The American Narrative Episode 6: Albert Fish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FI9jfcdrfs

DISCLAIMER (0:00) – The following program contains explicit language and graphic content, including discussions about child abuse, rape, murder, suicide, sexual violence, and other deeply disturbing subjects. This episode is intended only for mature audiences. Listener discretion is strongly advised.

TIM (0:19) – You’re listening to The American Narrative: Histories of a Nation, a podcast series by Discover America. I’m your host, Tim Murphy, alongside cohost Grant Shea.

Welcome to the first installment of ‘All-American Horror.’

Every Halloween, Discover America Blog releases an article that investigates the history behind one of the nation’s most haunted attractions. This year, we’re starting a similar tradition with The American Narrative.

Now, this won’t become a podcast about ghosts, aliens, or supernatural speculation. Instead, we’ll stay firmly grounded in the historical record—using an objective, evidence-based approach—to dissect some of America’s darkest crimes and the deeply disturbed individuals behind them.

Our first subject certainly sets a formidable standard.  

Tonight, we explore the convoluted mind and sinister actions of one of the most sadistic criminals in American history—someone that makes Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein look like altar boys. I’m talking about the Moon Maniac, the Gray Man, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Werewolf of Wysteria—I’m talking about Albert Fish.

Before we begin, I want to throw out a couple disclaimers.

Much of what we know about Fish’s childhood and alleged crimes comes from Fish himself. His self-described “mania for writing” provides us with unparalleled insight into his psychological state, but his accounts require careful scrutiny. Authorities could not corroborate several of his claims, and he may have exaggerated certain details for posterity’s sake. But even after stripping away every possible embellishment, his known crimes remain undeniably horrific.

This episode also covers extremely gruesome material. I’m no stranger to the macabre, but researching this case was difficult—gut-wrenching at times. I even considered abandoning the project entirely, since Fish’s actions reached a level of depravity difficult to comprehend, let alone describe. But we cannot suppress these stories simply because they make us uncomfortable. If we want to understand our history honestly, we must confront its darkest chapters—even when every instinct tells us to turn away.

For those brave enough to continue, let’s dive into it. 

TIM (2:27) – Albert Howard Fish was born in Washington D.C. on May 19, 1870—the youngest of four surviving children to Randall and Ellen Fish. Albert’s father, a riverboat captain, was 75 years old at the time of his birth, roughly 43 years older than his mother. The Fishes originally christened their son ‘Hamilton’ after their suppositional relative—the former Governor of New York and President Ulysses S. Grant’s Secretary of State. However, he later adopted the name ‘Albert’ after being relentlessly ridiculed with the nickname “Ham and Eggs.”

TIM (3:02) – I guess they had a low bar for insults back then.

GRANT (3:06) – Ham and Eggs. I wonder…Green Eggs and Ham. Did they—when was Dr. Seuss even…no, this was pre-Dr. Seuss, right? It’s got to be.

TIM (3:14) – This is pre-Dr. Seuss…

GRANT (3:15) – Pre-Dr. Seuss.

TIM (3:16) – …by, like, about eighty years, I think.

TIM (3:21) – Mental disease and psychiatric disturbances were common threads in the Fish family. Albert’s uncle reportedly suffered from “religious mania,” a paternal half-brother was schizophrenic, and his own mother experienced aural hallucinations. But these diagnoses may not be completely accurate, since the moralistic terminology of nineteenth-century psychiatry was often vague and imprecise.

The family’s financial circumstances sharply deteriorated when Randall Fish suffered a fatal heart attack on October 16, 1875. Widowed and destitute, Ellen placed her children in institutional care. Young Albert entered St. John's Orphanage, where he spent his most formative childhood years.

According to Fish’s later accounts, St. Johns relied heavily on corporal punishment and psychological trauma to instill obedience and religious discipline. Staff members would routinely strip, beat, and whip misbehaving children, sometimes in front of their peers as an extreme form of public humiliation. For most of the orphans at St. John's, the torment produced exactly what it intended: shame, submission, and behavioral correction. For Albert Fish, punishment produced physical pleasure that later developed into sexual gratification.

After obtaining federal employment and a certain degree of financial independence, Ellen Fish reclaimed her son from St. John’s in 1879.

In 1882, Fish allegedly began a sexual relationship with an older telegraph boy who introduced him to urophagia and coprophagia—the consumption of urine and feces. As an adolescent, Fish frequented public bathhouses and lavatories to watch boys undress—a behavior known as scopophilia, which is commonly associated with voyeurism. He also visited wax museums, ogling at the anatomical models. During one visit, Fish spotted a bisected human penis—a discovery that sparked his perverse obsession with sexual mutilation.

In 1890, Fish moved to New York City and found work as a house painter—an occupation that gave him access to overcrowded tenement buildings and a vulnerable victim pool for his dark impulses. Fish soon developed a pattern of luring unattended children, primarily boys, into basements with promises of candy or money, then sexually abusing them. By his own account, Fish molested “hundreds of children”—many of whom were either intellectually disabled or African American—later explaining that they would be less likely to attract attention once they went missing. 

Said Fish: “[I’ve] always had strong desire to read accounts in the daily papers of any one being tarred and feathered…to hear [them] scream when being switched and [see] how funny [they] must have looked—like a human chicken. I got a thrill—every time when I read of a [negro] who had raped a white girl in the South and was taken from the Police. He was stripped, castrated, emasculated. Oil was then poured on him and set on fire…I made up my mind—if I ever got the chance to do so, I would whip and torture children for the pleasure of hearing them scream as I had been made to scream.”

GRANT (6:22) – Where did he say that? Like, that…where is that account from?

TIM (6:29) – He wrote that himself. So, when he was in prison, he was basically writing nonstop, like pages upon pages upon pages of correspondence with his lawyer, his children, newspapers…

GRANT (6:42) – Wow.

TIM (6:43) – And a lot of these quotes come from one specific source: the aptly named Albert Fish in His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of the Child Killing Cannibal, by John Borowski. Like, there are photocopies of his personal letters, courtroom documents, medical records—all consolidated into a book, and it’s quite something to read.

GRANT (7:06) – Wow. Because that’s just insane. Like, he’s just writing this down. He’s just—he’s…gosh. There’s a screw loose in that guy. My gosh.

TIM (7:18) – Definitely more than a screw, I’ll tell you that.

GRANT (7:20) – Yeah.

TIM (7:22) – In 1898, Albert wed nineteen-year-old Anna Mary Hoffman. Over the course of their marriage, the couple had six children: Albert Jr., Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John, and Henry. On the outside, Fish appeared to be the patriarch of a normal, working-class family. Meanwhile, behind this façade, his compartmentalized, pathological impulses only grew more irresistible.

Fish eventually found himself in legal trouble, though his offenses were unrelated to his later violent crimes. In 1903, he was arrested for grand larceny and served sixteen months in Sing Sing Prison before being released.

Around 1910, while working in Wilmington, Delaware, Fish made the acquaintance of Thomas Kedden—an impressionable, nineteen-year-old transient from Arkansas.

“When I first met him, he had not a cent and was almost stoned, no place to lay his head,” Fish recalled of the teenager’s circumstance. “I took him with me to the place where I got my meals and we had supper. How he did eat. I enjoyed watching him and filled him up. Then I took him to my room for just what I wanted. I knew he was [lousy] for he could not stop scratching. I made him take everything off. He was full of the biggest lice I ever seen. I let good warm water run in the bathtub until it was half full. Then I made him get in and sit flat on his behind. I told him to stay there until I got back. I went to [the] drug store and got a package of hair remover in a powdered form. I had a pair of clippers and I cut all the long hair off him. Then I got a tin can, dumped the powder in it, and added water. This made a paste. I smeared it all on him. Let it stand ten minutes. Then I…took a sponge and a cake of soap. I washed him good, then made him stand up…[E]very hair fell off. Then he was really naked and how pretty he looked…I wiped him dry. Then rubbed him all over with hair tonic. I loved him then and kissed him all over. Then the fun began.”

GRANT (9:12) – Oh my gosh.

TIM (9:14) – It makes you squirm! It makes you squirm just listening to that. And that’s not even the worst part, but it just makes you go ugh!  

GRANT (9:22) – Yeah, no this…you know, I feel like when you read something and it’s written by the person who—like a first-person source—and you get an insight into how their mind is working, and then there’s something like that, your instincts—your sense of morality—you get [uncomfortable]. It’s like, I don’t even—their little world—like how did they get there? How is that another person’s world? Like its…ugh. I don’t know. Crazy.

TIM (9:51) – The “fun” Fish alludes to was, more precisely, a sadomasochistic relationship.

“I made him lay…face down as I sat on side of bed…Then I took my hairbrush and used the back of it to spank him. I made him yell, ‘Ouch, papa! I will be a good boy.’ Then it was his turn to be Papa. I was his boy, and had done #2 in my pants. He gave me a bath, then sat on the side of the bed and made me lay across his knees, face down. He spanked [me] good and plenty. I spanked him till he cried - he made me cry, too.”

GRANT (10:23) – Jesus. Ugh.

TIM (10:27) – But the sexual gratification Fish received from this roleplay was not enough: “I craved for something different. I wanted to…torture [Thomas], hear him scream with pain. I could not do it [in my apartment] - too many people.”

Fish eventually escorted Kedden to an old farmhouse, where the debauchery devolved into torture. Fish tied Kedden up and proceeded to cut, puncture, burn, and mutilate the young man’s body over the course of two weeks. 

“For five days, all he had was water and whippings. Then I brought him sandwiches and coffee. He was so hungry, I made him eat his own #2 before I gave him food…Then I spilled alcohol on him [and] set him on fire. I clapped my hands and jumped with joy when I heard him scream. It hurt like hell while it lasted, but the alcohol burned off quick.”

GRANT (11:13) – Jesus.

TIM (11:15) – As the torturous hours progressed into days, Fish stopped providing meals entirely, and the two men sustained on “peanut butter and cider.”

TIM (11:23) – Homemade, if you catch my drift.

GRANT (11:25) – Oh God.

TIM (11:28) – Fish originally intended to “torture [Kedden] to death, then use the parts that appealed to me for food,” but feared that the hot weather and resulting odor would attract unwanted attention. Instead, he partially castrated Thomas with a pair of scissors—"I shall never forget his scream or the look he gave me,” Fish recollected. After treating the wound with hydrogen peroxide and Vaseline, Fish kissed Kedden goodbye and left a ten-dollar bill as a parting gift. “[I] took [the] first train I could get back home. Never heard what became of him, or tried to find out.”

GRANT (11:59) – Oh my God. Oh my God. You know what’s crazy? It’s like—nowadays, when they have these serial killer documentaries, they usually can find the victim or the victim’s family, or you see the little Netflix special—it’s like, who the hell knows what happened to this kid. Like, what? And then how’s he going to…it’s the trauma. The undiagnosed, un-whatever trauma that people would go through, and I mean, my God. That…crazy. Just crazy.

TIM (12:30) – Yeah, crazy indeed. And like I said, a lot of the stuff Fish said he did, the police couldn't corroborate it, because also back then there wasn’t good record-keeping and a lot these crimes went unreported. So, this story about Kedden—again, this is from Fish’s own recollection, his own perspective—there’s no formal police report about it…but I’m not sure if he could completely fabricate this story without some modicum of truth. But again, it’s all speculation.

GRANT (13:05) – You know, people have been doing crazy shit, like, since the beginning of time. So, it’s one of these, like—there’s just always been whack jobs. Like, I don’t know. But this is…if we’re just scratching the surface, and this is the first scratch, I’m like, oh my god, what’s coming down the road?

