Albert FishKnown as the Grey Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac, and the Boogey Man, Albert Fish was the personification of nightmares. In November 1938, Mrs. Delia Budd of Manhattan received an anonymous letter claiming responsibility for the disappearance of her young daughter, who had vanished some six years previously.
The letter described how the kidnapper had visited the Budd family home, and how ten-year-old Grace had agreed to go with him to a birthday party. When the young girl failed to return, the Budd’s soon realised she had been taken. The letter presented a terrifying picture of the author’s intentions and the gruesome fate that awaited Grace Budd.
This letter would however prove to be the killer’s undoing, and lead detectives straight to him. Albert Fish was the quintessential boogyman, the stuff of nightmares for children and parents alike. A child rapist, serial killer and cannibal, Fish confessed to other crimes but was suspected of the unsolved murders of many more children who vanished. After his trial for the Budd murder, Fish was executed at Sing Sing for his unspeakable crimes.
On May 25, 1928, eighteen-year-old Edward Budd placed a classified ad in the Sunday edition of the New York World, “Young man, 18, wishes position in country. Edward Budd, 406 West 15th Street.” The enterprising young man was determined to make something of himself and escape the desperate poverty of his parents. A strapping young man who was eager to work and contribute to the well-being of his family.
Budd had longed to work in the country where the air was fresh and clean, so he could escape the dirty, foul-smelling, overcrowded city in which he shared a miserable tenement with his father, mother and four younger siblings. Some three days later on May 28, Edward’s mother, Delia, a large mountain of a woman, answered the door to an elderly gentleman, who introduced himself as Frank Howard.
He said he was a farmer from Farmingdale, Long Island, and wanted to interview Edward about a job. Mrs Budd instructed her five-year-old daughter Beatrice to get her brother at his friend’s apartment, and the old man beamed at her and gave her a nickel for her trouble. During the time they waited for Edward to return, Delia Budd took the chance to get a better opinion of the old man who would be her son’s prospective employer.Â
She was humming a song, and coming straight from church, she still wore her Sunday clothes: white silk confirmation dress, white silk stockings, and string of creamy pearls made her look older than her ten years. Her huge brown eyes and dark brown hair contrasted with her very pale skin and pink lips. She was a really pretty young girl.
Like most men who came face to face with the beautiful Gracie, Frank Howard couldn’t take his eyes off the radiant young girl. As he handed her a huge wad of bills he said, “Let’s see how good a counter you are”. The impoverished Budds were shocked by the sight of so much money that this old man was carrying in his pocket. “Ninety-two dollars and 50 cents,” she declared in short order.
“What a bright little girl,” Mr. Howard said, giving her 50 cents to buy candy for herself and her little sister Beatrice. The kindly old man then said he would come back later in the evening to pick up the two boys, and gave them two dollars to go to the movies. First he had to go to a birthday party that his sister was throwing for one of her children.
As he was about to leave, he invited Gracie to go with him to his niece’s birthday party. He told her mother he would take good care of her and make sure that little Gracie was home before nine o’clock that evening. When Delia asked where Mr. Howard’s sister lived, he replied that she resided in an apartment house at Columbus and 137th Street.
Delia was hesitant, unsure that she should let her go, but Albert Sr. convinced her that it would be good for Gracie. “Let the poor kid go. She don’t see much good times.” With that Delia helped Gracie put on her good coat and her gray hat with the streamers, and followed her daughter and Mr. Howard outside and watched them walk down the street, and disappear.
That first evening there was no word from Mr. Howard and no sign of little Gracie. Her parents endured a torturous and sleepless night with no message from their beautiful daughter. The next morning, they sent Edward down to the police station to report his sister’s disappearance. Police Lieutenant Samuel Dribben had nothing but bad news that day for the Budd’s.
