fish.

It is said that the psychopath took the name of a deceased brother and that he changed his original name because children used to make fun of him by calling him 'Ham and Eggs', which in Spanish would be ham and eggs.

First interests

His first sexual experience was at the age of 12. At such a young age he began to have homosexual relations and began visiting public toilets to see naked boys. By then he was already drawn to sadomasochism and had fun not only inflicting pain on other people but also on himself. But not only this.

He also began to develop a taste for coprophagia, which is the fondness for eating human feces, as well as urophilia, which is the act of feeling pleasure or masturbating with urine.

He also became interested in criminals who appeared in the press, so he began to collect material related to serial killers and especially cannibals, with whom he felt especially identified.

Moving to New York

In 1890 he decided to leave Washington to move to New York. There, at just 20 years old, he began to prostitute himself. But, unlike most of those who work in this profession, Albert was not looking for money but rather the possibility of experiencing new sensations in the sexual sphere. It was there, as he confessed years later, that he began raping young boys.

The beginning of a "new life"

In order to help stabilize his life, Fish's mother found him a girlfriend and arranged a marriage for him. Thus, in 1898, Albert married a woman, who was nine years younger than him.

Six children were born from that marriage. Although it sounds strange, apparently the murderer was not a bad father. Although his children witnessed many strange acts on the part of his father, he never abused or hit them.

Mental disorders

It is said that a few years later he began to suffer from hallucinations. He became obsessed with religion, with the idea of ​​sin and believed that the way to atone for guilt was through pain.

For this reason, he used to inflict punishment on himself, cutting himself and rubbing his naked body against thorny roses. He also used to prick needles into his body, especially in his pelvis and his genitals.

First crimes

At that time he was working as a house painter and, according to the murderer, during that time he sexually abused at least 100 children, most of them under six years of age.

In 1903, Albert was arrested for embezzlement. He was sentenced to prison and was sent to Sing Sing State Prison. That time in prison served him to reaffirm his sexual orientation, since during those years he had sexual relations with several of the inmates. After that experience in prison, he was detained several more times.

Some of the motives were theft, payment with bad checks and even for sending obscene letters to the advertisements of marriage agencies that appeared in the newspapers.

In early 1917, his wife left him for another man. This rejection affected him even more and it was from that moment that his hallucinations became more frequent.

His beginnings as a murderer

According to the murderer himself, the first murder he committed was in 1910. It occurred in the city of Wilmington, in the state of Delaware and the victim was a boy named Thomas Bedden. Nine years after that murder, Albert stabbed a mentally disabled young man in Georgetown, Washington DC

The next victim would arrive in 1924. After his arrest, the psychopath confessed to the murder of Francis X. McDonnell, an 8-year-old boy who died on Staten Island, an island in the state of New York. Apparently the killer had been stalking the boy for days. The body of the minor was found in a nearby forest. He had been strangled.

The next victim was Billy Gaffney. In 1927 his disappearance was reported in Brooklyn. The boy had been playing with another boy, who was barely three years old. Both disappeared but shortly after the little one was found on a roof. When asked about Gaffney's whereabouts, the boy replied that the coconut had taken him.

Billy's body was never found. And as the murderer confessed after his arrest, after killing him he ate it in parts. Despite all these crimes, Albert Fish was not caught until about eight years after the kidnapping of Billy Gaffney.

The case of Grace Budd

But the beginning of the end for Albert Fish came with the kidnapping and murder of Grace Budd. For some reason, the killer changed his modus operandi and began to approach the children in a different way.

Fish bought newspapers to select people who advertised for jobs. Thus it was that the psychopath reached the Budd family. In May 1928, 18-year-old Edward Budd had placed an advertisement offering his services and, after reading it, the killer decided to pose as a farmer to get closer to the family.

He knocked on the door of the house and introduced himself as Frank Howard. He claimed to be a farmer from Farmingdale, New York and said he would employ the boy. Although his plan was supposedly to take Edward away, everything changed when he met Grace, the young man's 10-year-old sister.

On a second visit to the house, the elderly man brought strawberries, fresh cheese and the family invited him to breakfast. But just before leaving, Fish convinced the girl's parents to let her accompany him to a supposed birthday party for his niece.

The mother hesitated but was soon convinced. Fish promised to get her home before nine at night, but that never happened. Fish left with Grace and Grace never came back. When they went to the address where the man lived, they found nothing. The police investigated, more than a thousand flyers were distributed, but the girl did not appear alive or dead.

Letter, confession and arrest

The case manager was Detective William F. King, who never seemed to give up on the case. Six years after Grace's disappearance and a few weeks after the case was officially closed, something happened that changed everything. The girl's mother received a letter from the murderer in which she told a story about cannibalism and then related how he murdered and ate the girl.

Although many did not believe that letter could be true, Detective King followed all the details and clues. Identifying a symbol on the envelope of the letter, they found the landlady of a place where Fish had lived.

The murderer was waiting for a letter from his son and the landlady had to keep it for him. In December 1934, the woman called the detective to let him know that Fish was at the scene. When the police arrived, the old man had a cup of tea, identified himself as Albert Fish when they asked his name and when he stood up he took out a small knife. The detective quickly controlled the situation and was arrested.

Death

After his arrest, Fish did not deny the murder of Grace Budd, but confessed that he originally intended to murder Edward Budd. After that, the psychopath confessed to being the author of other crimes. He also recounted all the aberrations that he had committed throughout his life. It was also he who confessed that the number of his rape victims amounted to about 100.

Fish confessed to only four murders. However, Detective William King believed he was responsible for three more crimes. King thought that Fish could have been the rapist and murderer nicknamed "the vampire from Brooklyn." The victims were Yetta Abramowitz, a 12-year-old girl murdered in 1927 in the Bronx; 16-year-old Mary Ellen O'Connor murdered in Queens in 1932; and 17-year-old Benjamin Collings, also assassinated in 1932.

Albert Fish was brought to trial for the premeditated murder of the girl Grace Budd. The trial, which began on March 11, 1935 in New York, lasted ten days. To defend himself, in addition to alleging insanity, the murderer assured that he heard voices from God ordering him to kill children.

During the trial, various sexual fetishisms were attributed to him, including coprophagia, urophilia, pedophilia and masochism. Fredric Wertham, chief defense expert and child development psychiatrist, claimed Fish was insane. However, the jury found him sane, he was found guilty and sentenced to the death penalty.

The criminal was sentenced to die in the electric chair. He arrived at the prison in March 1935 and was executed on January 16, 1936. His entry into the execution chamber was recorded at 11:06 pm and three minutes later he was pronounced dead. Before dying, the murderer defined his punishment as the supreme experience of his life.

Psychological profile

Following his arrest, Albert Fish underwent various psychological tests. The psychiatric reports identified among their problems masochism, sadism, castration and self-castration, exhibitionism, cannibalism, pedophilia, voyeurism, coprophagy, fetishism, homosexuality and hyperhedonism.

The conclusion of some psychiatrists is that Fish was unhinged. They diagnosed him with paranoid psychosis. However, despite having been diagnosed as psychotic, his insanity was not certified.

It is worth noting that during his life, the murderer was admitted to psychiatric hospitals on several occasions. However, on each of these occasions they let him out because they considered that he was not crazy and that he was not dangerous. He only suffered from a psychopathic personality of a sexual nature.