TIM (13:25) – Enough to make your stomach turn, that’s for sure. 

TIM (13:29) – In January 1917, Fish’s wife grew tired of his emerging eccentricities and ran off with John Straube, a handyman who boarded with the family. Within a week, she returned, begging for forgiveness. At the urging of his older children, Fish allowed her to come home, but the reconciliation proved brief. Several days later, Anna smuggled Straube into the house and hid him in the basement. Upon discovering the arrangement, Fish expelled them both. The extramarital lovers later returned while Fish was working in White Plains and removed all the family’s furniture. 

When Fish returned home. “I heard the children crying in the dining room and went in. The room was absolutely bare. Even the stove was gone…Because of the icy cold, the children were all huddled together at the street window in their hats and coats and I got the story from them all. ‘Mama gave us all a dime and sent us to the movies at 4 o’ clock,’ they all screamed.”

Anna’s departure left him solely responsible for their six children. In the years that followed, Fish lived an increasingly itinerant life and accumulated several arrests, mostly for petty fraud or sending obscene correspondence. 

Around the same time, Fish began experiencing auditory hallucinations and started sticking needles into his groin and abdomen. At first, he removed the pins after inserting them. But eventually, he embedded some so deep that he was unable to retrieve them. Fish offered several conflicting explanations for this bizarre behavior. At different times, he claimed that the needles alleviated pain from a hernia, provided sexual gratification, served as religious penance, or satisfied voices that commanded him to torture himself.

But needles were not the only objects of insertional interest: “[As a boy in Washington D.C.], we had a large yard with flowers of all kinds. I always loved to see and smell them…I often saw pictures in windows of male and female figures in a nude state. Garlands of vines and flowers, draped about their (nakedness). I always had a strong desire to appear in public absolutely naked, or decked out in flowers. I, of course, realized I could not appear in the streets in such a garb. However, I did so in my room at night. I would…strip naked and annoy myself in every possible way—stick stems of roses up my penis and behind. Then I would take a small looking glass in my hand. Tilt [my dresser mirror] on a slant and view my naked body for hours. Then eat the petals of roses.”

GRANT (15:54) – Oh my God! Jesus. Ugh.

TIM (15:59) – Fish also repeatedly struck himself with a nail-studded paddle, practiced self-flagellation, and inserted lighter fluid-soaked wool into his anus, which he then set alight. “The trouble with pain is you get tough and always have to invent something that hurts worse,” Fish bluntly commented.

GRANT (16:16) – What did this guy, like, not do? I mean, what the hell? Oh my God. You know what’s crazy is like—I feel like also back in the 1890s or you know, 1910s, 1900s—like, there wasn’t as much media as there is now. So it’s like, some of the things he’s coming up with or the like…was he the first one to be doing this shit? Like I don’t—I don’t understand. Like, I don’t know where he gets the…what…I’m just—I’m trying to articulate it, but it’s like, where does he get his penchant from? Where…it’s not like—I mean, was he reading any—did he just come out the womb like this messed up? Like was there…I’m interested—and maybe we’ll learn about it later—like abusive parents or whatever, like I don’t know. But like, what sent him into this direction? Or did he just find this on his own?

TIM (17:18) – I think it’s part invention, part discovery

GRANT (17:23) – Oh my God.

TIM (17:25) – By the early 1920s, Fish’s paraphilic psychosis merged with religious fanaticism. He believed that God had commanded him to torment and sexually mutilate children, particularly by castrating young boys. “I had sort of an idea through Abraham offering his son Isaac as a sacrifice. It always seemed to me that I had to offer a child for sacrifice, to purge myself of iniquities, sins, and abominations in the sight of God. Such as Sodom and Gomorrah!”

Fish intended to escalate from molestation to murder with ten-year-old Cyril Quinn.

“I had me Cyril Quinn several times,” recalled Fish. “He came up to my room one Sunday when I was all alone. Asked me if he could look at the funny papers. I said yes, come in. While he was doing so, I stripped naked and remained so for the entire time he was in my room. Going back in forth in front of him so he could see me good. He told other boys, and when they knew I was alone, several came in to see me naked. We had all kinds of relations, as well as spanking each other.”

For several months, Fish sexually exploited Cyril while concealing his so-called “implements of Hell” beneath his bedframe: a meat cleaver, butcher knife, and handsaw. One day, Cyril and a friend were wrestling on Fish’s bed when the mattress shifted, causing a strange metallic clang. They peeked under the bed and froze at the sight of Fish’s perturbing paraphernalia. Understandably frightened by what they uncovered, the two boys fled the apartment. Fish never saw either child again. 

GRANT (18:54) – Jesus.

TIM (18:56) – May 28, 1928—a pleasant spring day in Chelsea, Manhattan. But little sunlight graced the crowded confines of Albert and Delia Budd’s ground-floor tenement, where the stagnant air sweltered like a midsummer’s afternoon.  

While performing her mundane household chores, Delia heard a knock at the door. She answered to find a meek, elderly man on the other side. The subdued stranger introduced himself as Frank Howard and presented a classified advertisement from the Sunday edition of the New York World: “Young man, 18, wishes position in [the] country. Edward Budd, 406 W. 15^th Street.”

Howard explained that he managed a successful farm on Long Island, overseeing several hundred chickens and six dairy cows with the assistance of five farmhands. One of those laborers planned to leave, and he needed someone to fill the vacancy. 

Mrs. Budd was delighted that her eldest son’s personal ad had drawn such a quick response. She invited the prospective employer inside.

Edward soon returned to the apartment, along with his friend Willie Korman. After some brief introductions, Howard offered both young men employment at fifteen dollars per week. The opportunity seemed ideal—almost too good to be true—yet nothing about Howard’s demeanor aroused the slightest hint of dishonesty. Both boys eagerly accepted. Howard stayed for supper and, after thanking the Budds for their hospitality, promised to return for Edward and Willie on June 2. 

The appointed day came and went, but Mr. Howard never arrived. Instead, a Western Union messenger delivered a handwritten note of apology—Howard was delayed in New Jersey by some business matters, but reassured the family that he would call the following morning.

On June 3, Mr. Howard arrived as specified, bearing pot cheese and fresh strawberries procured from his farm. The gracious Budds invited their generous guest inside for lunch.

As the adults conversed around the dinner table, the front door swung open, and the familiar rhythm of a child’s footsteps sounded through the hall. It was Grace, Edward’s ten-year-old sister, still wearing her Sunday clothes: a white communion dress, silk stockings, and a string of imitation pearls around her neck.

Howard was captivated by the young lady’s appearance, holding his gaze with peculiar intensity. He invited Grace to sit on his lap and count out his pocket change. When she finished, he gave her fifty cents to buy candy for herself and her siblings. Grace excitedly thanked the kind stranger and hurried out the door.

Edward and Willie arrived minutes later—their bags packed, ready to leave for Long Island. But once again, Howard disappointed them. After apologizing for his failure to appear the previous day, he explained that he could not take the boys immediately. His sister was hosting a birthday party for his young niece that afternoon and he was obliged to attend. Seemingly on impulse, Howard asked whether Grace could accompany him. There would be other children, entertainment, and plenty of food. He provided the family with an address near 137^th Street and Columbus Avenue and promised to bring Grace home by nine o’clock that evening.

Howard’s manner remained gentle and reassuring for the Budds. He had eaten at their table, offered their son work, brought food from his farm, and shown Grace conspicuous kindness. These gestures had earned the family’s trust, and the Budds permitted their daughter to attend. With youthful eagerness, Grace grabbed Mr. Howard’s hand, and the two walked down the road until they disappeared from view.

Nine o’clock came and went. Frank Howard did not return Grace as he had promised. With each passing hour, the elderly farmer’s assurances seemed less and less credible. The Budds spent a sleepless night agonizing over their daughter’s absence before sending their son Edward to the nearest police station. Shortly afterward, Lieutenant Samuel Dribben arrived at the family’s apartment, along with three other detectives. The officers listened intently as Albert and Delia described their circumstances—how a man named Howard had offered their son employment, then obtained permission to escort Grace to a children’s birthday party. When Mrs. Budd disclosed the address, the detectives exchanged curious glances. “That address doesn’t exist,” Dribben said. “Columbus terminates at 110^th Street.”

News of Grace Budd’s disappearance reached the press on Tuesday, June 5. Flyers circulated nationwide, bearing her photograph and a description of the suspected abductor. One of the strongest early leads emerged that August, when J.S. Blitch—a prison warden from Raiford, Florida—contacted William King, lead detective in the missing person investigation. Blitch believed that the enigmatic “Frank Howard” was actually Albert Edward Corthell—a wily conman with an ingratiating demeanor who impersonated a Harvard-educated physician in Manhattan. To lend respectability to his schemes, Corthell sometimes hired young girls to pose as his daughters. Blitch suspected that he might have abducted Grace for a similar purpose.

The New York Police Department obtained a photograph of Corthell and showed it to members of the Budd family. Their responses were inconclusive, at best. Both Albert and Edward believed the man resembled Howard, but neither could confidently identify him. Delia, on the other hand, adamantly insisted that Corthell and Howard were the same man.  

This positive identification was further supported by William L. Vetter, the assistant superintendent of the Brooklyn Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Vetter told police that a slightly built, gray-haired man had visited his office just a few days before Grace disappeared. The visitor—well-dressed and soft-spoken—was interested in adopting a six-year-old girl, but something about his manner aroused Vetter’s suspicions. After a brief conversation, Vetter scheduled a more extensive interview, but the man never returned.

Police later asked Vetter to examine photographs in the department’s rogues’ gallery. After reviewing dozens of images, he selected one that looked indelibly familiar: Albert Corthell. On August 3, a grand jury indicted Corthell for kidnapping, and authorities issued a warrant for his arrest.

Despite the efforts of investigators, Corthell remained at large for the next two years. During that period, police identified another possible suspect: Charles Howard, a fifty-year-old Floridian who had been arrested for defrauding his new wife of $2,800. It was the hoodwinked bride herself who made the connection, claiming he might be the “Howard” New York detectives were looking for.  

Slight, stooped, and prematurely grizzled, Charles Howard resembled the older, mustachioed stranger described by the Budd family. Authorities transported him to New York City and placed him in a lineup viewed by Delia Budd and Willie Korman. While Korman could not identify the man with any certainty, Delia seemed to harbor few doubts. “He looks like the man,” she insisted.

This marked Delia’s second I.D. of a different suspect, raising questions about her reliability as a witness. Clearly, years of grief, anxiety, and fleeting hope had taken an emotional and psychological toll.

Despite his resemblance, Charles Howard produced an airtight alibi. He was living in a completely different part of the country at the time of Grace’s disappearance. Police cleared him of any involvement in the kidnapping, though he remained incarcerated for grand larceny.

On September 3, 1930, Jessie Pope marched into the West 20^th Street stationhouse and accused her estranged husband—67-year-old Charles Edward Pope—of kidnapping Grace Budd. According to Jessie’s story, Charles had sent her a telegram on the day Grace disappeared, asking her to meet him at the corner of High and Smith Streets, just a few blocks from her home. When Jessie arrived, she found her husband waiting with a pretty, brown-haired girl about ten years old. Charles explained that the child was a friend’s daughter and asked Jessie to look after her for several days. She refused and Charles angrily departed, taking the girl with him.

