Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer Read online

  It was midmorning on Monday, December 17, and in the visitors’ room of the Tombs, enclosed within a coarse chicken-wire screen, Albert Fish was pouring forth a detailed but highly selective autobiography for the benefit of the New York City press.

  “I was born May 19, 1870, in Washington, D.C.,” he said, speaking slowly enough for the newsmen to copy down his remarks. “We lived on B Street, N.E., between Second and Third. My father was Captain Randall Fish, 32nd-degree Mason, and he is buried in the Grand Lodge grounds of the Congressional cemetery. He was a Potomac River boat captain, running from Washington to Marshall Hall, Virginia. His father and grandfather came from Maine, and they were old English stock.

  “My father dropped dead October 15, 1875, in the old Pennsylvania Station where President Garfield was shot, and I was placed in St. John’s Orphanage in Washington.” The old man paused and let out a theatrical sigh. “I was there till I was nearly nine, and that’s where I got started wrong. We were unmercifully whipped. I saw boys doing many things they should not have done.”

  “I sang in the choir from 1880 to 1884—soprano, at St. John’s. In 1894, I came to New York. I was a good painter—interiors or anything.

  “I got an apartment and brought my mother up from Washington. We lived at No. 76 West 101st Street, and that’s where I met my first wife. After our six children were born, she left me. She took all the furniture and didn’t even leave a mattress for the children to sleep on.” As he spoke of his children, the old man’s watery blue eyes grew noticeably wetter. Extracting a yellowed handkerchief from his pants pocket, he wiped away his tears, then blew his nose loudly.

  “I’m worried about my children,” he continued after a moment, still sniffling back tears. “You’d think they’d come to visit their old dad in jail, but they haven’t. Maybe they haven’t got the car fare.” He nodded at the reporter from the Daily News. “Do you think you could fix it up so they can get Christmas baskets?” he pleaded. “I’ll give you their addresses if you want.”

  Bowed and teary-eyed behind his wire enclosure, Fish might have moved an onlooker to genuine pity—assuming that the onlooker knew nothing at all about the monstrous old man or the nature of his crimes.

  “Tell us about the killing,” one of the newsmen called out.

  Fish lifted a bony hand to his forehead and rubbed. “I’ve gone through it so many times,” he murmured. But the reporters were insistent. They wanted to hear the story from the killer’s own lips. And the old man seemed reluctant to disappoint them.

  Fish had told the story so often by now that it had begun to sound as formulaic as a fairy tale. He started by describing, once again, how he had led Grace Budd “by her trusting little hand” to the musty old house in Westchester under the pretext of taking her to his niece’s birthday party. “I let her play in the yard for a while and then I called her upstairs. I guess it was about four o’clock in the afternoon. I did it then. It was a terrible thing to do. She was such a nice little girl. As soon as I had killed her I would have given my life to have her standing there beside me again.

  “But it was too late by then. After I had cut her into three pieces and hid her clothes in a closet, I got away as fast as I could. I went home and took a bath and tried to sleep. But I couldn’t. I went up to the zoo in Central Park and wandered around. I slept there in the park for two nights. I couldn’t eat. All I could drink was coffee. It stimulated me.

  “It wasn’t until I went back to Wisteria and put her out behind the wall that I could sleep again.

  “They’ve asked me about a lot of other crimes. I told Detective King and the others that I don’t know anything about them. I can’t tell what I don’t know. I can’t lie.

  “My conscience is clear,” he repeated.

  The little man then launched into a self-pitying account of the evil influences that had warped his life. He spoke about his older brother, who had returned home from the navy full of “dirty stories” that had instilled “overpowering urges” in the younger man, urges that had ultimately driven him to commit his awful crime against Grace Budd.

  For someone who kept insisting that life meant nothing to him any longer, Fish displayed a remarkable interest in the outcome of his case. “I’m ready to die for my crime,” he declared solemnly—then he immediately added, “But do you think I might get charged with second-degree?” On several other occasions during the interview, he interrupted his narrative to ask worriedly, “Do you think they’ll give me the chair?”

