# 27: Depraved Killer Sends Letters to His Victim's Family

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 18 Jul 2023, 33 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/105f723ac/podcast/play/103880346/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-5-9%2F401851642-44100-2-64c3633417c74036.mp3

Today's episode is on serial killer Albert Fish. Trigger Warning: child death, caniballism Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:05] Hello everyone, and welcome to Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor
[0:09] Neil, a true crime podcast where we crack open some of the most
[0:12] notorious cases in history. Given the topics that we'll be
[0:16] investigating, it goes without saying that this show comes with
[0:20] a content warning. The details can get a bit heavy
[0:23] and you might find some of the themes we discussed triggering.
[0:26] Listener discretion is strongly advised, and check the
[0:29] description for some resources and further information.
[0:39] Today we're going to be talking about the Albert Fisch case,
[0:42] which is a very, very old case almost.
[0:45] Well, no, it is. It's over 100 years old.
[0:48] Now, let's get into the case. Before I do, I just want to give
[0:51] my usual disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[0:54] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[0:56] This video is for educational purposes and everything that I'm
[0:59] about to say is just information that I have found on the
[1:01] Internet and I'm compiling into one video.
[1:04] Before we do get into this one now, I just want to warn you
[1:06] that it is a case that involves children and it is quite a heavy
[1:10] case. So Albert Fish goes by many
[1:13] names in the media. He's been nicknamed the Werewolf
[1:16] of Wisteria, the Boogeyman, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Grey Man.
[1:20] His story has been told so many times in so many different like
[1:23] movies and stories. But his name actually wasn't
[1:26] Albert Fish, it was Hamilton Howard Fish.
[1:29] He was born on May 19th, 1980. He was a Taurus and he was born
[1:34] in Washington DC in America. He lived with his father,
[1:37] Randall and his mother, Ellen, who had the most insane age gap
[1:41] I've ever heard of in my life. There was 43 years between them.
[1:45] His father was 75 at the time of Albert's birth.
[1:48] Albert was the youngest of four siblings at the time of his
[1:51] birth. However, he did have other
[1:53] siblings that had passed away before he was born.
[1:57] His family had a history of various mental illnesses.
[2:00] His uncle suffered from mania. His sister was diagnosed with
[2:04] mental affliction. I don't know what that means.
[2:06] Like, today, I don't know if that's still a mental illness
[2:10] today, but, like, reworded, or if that's one that they got rid
[2:14] of and were like, that's not actually mental illness.
[2:16] His brother was later admitted to a psychiatric ward.
[2:19] His mother suffered from hallucinations, and three other
[2:23] family members were diagnosed with some kind of mental
[2:26] illness. So there's a lot going on in
[2:28] this family already. When Albert was five years old,
[2:31] his father passed away at aged 80 from a heart attack.
[2:34] And his mother just could not afford to work and also look
[2:39] after all four children all at once, and so she put them in an
[2:42] orphanage. During his time in this
[2:44] orphanage, Albert was relentlessly teased by the other
[2:48] children. They used to call him Hammond
[2:50] Eggs. I don't know why his name was
[2:52] Hamilton. Maybe that's why, I don't know.
[2:55] But anyway, Albert hated being called Ham and Eggs and so in an
[3:00] attempt to kind of shed this nickname Ham and Eggs, he
[3:03] changed his name to Albert, which he actually got from his
[3:06] sibling that passed away before he was born.
[3:08] He was called Albert and so he kind of named himself in memory
[3:12] of the brother that he never met.
[3:13] So he told all the other kids to call him Albert and that is how
[3:17] he was known for the rest of his life.
[3:19] However, that wasn't the only kind of abuse that he endured
[3:24] while he was at the orphanage. There was physical abuse, too,
[3:27] not only from the other kids but also from staff members.
[3:30] Because remember, this was the 1800s, late 1800s.
[3:33] And, you know, whipping kids and beating kids was a common form
[3:38] of punishment. That was, you know, normal.