When detectives arrived the next day to investigate the disappearance of the Gaffney boy, they refused to believe the three-year-old witness, who stuck to his simple yet sinister explanation. At first they suspected the young boy had wandered outside into some of the factory buildings into the neighbourhood, or possibly fallen into the Gowanus canal located just a few blocks away.
A search was organized by people from the community, and the canal was dredged, but they found no sign of Billy Gaffney. With little in the way of leads, police were soon obliged to listen to what the three-year-old witness who gave them a description of the “boogey man.” He said he was a slender old man with gray hair and a gray moustache.
Because police had paid little attention to this, they failed to connect it to a previous crime that had been committed by the “Gray Man” several years earlier. On July 14, 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDonnell was playing on the front porch of his home in the pastoral Charlton Woods section of Staten Island. His mother Anna McDonnell sat close by, and was nursing her infant daughter when she saw a frail elderly man with gray hair and moustache standing in the middle of the street.
As she looked at the strange shabby old man, he stood staring and constantly clenched and unclenched his fists while mumbled to himself. He then tipped his dusty hat to her and disappeared down the end of the street. The same old man was seen again later that afternoon, watching Francis and four other boys play ball. He eventually called Francis over to him, as the other boys continued to play.
A few minutes later, both the old man and Francis were nowhere to be seen. That same afternoon a neighbor noticed a young boy that looked like Francis walking into a wooded area with an elderly gray-haired tramp behind him. His disappearance was not noticed until the boy missed dinner, and his father, a policeman, organized a search of the area.
In the woods under some branches, they found the boy. He had been horribly assaulted, with his clothes torn from his body and he had been strangled with his own suspenders. The young lad had been beaten so horrifically that police doubted that the tramp responsible could have really been as old and frail as he looked. The beating was so extensive and severe that they thought the old tramp might have had an accomplice who had the strength to commit such a heinous crime.
Manhattan police photographers were soon on the scene, along with fingerprints experts and a search was undertaken by some 250 plainclothesman. This huge manhunt produced several potential suspects, however none that looked like the grey-haired, moustached old tramp. Anna McDonnell would never forget his face, which was forever imprinted in her memory.
He told detectives, “He came shuffling down the street, mumbling to himself, making queer motions with his hands. I’ll never forget those hands. I shuddered when I looked at them… how they opened and shut, opened and shut, opened and shut. I saw him look toward Francis and the others. I saw his thick grey hair, his drooping gray moustache. Everything about him seemed faded and gray.”
Despite the massive search efforts of the police and the community, it appeared the suspect known as the “Grey Man” had simply vanished into thin air. In September 1930, a suspect was arrested in the Budd murder. Police arrested 66-year-old superintendent Charles Edward Pope, who had been accused of the crime by his own wife.
Few would have believed such a letter was genuine. Those who read it thought it had to be the ravings of some sick, perverted crank. But, Detective King soon realized that the details of the authors meeting with the Budds and Grace were accurately described. It was also discovered that the handwriting on the letter was identical to the letter the elderly kidnapper had written for the Western Union messenger six years earlier.
Upon closer inspection, the envelope contained an important clue, a small hexagonal emblem that had the letters N.Y.P.C.B.A. which stood for the New York Private Chauffeur’s Benevolent Association. An emergency meeting of the members was held, with the cooperation of the president of the association. Meanwhile, detectives checked out the handwritten membership forms, looking for any handwriting similar to “Frank Howard’s.”
Detective King proceeded to ask the members, all of whom had passed the handwriting test, to report anyone who had taken the association’s stationery. Soon enough, a young janitor came forward, admitting that he had taken a couple of sheets of paper and a few envelopes. He said he had left the stationery in his old rooming house at 200 East 52nd Street.
He planned to lure him to a remote location, restrain him and cut off his penis, leaving him to bleed to death. When he saw the strapping young Edward, and his friend Willie, Fish was convinced he could overpower the two of them, and evidently had a lot of experience in that with his previous crimes. Upon leaving the Budd house the first time, Fish had purchased the tools he would use to murder and mutilate Edward Budd and his friend Willie.