  As Fish rambled on, it became increasingly clear to the reporters that he was doing everything possible to mitigate the monstrous image of himself presented in the press. “Remember, I didn’t attack her,” he declared during his account of the killing. He reminded them that if it hadn’t been for his willingness to lead police to the crime scene, “they wouldn’t have had any proof—they wouldn’t have found the skull and bones if I hadn’t showed them.”

  He insisted once again that he had slain no one except Grace Budd. “I don’t know anything about those other bones they say they’ve found,” he exclaimed. “And cannibalism!” He screwed his face into an expression of exaggerated disgust. “The very thought sickens me.”

  Fish did admit that, in his imaginings, he had murdered many times. “These lustful thoughts have frequently come over me,” he said. “I could see myself killing people. But I never did it, only that once.

  “I don’t know—I guess I must be crazy,” he announced. “Yes, I must be insane. I’m almost sure I am.” As he spoke, Albert Fish peered through the spaces in the wire-mesh screen to make sure that the reporters were getting down every word.

  As the devious old man clearly knew, the question of his sanity would be the key to his fate. Fish had yet to be assigned a lawyer, but anyone could see that insanity was the only possible defense. Anticipating this tactic, Westchester D.A. Frank Coyne announced on Monday afternoon that his office had engaged two psychiatrists or “alienists,” as they were commonly called in those days, of its own—Dr. Charles Lambert of Scarsdale, New York, and Dr. James Vavasour of Amityville, Long Island—to examine Fish in the Tombs. The Mirror, meanwhile, sought out the opinions of a separate pair of psychiatrists which it published in an article headlined, “FISH VICIOUS MORON, TWO EXPERTS AGREE.”

  Actually, “vicious moron” was the paper’s own diagnosis. The language of the specialists was considerably more circumspect. Indeed, the pronouncement of Dr. Thomas S. Cusack, a consulting psychiatrist to the U.S. Army during World War I, managed to sidestep any meaning at all.

  Cusack did go out on a limb and declare that Fish was “undoubtedly an abnormal individual.” On the vital question of responsibility—whether the old man could be held accountable for his crimes on the basis of his ability to distinguish right from wrong—the doctor was less willing to commit himself. “He is one case where it seems he knows the nature and quality of his act,” the doctor opined, then added, “But does he really know it in the true sense of the word?” Nevertheless there was no doubt in the doctor’s mind that “This is rather an unusual crime, especially at his age. He is a case for intensified neuro-psychiatric survey and study. It is,” the doctor concluded sagely, “a crime of an unusual nature.”

  The second expert interviewed by the Mirror, Dr. Nathaniel Ross of Bellevue Hospital, was one of the psychiatrists who had examined Fish during the old man’s brief commitment in 1930. Unlike Cusack, Ross spoke from firsthand knowledge of Fish, but his diagnosis was equally vague. The old man was a “pathological case,” he observed. Ross seemed less interested in analyzing Fish than in justifying Bellevue’s decision to set him free: “Such pathological tendencies as Albert Fish showed are, unfortunately, under the law, not in themselves evidence of insanity,” he explained. “We were compelled to consider him legally sane and return him to the courts.

  “It seems a shame that the community, from a purely enlightened scientific point of view, does not provide some form of prolonged or permanent confinement
for such incurably abnormal types.” Clearly, Ross feared that Bellevue’s psychiatric staff might be blamed for its failure to perceive the full and terrifying extent of Fish’s “abnormality.” And Ross would turn out to be right.

  It would be several more months before psychiatric examiners began to understand just how appalling, indeed unbelievable, a phenomenon Fish truly was. In the meantime, scattered details of his past perversities continued to surface.