[3:40] As Albert began hitting the early stages of puberty, when he
[3:44] would get these beatings and when he would get whipped for
[3:48] being, you know, misbehaving, he realized that he kind of got
[3:53] some kind of pleasure from it. And he began getting erections
[3:57] whenever he would get beatings. And this only caused, you know,
[4:01] more beatings from the older boys that would call him
[4:04] homophobic slurs and make fun of him for, you know, like making
[4:08] it. And it was at this orphanage
[4:10] that Albert Fish really pinpointed his initial hatred of
[4:15] humanity and need for revenge and his desire to inflict pain
[4:19] on other people, both because he just enjoyed it in general and
[4:23] also because he wanted to get revenge on the people that had
[4:26] hurt him in the past. Eventually, Albert's mother got
[4:29] a job and managed to get back on her feet and everything.
[4:31] And so she took all the children out of the orphanage.
[4:34] And this was when Albert was aged 9.
[4:36] When he went back home, things were kind of rocky.
[4:40] Albert was a frequent bed wetter and he occasionally ran away
[4:44] from home. Now, I don't know for what
[4:45] reason. I don't know whether his home
[4:47] life was bad. I couldn't find anything.
[4:50] I'm assuming he was still getting beatings and stuff, but
[4:52] that was kind of common back then to beat your children, as
[4:56] awful as it is. And Albert began trying to seek
[4:59] out sexual satisfaction in other ways.
[5:02] He would go to like public swimming pools and stuff and go
[5:06] to the changing rooms and like watch the boys get changed.
[5:09] And some reports would say that he masturbated while he was
[5:12] watching them. When Albert was 12 years old, he
[5:15] got into his first romantic sexual relationship with another
[5:19] 12 year old boy. And it was in this relationship
[5:23] that this boy introduced Albert to a lot of strange things.
[5:28] They would drink each of this urine and eat each of this feces
[5:33] and it was a very strange first relationship to be in.
[5:36] When he was around 15 years old, Albert fish actually fell from a
[5:39] tree when he was playing out with his friends and this gave
[5:43] him quite a serious concussion. He was left with headaches, you
[5:46] know, on and off for the rest of his life.
[5:48] He would get dizzy spells occasionally, and he was left
[5:52] with quite a bad stutter. When he turned 20 years old in
[5:55] 1980, Albert Fish moved to New York City with his mother.
[5:59] He was the youngest of all the children, and he was the only
[6:01] one left at home. So it was just him and his mom
[6:03] at this point. And it was there in New York
[6:05] City where he took up male prostitution as a job and began
[6:09] molesting young boys. And his preference was those
[6:13] under 6 years old. And it was around the same time
[6:16] that Albert tried to satisfy his sexual urges in other ways.
[6:20] So he would read the newspaper and he would read the personal
[6:23] ads. You know, when people would,
[6:25] like, buy a little AD space and just pretty much advertise
[6:28] whatever they wanted, They could say they were a woman looking
[6:31] for a job. They could be advertising like a
[6:33] couch that they want to sell. You know, they could advertise
[6:36] anything on this little square that they paid for.
[6:38] And whenever Albert would find one from a woman, he would write
[6:41] them a letter. And these letters would be full
[6:44] of obscene, depraved sexual content.
[6:49] Eventually, when he was 28 years old, he got a job as a painter.
[6:53] And like I had Andy man. And it was around that time that
[6:56] his mother arranged for him to marry a 19 year old girl who was
[7:01] almost a decade younger than him.
[7:03] And the two of them ended up having six children together.
[7:05] But throughout this whole marriage, Albert had several
[7:09] affairs with several different men.
[7:12] And I don't think he was even that secretive about it.
[7:14] Like he would go on public dates with these men.
[7:17] And it was on one of these dates that his lover took him to a
[7:21] waxwork museum. And one of these pieces of art
[7:24] that was on display was a dissected penis.
[7:29] And Albert was mesmerized by it. I don't know, it just kind of
[7:33] sparked something in him. Now, not only was he attracted
[7:36] to being beaten and whipped and hurt, but he also wanted to
[7:41] dissect things and cut things up.
[7:44] And it also gave him a desire to castrate other men.
[7:48] And after this point, Albert began, Whenever he would
[7:52] masturbate, he would insert needles into his groin.