He bought a cleaver, saw and butcher knife, and wrapped up these implements of death into a bundle which he left at a newsstand before he went to the the Budd home for the second and last time. It was only after seeing young Gracie and knowing that it was she he desperately wanted to kill, that he changed his mind and altered his plans.
When he left that day with the unsuspecting young child, he stopped back at the newsstand to pick up his bundle before taking a train to the Bronx and then to the village of Worthington in Westchester. For his child companion, he only bought a one-way ticket. As Gracie had only twice in her life been out of the city, she was excited by the 40-minute ride into the countryside, which was an adventurous treat for her.
No questions were asked about the Cannibalism aspect of the letter, and neither was this information volunteered by the prisoner. The police may have considered it too insane to be true, or, perhaps, they were already thinking about a future trial, and that including such horrific details about cannibalism could bolster the inevitable defense case for insanity.
That night the capture of Albert Fish had leaked to the newspapers and soon reporters descended on the Budd apartment with the news. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Budd and his son Edward were driven to the police station by Det. King to help identify Fish as the man who took Grace. Edward did more than identify Fish, and threw himself at the old man.
You old bastard! Dirty son of a bitch!” Surprised at Fish’s lack of emotion, Mr. Budd asked him “Don’t you know me?”. “Yes,” Fish answered politely. “You’re Mr. Budd.” In response, Mr. Budd said, “And you’re the man who came to my home as a guest and took my little girl away,” with tears in his eyes. Albert Fish was facing indictments in Manhattan and Westchester County.
With Albert Fish in jail, police got a major break in one of their unsolved murder cases. During the initial investigation in the disappearance of Billy Gaffney, the police suspected he might have been murdered by serial killer Peter Kudzinowski, who operated at the same time and area as Fish and was responsible for the murders of three children.
He was eventually ruled out as suspect in the Gaffney case. After his capture, The motorman on the Brooklyn trolley line saw a picture of Fish in the newspaper and came forward to identify him as the nervous old man that he saw on February 11, 1927. Joseph Meehan, the retired motorman, said Fish was the man he saw trying to quiet the little boy sitting with him on the trolley.
As he watched the two carefully, the little boy, who didn’t have a jacket or coat, was crying for his mother continuously and had to be dragged on and off the trolley by the old man. The little boy, it would turn out, was identified as the abducted Billy Gaffney. Presented with this evidence, Fish admitted to his involvement in the death of Billy Gaffney, and described the unspeakable things he did to him.
Around 1919, Fish had stabbed an intellectually disabled boy in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.. He intentionally chose people who were either mentally handicapped or African-American as his victims, explaining that he assumed these people would not be missed. He would claim to have occasionally paid boys to procure other children for him, who he would torture, mutilate, and murder with his “implements of Hell”, a meat cleaver, a butcher knife, and a small handsaw.
Fish went to Staten Island on July 11, 1924, and there came across eight-year-old Beatrice Kiel playing alone on her parents’ farm. He offered the young girl money if she would go and help him look for rhubarb. As she was about to leave the farm, her mother spotted the old man and chased Fish away. He left but returned later to the Kiels’ barn, where he tried to sleep but was discovered by Beatrice’s father and forced to leave.
Several days later, Mr. Kiel came forward after seeing Albert Fish’s photograph. The man said that Fish was the man who had tried to lure his then eight-year-old daughter into the woods not far from where Francis O’Donnell was murdered three days later in 1924. He described the man as a slender old man with gray hair and a gray moustache.
“His mother was held to be ‘very queer’ and was said to hear and see things. One paternal uncle suffered from a religious psychosis and died in a state hospital. A half brother also died in a state hospital. A younger brother was feeble-minded and died of hydrocephalus. A paternal aunt was considered ‘completely crazy.’A brother suffered from chronic alcoholism. A sister had some sort of ‘mental affliction.'”