Almost immediately after this bizarre encounter, Mrs. Pope became “seriously ill” and needed several months to recover. By then, public interest in the Budd case had subsided, and her own memory of that day had faded. Only after reading recent newspaper reports about a suspect named Charles Howard did she connect the incident to Grace’s disappearance.

The police arrested Charles Pope two days later. Inside the police station, Pope endured hours of interrogation but firmly denied any involvement. “My wife has had it in for me,” he claimed, “ever since I was made executor of my father’s $30,000 estate.” Pope further alleged that Jessie had previously tried to commit him to an insane asylum so she could seize the money. This latest accusation, he speculated, was just another attempt to gain control of his inheritance.

Detectives soon discovered that Pope owned an old farmhouse in Shandaken—a small town in the Catskill Mountains. On Sunday, September 7, a contingent of New York State Troopers led by Lieutenant Matthew Fox executed a search warrant at the property. Inside a small garage, investigators found a trunk containing suggestive materials—pictures and postcards of women and girls, many of them in provocative poses.

Although the images cast Pope’s private interests in an unflattering light, they were not particularly incriminating. But other objects seemed more troubling. Concealed beneath the photographs lay three strands of dark brown hair tied with a white ribbon. Judging by their length and texture, Lieutenant Fox concluded that the strands had been clipped from the head of a young girl. State troopers also recovered a pair of white children’s stockings with darned heels, similar to those worn by Grace the day she disappeared.

Pope offered plausible explanations for these “incriminating” items. He claimed that the stockings were hand-me-downs from former tenants of a building he managed on Madison Avenue. He collected children’s clothes for his son, who had five youngsters of his own. As for the three mysterious locks, they were family mementos—snipped from his son’s head many years before. Still, a grand jury found probable cause to indict Pope, and the court scheduled his trial for December.

The prospect of closure delighted the Manhattan community. As the Nassau Daily Review reported: “Grace Budd Mystery Seen Near Solution – Solution of the disappearance of 10-year-old Grace Budd two years ago was believed to have been advanced today with the holding of Charles Edward Pope, aged janitor, for the grand jury on the charge of kidnapping. Although Pope insists he knows nothing of the girl’s disappearance, remnants of clothing and an ornament found on his farm…were identified yesterday by Mrs. Budd as belonging to her missing daughter. She previously had identified Pope as the “Frank Howard” who left the Budd home with Grace…ostensibly bound for a children’s party.”

But such assured anticipation was quickly dashed. In early December, just two weeks before Pope’s trial, Albert Corthell—using the alias J. W. West—was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, while attempting to cash a fraudulent $15,000 check. He was subsequently identified by both Delia and Albert Budd in a police lineup.

By this point, investigators had reluctantly concluded that the allegations against Pope were more closely associated to a bitter domestic dispute than Grace’s disappearance. Long-standing resentment between Pope and his wife apparently fueled the accusations against him.

At Pope’s trial on December 22, the judge heard testimony from only two witnesses: Delia Budd and Jessie Pope. Mrs. Budd openly admitted that she had misidentified Pope, while Jessie surprised the courtroom by conceding that she had accused her husband out of spite. After reprimanding Jessie, the judge acquitted Charles Pope of all charges. He was released after spending 108 days in jail.

GRANT (30:15) – Oh, man.

TIM (30:16) – Poor guy.

TIM (30:19) – Pope’s exoneration reinstated Albert Corthell as the main suspect. Yet months of inquiry—complicated by false leads, unreliable witnesses, and the practical limitations of contemporary police work— produced no concrete evidence connecting Corthell to Grace Budd’s abduction. On February 6, 1931, the district attorney withdrew the charges against him.

Although the Budd case had gone cold, Detective William King refused to let Grace’s disappearance fade from public consciousness. He repeatedly reexamined the scant evidence, pursued unlikely leads, and even published false reports about breakthroughs in the investigation, hoping to provoke a response from the perpetrator. The main outlet for King’s calculated leaks was “On Broadway,” Walter Winchell’s widely read gossip column in the New York Daily Mirror. 

On November 2, 1934, Winchell published the following piece: “I checked on the Grace Budd mystery…And it is safe to tell you that the Dep’t of Missing Persons will break the case, or they expect to, in four weeks. They are holding a “cokie” now at Randall’s Island, who is said to know most about the crime. Grace is supposed to have been done away with in lime, but another legend is that her skeleton is buried in a local spot. More anon.”

On November 11, an anonymous letter addressed to Mrs. Delia Budd arrived at the family’s residence. Because Delia was illiterate, she had her son read it to her. Sparing the extremely horrific details, the letter reads:

“My dear Mrs. Budd,

In 1894, a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Captain 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 a famine in China. Meat of any kind was from 1 to 3 dollars a pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor, that all children under twelve were sold to butchers to be cut up and sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under fourteen 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 [was] sold as veal cutlet—brought the highest price. John stayed there so long, he acquired a taste for human flesh.

GRANT (32:40) – What?

TIM (32:42) – On his return to New York, he stole two boys—one seven, one eleven—took them to his home, stripped them naked, [and] 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 eleven-year-old boy… Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except head, bones, and guts. He was roasted in the oven—boiled, broiled, fried, stewed. The little boy was next, [and] went the same way. He told me so often how good human flesh was, I made up my mind to taste it.

GRANT (33:15) – What the hell?

TIM (33:17) – On Sunday, June the 3^rd, 1928, I called on you…on the pretense of taking [Grace] 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, [it] 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…It took me nine days to eat her entire body. I did not [rape] her, though I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.”

GRANT (34:09) – What the hell? Oh my gosh. How many people did this guy eat? Ugh! You got torture, you got mass murder, you got some cannibalism, you got some sadism, you got—I mean—you got the nudity and the…You got some like, Jeffrey Dahmer sprinkled in there, you got some—who’s the guy that wore the people’s skin?

TIM (34:35) – Ed Gein.

GRANT (34:36) – Ed Gein! We got some, like Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, just…and nobody even knows about [this]—or at least I didn’t know about this guy.

TIM (34:43) – The only reason why I know about this guy is because way back in the day, like when I was eleven or twelve, I wanted to be a criminologist. So, one of my family members got me this book of headline crimes through the twentieth century. And I remember, specifically, 1928 featured Albert Fish. And I was just reading through the newspaper reports thinking ‘this guy’s messed up.’

GRANT (35:10) – This guy’s next level! Yeah, like, oh my gosh!

TIM (35:15) – But it kind of speaks to the level of depravity of his crimes. Like, I remember this distinctly, and that was like fifteen, sixteen years ago. And that’s still fresh in my mind, and I was like ‘Yo, for our first Halloween episode, we got to do Albert Fish.’

GRANT (35:29) – Dude, this guy’s—I mean, it’s just insane. Like, as you said, Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. When I think of like the most—like, there are so many, but like—just really got to be high up there in their…like what? What? Geez, dude. Yeah, it’s going to stick with me. Albert Fish in now the—he’s like the apex predator of…my God.

TIM (35:54) – So disturbing was this letter—graphically depicting the murder, dismemberment, and cannibalization of young Grace—that King almost dismissed it as the ravings of a deranged lunatic. Yet certain details conveyed a sense of authenticity. King obtained a copy of Howard’s Western Union message to the Budds and compared the handwriting. Even without professional analysis, the similarities were unmistakable.

The letter arrived in an envelope bearing a small hexagonal emblem with the initials "N.Y.P.C.B.A." representing the "New York Private Chauffeurs’ Benevolent Association.” Detective King contacted the association’s president and requested an emergency meeting of its members. Once assembled, King asked whether anyone recognized the envelope or knew where it had originated, but no one responded.

When the meeting adjourned, a young man named Lee Sicowski timidly approached King. Sicowski—who worked part-time as a janitor and errand boy—admitted that he had stolen several sheets of the association’s stationery approximately six months earlier, but left them behind in his former room at 200 East 52^nd Street. Sicowski explained that he was hesitant to volunteer information during the meeting, since taking office materials violated the association’s rules.

King visited Sicowski’s former boardinghouse and spoke with the landlady, Frieda Schneider. As he described the man suspected of abducting Grace Budd, Schneider suddenly recognized the description. “Why, that sounds like Mr. Fish,” she said.

Albert Fish had checked out several days earlier, but Schneider supplied King with a critical piece of information: Fish planned to return in mid-December to collect a check from his son, who was working with the Civilian Conservation Corps in North Carolina.

King placed the rooming house under constant surveillance and moved into Room 7—the same apartment previously occupied by Sicowski and Fish. To determine when Fish might return, King contacted the C.C.C. paymaster in North Carolina and arranged to receive notice when the next checks were mailed.

On December 4, a New York postal inspector informed King that a letter addressed to Albert H. Fish had been intercepted at the Grand Central Annex post office. Authorities turned the envelope over to King, but Fish did not immediately return to the boardinghouse. The stakeout continued for more than a week without any sign of him.

On December 13, while attending a meeting at police headquarters, King received an urgent telephone call from Schneider: Fish had returned.

King instructed the landlady to stall him, then he jumped into a squad car and sped uptown to 52^nd Street. Mrs. Schneider met King at the front door and ushered him into one of the furnished rooms. There, seated at a small wooden table, was a gaunt old man with a wispy moustache.

Upon seeing the detective, Fish slowly rose to his feet. As King approached, Fish brandished a razor blade from his vest pocket and slashed. King easily avoided the unwieldy blow and seized Fish’s wrist—the razor skittering harmlessly across the floor. He placed Fish in custody and questioned him at police headquarters.

King first confronted Fish with the documentary evidence. He produced the letter sent to the Budd family and the telegram connected to Grace’s disappearance, then asked whether Fish had written them. The old man readily admitted authorship. But when asked whether he had taken Grace from her home, Fish initially denied any involvement. After King threatened to place him in a lineup, Fish relented. “I’ll tell you all about it. I’m the man you want. I took Grace Budd from her home on the third day of June and…killed her that same afternoon.”

GRANT (39:21) – Wow.

TIM (39:23) – Fish admitted that Edward Budd had been the original target of his psychotic fantasy. He intended to lure Edward away under the false pretense of employment, sexually mutilate him, and leave him bound inside an abandoned cottage to die. However, when Fish first met Edward, he was disappointed to find a broad-shouldered, stocky young man—unlike the weak, docile boys he had previously victimized. The presence of Edward’s friend, Willie, further complicated matters. Still, Fish was determined to go through with his plan, confident that the element of surprise would offset his physical disadvantage. All he had to do was separate the two young men. “I have some experience in these things,” Fish whimsically remarked.

GRANT (40:03) – Oh my [God]. “Whimsically,” like…

TIM (40:06) – I may have taken some literary license with that one.

GRANT (40:10) – No, but it fits! He probably did, like you can tell he’s just…ugh. There are some people on this earth that I feel like they just—they stay with you, and not for the right reasons. And this guy, I mean, there’s something like, just…oh God. Like, again, I just want to figure out how he got to that state and how we can make sure nobody else ever does.

TIM (40:40) – Incredibly off-putting human being, for sure.

GRANT (40:42) – Yeah, like just evil. Just downright evil.

TIM (40:47) – While returning to the Budd residence on June 3, Fish purchased pot cheese and strawberries from some street vendors, intending to pass them off as products of his fictitious Farmingdale farm. He also persuaded one peddler to hold a large, canvas-wrapped package while he visited the family—the contents being Fish’s “implements of Hell.”