[7:58] Sometimes he would insert them so far that they would, like, go
[8:02] all the way into his body, like, so you can't pull it out
[8:06] anymore. And he would just leave them
[8:07] there forever. Eventually, much later in life,
[8:10] he had an X-ray and they found 29 full needles in that man's
[8:16] groin. Just that had been there
[8:18] forever. In 1903, when Albert Fish was 33
[8:21] years old, he was jailed for embezzlement.
[8:24] And while he was in prison, he continued his affairs with the
[8:27] other men and honestly, I think his wife probably knew and just
[8:32] didn't really care that much. When he was released from
[8:34] prison, however, his children really noticed a change in
[8:39] Albert's behavior. He was acting so much more
[8:42] bizarre. He began hearing voices and he
[8:45] claimed that they were from God and the apostles and they were
[8:48] telling him that he was the second coming of Christ and his
[8:51] job on earth was to castrate little boys.
[8:54] He began self harming as a way to repair his sins.
[8:58] I forget what that's called. There's an actual term for that.
[9:00] And around that same time, he was diagnosed by psychiatrists
[9:04] as having religious mania. He made this kind of like
[9:07] homemade club. He got like a bat paddle type
[9:11] thing and shoved 4 inch nails in it and he would hit himself with
[9:15] that. And I can't imagine how painful
[9:17] that must have been. In 1910, when Albert was 40
[9:20] years old, he began grooming this 19 year old boy named
[9:23] Thomas Kedden. Now Thomas was disabled, very
[9:28] easily manipulated and Albert knew that he targeted him on
[9:32] purpose. Albert Fish took Thomas Kedden
[9:34] away to an abandoned farmhouse and locked him up there for two
[9:38] weeks, and in that two weeks he tortured this boy.
[9:43] He used him as a sex slave. His original plan was to do this
[9:47] for as long as he wanted and then eventually kill Thomas
[9:49] Kedden. However, two weeks went by and
[9:52] he realized that it was summer and if he was to kill this boy,
[9:57] the smell would easily give him away because the body would
[10:00] decompose quicker in a higher temperature.
[10:02] And so he decided not to kill him.
[10:04] Instead, Albert Fish grabbed a pair of scissors and severed
[10:10] Thomas Kedden's penis and he kept it as a souvenir.
[10:13] And Albert Fish has since said that he will never forget the
[10:17] screams. Instead of killing Thomas
[10:19] afterwards, Albert kind of cleaned and bandaged up this
[10:22] wound. He gave him $10 as like
[10:25] compensation or as like a thank you and then he kissed him and
[10:30] sent him on his way. And that is literally all we
[10:32] know of Thomas Kedden. He went on to live a life after
[10:35] after that I'm assuming, and I don't think he ever went to
[10:38] police and if he did it didn't really go anywhere.
[10:41] Obviously it never got linked back to Albert Fish.
[10:43] Shortly after this, Albert's wife left him for another man
[10:47] and I don't think she knew about the Thomas Kedden thing, but she
[10:51] left him in the middle of the day while Albert was at work.
[10:53] And when he returned home he returned to all six children in
[10:57] the house and half of their belongings were gone.
[10:59] She'd taken pretty much everything of value with her,
[11:02] and so now Albert was left to raise these six children alone.
[11:07] And it was at this point that his bizarre behaviours and
[11:10] hallucinations stepped up. His children were called, going
[11:14] into the room one day and finding him wrapped up in a
[11:16] carpet, saying that one of the apostles told him to do it.
[11:19] And at the same time, these voices in his head were telling
[11:22] him to attempt cannibalism and he began eating raw meat, like
[11:27] animal meat, not human. And he would try and feed his
[11:30] own children raw meat as well, especially around a full moon.
[11:34] They noticed. And that is how he got the
[11:37] nickname The Werewolf of Wisteria.
[11:39] And while he didn't abuse his children ever, actually he did
[11:44] often try and get them to abuse him, he presented it like a game
[11:48] to the children. He would get on all fours and
[11:51] get one of them to sit on his back.
[11:52] And he would say, right, OK, hold up any amount of fingers
[11:55] you want. And then Albert would have to
[11:58] guess how many fingers the child on his back was holding up.