  Another of Fish’s obscene communications turned up when a well-dressed Brooklyn woman appeared at Police Headquarters with a handwritten letter she had received after placing a “Room to Let” ad in the papers. Signed “A.H. Fish,” the letter was yet another variation on one of the old man’s favorite sadomasochistic themes, the spanking and sexual humiliation of teenage boys:

  Dear Madam

  I am a widower with 3 boys, 13-15-19 I wish to board out until the two youngest are thru school. I want good plain food clean beds, sew mend darn and do their laundry. I prefer a widow, who has a girl old enough to aid her. Henry and John have caused me a lot of trouble by not going to school…. Their principle Miss Bruce said to me, if they were her boys, she would spank both of them soundly 3 times a day for a month and give John a dose of the Cat-o-nine-tails at bed time. She blames him most so do I. I have no time to do this and besides I think whipping children is a woman’s job. I want a good motherly woman, who can and will assume full charge of the 3 boys. Make them obey you and when they dont take down their pants and spank them good Dont hesitate to strip them to the skin and use the Cat-o-nine-tails on them, when you think they need it. Robert is feeble minded due to a fall. Tho going on 20, well built and strong he is much easier to spank or switch than Henry. He kicks like an army mule when being spanked. I want a woman who will whip any one of the 3 or all 3 at once if they need it. Our own doctor says if Bobby is not spanked and switched when he gets cranky he is apt to lose his reason entirely. So he must be spanked as well. He is now in Phila Pa in charge of a Colored woman I have known 25 years. She has a daughter 17 and between them he is getting plenty of the paddle and Cat-o-nine-tails. Henry and John are in Upper Darby Pa in charge of two Maiden Sisters, both ex School Teachers. They conduct a boarding school for boys and girls up to 17 yrs. Both are very strict and any boy or girl who misbehaves is spanked in front of the entire class. John is a big boy for his age and it shames him to have his pants taken down and be spanked in front of a lot of girls. I want a place where all 3 can be together…. I am willing to pay you $35.00 a week for the 3 boys, $15.00 a week extra when I am there. But if you take them you must assure me you will Use the paddle and Cat-o-nine-tails freely on all 3 boys. I want a woman who will not be embarrassed in stripping Bobby any more than Henry and John. So if you are interested tell me how to reach your place by car.

  The letter had been mailed November 21, just ten days after the Budds had received their own, even more insane communication from Albert Fish.

  The same Monday Fish was interviewed in the Tombs, the Budds themselves were in court to appear before the New York County Grand Jury, which was expected to return a quick indictment against Fish for abduction. Though Fish was to be tried first in Westchester on a charge of murder one, the Manhattan D.A.’s office had decided to seek the kidnapping indictment as a backup against the remote possibility of his acquittal.

  Only two family members testified before the Grand Jury—Mrs. Budd and her son Edward, who were called upon to recount the circumstances of the kidnapping. Detective King also appeared as a witness, describing his long, frustrating manhunt and the sequence of events that began with the Budds’ receipt of Fish’s letter and culminated one month later in the old man’s arrest.

  One legal question needed to be resolved before the jurors could return an indictment. The statute of limitations on kidnapping cases was fixed at five years, and more than six had elapsed since the Budd abduction. According to a provision in Section 143 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, however, the statute did not apply if the defendant had moved out of state or lived under an assumed name after committing the crime. Assistant D.A. Albert Unger was able to show that, in the years since the Budd kidnapping, Fish had lived briefly in New Jersey (where he had been arrested twice for passing bad checks) and had also used a variety of aliases, including Robert Hayden and James Pell.

  Satisfied by Unger’s argument, the Grand Jury promptly moved to indict Fish for abduction. Within the hour, Westchester D.A. Frank Coyne called a press conference in White Plains to announce that evidence to support a first-degree murder charge against Fish would be presented to the Westchester Grand Jury on Thursday. Thirteen witnesses would testify, including the Budd family, Detective King, and members of the Greenburgh police force.

  With only three days left before the Grand Jury assembled in Westchester, the police redoubled their efforts to track down the dentist who had treated Grace Budd and could identify the fillings in her skull. Dozens of dentists were called down to police headquarters for questioning, and a circular containing a diagram and description of the work performed on Grace’s teeth was printed up for distribution to clinics and dispensaries throughout the city. By Tuesday afternoon, however, the police had still not managed to locate their man.

  The hunt for more evidence at Wisteria Cottage had also proved fruitless. For all their doggedness, the police had failed to turn up the missing butcher knife, even with the aid of a special electromagnetic device supplied by the Westchester Lighting Company. Their search for Grace’s hat and coat, which the old man claimed he had rolled up and stuck under a stone, was also unavailing. And since the discovery of the skeletal fragments in the muddy beds of the two cisterns, no additional bones had come to light.