Edward was away when Fish arrived, but Mrs. Budd invited him to stay for lunch. While the meal was being prepared, ten-year-old Grace entered the room. At that moment, everything changed. Fish immediately redirected his predatory impulses towards the young girl. In a moment of near-instantaneous deception, Fish fabricated a story about attending his niece’s birthday party and asked the Budds for permission to take young Grace along. Neither Albert nor Delia suspected any ulterior motive when they issued their approval.

After leaving the Budd residence, Fish retrieved his seemingly innocuous package and accompanied Grace to the Ninth Avenue elevated railway station. They traveled through the Bronx, transferred toward Van Cortlandt Park, and boarded a New York Central train bound for Worthington in Westchester County. Fish purchased a round-trip ticket for himself, and a one-way fare for Grace.

When they disembarked in Westchester, Fish was so fixated on his perverted plans that he forgot his package aboard the train. In bitter irony, Grace noticed his mistake and hurried back to retrieve the tools of her own destruction.

“As soon as the train stopped at the station,” Fish recalled, “I had stepped off and was holding up my hands for her to jump in my arms. No thought of the tools. But she remembered that I had brought a package, sees my hands empty, says, ‘Oh! You have forgotten your package!’ and runs back to the seat where it had been left.”

GRANT (42:29) – Oh my God.

TIM (42:31) – “Had she jumped in my arms when I said ‘Jump!’ instead of looking for the package, the waiting conductor would have given the signal to the engineer and the train would have gone on, carrying the tools out of my reach. The child would now be in her home and I would not be where I am.”

GRANT (42:46) – That is crazy. She just was trying to help.

TIM (42:50) – Yeah. It’s kind of sad.

GRANT (42:53) – Yeah, it’s just, like demonic and…ugh.

TIM (42:58) – The two made their way to Wisteria Cottage—an abandoned, two-story clapboard house half-hidden by dense woodland. While Grace picked wildflowers, Fish climbed to the second floor, stripped naked, then called her inside.

Grace froze at the sight of the naked old man—her eyes widening with shock and terror. She then screamed, “I’ll tell momma!” She turned back towards the stairs, but Fish was faster:

“I grabbed her by the throat and almost carried her in the room and laid her on the floor. I didn’t think she would put up [much of] a struggle. She was a frail-looking child. She gave me the surprise of my life. She was losing consciousness, and I placed my knee on her chest to squeeze the breath out of her, to get her out of her misery.”

GRANT (43:39) – Jesus.

TIM (43:41) - After strangling Grace to death, Fish positioned a paint bucket under her head and proceeded to decapitate the child. “I drank the blood when I cut her head off…about one or two…good swallows. But I spat out most. It tasted sickening, nauseating. If I’d drank any more, I would have vomited.”

Fish initially considered tossing Grace’s head down a latrine, but decided that doing so would be disrespectful. Instead, he placed it on the outhouse floor and covered it with old newspapers.

TIM (44:09) – That’s where we draw the line of disrespect.

GRANT (44:12) – I just…oh God. Like, oh Lord, why—why was this guy doing this shit? Oh, Albert! C’mon Albert. Get your shit together, man! C’mon! Ugh.

TIM (44:30) – Upon returning to the house, Fish removed Grace’s bloodstained clothing and emptied the bucket of blood through a window. Fish then got to work with his butcher knife, slicing about four pounds of tissue from her buttocks and abdomen. He severed the torso below the navel, hacked through the spinal column, and concealed the remains inside a closet.

Fish wrapped Grace’s flesh in canvas and boarded the train back to New York City. He placed the package on his lap—an act so acutely arousing that Fish reportedly experienced a spontaneous ejaculation on the journey home.

GRANT (45:02) – What the fuck? Like, I’m sorry man. What the fuck is wrong with this guy? Like, ugh…oh God.

TIM (45:11) – I’m just saying what he told police.

GRANT (45:14) – This—this…no, yeah, no. I’d—it’s like oh my God. This definitely needs the good old ‘E’ on the—or the explicit…

TIM (45:22) – Absolutely!

GRANT (45:25) – My God.

TIM (45:28) – Back at his apartment, Fish cooked the flesh in a stew with potatoes, carrots, and bacon. He consumed this morbid meal over the next nine days, savoring its flavor, which he likened to veal. During this period, Fish remained in a near-constant state of sexual excitation, masturbating frequently as he relived the murderous events.

Four days later, Fish returned to Westchester and disposed Grace’s remains more thoroughly. “I took the body and the legs out from behind the door. The legs were so stiff, they were as stiff as a board. I threw them out the window onto the lawn and carried the torso out, picking up the legs as I passed over the lawn, and went to the stone wall in [the] back of the house…I then went to the outhouse and got the head. It was all stiff, the hair was all clotted. I brought the head up and placed the head with the body just as it would be in life, the head, the torso, and the legs”

Fish’s interrogation revealed a nexus of perversion and unspeakable depravity, one that seemed almost unbelievable until investigators could corroborate each detail. The confession was all the more bewildering considering how harmless Fish appeared: a stooped, decrepit old man who stood five feet, five inches tall and weighed approximately 130 pounds.

Around 5:00 p.m. on December 14, 1934, several police cars departed the Missing Persons Bureau for Westchester County. Fish rode with the detectives, apparently eager to revisit the crime scene. At Wisteria Cottage, he led the officers along the wraparound porch, through the rear entrance, and upstairs to the room where he had killed Grace Budd. There, with disturbing composure, he reenacted the murder.

GRANT (47:06) – That’s wild.

TIM (47:08) – Fish then guided the investigators behind the house, up a hill toward an old stone wall. In the darkness, he could not identify the precise spot where he had placed Grace’s remains, but indicated that they were the correct distance away from the cottage.

After a brief search, Detective King spotted a smooth, curved object protruding from the topsoil. It was unmistakably a human skull, yellowed with age. Although the jawbone was missing, its small size suggested it belonged to a child.

Greenburgh Police Chief Philip J. McQuillan reached Wisteria Cottage at approximately 8:40 that evening. Several officers were already present, along with Westchester County District Attorney Frank H. Coyne. Another dozen officers arrived by 9:00 pm. Under McQuillan’s direction, Greenburgh police scoured the woods by lamplight, uncovering ribs, finger bones, vertebrae, and shoulder blades belonging to a prepubescent girl.

The police activity attracted curious residents. Within an hour, more than one hundred spectators had gathered as news of the grisly discovery spread through the community. Several carloads of reporters also arrived on scene.

The unfolding events at Wisteria triggered sensational coverage in the national press. “Budd Case Spurs Hunt for Others Believed Slain by Maniacal Killer,” proclaimed The Washington Times. “Metallic echoes of picks and shovels today shattered the sylvan silence of Wisteria Cottage—Westchester County’s “house of horrors”—as detectives ripped up the basement of the ramshackle, deserted house on the theory that other victims may have met the gruesome fate of 10-year-old Grace Budd, childish prey to the bloodlust of a ‘vampire slayer.’

Orders to rip up the basement of the dilapidated old house were given by [Westchester County] Medical Examiner Amos O. Squire who yesterday provided the key that may unlock hidden solutions to other disappearances in the metropolitan area by recovering a 10-inch bone, resembling that of an adult…[although] it may be that of an animal.

Flushed at early success in their hunt, police swung their picks with renewed vigor. Already they have recovered practically the entire skeletal remains of Fish’s admitted victim, together with an ax, a saw, a butcher’s cleaver, and 20 imitation pearl beads.” 

Around 1:00 am on December 15, Detective King returned to Manhattan to collect Albert and Edward Budd, and bring them to police headquarters to identify Fish. Mrs. Budd, who had proven herself to be an unreliable witness, was left behind.

At the station, Edward recognized Fish immediately. “You dirty old bastard!” he screamed. “You dirty son of a bitch!” Edward lunged toward the confessed killer, but several officers managed to restrain him.

A few moments later, Albert Budd entered the room. “Do you know me?” he asked in a trembling voice.

“Yes,” Fish replied mildly. “You’re Mr. Budd.”

“And you’re the man who came to my home as a guest and took my little girl away,” Budd bellowed, his voice breaking as his eyes filled with tears. Fish just sat there expressionless.

GRANT (50:02) – Geez.

TIM (50:04) – When asked why he had killed Grace, Fish shrugged with indifference, “The temptation just came over me.”

Fish’s confession ostensibly solved the Grace Budd mystery, but questions about his mental state soon complicated the legal proceedings. As the Washington Daily News reported: “A mild mannered, little 65-year-old man insisted today upon confessing again and again to the revolting murder of Grace Budd, 10, whose disappearance in 1928 became one the country’s most publicized mysteries. Oblivious of his own fate, Albert Fish, his nervous hand fluttering, provided police with information forming an open and shut case of first degree murder. But authorities disagreed as to the extent of his responsibility. Some said he obviously was insane and should spend the rest of his life in a psychopathic institution; others said he clearly was sane and should be electrocuted.”

Certainly, in the years following Grace Budd’s disappearance, Fish hardly remained dormant. Police arrested him at least six times on charges ranging from petty larceny and vagrancy to mailing obscene correspondence—one of his many vile personal endeavors.

GRANT (51:11) – “Mailing obscene correspondence.” Oh my God. If only they knew…

TIM (51:18) – If only they knew. They had him six separate times and they didn’t—they couldn’t connect it.

GRANT (51:22) – It doesn’t really seem like he has any respect for the rule of law, you know? Just doesn’t really—the laws don’t apply to him. He’s…

TIM (51:33) – He’s a repeat offender.

GRANT (51:34) –Larceny, he does it all.

TIM (51:38) – Fish obtained women’s names through classified advertisements and matrimonial agencies. In his letters, he portrayed himself as a Hollywood producer seeking accommodations for his teenage son, whom he described as physically capable but intellectually disabled and in need of strict supervision. What began as a seemingly practical request soon became explicit. Fish supplied detailed instructions for administering corporal punishment, specifying how the boy should be beaten and how often. He would eventually follow up with more grotesque letters referencing his other vulgar obsessions, such as drinking urine and eating feces.

GRANT (52:14) – I forgot—you know what’s funny, Tim, is I’ve forgotten all about that. Like of everything, I forgot that, you know, he started just with the—the eating the number two and…

TIM (52:24) – The peanut butter and cider.

GRANT (52:26) – Yeah, oh God! The peanut butter and cider, yeah.

TIM (52:32) – The euphemisms he comes up with, it’s crazy!

GRANT (52:35) – He’s, he’s—yeah, he’s got like a…you know what’s funny to me? Is a lot of these serial killers—like when you read the documentaries, you hear about—they kind of have these like, strange artistic flairs, or like little, like artistic…Like, he liked looking at himself naked with the garlands, or whatever, and he liked wearing the, you know, he…It’s like they all have this little like, artsy—it’s a really fucked up artsy, but like—there’s some little artsy…He’s got some poetic, you know—‘peanut butter and cider’—I wouldn’t think of that. Jesus.

TIM (53:14) – In September 1930, Fish mailed one of these scatological propositions to a Mrs. E. Solarid—a professional housekeeper who promptly turned the letter over to the police. Although Fish signed the letter under the pseudonym “Robert Fiske,” he included a return address, apparently hoping for a favorable reply.

Police arrested Fish shortly before Thanksgiving. A court social worker examined him and described his mental condition as “questionable,” prompting authorities to commit him to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

During the month-long observation period, Dr. Menas S. Gregory—Bellevue’s head of psychiatry—noted that Fish had been “quiet and cooperative [and had] conducted himself in an orderly and normal manner.” There had been “no evidence of delusional notions or hallucinatory experiences. It is true that he shows some evidence of early senile changes; this condition, however, is quite alright at the present time and has not impaired his mentality. His memory, particularly for a man of his years, is excellent.”