[12:01] And if he got it wrong, the child would get to hit him with
[12:05] that homemade club. So he was getting sexual
[12:08] gratification from his own children, but of course that
[12:12] didn't satisfy it fully. And so he would also go to
[12:14] brothels and solicit prostitutes and ask them to brutally beat
[12:19] him during intercourse. Sometimes he wouldn't even have
[12:22] sex with them, he would just go to them for them to beat him.
[12:25] And around this time, the self harm also stepped up.
[12:29] Albert began soaking cotton wool in like lighter fluid, shoving
[12:34] it in his anus and lighting it on fire.
[12:38] And then in 1919, Albert Fish began his momentum of attacks.
[12:44] His last one was on Thomas Kedden, but now they were
[12:47] becoming somewhat regular. He began going out and stabbing
[12:51] and attacking disabled or African American men because he
[12:55] believed that those two groups wouldn't be missed if he killed
[13:00] them. And he also said that he felt
[13:02] that they probably weren't a police priority and so he could
[13:05] get away with them easier. And he did get away with every
[13:08] single one of those attacks. In 1924, when Albert Fish was 54
[13:13] years old, he was walking down this country lane when he
[13:16] noticed a little girl playing in one of the fields.
[13:19] Her name was Beatrice Keel. She was 8 years old and she was
[13:23] on her own property. This was her parents farmhouse
[13:26] when Albert Fish approached and asked her to help him pick some
[13:30] rhubarb. Beatrice was a little bit
[13:32] hesitant to go off with this man, and so he offered her some
[13:35] money to help him pick it and of course she said yes.
[13:39] So they set off walking away. But it was then that Beatrice's
[13:42] mother came out of the house and saw her daughter walking away
[13:46] with a strange man. And so she went over, grabbed
[13:49] her daughter and chased this man, Albert Fish off of the
[13:53] property. But Albert Fish wasn't ready to
[13:55] give up. He actually came back to the
[13:58] property that same night and hid in their barn.
[14:01] And somehow they found out that he was in there, and Beatrice's
[14:05] father this time came out and chased him off the property.
[14:09] And he didn't go back there again.
[14:10] Shortly after that, he attempted to harm two other children, not
[14:14] Beatrice this time, 2 boys. So Albert Fish had what he
[14:18] called his implements of hell, which were three weapons that he
[14:22] would use to torture, mutilate and murder children.
[14:26] And these were a meat cleaver, a butcher's knife, and a small
[14:29] handsaw. And he was eager to test them
[14:32] out on a child. And so in early 1924, Albert
[14:36] Fish lured in two boys who were playing outside into his house,
[14:41] boy named Cyril Quinn and his friend.
[14:43] Albert had actually been molested in Cyril for quite some
[14:46] time before this. And so when he asked the boys to
[14:50] come for dinner at his house, it wasn't out of the ordinary.
[14:54] Cyril was used to being groomed like this.
[14:57] And so the two of them just went in.
[14:58] Albert told the boys to wait in his room and they could just
[15:02] play in there, whatever while he was making sandwiches in the
[15:05] kitchen. And so the boys began, like,
[15:07] play wrestling, play fighting. And somehow they kind of knocked
[15:11] the mattress kind of half off the bed.
[15:13] And there, underneath the bed, were Albert's implements of
[15:17] hell. There's three weapons that he
[15:19] was going to use to torture, mutilate and murder the
[15:22] children. And so the two of them freaked
[15:24] out, just as anyone else would, and they just ran out of the
[15:27] apartment. They didn't say a word to
[15:28] Albert. They didn't say a word in
[15:30] general. They just got out of there.
[15:39] Albert wasn't prepared to just give up there and he struck
[15:42] again just four days later on July 14th, 1924.
[15:46] On that day, 8 year old Francis McDonnell was reported missing
[15:50] by his parents when he didn't come home after playing with his
[15:54] friends all day. So police went and spoke with
[15:56] these friends that he'd been playing with because they were
[15:58] the last people to see him and they all said that he left with
[16:02] a grey haired man. So police were asking around
[16:05] neighbors, knocking on doors, seeing if anyone else had seen
[16:08] anything suspicious. And one other neighbor had seen
[16:11] a little boy walking into the local woods with an old grey
[16:15] haired man. And Francis's own mother
[16:18] believed that she'd actually seen this grey haired man walk
[16:22] into the local woods that day. And she put out a statement that
[16:25] would go out into the public, into the newspapers and
[16:28] everything where she begged people to help find the grey
[16:32] man. And that is where Albert Fish
[16:33] got the nickname The Grey Man. However, before long, Francis's
[16:37] body was actually found by a couple of Boy Scouts in the
[16:40] local wood. He'd been brutally sexually
[16:43] assaulted and strangled with his own suspenders.
