Albert Fish - The Boogeyman (& my personal favorite)

happy october !!

i should have started the month off with a story, but i spaced it & i apologize. 

but again, deadlines keep me motivated & therefore keep my blog alive so we can all thank my professor!

anyway, onto the story. 

i figured i’d start my favorite month off with my favorite serial killer: albert fish.

albert hamilton fish, also known as the boogeyman or the gray man, was born on may 19, 1870. his father died of a heart attack when fish was five, & his mother decided to put him in an orphanage as soon as that happened. in the orphanage, albert was frequently whipped & beaten. this led to fish’s discovery of his masochism (which means he enjoys being in physical pain). since that time, fish would purposely misbehave in order to be whipped. 

his mother took him back in 1879. by the age of 12, albert was in a relationship with a local telegraph boy & would frequently visit public bath houses to watch the other little boys undress. 

by 1890, fish lived in new york & was a male prostitute. he also admitted to raping little boys. his mother eventually arranged a marriage & with that wife, albert had six kids.

regardless of his family, albert still had homosexual tendencies, which were shamed in his time. since he was tied down, he had to find other ways to fulfill his desires. he worked as a house painter, & he admitted to molesting several of the young boys who lived in the houses he’d paint. he also had several relationships with other men while he was married. 

fish claimed to have had “children in every state,” although only three murders were traced back to him. he also confessed to stabbing two other people. 

his first recorded attack was in 1910, on a boy named thomas bedden. details of this attack are very limited.

the second attack was on a mentally  disabled  boy in georgetown washington. he stabbed the boy in 1919.

many of fish’s intended victims were either african-american, or mentally disabled because he believed they would not be missed. (which is really messed-up if i do say so myself)

the third was in 1928, a 10-year-old girl by the name of grace budd. albert found her when her older brother, edward, put an ad in the newspaper saying that he wanted to work in the country. fish met with him & his family under the name frank howard. he promised to hire edward & convinced the parents to let him take grace with him to a birthday party. he never returned with her. 

in november of 1934, an anonymous letter was sent to the budds regarding the disappearance of grace. (the letter was from albert) i’ll include that letter at the end if you wish to read it, but for those of you that don’t, basically it told of how he had a friend who went to china while they were in a great famine. the famine was so intense that meat of any kind was desired & expensive. he talked about how kids under the age of 12 would be sold for meat. his friend grew a liking to the taste of human flesh & even after he went home to the americas, kidnapped & tortured & ate two kids. the friend told albert about how good human flesh tasted & so albert decided to try it for himself. he choked grace to death & then ate her. 

this letter was ultimately his downfall.

police traced the letter back to fish & he didn’t even deny his crimes. he even told them that he originally intended to kill edward budd & also confessed to several other crimes including two other murders, the murder of francis x. mcdonnell & the murder of billy gaffney. 

he was arrested on december 13, 1934 & executed by method of electric chair on january 16, 1936. 

and thus concludes our first terrifying truth. albert fish was a wild dude to say the least, & everything i just told you was 100% real. this post is already pretty long, so i’m just going to finish it off now. i hope you enjoyed the story of the boogeyman & i hope you were reasonably spooked. see you next time, folks. stay spooky.

~ Adi (adsmads)

here is the letter’s contents, with all fish’s grammatical errors & everything:

• “Dear Mrs. Budd. In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1-3 per pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak—chops—or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl's behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid [sic] there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys, one 7 and one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them — tortured them — to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 year old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except the head—bones and guts. He was roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 St. near—right side. He told me so often how good human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it.
• 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. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said yes she could go. 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. 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 my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.”