GRANT (54:18) – You know, it’s always just insanity and [psychiatric]—It’s always interesting, like…Define [insanity]. And it’s like, this guy, Albert Fish, I don’t really care if he’s insane. Like, does anybody seriously think that this guy is going to be remediated? Like, I believe in hope for all, like we need to…But, there’s got to be—there’s just that one, like I don’t—just lock him up. Throw away the key away. Like, bro. There’s just—I don’t…He does not belong with society, I’m sorry. Like, just hasta la vista!

TIM (55:01) – Well, hold onto that conclusion because this becomes central to his defense strategy.

TIM (55:07) – Gregory’s report was forwarded to Judge Frank J. Coleman of the U.S. District Court, who sentenced Fish to six months’ probation. Fish was ultimately discharged from Bellevue with the diagnosis of “not insane; psychopathic personality; sexual type.”

GRANT (55:23) – “Sexual type.” If only they knew.

TIM (55:25) – If only they knew.

GRANT (55:26) – Yeah, if only.

TIM (55:28) – Fish repeatedly found himself in other psychiatric facilities, but his calm and cooperative demeanor often obscured the severity of his condition. He answered questions coherently and appeared oriented to reality, making him ineligible for long-term commitment under the era’s diagnostic standards. This pattern recurred with troubling consistency: attending psychiatrists performed perfunctory mental evaluations, acknowledged his abnormal proclivities, deemed him legally sane, and released him back into the public sphere. 

Although Fish professed indifference to his fate, he took a keen interest in his defense. His first court-appointed attorney was Carl Heyser, a young lawyer from Port Jefferson. On January 7, Heyser appeared with Fish before Justice William Bleakley in Westchester County Supreme Court. He entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and requested that the court appoint a commission to examine Fish’s mental condition. Bleakley took the request under advisement but denied it two days later. He explained that two psychiatrists retained by the district attorney’s office had already declared Fish legally sane. The defense could challenge that conclusion by presenting contrary evidence at trial.

Even before Bleakley’s ruling, Fish had grown dissatisfied with Heyser and sought his dismissal. He instead wanted James Dempsey, a former assistant district attorney of Westchester County with an impressive courtroom reputation. Fish immediately launched an epistolary campaign, relieving Heyser of his services and petitioning Bleakley to appoint Dempsey as his legal presentation. On February 6, the court granted his request.

Dempsey placed Fish’s nebulous mental state at the center of his defense. He raised the possibility that Fish suffered from lead poisoning—a contemporary occupational illness associated with house painters—which could cause encephalopathy, neurological damage, and severe psychiatric disturbances. Dempsey also retained two prominent psychiatrists, Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe and Dr. Fredric Wertham, to refute the prosecution’s expert witnesses and support Fish’s insanity plea.

At first, even an experienced psychiatrist like Wertham struggled to reconcile Fish’s unassuming appearance with his dark compulsions. “The first time I saw him, he was in jail. He looked like a meek and innocuous little old man, gentle and benevolent, friendly and polite. If you wanted someone to entrust your children to, he would be the one you would choose.”

However, after many hours of interviews—and additional efforts verifying Fish’s more extraordinary claims—Wertham developed a far more disturbing clinical portrait: one of a profoundly depraved man governed by elaborate delusions and violent sexual fantasies.

Under New York law, Fish could only be held criminally responsible if he understood the nature of his acts and knew they were wrong when he committed them. Dempsey maintained that Fish was so clearly and thoroughly deranged, he could not satisfy such a standard.

GRANT (58:21) – I feel like he knew it was wrong. He just liked that it was wrong, you know? That’s like—that’s where it’s interesting. It’s like, can you tell that it was wrong? I think some people, they honestly—they’re…but like, some people, oh, the fact that it’s wrong is the very thing they like about it, you know?

TIM (58:39) – Absolutely, yeah.

GRANT (58:40) – Hence his—some of the “sexual type” and everything else about this man.

TIM (58:48) – On the eve of his trial, Fish removed a three-inch chicken bone from his lunch, sharpened it against the concrete floor of his cell, and repeatedly drove the shiv into his bare chest and abdomen.

GRANT (58:59) – I’m sorry. Like, what the hell is…my God, he made a shank out of a chicken bone.

TIM (59:09) – Upon hearing his moans, guards rushed into the cell and wrested the bloodied bone away from him.

Newspapers initially characterized the episode as a failed suicide attempt, but those familiar with Fish’s psychology understood it differently. He was not trying to kill himself. Rather, the act was a form of autoeroticism—an ecstatic release after his prolonged, involuntary abstinence from pain.

Fish's murder trial began on March 11, 1935, in White Plains, New York, with Justice Frederick P. Close presiding. Westchester County District Attorney Walter Ferris and Chief Assistant District Attorney Elbert F. Gallagher prosecuted the case, while Dempsey represented Fish. The trial lasted ten days. 

The state’s attorneys argued that Fish had planned his crimes with careful precision. He assumed a false identity, deliberately selected a victim, and deceived the Budd family to gain their trust. He also concealed his crime for six years, demonstrating a capacity for rational judgment, something fundamentally incompatible with legal insanity. Taken together, these actions indicated preparation, self-control, and consciousness of guilt—evidence that Fish understood the difference between right and wrong.

“Now in this case, there is a presumption of sanity,” district attorney Ferris remarked. “The proof, briefly, will be that this defendant is legally sane, and that he knows the difference between right and wrong and the nature and quality of his acts, that he is not defective mentally, that he had a wonderful memory for a man of his age, that he has complete orientation as to his immediate surroundings, that there is no mental deterioration, but that he is sexually abnormal, that he is known medically as a sex pervert or sex psychopath…”

Dempsey’s opening remarks made no mention of Grace Budd’s murder. Instead, he focused on the disturbing details of Fish’s life—a strategy shaped by the strength of the evidence against his client. Fish had already confessed to killing Grace and his intimate knowledge of the crime left little room for doubt. Dempsey’s only realistic hope, therefore, was to convince the jury that Fish was legally insane. “We do not have to prove that he is insane,” Dempsey emphasized. “[T]he State [has] to prove that he is sane.”

GRANT (1:01:19) – Now that I don’t know about, because that [needs] irrebuttable proof…But what I will say is that was like—when we were talking about it—it’s like his only defense. They’re going to slam insanity as hard as they can, because that’s all they got. Like—and it’s just—there comes this point with the insanity thing where it’s like, ‘alright.’ It’s, you know, there’s all these like—you could read hundreds of pages of legal analysis about the insanity defense. There is—I’m glad it exists, and it has its purpose and everything. You know, we could go back and…But for Albert Fish, it’s like, ‘hmm.’ Was that the intent? Is that the public policy interest of the insanity defense? I don’t know.

TIM (1:02:10) – We’ll see.

GRANT (1:02:13) – I bet—you know what’s funny? I don’t know how this turns out—but I would bet that they make a good argument, there’s a lot legal back-and-forth about it, but that at the end of the day, the jury is just like, ‘Nah, he’s done.’ But we’ll see. I don’t know, but that’s my guess. I’m going to clock-in my guess now.

TIM (1:02:34) – Fish also attempted to shape the public narrative, whether by eliciting sympathy or preserving his notoriety. He published the following account in the New York Daly Mirror on March 12, 1935: “I am a man of passion. You don’t know what that means unless you are my kind. At the orphanage where they put me…there were some older boys that caught a horse in a sloping field. They got the horse up against a fence down at the bottom of the field and tied him up. An old horse. They put kerosene on his tail and lit it, and cut the rope, and away went that old horse, busting through fences to get away from the fire. But the fire went with him. That horse, that’s me. That’s the man of passion. The fire chases you and catches you, and then it’s in your blood. And after that, it’s the fire that has control, not the man. Blame the fire for passion for what Albert H. Fish has done.”

GRANT (1:03:24) – Well, but, here’s the thing. Who—he lit his own fire and he could’ve put it out whenever he wanted to. He’s not a horse, bro! Apples and oranges! Like, I…great attempt at an analogy, but there’s one big difference: a horse can’t reach around and get its tail, or whatever, but a person? They got a little more upstairs than a horse.

TIM (1:03:49) – I’m just surprised he was allowed to publish that, like, in the midst of his trial.

GRANT (1:03:53) – Oh, it’s crazy. Yeah, and right? And it’s—you’d think it’s like…I’m forgetting the technical term for it right now, but like trying to appeal to the public interest. Yeah, usually they try to sequester the jurors so that they don’t get influenced by that stuff, but it’s almost impossible. Again, talking about the weird, artistic flair. They always have these like grandiose, narcissistic-like metaphors, stories, and.—you got his horse story, like—I don’t know, man. I don’t know.

TIM (1:04:26) – Defense psychiatrists portrayed Fish as a "psychiatric phenomenon,” arguing that no singular case in the legal or medical literature combined so many compulsive and paraphilic behaviors.

GRANT (1:04:38) – You know, I’m that that at least got sprinkled in there because it makes me feel like, you know…He set the baseline, or whatever, like pre-1928. I don’t even know. That’s what I’m saying, like where did he get this from? Like who—like what? Like…

TIM (1:04:54) – This guy is so messed up, that we have nothing to characterize him by.

GRANT (1:04:58) – You know what’s crazy though, Tim? Is like shit that he was doing and whatever, you know, slaveowners were doing to slaves, conquerors were doing to the conquered. Like it’s—I think about it more as in like, you know…it had been happening, and that’s probably where—but it’s like, it was so different. Like it’s just—he’s definitely not the first one to be doing this, but in the whole age of sensationalized crime and like, you know…I don’t know. But it’s just—and when I think of the modern-day serial killer, right, I think of—or like when I think of a serial killer I think of somebody like this guy, like ‘okay, like yep, welp.’ But then you think about like, how we label things and understand them. It’s like if you actually think about it, like…I don’t know. It’s like something…I don’t know, but it’s just—it’s really fascinating to me how there’s like this distinction right around like the turn of the twentieth century where you have like, ‘serial killer,’ but you don’t apply that same like mindset to, you know, like what…if I think about a serial killer, I think about just like serial murder, right? And it’s like, I think of Ed Gein. I think of Jeffrey Dahmer. I think of all these guys, and I think going forward, that’s kind of what we think about. But it’s like, where did all that sadism and whatever come from? You know, who was it, Genghis Khan cut the heads off everybody, like there’s always—there’s just—go throughout history. There’s Vlad the Impaler. My dude just stuck people on stakes and put them out on the street. I mean, crucifixions, like everything. I mean, it’s just…people have been doing weird shit to each other since the beginning of time. That’s really…it doesn’t make it right, but it’s just like…

TIM (1:06:46) – There’s always some different way—you know, there’s always some way to reinvent…

GRANT (1:06:51) – Reinvent the wheel! Yeah, like…

TIM (1:06:53) – Yeah, exactly.

GRANT (1:06:55) – Oh, yep. Yep.

TIM (1:06:58) – These included sadomasochism, self-flagellation, voyeurism, piquerism, pedophilia, necrophilia, cannibalism, coprophagia, urophagia, hematolagnia, and infibulation.

GRANT (1:07:11) – That’s a lot of -ias and -isms. A lot of -ias and -isms right there! Oh my God.

TIM (1:07:18) – The defense maintained that Fish had neither exercised poor judgment nor merely succumbed to criminal impulses. Instead, his psychological condition lay so far outside ordinary experience, that conventional ideas of choice and moral responsibility could not adequately explain his conduct.