[16:47] Strangled so tightly, in fact, that the suspenders were almost
[16:51] embedded into his skin. They'd squeezed so hard that
[16:54] they'd like gone through the skin.
[16:56] But not only that, it seemed that whoever had killed Francis
[17:00] had been torturing him beforehand.
[17:03] Slashing different parts of his body, making him bleed, making
[17:06] him hurt, even skinning part of his car.
[17:09] Albert had since said that he actually planned on castrating
[17:13] Francis. However, he heard noises in the
[17:16] other part of the wood and thought it would be better to
[17:18] just kill him and get straight out of there.
[17:20] Quickly, this became one of the biggest cases in the whole of
[17:24] Staten Island history. This was huge because this was
[17:28] proportionately one of the worst crimes that had ever happened in
[17:31] Staten Island. It deserved to be one of the
[17:33] biggest cases. Francis's father was actually a
[17:36] police officer, but he was on a different department.
[17:39] However, he requested that he get moved to the department that
[17:43] was dealing with his son's murder because he wanted to
[17:46] personally find the person that did this to his son.
[17:49] Francis's autopsy showed that he'd actually been eating
[17:53] raisins just before he passed away, like immediately before he
[17:57] passed away. And his friend said that none of
[17:59] them had raisins. And so police theorized that
[18:02] perhaps his killer gave him raisins to kind of lure him
[18:06] away. However, that same pathologist
[18:08] that did the autopsy said that the killer can't have been an
[18:12] old man. Now, all the witnesses say that
[18:14] he was an old Gray haired man, but the person doing the autopsy
[18:18] said that an old man just wouldn't have the strength in
[18:20] him to do the things to Francis that were done to it.
[18:24] So many different men were arrested and questioned, some
[18:28] even charged with Francis's murder before they were
[18:31] eventually let go because police couldn't find enough evidence
[18:35] against any of these people. However, Albert Fish, the real
[18:39] murderer, wasn't Even so much as suspected.
[18:41] His name never even came up. In February of 1927, so three
[18:46] years after the previous murder, a four year old boy named Billy
[18:50] Gaffney went missing from the halls of his apartment building.
[18:54] 4 year old Billy was out playing with his friend who was also
[18:57] called Billy. And he, he was three years old.
[18:59] So these were two toddlers and they were playing with the other
[19:03] Billy's older brother who was 11.
[19:06] Now the 11 year old boy went inside one of the apartments at
[19:11] one point leaving the two toddlers outside by themselves.
[19:14] And when he returned, only three-year old Billy was there
[19:18] and four year old Billy had gone.
[19:20] And so this older boy went and got the parents.
[19:22] The parents brushed back and they were asking the younger boy
[19:25] like what had happened to Billy, like where's he gone?
[19:28] And and this three-year old said the boogeyman took him.
[19:31] And that is where Albert Fish gets the nickname the Boogeyman
[19:34] as well. Billy Gaffney's body was never
[19:37] recovered. It was never found.
[19:39] However, that is because Albert Fish is believed to have eaten
[19:45] most of it. He told police that he sexually
[19:47] assaulted the boy and mutilated him so bad that he was barely
[19:52] recognizable anymore. He also tortured him for a
[19:55] prolonged amount of time, and I'm not going to go into details
[19:58] with that. I'm not going to go into details
[20:00] with the torture at any point during this case, but just know
[20:03] that he did it to every single one of his victims.
[20:05] I'm just going to talk about the murder and the aftermath.
[20:08] Albert Fish then took Billy's body home.
[20:12] He drank his blood, chopped up the rest of his.
[20:15] Body and cooked it and ate it with vegetables.
[20:19] A year later, Albert was ready to commit his next murder.