  A few more discolored beads from Grace’s necklace were the only new finds of any significance. Without the testimony of the unknown dentist, the string of fake pearls would, in the view of the Westchester D.A., constitute a key piece of evidence when the Grand Jury met on Thursday.

  Another, of course, would be the child’s skeleton itself.

  On Tuesday afternoon, the pieces of that skeleton—along with the other bones recovered from the premises of the Wisteria “murder lodge”—were in the laboratory of Dr. Dudley J. Morton, Associate Professor of Anatomy at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University.

  Earlier in the day, Captain McQuillan had removed the boxes of bones from his office closet and driven them down to Yonkers Police Headquarters. There, he was joined by Medical Examiner Squire, who transferred the evidence to a large, black leather satchel, making sure to keep the child’s skeleton separate from the thirty-odd bones that had been found in the basement and at the bottom of the two wells. McQuillan and Squire then took the satchel of bones to the medical school at 168th Street and Broadway, arriving around noon.

  They were met in the lobby by Sergeant Hammill of the Missing Persons Bureau, who was carrying a leather satchel of his own. Inside were the weatherworn skull and other skeletal fragments which Hammill and his colleagues had unearthed on the night of December 13, when Albert Fish had first led them to the spot behind the mossy stone wall where he had left the little girl’s butchered corpse to molder.

  The officers delivered the bags to Doctor Morton, who at once began the task of piecing the bones together and comparing them to the skeleton of a twelve-year-old child in the college museum. Two hours later, the examination was over. Judging by their size and texture, Morton concluded that the bones found behind the stone wall constituted the nearly complete skeleton of a child who had not yet reached puberty.

  The bones removed from the cellar and cisterns—identified by the Daily Mirror as “hacked sections of human anatomy”—were, in fact, the remains of an indeterminate number of four-footed animals, including at least one dog, a pig, and a cow.

  Though Morton’s findings supported Fish’s claim that Wisteria Cottage was not the “ogre’s lair” portrayed in the tabloids, police remained convinced that Grace Budd was
not the only child Fish had slain. Indeed, even as the little girl’s bones lay spread out on the anatomist’s lab table, investigators were checking into the old man’s possible involvement in five more child killings. These were the molestation and murder of four Brooklyn girls ranging in age from five to seven—Barbara Wiles, Sadie Burroughs, Florence McDonnell, and Helen Sterler—plus the 1927 killing of eleven-year-old Yetta Abramowitz of the Bronx, who had been lured to a tenement rooftop by an elderly stranger, where she was raped, strangled, and savaged with a knife.

  For the murder of the six-year-old Sterler girl, a man named Lloyd Price—described in the papers as a “Negro vagrant”—had been arrested, tried, and sentenced to die in the electric chair. Price had recanted his confession, insisting that it had been beaten out of him by his interrogators. His final words before the switch was pulled at Sing Sing were “By the Grace of God, I am innocent.”

  Now the police had begun to think that Price might have been telling the truth after all.

  Investigators in Brooklyn, meanwhile, were making progress in their efforts to link Fish to the Gaffney disappearance. On Wednesday, December 19, they got the break they were hoping for.

  Disabled by a stroke, fifty-seven-year-old Joseph Meehan was retired now, but for many years he had worked as a motorman on the BMT trolley line in Brooklyn. On the evening of February 11, 1927, it was Meehan, along with conductor Anthony Barone, who had been struck by the strange-looking pair huddled in the back of his car—a jittery old man trying to hush an underclothed little boy, who cried continuously for his mother from the moment he was led onto the trolley until the moment he was dragged off into the night.

  Only later had Meehan and Barone realized that they had been eyewitnesses to the abduction of little Billy Gaffney.

  Like millions of his fellow New Yorkers, Meehan had been transfixed by the unfolding horrors of the Fish story, and on December 18, his eye had been caught by a special feature in that day’s edition of the Mirror. Running along the bottom of page two was a series of close-up photos, five in all, showing the face of the hollow-cheeked “thrill murderer” from various angles. “REMEMBER THIS FACE?” the headline asked.