Medical experts cited Fish’s clinical history as evidence that severe psychopathology had shaped his behavior. Among the most compelling examples were Fish’s pelvic and abdominal x-rays. Dr. Roy Duckworth—who took the radiographs at Grasslands Hospital in December 1934—identified twenty-nine sewing needles embedded in Fish’s groin, some of which had begun to erode. These images were not lurid curiosities, but anatomical proof that Fish’s compulsions repeatedly overridden basic human instincts of pain avoidance and bodily preservation.

TIM (1:08:09) – I told you those needles would come back into play later in the story.

GRANT (1:08:12) – They’ve been in there for a while, yeah.

TIM (1:08:14) – They’ve been in there for years, some of them decades.

GRANT (1:08:18) – Literally eroding. My God.

TIM (1:08:22) – I’m surprised he didn’t like, perforate his bowel or something.

GRANT (1:08:25) – Yeah! I mean, this guy—he has a strange relationship with pain, that’s for damn sure.

TIM (1:08:34) – The defense then called Dr. Fredric Wertham to provide further insight into Fish’s mental state: “I diagnosed [Fish’s mental disease] as a paranoid psychosis”—a condition marked by delusions and hallucinatory experiences with relative capacity for reasoning. “I characterized his personality as introverted and extremely infantilistic…A child might be cruel to an insect, and might not know the difference between men and women, and might wish to play with his urine and feces without knowing what that means. But I have yet to see a man who did all these things and continued to do them up to the age of sixty-five as this man did.”

Wertham then described Fish’s pattern of predation. He typically targeted impoverished or otherwise vulnerable children, enticing them with candy or pocket change before luring them into cellars or other secluded spaces. Once there, he bound, raped, and beat them. Although Fish sometimes gagged his victims, Wertham testified that “he preferred not to gag them, circumstances permitting, for he liked to hear their cries.”

After committing his fiendish attacks, Fish would simply pick up and move. His itinerant work as a house painter gave him a plausible reason to travel and allowed him to pass through communities without arousing suspicion. “[T]his man has roamed around in basements and cellars for fifty years,” Wertham emphasized. “There were so many innumerable instances that I can’t begin to give you how many there are. But I believe to the best of my knowledge that he has raped one hundred children. At least.”

GRANT (1:10:03) – Oh my gosh. Jesus.

TIM (1:10:07) – Wertham further testified that Fish's sexual psychosis was inseparable from his religious obsessions, particularly his fixation on the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. According to Wertham, Fish believed that sacrificing a child might atone for his sins, even though he understood the act itself was wrong. If God disapproved of the sacrifice, divine messengers would intervene, just as they had for Abraham.

Grace Budd did not match the intended sex in Fish’s Abrahamic fantasy. She was a girl, and Fish knew it. Wertham nevertheless argued that because Grace was prepubescent, Fish may have perceived her as a boy. Drawing on Freudian theory, he interpreted her decapitation as a symbolic act of castration.

Wertham next addressed Fish's cannibalism. Within Fish’s disordered belief system, eating a victim was both a sexual act and a corrupted sacrament. Christian Communion commemorates the Last Supper through the symbolic consumption of Christ’s body and blood; Fish grotesquely literalized that imagery.

Dempsey brought the psychiatric testimony to its climax with an extraordinary hypothetical question spanning 15,000 words. It recounted Fish’s life, family history, sexual compulsions, religious fixations, self-punishment, violence, and alleged crimes, then asked Wertham to assess his mental condition on the basis of the entire narrative. Wertham simply answered, "He is legally insane."

TIM (1:11:34) – Fifteen-thousand-word question.

GRANT (1:11:36) – That’s, I mean, how do you even, like…can I get the SparkNotes? Can ChatGPT summarize that for me? You know, it’s like what?

TIM (1:11:46) – Like, the script for this podcast is like 13,800. I can’t imagine talking for, like…

GRANT (1:11:53) – That long.

TIM (1:11:54) – He would’ve talked for like two hours about this one question. And then for Wertham to say, “he is legally insane,” just a four-word answer…

GRANT (1:12:02) – It’s…You know, there’s this story like—I forget who told it to me, but—it’s like the philosophy final exam and the question is just ‘Why?’ Everybody writes these like treatises of what it means to say ‘why’ or whatever. And then the one person just writes ‘why not’ and then they get a hundred.  Like—it’s like—it’s just like, you know, sometimes more words are needed and helpful, and they can really—because some things can’t be explained in a soundbite. But then there are times where, if you’re going to say fifteen thousand words, and what you’re saying is reliant upon the response of someone else, you [can] guarantee that they’re not going to have the time or the energy, like you just…I don’t know. That’s crazy though. Fifteen thousand words for one question.

TIM (1:12:56) – I guess that’s the legal equivalent of like, a filibuster.

GRANT (1:12:59) – Yeah, right? Like, it’s just rambling. The jurors aren’t going to remember it all. They’re going to start tuning out and…I don’t know.

TIM (1:13:11) – ADA Gallagher cross-examined Wertham for several hours, pressing him on Fish’s capacity to distinguish right from wrong: “Didn’t Fish’s cunning both in the commission of the crime and in his attempts to conceal it afterward indicate that he did, in fact, know the difference?”

Wertham responded that Fish possessed sufficient intelligence to understand the consequences of his crime and take deliberate precautions against discovery and arrest. But, as Wertham explained, the ability to distinguish right from wrong required a “certain emotional sympathy…You have to feel what is right and wrong. This defendant is suffering from a mental disease. He is so mixed up about the question of punishment, of sin, of atonement, of religion, of torture that he is in a particularly bad state to know the difference between right and wrong. He is even worse off than that, because he actually has a perverted, a distorted, if you will, an insane, knowledge of right and wrong.”

But Gallagher challenged Wertham’s opinion about Fish’s legal sanity: “Now doctor, insanity is a disease of the mind, isn’t it?”

“No,” replied Wertham. “Insanity is a legal term, a purely legal term, which in medicine has no meaning. There is no disease called insanity. Strictly speaking, a doctor cannot pronounce anybody insane. Only a court or jury can do that. A doctor can only say that a man suffers from a mental disease and that therefore he should be declared insane.”

GRANT (1:14:37) – Interesting.

TIM (1:14:40) – Dempsey’s two remaining expert witnesses, Dr. Jelliffe and Dr. Henry A. Riley—a professor of neurology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons—further confirmed Wertham’s conclusions while adding several new details.

Riley’s testimony placed particular emphasis on Fish’s religious delusions. “He would see the face of Christ or the whole body of Christ garbed in various kinds of raiment, showing the marks of the nails in the hands and feet,” said Riley. “He told me that he had received a direct command that he should take a virgin and sacrifice her so that she shouldn’t become a harlot.”

Jelliffe likewise concluded that “the whole killing of the Budd girl took on the character of a religious ritual.” He also disclosed Fish’s revised version of the crime, which contradicted his earlier confessions on one crucial point. In his initial statements to police, Fish had steadfastly denied any sexual dimension to the murder. During his examination by Jelliffe, however, he admitted that, while strangling Grace to death, he experienced two “emissions,” as so termed.

When Detective King took the stand on Wednesday, March 14, he addressed the initial visit to Wisteria Cottage, Fish’s reenactment of the crime, and the discovery of Grace Budd’s remains. During his testimony, two bailiffs entered into the courtroom carrying Grace’s bones in a cardboard box, drawing strong objections from the defense table. “If your Honor please,” shouted Dempsey, “I submit that there is enough gruesome evidence in this case without putting any skeleton in evidence.”

But Justice Close disagreed. “He has to establish the corpus delicti.”

“The corpus delicti was presented in the courtroom in a cardboard carton,” Dempsey retorted, “and the district attorney frequently and dramatically rattled the bones both figuratively and actually.” Dempsey called for a mistrial, but his motion was promptly denied.

GRANT (1:16:31) – Yep, they’re starting to—they’re starting to close it. You know what’s funny is like, he may have arguments that that’s a little much, but you can just tell by the judge, they’re starting to give the—if you’re a litigator, they’re starting to give the signs of ‘you’re done.’ I’m curious, but I’m starting to even feel more confident in what I said earlier. I’m like it’s giving—it’s giving ‘we don’t have time for your B.S., Mr. Fish.’

TIM (1:17:00) – Following this tense exchange, Gallagher reached into the cardboard box and withdrew Grace Budd’s skull. He momentarily held it aloft—in a Hamletian manner—before placing it in Detective King’s hands. The macabre spectacle sent a collective gasp through the crowd of spectators.

The Skyland Post of West Jefferson, North Carolina, captured the chill within the courtroom: “A child’s skull—allegedly that of the slain Grace Budd—was dangled last Wednesday before a shocked jury in the courtroom at White Plains…trying Albert Howard Fish for slaying the 10-year-old girl.

Unexpectedly, Elbert Gallagher, assistant district attorney, picked up a battered cardboard box and withdrew [a] brown, weathered skull—marked by Supreme Court Justice Frederick Close as “exhibit 18.” 

He handed it to the court stenographer. Jurors rose from their seats. A pall was over the courtroom. The little 65-year-old defendant took a swift glance at the gruesome exhibit, opening his eyes for the first time since he took his seat that morning. Expressionless, apparently unaffected, he slumped in his chair, his head resting on his right hand.”

GRANT (1:18:07) – He opened his eyes for the first time and was like, ‘ah.’

TIM (1:18:12) – Dempsey proceeded to call several of Fish’s children to the stand to describe their father’s “peculiar brand of madness.”

Fish’s eldest son, Albert Jr., controversially claimed that the full moon intensified his father’s psychological disturbances and cravings for raw meat. Dempsey then introduced a World Almanac and asked the court to take judicial notice of the moon’s phases on relevant dates. This unusual testimony contributed to Fish’s sensationalized nickname, “the Moon Maniac.”

GRANT (1:18:40) – Is there any werewolf nickname? Or anything in there? Full moon…

TIM (1:18:44) – The Werewolf of Wisteria.

GRANT (1:18:45) – There we go! I was going to say, the full moon comes out [and] he needs meat?  Like, oh God.

TIM (1:18:54) – Sometimes I love the press, sometimes I hate it.

GRANT (1:18:56) – Yeah! Oh, God.

TIM (1:19:01) – Seventeen-year-old Mary Nicholas, Fish’s unofficial stepdaughter, also testified for the defense. She described how Fish taught her and her siblings several games involving masochistic elements and sexually exploitative behavior.

“What games?” Dempsey asked.

“Buck-Buck, How Many Hands Up,” Mary said politely. “He would give the stick to one of us, and then he would get down on his hands and knees. 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. If he guessed right, which he never did, we weren’t supposed to hit him. And if he [guessed incorrectly], why, we would hit him as many [times as fingers] we would have up…Sometimes he would even say more fingers than we really had.”

GRANT (1:19:46) – He just wanted to get hit. My man’s—my man’s got some problems.

TIM (1:19:53) – Occasionally, they played the game with a hairbrush instead of a stick, for variety’s sake.

“Which end of the hairbrush would you hit him with?” inquired Dempsey.

“Sometimes the side with the bristles, sometimes the other side, just whichever way we happened to pick it up.”

GRANT (1:20:09) – As long as it hurt. Oh my gosh.

TIM (1:20:15) – Mrs. Anna Collins, Fish’s oldest daughter, recalled an incident from 1917 when her younger brother Henry—then three years old—asked for a glass of water. As she walked to the kitchen, she discovered her father lying on the floor, wrapped tightly in the living-room carpet. Only his head was visible from the nose up. “Pop,” she admonished, “go on up to bed. You will never get any rest that way.” The next morning, when Anna came downstairs to fix breakfast, Fish was just unrolling himself from the carpet. When asked why he had chosen to sleep there, Fish replied, “St. John the Apostle told me to.”