[20:23] And on May 28, 1928, he saw an advert in the local newspaper
[20:28] from a boy named Edward. But Edward was in his late teens
[20:32] and he was looking for work, any kind of work, literally any job
[20:37] he could do to earn money he would take because his family
[20:40] really needed the money. And Albert saw an opportunity
[20:43] here to give this boy a job at his house so he could lure him
[20:48] away from the outside and from other people and kill him
[20:52] peacefully in his house. And so Albert used his age.
[20:56] He was 58 years old at this point.
[20:57] And so he was a trustworthy looking old, frail man.
[21:02] And so he sent the family a Telegraph saying, I'm
[21:05] interested. I want your son to come and work
[21:07] for me. I'm an old man.
[21:08] I can't do my housework by myself anymore.
[21:11] I need some help around the house.
[21:13] He later went to the Bud family's house to kind of
[21:15] introduce himself. He introduced himself as Frank
[21:18] Howard, not as Albert Fish, and he spoke with Edward about
[21:22] working for him and everything. And Edward was excited.
[21:25] It was going to be like a few days away from home because
[21:29] Albert actually lived quite a way away from Edward and his
[21:31] family. So he was going to keep him for
[21:33] a few days and then bring him back home, although Albert's
[21:36] real plan was to take him home, time up, mutilate him so bad
[21:42] that he would just bleed to death.
[21:44] Albert set a date with the Bud family where he would come and
[21:47] pick Edward up and take him back to his house and they would
[21:50] start the work. And this day came around and
[21:53] Albert went to the house or Frank Howard went to the house
[21:57] and it was Edward's younger sister Grace that opened the
[22:00] door to him. And immediately Alberts plans
[22:04] changed. He decided that instead of
[22:06] killing Edward who was in his late teens, he now wanted to
[22:09] kill Grace who was 10 years old. And so he had to think of a plan
[22:14] quick. So that day before he was due to
[22:16] take Edward back to his house, Albert or Frank Howard and the
[22:21] Bud family all sat down and ate a meal together.
[22:24] And that was when Albert told the family that plans had
[22:27] actually changed. He was still going to take
[22:29] Edward to go and work at his house for a few days.
[22:31] However, he forgot that he actually had his niece's
[22:35] birthday party that day, his 10 year old niece, and he needed to
[22:38] go there first and then he would pick Edward up on the way home.
[22:41] And so just as he was leaving for his niece's birthday party,
[22:44] he turned around and said, you know what would Grace like to
[22:47] come with me? All the girls there were going
[22:49] to be her age. It might be quite fun for her.
[22:51] And Grace really wanted to go to this party and she was begging
[22:54] her parents, but her parents were a little bit like, maybe
[22:58] not because you're a 10 year old girl and you know, we don't know
[23:02] this man very well. But eventually her father was
[23:04] like just let her go. And so the parents said yes and
[23:08] Grace left with Albert Fish. Albert told them he would have
[23:11] Grace back by 9:00 PM and also pick Edward up at 9:00 PM and
[23:15] take him away. And 9:00 PM came round and they
[23:19] weren't back. And so the Bud family waited up,
[23:22] thinking that maybe they'd time and run over or whatever.
[23:24] They'd forgotten what time it was and they'd be back very
[23:27] soon. But they waited and they waited
[23:30] and they waited until the next morning.
[23:32] And still there was no sign of Grace, no sign of Frank Howard.
[23:35] And by the next morning, her mother was hysterical with
[23:39] worry. And so they went to the nearest
[23:41] police station and reported him missing.
[23:43] So police began looking through the records for a Frank Howard.
[23:47] However, they couldn't find 1. Frank Howard didn't exist.
[23:51] Of course, in those times it was so easy to just give someone a
[23:54] fake name and then be able to completely forget about it.
[23:57] There would be no way to trace you if he gave a fake name back
[24:00] then. However, the Bud family all got
[24:03] a really good look at this man so they were able to give
[24:05] detailed descriptions. Posters were made for Grace
[24:08] Budde disappearance. Her picture was put all over
[24:11] them and a description of this man, Frank Howard was put on
[24:15] them as well and they were handed out all over New York.
[24:18] However, nothing really came of them.