#His own perverse nature was considered unique in the annals of psychiatric and criminal literature. “Sado-masochism directed against children, particularly boys, took the lead in his sexually regressive development.”
Fish told him, “I always had a desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me. I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurt.”
Fish would confide in Dr. Wertham his long history of preying on children. “At least a hundred,” Fish claimed. He would bribe them with money or candy, and usually chose African-American children because he believed that the police did not pay much attention when they were hurt or missing. In an effort to evade capture, he never went back to the same neighborhood, and said that he had lived in at least 23 states and in each one he had killed at least one child.
Sometimes, he lost his job as a painter because he was suspiciously connected to these dead or mutilated children. He explained about a compulsion to write obscene letters, and did so frequently, such as the one sent to the Budd family. According to Dr. Wertham, “they were not the typical obscene letters based on fantasies and daydreams to supply a vicarious thrill. They were offers to practice his inclinations with the people he wrote his graphic suggestions to.”
Dr. Wertham understandably had some initial concerns about whether or not Fish was lying to him, especially when he told the psychiatrist that he had been sticking needles into his body for years in the area between the rectum and the scrotum, “He told of doing it to other people too, especially children. At first, he said, he had only stuck these needles in and pulled them out again. Then he had stuck others in so far that he was unable to get them out, and they stayed there.”
He was X-rayed by the doctor and as described, there were at least twenty-nine needles in his pelvic region. Wertham said “experiences with excreta of every imaginable kind were practiced by him, actively and passively. He took bits of cotton, saturated them with alcohol, inserted them into his rectum, and set fire to them. He also did that with his child victims.”
It was in January 1917, when his wife left Fish for John Straube, a handyman who boarded with the Fish family. Fish told a newspaper that when his wife left him, she took nearly every possession the family owned. When Fish was around the age of fifty-five, he started to experience hallucinations and delusions, and once wrapped himself in a carpet, saying that he was following the instructions of John the Apostle.
“He had visions of Christ and His angels….he began to be engrossed in religious speculations about purging himself of iniquities and sins, atonement by physical suffering and self-torture, human sacrifices… He would go on endlessly with quotations from the Bible all mixed up with his own sentences, such as ‘Happy is he that taketh Thy little ones and dasheth their heads against the stones.”
He believed that God had ordered him to mutilate and castrate little boys, something he had done a number of times. Based on his confessions, it was obvious that Fish was suffering from some religious psychosis. Albert Fish told Dr. Wertham that his children had seen him “hitting himself on his nude body with a nail-studded paddle until he was covered with blood. They also saw him stand alone on a hill with his hands raised, shouting: ‘I am Christ.'”
One of those prosecution alienists was the head of the psychiatric hospital where Fish had been detailed for observation a couple of years after the Budd and other murders, and where he had been judged “both harmless and sane.” On March 11, 1935, the trial of Albert Fish began, in White Plains, N.Y., in the court of Justice Frederick P. Close. Charged with the premeditated murder of Grace Budd, he was defended by attorney James Dempsey, while the prosecution was led by Chief Asst. District Attorney Elbert F. Gallagher.
Defense attorney Dempsey focused primarily on his client’s strange life and the self-flagellation with nail-studded paddles and needles that he claimed to have undulged. He then brought up Fish’s competence as a father and his love for his children: “In spite of all these brutal, criminal and vicious proclivities, there is another side to this defendant. He has been a very fine father. He never once in his life laid a hand on one of his children. He says grace at every meal in his house.”
“In 1917, when the youngest one of his six children was three, his wife left him. And from that time down until shortly before the Grace Budd murder in 1928 he was a mother and father to those children.” In his closing remarks, he reminded the jury that it was up the prosecution who had to prove that a man who killed and ate children, was sane.