GRANT (1:20:52) – What?

TIM (1:20:53) – Can you just imagine him rolled up in a carpet with just his nose sticking out over the edge?

GRANT (1:20:57) – It’s just Albert being Albert!

TIM (1:21:00) – It’s just dad being dad, again. Rolling himself up in the carpet, talking to St. John the Apostle.

GRANT (1:21:10) – Oh, lord.

TIM (1:21:13) – The familial testimony apparently weighed heavily on the elderly Fish. As reported in The Daily Press of Newport News, Virginia: “Tears dripped from the sunken, pale blue eyes of shriveled Albert Howard Fish—accused of the brutal slaying of 10-year-old Grace Budd—as his daughter, Mrs. Gertrude de Marco, helping defense attempts to prove him a sadistic maniac, broke down and sobbed on the witness stand in supreme court today.

For the first time since his trial [started]…the decrepit defendant appeared to be listening to the testimony.

The old man’s momentary breakdown came after he heard his eldest son, Albert Fish Jr., tell the jury that his father thought himself to be Christ, devoured raw steak on days when a full moon was visible, and tortured himself with a spiked paddle and by injecting needles into his body.”

GRANT (1:22:02) – Oh, God.

TIM (1:22:05) – On Thursday, March 21, the prosecution called their own expert witnesses to contest Fish’s insanity defense. First up was Dr. Menas Gregory, the former head of Bellevue Hospital’s Psychiatric Department, who described Fish as “abnormal but sane.” He acknowledged Fish’s propensity for coprophagia, urophagia, and pedophilia, but argued that such behaviors did not necessarily indicate psychosis or diminish a person’s capacity for reason. From a diagnostic perspective, such perversions were “socially perfectly alright,” making Fish “no different from millions of other people.”

GRANT (1:22:42) – What? I don’t know, man. I don’t know about that one.

TIM(1:22:49) – Dempsey challenged that position on cross-examination.

GRANT (1:22:52) – As he should.

TIM (1:22:53) – “Is it a common thing, doctor, for a man to drink urine and eat human feces?”

“It's not as uncommon as you think,” Gregory countered. “I know of successful people—I know of successful people, artists, teachers, financiers, who have the same perversion.”

GRANT (1:23:08) – ‘No, bro, you just—you just haven’t tried it yet, bro. I know a bunch of people, dude. Like, you know, it’s pretty good.’ What? I mean, how do you respond? Like, no it isn’t. And then it’s like, ‘yes it is.’ And it’s like, alright. I don’t know where you go from there.

TIM (1:23:31) – Although Gregory conceded that Fish was profoundly troubled, he maintained that mental disturbance did not necessarily amount to legally insanity. In his view, Fish could exhibit compulsive and sexually deviant behavior while retaining the cognitive faculties necessary for criminal responsibility. The planning and execution of Fish’s crimes, therefore, demonstrated rational thought and an awareness of his actions—qualities inconsistent with the legal definition of insanity.

Another witness, Dr. Charles Lambert, reinforced Gregory’s distinction between perversion and insanity. He testified that coprophagia was more common than generally assumed and that religious cannibalism, while potentially psychopathic, did not by itself constitute evidence of psychosis.

TIM (1:24:18) – “Potentially psychopathic.”

GRANT (1:24:20) – It’s just like, oh God. You know, this is the kind of shit that makes me like understand why people got beef with lawyers and the legal system. It’s because it’s like now we have to litigate. Now we’re going to have to waste everybody’s time to argue about whether cannibalism is psychopathic. And it’s like, okay, yeah. We’ll find the one example of a culture that’s, you know, far-removed from the mainstream of wherever this took place, like New York, and we’re going to have to talk about how in some instance of the grand human experience, people eat people as part of the culture, and so therefore…And it’s like, well, how about you look around, and like, [are] we eating people here? Like, ‘oh, you eat somebody, bro?’ Like, ‘oh, we’re all eating’—like, no. And now we got to argue about it. And now we got to like—and it’s just—it’s like my God. Like, why do we have to argue about those kinds of things? Like, I get it, but in the context of trying to administer justice in this one instant, like my…give me a break.  

TIM (1:25:29) – “Doctor,” Dempsey cynically posed, “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 and not have any mental diseases?” 

“Well…there is no accounting for taste, Mr. Dempsey,” Lambert breezily replied.

GRANT (1:25:47) – What the fuck? Oh my God. Like, what are we doing? What is the…

TIM (1:25:59) – I think that the prosecution is trying to say that he is legally sane and so that they can get the death penalty.

GRANT (1:26:06) – Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

TIM (1:26:07) – And they’re trying to do—they’re trying to just deny any sort of perversion and be like, ‘yeah, that’s totally normal, man.’ Like…

GRANT (1:26:13) – Oh no, I get it. I get it because the insanity defense would help him. And it’s just like, it’s one of these—it’s like a catch 22, right? Because we’re in this situation where, is anybody going to sit here and be like, ‘the guy isn’t insane?’ Like, in our concept of insane, is like—the legal definition of insane is different than like the literary definition of it, or whatever. If you Oxford Dictionary ‘insane,’ it’s going to be different than Black’s Law Dictionary. Like, I get it. But it’s just like, there comes a point where the whole insanity defense, it’s like—what good is it doing? Like, there are times, again, where…but it’s like—it’s just like, bro. Why are we spending a whole day arguing about this? The man admitted it. He got sexual gratification, too. He ate this girl over a period of nine days after like, cutting off her head, like…Now we got to, ‘well, actually, you know…eh, I don’t know if it’s crazy.’ Eh, no, it is kind of crazy, but…It makes—you know what it does, though—it makes for some really entertaining trial transcripts or whatever, like…‘That didn’t account for taste.’ That’s wild. Oh my God.

TIM (1:27:26) – And like, you have to go to the extremes on each end, too…

GRANT (1:27:29) – Yeah!

TIM (1:27:30) – …in this situation because, like I said, he is so far gone—from what the normal definition of insanity is—like, they have no definition for what he is. And then, so, the prosecution has to go and be like, ‘well, all these abnormal behaviors are actually totally sane.’ But yeah, it’s crazy. And I think with the insanity defense, too—like, you can cite specific examples like you know, acute emotional distress, something like that—but like, this is habitual behavior that he’s been doing for decades, you know? There’s definitely [an] escalation to the severity of his behavior, and I think that, you know, the fact that he just got caught—and he clearly doesn't have any remorse for his actions, so he's not doing himself any favors—he wants to use the insanity defense as a way to avoid any criminal punishment.

GRANT (1:28:25) – Yeah. You know what’s interesting, too? Is like, if you ever go to—if you ever wanted to be like a legal nerd—the case law around insanity over in different jurisdictions and different…It is so interesting because it’s really a creature of—I mean, there are some statutory [whatever] but like—the case law of figuring out ‘all right, well how have we decided…what do we…’And it’s really, really interesting because it’s—as you said, right—it’s like, I don’t even know…we have to go to the extremes on each side here. And it’s, for me, I mean, it doesn’t matter, right? It’s anecdotal and it has no bearing, and if somebody—if I were to try to say this to somebody else and they say, ‘well, I disagree,’ and then it’s like, well nothing’s going to happen. But the one thing for me was always like, a lot of it is the distinction between knowing what is right and what is wrong, right? Like, there’s some philosophical, ethical like…it’s just knowing if what you are doing is good or bad. But like, the whole—the whole exercise of untangling wet spaghetti of like—is whatchamacallit, is [cannibalism]—‘Well, cannibalism is insanity if you do it for two days straight, but God forbid you go to that third day of eating a body.’ Now were in, like…oh, come on.

TIM (1:29:43) – If it’s wrong, God will stop me.

GRANT (1:29:49) – That’s right. You know what, though? That right there, right? And it’s like, ‘well, if it’s wrong, somebody’s going to stop me.’ It’s like, ‘well, if nobody’s going to stop me, then is it really wrong?’ And then it’s like, well the limit’s got to push back at some point, you know? That’s when you get into these pedantic arguments where it’s like—if we were immortal being that never got hungry, never had to sleep, never were going to die, we could engage in these lengthy, philosophical arguments to the end of time. But when you realize, like we are living, breathing creatures that—we have a finite amount of time—because of that, we got to prioritize things, we got to make sense of things, we got to keep it moving while we’re here.

Like…something you learn very early on—I mean, it’s not in law school. It’s not something that oh, lawyers learn—like everybody knows it in their gut. Most of the law is just like, common sense articulated in a way that we can work with. But like, everything is a spectrum, right? Like good, bad…eventually, at some point, you kind of have to arbitrarily draw the line. Like, do you ever see those memes where it’s like the animals, and it’s like ‘you shouldn’t be eating out of this.’ And then it’s like, there’s like dogs, cats, or whatever. But then, on the other side, there’s like cows and chickens and—and then there’s people who are like, ‘well, I draw the line here.’ It’s that same idea though, of like, the principle—if you really—it’s like humans are hypocritical by [nature], or there has to be some inconsistency. There has to be some demarcation. And I just like—here, in this case, right—it’s like okay, my mans is out of his fucking mind, but he needs to go! Like, I don’t know what else to say. Like, somebody’s got to stop him, bro! God ain’t stopping him. Somebody’s got to stop him.

TIM (1:31:36) – Some mortal being needs to stop this man.

GRANT (1:31:38) – Exactly! So I’m interested to see how this ends up. But I—you know what I will say, though? The fact that they brought—they let the bones come in and the judge was like—I’m like, okay the judge is definitely team “this guy needs to go.” We’ll see what the jurors say, but I mean, it’s not looking good.

TIM (1:31:57) – The district attorney was literally rattling the bones in the box!

GRANT (1:32:03) – I mean, he’s like, ‘what more do I have to do?’ Oh man. That’s nuts. Dude, the fact that they were arguing about “well, [that] doesn’t account for taste.” You know, like after this case when the lawyers went down to the bar to grab a few drinks or whatever, like, on each [side], they’re just like ‘what the fuck is happening?’ Oh man.

TIM (1:32:30) – During closing arguments, Dempsey maintained that no rational person could have committed such an atrocity, much less dined on his young victim’s remains. He conceded that Fish had used deception to abduct Grace and evade detection. However, these actions did not demonstrate a sound, reasoning mind, rather the animalistic instincts of survival: “The fact that a man can connive and plan an outrageous, dastardly, fiendish crime like this is no indication of the fact that a man is in his right mind.”

Finally, Dempsey underscored the significance of the jury’s decision: “In the course of human nature, ten of you twelve men will die in full possession of your reason and memory. When that hour comes, when the blood begins to congeal and the breath to fail, when death snaps one by one the strings of life, when you look back to the past and forward to judgment, remember Albert Fish, that when he was helpless and defenseless and pleaded with you for his life, that you said, ‘Let him live,’ or ‘Let him die,’ and if you said ‘Let him die,’ may He who breathed into your nostrils the breath of life judge you more mercifully than you judged this maniac.”

GRANT (1:33:39) – What? That’s the bit: “we’re all going to die.”

TIM (1:33:43) – Just remember that you’re going to die and you’re going to have to meet you maker just like Albert Fish will.

