Albert Fish was a frail, grey-haired man with the polite air of a kindly grandfather – but beneath that veneer lurked one of the most sadistic killers in American history.
Known as The Grey Man and The Brooklyn Vampire, Fish preyed on children across New York in the 1920s and 1930s.
He not only murdered, but mutilated and cannibalised them, leaving a trail of letters and confessions that shocked even seasoned detectives.
He claimed he had killed children ‘in every state,’ though only a handful of murders were definitively confirmed.
His most infamous crime was the abduction and killing of Grace Budd, who was only 10 years old.
On June 3, 1928, Fish visited the Budd family home in Manhattan, claiming to seek work for their teenage son.
However, that was all a ruse – his devious attention was fixated on their daughter, Grace.
Pretending he wanted to take her to a birthday party, he won the trust of her parents, Delia Bridget Flanagan and Albert Francis Budd Sr. and led Grace away. That was the last time they would see her alive.
Albert Fish was a frail, grey-haired man with the polite air of a kindly grandfather – but beneath that veneer lurked one of the most sadistic killers in American history
Grace Budd, right, and her family. Fish told her family he was taking her to a birthday party before going to kill her
Detectives conducted an extensive dig while looking for the remains of Grace Budd
Fish described in horrific detail how he murdered Grace and cooked her flesh to be consumed within nine days
In the years that followed, her devastated parents searched statewide, hoping to find answers.
But six years later, their world was turned upside down when they received a letter written with evil intent.
It was from Fish, and he described in horrific detail her murder and cannibalisation. He told them about how he cooked their daughter’s flesh and consumed it, to their utter horror.
The sick monster wrote: ‘On Sunday, June the 3, 1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese – strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her.’
He added: ‘I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out.
‘When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. 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 a 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.’
Fish wrote about the torture she put Grace Budd through before killing her and cooking her flesh to eat
The letter he wrote was all police needed to trace and arrest him for Grace’s horrific murder
In his letter, he claimed he took Grace to this cottage and murdered her in cold blood
The deranged predator added: ‘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 … It took me 9 days to eat her entire body.’
Fish set out to torment the family of his victim, but what he had not banked on was the fact that cops could use the letter’s stationery to track him down and arrest him at a boarding house in Manhattan.
When he was interrogated by the police, he quickly confessed to what he had done. Official records say he admitted to dismembering Grace’s body with a handsaw at an abandoned house.
He then prepared a meal out of her flesh and included onion, carrots, and bacon.
Fish said he had kept Grace’s bones in the woods and had scattered them behind a building – cops were able to retrieve her remains in the weeks after his arrest.
But Grace’s gruesome murder was not the only time he had killed a child.
In 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDonnell vanished in Staten Island. Witnesses reported a gaunt, grey-haired man lurking near playgrounds.
Francis’ body was later discovered in a wooded area, strangled and beaten. He had been choked with his own suspenders.
Francis’ body was later discovered in a wooded area, strangled and beaten. He had been choked with his own suspenders
Billy Gaffney’s body was discovered in March 1927, wrapped in a burlap sack and lodged between a wine cask on top of a rubbish dump
When Fish was questioned about the crime, he initially attempted to deny any involvement.
However, he later admitted to the murder after he was convicted of Grace’s murder in 1935.
Fish’s method of torturing the family of children he had killed did not end with Grace.
On February 11 in 1927, four-year-old Billy Gaffney and a playmate disappeared from their Brooklyn apartment block.
While the other child was shortly found unharmed, a frantic search was launched for Billy. When asked what happened to Gaffney, the boy chillingly said: ‘The boogeyman took him.’
While police initially suspected another serial killer, they got a break when a man saw Gaffney’s picture and said he remembered the man trying to interact with him.
The boy’s body was discovered in March 1927, wrapped in a burlap sack and lodged between a wine cask on top of a rubbish dump.
According to a report that appeared in the New York Times at the time described his horrific injuries, saying: ‘The child apparently had been killed by a blow in the face, and besides the fractured jaw, four teeth in the lower jaw and two in the upper had been knocked out.
Fish in conversation with his lawyer, James Demsey, during a court recess in December 1935
‘The lower part of the right leg was covered with a bandage as if to cover a small cut or scratch, but no indication of a wound was found on the leg.’
Later, Fish said in a confession letter, he described how he stripped the boy naked, tied his hands and feet and gagged him with ‘a piece of dirty rag’.
The revolting pedophile added: ‘I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears – nose – slith 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.’
He also described how he cut up the boy and made stew out of his ‘ears, nose and pieces of his face and belly.’
His trial for Grace’s murder started on March 11, 1935. Psychiatrists testified at trial that Fish’s religious delusions and obsessive sadism drove him. The trial also gave an insight into his childhood.
His father, who was in his 70s when Fish was born in 1870, died when he was five. He was placed in an orphanage when his mother admitted she couldn’t take care of them. While at the St John’s Home for Boys in Brooklyn, he was subjected to intense torture and physical abuse.
He later admitted: ‘I was there ’til 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.’
By adolescence, he developed extreme masochistic tendencies – he admitted to inserting needles into his groin and abdomen, a practice later confirmed by X-rays taken at Sing Sing that revealed over 20 needles lodged inside him.
An X-ray of Fish’s abdomen revealed how he stuck several needles into himself
Fish claimed he had received visions instructing him to punish children, and he spoke of God as commanding his acts.
He would beat himself with spiked paddles, burn his flesh, and write obscene letters describing sexualised torture fantasies.
Fish derived sexual gratification from these acts on himself and others.
These self-inflicted torments foreshadowed the unimaginable pain he would inflict on children. He claimed he had received visions instructing him to punish children, and he spoke of God as commanding his acts.
Fish himself was once married to a woman named Anna Mary Hoffman. The pair had six children, but when she left him for another man, he was forced to raise their kids alone.
In 1910, Fish met a 19-year-old man called Thomas Kedden, who was intellectually disabled. Over the course of their relationship, Fish physically and emotionally tortured him.
At one point, he tied him up and cut off half his genitals. Writing about the moment, Fish said: ‘I shall never forget his scream or the look he gave me.’ He also confessed that his intention was to kill Kedden, but he feared he would be caught.
Seven years after his relationship with Bedden, Fish’s wife left him for another man, forcing him to raise their kids alone. At some points, he even encouraged his children to hit his buttocks with paddles.
With all this, his lawyers sought to convince the jury that he was legally insane.
Fish’s childhood trauma was extensively covered in court. Despite this, the jury still found him guilty
Grace is seen on the right. Fish tortured Grace’s family by describing in horrific detail how he killed and cannibalised her
However, they rejected that theory and on January 16, 1936, Fish was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing. Witnesses said he showed no fear, even assisting the executioner with the electrodes.
At the time of his execution, he was a suspect in several murders, including the killings of Yetta Abramowitz, a 12-year-old who was strangled and beaten on the roof of an apartment building.
Cops also feared he was involved in the death of Mary Ellen O’Connor, a 16-year-old whose mutilated body was found near a house that Fish was painting.
Fish’s crimes remain among the most revolting in American history. He was a murderer, cannibal, and sadist who turned his most twisted fantasies into reality.
His letters and confessions, preserved in court records, reveal a man who managed to hide his monstrosity behind the polite exterior of a grey-haired old man.