Testimonies were made by Grace’s parents and brother Albert, Jr., and Dempsey was determined to point out that both Albert, Sr. and Delia gave their consent to Grace going to a birthday party with Fish. When it came time for Albert Sr. to testify, he was overcome with emotion and began to weep loudly. By the third day of the trial, a box of Grace Budd’s remains was brought into the courtroom as evidence, despite the strenuous objections of the defense attorney.
Meanwhile Det. King described to the court, from Fish’s confession, how the girl was killed. At one point during and in what was a very dramatic moment, Gallagher reached into the box and held out the small skull of the dead girl. Dempsey sought a mistrial. He then focused on the cannibalism claims as a central part of the insanity defense, and it became clear that he was trying to establish that Fish had eaten parts of the girl’s body — something that no sane person would do.
This proved unsuccessful in establishing and proving that Fish actually did what he said he did with her body. During the process, Fish appeared to be completely indifferent, although, at one point, he expressed to his attorney that he had a desire to live because “God still has work for me to do.” Several of Fish’s children took the stand to testify to his bizarre behavior of self-flagellation and sticking needles in his body, as well as his religious delusions.
But they also testified that he was a good father who always provided for them, and he never subjected to physical abused. To further demonstrate Fish’s strange behavior, he called forth to the stand a woman who had been the recipient of several obscene letters from Albert Fish. The courtroom was cleared of women as Dempsey read the obscene correspondence.
Another defense witness called by Dempsey was Mary Nicholas, Fish’s 17-year-old stepdaughter. She went on to describe how Fish taught her and her brothers and sisters a game he invented. “He went into his room and he had a little pair of trunks, brown trunks, that he put on. He put those on and came out into the front room, and he got down on his hands and knees, and he had a paint stick that he stirred paint with.”
“He would give the stick to one of us, and then he would get down on his hands and knees and we would sit on his back, one at a time, with our back facing him, and then we would put up so many fingers, and he was to tell how many fingers we had up, and if he guessed right, which he never did, why, we weren’t supposed to hit him. Sometimes, he would even say more fingers than we really had. And if he never guessed right, why, we would hit him as many fingers as we would have up.”
She said that sometimes a hairbrush was used instead of the paint stick, and also stuck pins under his fingernails in front of the children. Towards the end of the trial, Dempsey eventually had a chance to attack the prosecution alienists. Dr. Charles Lambert, after a three-hour interview with Fish, pronounced him a “psychopathic personality without a psychosis.”
Dempsey questioned Lambert over this, “Assume that this man not only killed this girl but took her flesh to eat it. Will you state that that man could for nine days eat that flesh and still not have a psychosis?” Lambert answered, “Well, there is no accounting for taste, Mr. Dempsey.” Dempsey then persisted: “Tell me how many cases in your experience you have seen people who actually ate human faeces.”
Lambert remarked casually, “Oh, I know individuals prominent in society… one in particular that we all know who used it as a side dish in his salad”. Unperturbed, Dempsey got much further with one of the other defense alienists, who testified that he could see signs of psychosis in Fish’s behavior. The trial lasted for ten days, and it took the jury less than an hour to reach its verdict.
John Brennan Crutchley Dubbed the Vampire Rapist, John Brennan Crutchley was a suspected serial killer who drank the blood of one of his kidnapping victims.
Red Inn Murders The Red Inn Murders were occurred in France during the 19th century, where the proprietors of an inn killed and cannibalised their clientele.
George “G” Williams During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, George “G” Williams carried out a murderous vendetta against Suge Knight and his Death Row Records.
John Brennan Crutchley Dubbed the Vampire Rapist, John Brennan Crutchley was a suspected serial killer who drank the blood of one of his kidnapping victims.
Red Inn Murders The Red Inn Murders were occurred in France during the 19th century, where the proprietors of an inn killed and cannibalised their clientele.
George “G” Williams During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, George “G” Williams carried out a murderous vendetta against Suge Knight and his Death Row Records.
Copyright © 2025 The True Crime Database. All Rights Reserved.
