Albert Fish

Serial Killer. Child Rapist. Cannibal. Murderer. These are the polite names that I think of for Albert Fish. Born in May 1870, Fish had a tough childhood which ultimately led to a disturbed man.

Fish’s father died when he was young and he ended up spending some of his early years in St John's Orphanage in Washington DC. While at the orphanage Fish was subjected to regular beatings while the beatings were for punishment, Fish began to enjoy the physical pain they brought and many phycologists believe that this could have triggered his behaviour later in life.

At age 10 Fish’s Mother was able to remove Fish from the orphanage and back into the family home but the damage was already done. Two years later, Fish began a relationship with a telegraph boy who introduced Fish to practices like urolagnia (drinking urine) and coprophagia (eating faeces). Which is eww. Fish began frequenting public baths so he could watch young boys undress. 

By 1898 Fish was married with 6 children but was still molesting children, especially young boys. He was also fascinated with sexual mutilation to the point he embedded more than two dozen nails in his pelvic area.

In 1910, Fish met 19-year-old Thomas Kedden and they began a sadomasochistic relationship. After 10 days, Fish began to torture Kedden at “an old farmhouse” over a period of two weeks. Eventually, Fish tied the poor boy up and cut half of his penis off. Now I don’t have a penis but I can imagine it hurts A LOT. Fish recalled later in life “I shall never forget his scream or the look he gave me”.

Fish’s original plan was to kill Kedden, cut up his body, and take it home, but he feared the hot weather would give him away (Didn’t stop Gacey). So instead, he poured peroxide on the wound, wrapped a Vaseline-covered handkerchief over the wound, left a $10 bill, kissed Kedden goodbye and left. Fish later said he “took the first train I could get back home. Never heard what became of him, or tried to find out”. It is still unclear whether Kedden was a willing participant as subsequent Fish implies through a confession years later that Kedden was intellectually disabled. 

In 1917 Fish's wife left him for another man, leaving him with the children. This is when he began to have auditory hallucinations and began to indulge in self-harm. He would hit himself with a nail-studded paddle and insert wool doused with lighter fluid into his anus and set it alight. If this isn’t a massive red flag, I don’t know what is. Though it’s thought he never physically attacked or abused his children, he did encourage them and their friends to paddle his buttocks with the nail-studded paddle. Another red flag! He soon began to develop a growing obsession with cannibalism, often eating a meal of are meat and nothing else. 

In 1919, Fish stabbed a disabled boy in Georgetown, Washington. Fish himself stated he favoured the mentally handicapped and African-Americans, as he assumed that people wouldn’t miss them when they were killed. He also claimed that he would occasionally pay boys to get a hold of other children. He would torture, mutilate and murder young children with his “implements of Hell” - a meat cleaver, a butcher knife, and a small handsaw. 

During July 1924, Fish was suffering from psychosis and felt that God was commanding him to torture and sexually mutilate children. During this period Fish tried to abduct eight-year-old Beatrice Kiel from her parents’ farm in Staten Island. He was stopped by her mother and then forced off the property by her father.

The crime that ultimately sealed Fish’s fate was the murder of Grace Budd. In 1928, Fish was in contact with the Budd family and asked them if Grace could come to the birthday party of his niece. Thinking nothing was wrong, Mr and Mrs Budd said yes. That was the last time they saw their daughter. In 1934, six years after Grace’s disappearance, Mrs Budd received an anonymous letter. She couldn’t read the letter herself so got one of her sons to read it for her.

When Fish was finally caught and questioned about the murder of Grace Budd, he made no attempt whatsoever to prove his innocence. He told the police that he meant to kill Edward Budd, Grace’s brother. He said it “never even entered [his] head” to rape the girl, but later told his attorney that while kneeling on Grace’s chest as he strangled her, he did have two involuntary ejaculations.

The trial began on 11th March 1935 and lasted for 10 days. Fish pleaded insanity claiming he heard voices from God telling him to kill children. Which a load of bull poop if you ask me. He was sentenced to death by electric chair at Sing-Sing Prison and was executed on 16th January 1936.