[24:21] They were able to locate the abductor to East Harlem in New
[24:25] York based on the telegram office that the original
[24:29] telegram came from. You know, I said he sent them a
[24:31] telegram just telling them that he was interested before he went
[24:34] to the house. So they were able to locate that
[24:37] to East Harlem, but that doesn't really tell them much.
[24:40] At this point. A man was actually arrested and
[24:43] charged and sentenced for Grace Bud's murder and he actually
[24:48] served over three months in jail, 108 days until police
[24:52] finally realized this man wasn't guilty.
[24:55] Turned out that he had a really like messy marriage and his wife
[25:00] kind of like friend him a little bit and said that it was him
[25:03] because she like hated him. I don't know.
[25:05] He saved a lot of prison time when he was completely innocent.
[25:08] And then the case went called for six full years.
[25:12] And at this point, the Bud family were, you know, they
[25:16] didn't really have much hope of ever seen Grace again or ever
[25:20] finding out what happened to her.
[25:22] That was until Albert Fish himself decided to write a
[25:27] letter to the Bud family detailing everything he'd done
[25:31] to their daughter. So I'm not going to read the
[25:33] letter word for word. I'm just going to summarize like
[25:36] the significant bits because this was a really long, really
[25:39] waffly letter. You can read it online, but I've
[25:43] summarized it pretty well in this letter.
[25:45] He said that he took Grace to an abandoned farmhouse, one that
[25:49] he'd actually picked out prior to this.
[25:52] He was probably going to take Edward there, but then decided
[25:55] to take Grace instead. He said he went inside this
[25:57] farmhouse and he told Grace to wait outside.
[26:00] He went straight up to the second floor and removed all of
[26:03] his clothes so that when he killed her, he wouldn't get any
[26:06] blood on them. He said he looked out of the
[26:08] window and saw her picking wildflowers and so he shouted to
[26:11] her to come up to the room upstairs and as she did he went
[26:15] and hid in a wardrobe and when she got into the room he exposed
[26:19] himself from this wardrobe and she began crying immediately at
[26:23] the sight of him naked. She was scared.
[26:25] She was saying I'm going to tell my mom but it was too late and
[26:28] he'd already attacked her and pinned her down.
[26:31] He began removing her clothes and she was biting, she was
[26:35] kicking him, she was biting him, she was scratching him.
[26:37] Although he ultimately overpowered her and strangled
[26:41] her to death. He then detailed in this letter
[26:43] about how he decapitated her, chopped up her body, took it
[26:47] home, cooked it and ate it over the next 9 days.
[26:52] So police compared the handwriting on this letter about
[26:56] Grace to the original telegram that was sent to the Bud family
[26:59] and they could confirm that it was the same handwriting.
[27:02] And although that doesn't leave them to anyone in particular, it
[27:06] tells them that this letter was authentic.
[27:08] It wasn't a hoax, but there was nothing more about this letter
[27:11] that could identify where it came from.
[27:14] That was until police started to look at the envelope, which they
[27:18] realized had a company name on. This company was called NYPCBA.
[27:23] And so police went to this company, and they were like, hi,
[27:27] who has access to these envelopes?
[27:29] And it was actually a janitor at this company that told police
[27:32] that he took a bunch of those letters his home a few weeks
[27:35] prior, around the same time that the letter was written.
[27:38] And he said he moved house at the same time that he brought
[27:41] the envelopes home. And he ended up leaving a bunch
[27:43] of them at his old house. And so police went to this old
[27:47] house, the janitor's old house, to speak with the landlady.
[27:50] And they were like, hi, who is in the janitor's old room now?
[27:55] And this woman said a man named Albert Fish.
[27:58] Now police didn't recognize the name Albert Fish.
[28:01] Obviously they were looking for a Frank Howard.
[28:03] And so they gave her like a general description, the
[28:06] description that the Bud family gave them of this like old grey
[28:10] haired man. And she said, Yep, that's him.
[28:13] So police decided that they would wait at his kind of house
[28:18] building type thing until he got home that night, but he didn't
[28:22] come home that night. And so they stayed there the
[28:24] next day and the next day and the next day, and he just wasn't
[28:28] coming home. So police decided to put the
[28:30] building on surveillance, which meant that a police car could be
[28:33] parked outside at all times watching the building, but
[28:36] police didn't actually have to be inside the building.
