Where do you even start with Albert Fish, a serial killer who seemed to top himself with each crime that he committed? His disgusting acts would no doubt inspire future serial killers who wanted to get their rocks off while being as freaky as possible. The most well-known of the Albert Fish crimes is the murder of Grace Budd, a small girl from New York City whom the “gray man” kidnapped, dismembered, and ate over the course of nine days in the 1920s, but there were so many more gruesome crimes committed by this mad man that it’s impossible to give one precedence over the others. Each act of murder, sexual perversion, and sadomasochism plays out like something that even the Marquis De Sade would have ruled out.
It seems like everything that Albert Fish did was designed to cause everyone around him pain, whimch is the only thing that he ever cared about. He wasn’t a man who stopped at killing and eating a child, he had to let their parents know about the torture their spawn endured before finally being put out of their misery. Even after his arrest there was no getting Fish down. He obviously enjoyed sending jailhouse letters to his attorney, confessing to disgusting crimes, knowing that his attorney thought the whole thing was sick. Fish probably even got off on being electrocuted to death, a pain loving creep to the end.
13 Disturbing Things Albert Fish Did to His Victims (And Himself),
He Drove Needles Into His Pelvis
Fish was a sadomasochist, meaning that he craved feeling pain as well as inflicting it. He would often subject himself to painful procedures, most notably driving nails into this body, especially the area between his scrotum and his rectum. At first, he would drive them in and pull them out again, but eventually he started driving them in so far that he couldn't get them back out. After he was arrested and examined by a doctor, an X-ray showed 29 needles lodged in his pelvis.
He Wrote Horrific Letters to the Parents of His Victims
As if the murder of Grace Budd weren't bad enough, Fish decided to gloat about the girl's death to her family six years after she went missing. The letter is a bizarre tale of how Fish came to learn about cannibalism (it's likely mostly a fabrication, if not an outright lie), and a far-too-detailed description of Budd's final moments.
Fish writes:
I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready, I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in the closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First, I stripped her naked. How she did kick, bite, and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take the meat to my rooms, cook, and eat it.
He Lured a Little Girl with the Promise of a Party, Then Killed and Ate Her
If serial killers can have such things as greatest hits, Grace Budd would be Fish's. In 1928, Fish inquired with Budd's parents about hiring their son for some work. Initially he wanted to kill the 18-year-old son, but when he got a look at Grace, Fish forgot all about her older brother. After an on-and-off friendship with the Budd family, Fish took their little girl to a "birthday party" at a run-down cottage, where he would strangle her before cutting off her head, dismembering her, and eating her flesh over a nine-day period.
He Tortured a Boy Until He Was Good Enough to Eat
In 1927, 12-year-old Billy Gaffney disappeared from his apartment building after having a run-in with "the gray man." Gaffney was actually seen by multiple people across New York City, but even after the police finally put all the information together, they weren't any closer to finding his kidnapper.
After his arrest, Fish detailed Gaffney's death to his attorney:
I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears – nose – slit his mouth from ear to ear. Gouged out his eyes. He was dead then. I stuck the knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drank his blood.
Then he made a meal out of Gaffney.
I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did. I ate every bit of the meat in about four days. His little monkey was a sweet as a nut, but his pee-wees I could not chew. Threw them in the toilet.
He Strangled, Hanged, Skinned, and Nearly Castrated a Little Boy
In 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDonnell went missing after playing ball with one of his friends. His body was later found hanged from a tree in a wooded area near his home. He had been sexually assaulted and strangled with his suspenders, and his body had suffered severe lacerations. His left hamstring had been almost entirely stripped of flesh. McDonnell's friends said they saw the boy with a "gray man," undoubtedly Fish, before he went missing. Initially, Fish denied having anything to do with the boy's murder, until he finally admitted that he was actually planning on castrating the child before fleeing the area.
He Tried to Corrupt and Debase Women He Met as Pen Pals
One of Fish's less extreme pastimes was writing letters to women who would request pen pals in the "lonely hearts" section of his local newspapers. Often, he would pretend to be a Hollywood producer named Robert Fisk with a son named Bobby who needed frequent spankings with a cat-o-nine-tails. His only goal with these letters was to find a woman's breaking point and see how much she would debase herself in print before finally giving up on the fictional Fisk. He met one woman who went on with his game and even admitting to being interested in cannibalism: he told her to tie up her son and husband and whip them daily to tenderize them so they could both feast on them. It's kind of like sexting, but with a violent sadomasochist on the other end of the phone.
He Cut Off Half of Thomas Kedden's Penis
One of Fish's first known victims was Thomas Kedden, a mentally disabled 19-year-old man who rode the rails for most of his life until he ran into Fish. These two got on like a house on fire and spent two weeks having the kind of sex that one can only find on the darkest parts of the Internet. After two weeks of sex, Fish decided to get really kooky and tied Kedden to a chair, made him erect, and began cutting off the head of his penis with a pair of scissors.
"I shall never forget his scream, or the look he gave me," Fish later recalled. He originally intended to kill Kedden, cut up his body, and take it home, but he thought the hot weather would draw attention to him. Instead, Fish poured peroxide over the wound, wrapped it in a Vaseline-covered handkerchief, left a $10 bill, kissed Kedden goodbye, and left.
"Took first train I could get back home. Never heard what become of him, or tried to find out," Fish said.
He Terrified His Family with Bizarre Outbursts
Not all of Fish's victims were raped, murdered, and eaten; some of them simply had to live with him after their mother abandoned them with a psychopath who liked to shove needles into his pelvis. When he was 28, Fish married 19-year-old woman and had six kids before she abandoned her family and ran away with another man. One of Fish's sons tells the story of an afternoon where his father completely ruined a family outing in upstate New York. Fish made the most of the hills of Westchester by climbing on top of them, shaking his fist at the sky and repeatedly screaming, “I am Christ!” Who needs a social life?
He Tortured the Parents of His Victims and Other Missing Children
If you think Fish stopped receiving sexual gratification from torturing people after he was arrested, you're very wrong. While he was on a confession spree, admitting to the deaths of Grace Budd and Billy Gaffney, Fish commented that he had killed dozens of children, committing murder in just about every state of the union. Whether this is true or not (it's probably somewhere between the truth and a lie), Fish was knowingly torturing the parents of every missing child in America by keeping them up at night with the thought of the gray man eating their precious boys and girls.
He Ate Raw Meat and Beat Himself with a Nail-Studded Board
Albert Fish, Jr., Fish's son, knew that his father was crazy. After Fish's arrest, he gave a newspaper interview detailing his very strange upbringing. "That old skunk," he said in the newspaper interview, "I always knew that he would get caught for something like this."
He went on to reveal that Fish would only eat raw meat, and how he had come home one day to find his father stripped naked and beating himself with a heavy board that was studded with sharp nails. He threw the old man out of his house shortly after. He concluded his interview in disgust. "I've never wanted anything to do with him and I'll not lift a hand to help him."