[28:39] And this police car was there for over a month and still
[28:41] nothing. Albert Fish didn't come home for
[28:44] a full month. He probably knew that police
[28:46] were on to him. And so eventually the police
[28:48] surveillance was also called off and they just said to the
[28:52] landlady, look, if he turns up, you've got a call as immediately
[28:55] and just stall him, keep him there for as long as you can.
[28:58] And eventually, four months later, police finally got that
[29:02] call. Albert Fish had arrived back at
[29:04] home. And the landlady called them and
[29:06] said, right, I'm going to saw him get here as quick as you
[29:08] can. She made him a drink and sat and
[29:10] talked with him for a while until a detective finally burst
[29:14] through the door. And he saw this frail old man
[29:17] sat in this chair drinking his drink.
[29:20] And he said, are you Albert Fish?
[29:22] And Albert immediately got really defensive.
[29:25] He grabbed a blade out of his coat pocket and began like,
[29:27] holding it up, like in defense, like it was a shield.
[29:30] And because he was so old and frail, this detective managed to
[29:34] disarm Albert Fish quite easily. And when he did, Albert just
[29:38] slumped back in the chair like he knew that he there was number
[29:42] point in fighting anymore. This detective arrested him then
[29:45] and there for the murder of Grace Bud.
[29:47] And he took him back to the police station where he just
[29:50] straight up admitted to it. And he knew at this point he'd
[29:53] already admitted to this depraved murder and cannibalism
[29:57] of Grace Bud. He knew that he was going to be
[29:59] sentenced to death no matter what, so why not make himself
[30:03] more notorious? He also confessed to the murders
[30:06] of Francis McDonnell and Billy Gaffney, and he told police how
[30:10] he cannibalized them and tortured them.
[30:12] He also claimed that he'd committed hundreds of just
[30:16] attacks and assaults and, you know, raped, molestations, other
[30:20] murders. And he claimed that he had a
[30:23] child in every state, meaning he'd killed at least 50 more
[30:28] children. Police did try to link him with
[30:30] more children's disappearances, however, they just couldn't find
[30:33] the evidence to, you know, properly say that it was him.
[30:37] So he's never been charged with more than those three.
[30:39] He was confirmed to have killed those three, but he is believed
[30:43] to have killed potentially up to like 100.
[30:46] And during the trial for these three murders, Albert Fish was
[30:49] entirely emotionless. He did not care at this point.
[30:54] He wasn't excited. He wasn't, you know, how some
[30:57] serial killers kind of enjoyed the spotlight and everything.
[31:01] He was just completely unbothered.
[31:02] He never showed a single ounce of a emotion throughout his time
[31:06] in custody. So you know, after his arrest
[31:09] and before his trial he was still self harming.
[31:12] When they would have like chicken for dinner in prison, he
[31:16] would hide one of the bones in his cheek and then when he would
[31:19] get back to his cell he would like sharpen it down to make it
[31:22] really pointy and he would stab himself repeatedly with that.
[31:25] Some people say it was a suicide attempt, others say it was just
[31:28] self harm. I would say based on his
[31:30] previous behaviors, it was probably just self harm because
[31:33] he knew he was going to die anyway.
[31:35] The trial lasted 10 days and Albert Fish pleaded not guilty
[31:39] by reason of insanity. And while the jury believed that
[31:42] he probably was insane, he was criminally insane when he
[31:46] committed those murders. They weren't going to let him
[31:49] get off just because of that. So on March 21st, 1935, Albert
[31:54] Fish was found guilty of all three murders and sentenced to
[31:58] death by the electric chair. After his death, Albert's
[32:01] attorney gave an interview to the press about how Albert had
[32:05] given him his final statement, like a final written statement,
[32:08] his final word to the world. And they asked him to read it
[32:12] out. But this attorney refused,
[32:14] saying that it was the most filthy string of obscenities
[32:17] that he'd ever read, and he vowed that he would never show
[32:20] it to anyone. And yeah, that completes this
[32:23] case of Albert Fish. Thank you so much for listening
[32:30] to Usual Disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[32:32] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[32:35] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[32:38] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[32:41] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
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[32:47] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[32:50] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[32:53] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[32:56] production. See you next time.

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