GRANT (1:33:50) – You got to show mercy to this man, because he would’ve done the same for you. Like, what? Like—basically it’s like: ‘Because we’re all going to die, justice, punishment—there’s no point.’ It’s like…I’m a very—when it comes to—I’m much more on the side of rehabilitative justice, or restorative justice, right? Like, you know…but what I will say is—and I guess it is hypocritical, because if you’re like well, my principles say like, restorative justice: everyone deserves a chance. Blah, blah, blah—it’s like, you know what, though? The reason we have laws is to make sense of—it’s to put guidelines on each extreme. It’s like yes, there needs to be restorative, rehabilitative justice for like, offenders who, you know—we don’t want to just…there’s something to be said for mercy. But, you can’t have mercy if like—if this man is deserving of the same mercy that other people—like if you’re just going to say well, moral nihilism: everyone’s entitled to the same degree of mercy. Then nobody is.

It’s like—it’s like he’s doing the argument. He’s doing like the catch-all, Hail Mary argument of just like…basically, I got absolutely nothing, so I’m going to pull the nihilism card of ‘we’re all just…’ That part of your brain that is about critical thinking and distinguishing—nope. Just we’re all going to die. That’s all I got. It’s like, when someone pulls the ‘well, we’re all going to die’ or ‘we all got to die,’ that’s how you can immediately know that whatever they’re about to say is just a copout, bullshit. It’s like, all right. Like, oh well, we’re all going to die. Great! Okay, then why do we choose to do anything? Let’s like…no. We—things matter because we choose to make them matter. And we choose to make them matter because we think about them critically, and we have empathy, and we are humans, and we…I hate that. I just hate when people do that—the moral nihilism. Like just, I hope they’re not like, ‘Oh, welp. You know, he…it’s all good, bro.’ I hope they—He needs to go to jail. He needs to be removed. Like, oh. My man.

TIM (1:36:03) – “Mr. Dempsey has asked you to remember certain things about the defenseless Mr. Fish,” Gallagher scoffed. “Gentlemen, I want you to remember poor, defenseless little Grace Budd as she kicked and screamed in the springtime of her life and said that she would tell her mama.”

GRANT (1:36:17) – Exactly!

TIM (1:36:20) – Gallagher then went on to address Fish’s insanity defense: “Don’t put any stock, gentlemen, in this divine command business. That is merely a smoke screen.”

GRANT (1:36:28) – Exactly! Sorry.

TIM (1:36:31) – No, yeah. That’s completely valid.

TIM (1:36:35) – Every step of Fish’s crime indicated “premeditation and design…to satisfy his own sexual gratification…The defendant is undoubtedly a conniving and scheming sexual pervert. He undoubtedly has engaged in revolting practices with women and children. But that does not make him insane.”

GRANT (1:36:52) – Exactly.

TIM (1:36:55) – Justice Close briefed the jury after the lunch recess: “Well, now, gentlemen,” he stressed. “If you find that this man, through his own perversions, has so weakened his will that an irresistible impulse comes upon him to satisfy his sexual passions, that would not excuse him from the consequences of his act. He must have been suffering from such a defect of reason as not to know the nature and quality of his act or to know that it was wrong when he performed it, or he must answer for the consequences of his act.”

GRANT (1:37:24) – Yeah. That’s the—that’s usually what I’ve understood the insanity…it’s like two prongs. It’s like you have to know what you’re doing and then you have to know if it’s right or wrong. That’s thinking—from my remembrance of, like—I could be very well wrong about that. But those were always like the two big prongs. And some states kind of modify that, but like…I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.

TIM (1:37:47) – The jury retired from the courtroom at 3:00 p.m. They reached a decision less than six hours later. “We find the defendant guilty as charged in the indictment,” the foreperson solemnly declared. The verdict carried a mandatory death sentence in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison.

GRANT (1:38:03) – Oh! Damn.

TIM (1:38:07) – While the jury did not doubt Fish’s insanity, they ultimately determined that he should be executed anyway.

GRANT (1:38:14) – That right there! I mean, that’s kind of what I was getting at, right? It’s like, is anybody going to sit here and say the man isn’t insane? No, he is. But like, there comes a point where it’s like, ‘You know what, bro? You had the spark of life. I value human dignity. You had a chance and you blew it.’ I don’t know what else to say. Like, you’re just—you’re too fucked up. You got to go. Like, I feel—I wish it weren’t this way, bro, but like…Nah, you’re out. I mean, my God.

You know, I feel like, too, we can like, talk about…I’m not very pro-death penalty. Like, I don’t think—but what I will say is, he—regardless of death or life—he needed to go. My mans needs to go. There’s no like—and it’s one of those like…Anybody can be like a death penalty purist of like: I am against it, I am for it, whatever. I’m not for it—after all the studies I’ve reviewed and like—but what I will say is it’s like, am I going to sit here and am I going to spend a lot of time trying to tell someone like, ‘oh, well actually, I don’t think they should have killed this guy. Like, I think he…’ I’m going to sit there and I’m going to be like, if there were ever one person—there was one exception to the rule—if there was one person who was, you know, maybe warranted that…sorry, bud. Hasta la vista. Like, I don’t know what to say to you, man. You fucked up!

TIM (1:39:48) – “I feel bad,” the condemned Fish whimpered, “I thought I should have got Mattewan.” Mattewan was the state asylum for the criminally insane.

TIM (1:39:57) – So what do you [think]—he thinks he should’ve gotten mercy and he should’ve just spent the rest of his life behind bars.

GRANT (1:40:04) – Who cares what he thinks at this point? I’m sorry, bud. I mean, oh my God.

TIM (1:40:13) – Albert Fish entered Sing Sing as Inmate No. 83909. While incarcerated, he wrote, “The cell I am in is nice and light, but I can’t stand that man [next to me] cursing all the time. I can’t read my Bible. Religion was always one of my strong points.” 

While awaiting execution, Fish confessed to two previously unsolved murders: those of Francis McDonnell and Billy Gaffney.

On July 15, 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDonnell, the son a of New York City policeman, disappeared from Port Richmond, Staten Island— a semi-rural community bordering the dense Lattingtown Woods.

Earlier that day, Francis had been playing outside with his two younger siblings. Their mother, Anna McDonnell, was working in the kitchen when she noticed an unfamiliar man pass their property twice within half an hour. "He came shuffling down the street mumbling to himself and making queer motions with his hands. I’ll never forget those hands...I saw his thick grey hair and his drooping grey moustache. Everything about him seemed faded and grey."

Later that afternoon, the elderly stranger reappeared at the edge of the woods; his gaze fixed on Francis. When the boy looked up, the old man summoned him closer. After a brief conversation, the boy entered the woods and disappeared among the trees, the old man following close behind.

The McDonnell family did not realize that Francis was missing until he failed to return home for dinner. Police officers and civilian volunteers soon began an extensive search of the surrounding area. The following morning, three Boy Scouts discovered Francis’s body in the woods near his home, hastily concealed beneath branches and leaves. He had been sexually assaulted and strangled with his own suspenders. An autopsy also revealed extensive lacerations to his legs and abdomen, with much of the flesh being stripped from his left hamstring.

Investigators initially focused on Clyde Patterson and Jacob Gottlieb, two orderlies employed at nearby Sea View Hospital. During police questioning, Gottlieb acknowledged that he and Patterson had frequented the forest where Francis was killed. Within Lattingtown Woods lay a hollow known as the “Rattlesnake’s Nest”—a place where homosexual men reportedly gathered to engage in “wild orgies of degeneracy.”

The New York Daily News seized this claim and amplified the era’s prejudices associating poverty and nonconforming sexuality with moral corruption: “[Staten Island is] overrun with old men, morons, degenerates of all types, men picked out of the gutters and bread lines of New York City…At present, there are nearly five hundred men on the poor farm and many of them are known to be degenerates.” Patterson and Gottlieb were arraigned on sodomy charges but later eliminated as suspects in Francis’s murder.

After several weeks without significant progress, the Daily News lamented: “The fiend who attacked and killed Francis McDonnell seems to have gotten away. But even if he should be apprehended—even if a confession should be wrung from his lips—there is little likelihood that the grim and merciless punishment that an outraged citizenry would look for could be inflicted by law!” With no arrests and few credible leads, rumor began to replace fact.

Stories soon circulated about a sinister “hermit” who had allegedly accosted local boys in Lattingtown Woods. Late one afternoon, a teenager named William Bellach encountered the suspected recluse—John Eskowski, a drifter from Pennsylvania—while walking through the forest. Convinced that Eskowski was the child killer, Bellach ran to a nearby gas station and alerted its proprietor, Salvatore Pace, who armed himself with a pistol and followed the boy back to Eskowski’s camp. Pace confronted Eskowski, who pulled his own handgun and ducked behind a tree. The two men exchanged shots, but neither was struck.

Within minutes, mounted police officers swarmed the woods, followed by a mob of one hundred armed and enraged citizens. Eskowski took cover behind a cluster of rocks and shot at his pursuers, who returned fire. Wounded in the ensuing barrage, the desperate drifter placed his pistol against his temple and pulled the trigger. No conclusive evidence ever established that Eskowski had encountered Francis McDonnell. Later accounts instead portray him as an unfortunate victim of communal panic and vigilantism. 

On February 11, 1927, three-year-old Billy Beaton and four-year-old [William] “Billy” Gaffney were playing with twelve-year-old Johnny McNiff in the hallway of their Brooklyn tenement. Johnny briefly stepped away to tend to his infant sister, but when he returned a few minutes later, both Billys had disappeared.

Moments later, Billy Beaton’s father entered the hallway and found Johnny standing there, visibly confused. After hearing the boy’s account, Beaton took Johnny and searched the building floor by floor. They found no sign of either child until they reached the top story. There, near the ladder leading to the roof, stood Billy Beaton, alone. When asked where Gaffney had gone, the frightened three-year-old replied, "The boogeyman took him."

Gaffney's disappearance prompted a citywide search, but police found no trace of him. Although authorities classified the case as an abduction, Sergeant Elmer Joseph, who led the investigation, expressed his doubts. The Gaffneys lived in a cramped, sunless tenement and could not afford a substantial ransom. Joseph believed that the unsupervised child had most likely wandered into the street and become lost. He hoped that someone would find Gaffney and take him to a nearby precinct. Inspector John J. Sullivan of the Missing Persons Bureau shared Joseph’s skepticism: “There is no reason why anyone should want to take this child,” he opined. “The kidnapper would have to be deranged.”

Detectives also considered whether Gaffney had become trapped in a nearby factory or had fallen into the Gowanus Canal, located just five blocks from his home. Police dredged the polluted waterway with a scow, but hours of work yielded only sludge and garbage.

The wandering-child theory weakened when trolley operators Anthony Barone and Joseph Meehan recalled a suspicious scene the day that Billy disappeared. An elderly man had boarded their car with a small boy in tow, crying continuously. The peculiar pair traveled to the end of Hamilton Avenue, where the man asked for directions to the Staten Island Ferry. After disembarking, the man hurried down Sackett Street in the opposite direction, “half dragging, half carrying” the weeping child. Meehan later identified Albert Fish as the elderly passenger.

The Manhattan Missing Persons Bureau subsequently learned that Fish had worked as a house painter in Brooklyn around the time of Gaffney's disappearance; his job site situated only a few miles from where the boy was last seen.

Eight years after her son vanished, Elizabeth Gaffney accompanied Detective King to Sing Sing prison, hoping to question Fish about the child’s fate. While Fish refused to speak to her directly, he did describe the alleged crime in a letter to his attorney:

“I brought him to the Riker Ave. dumps…Stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I picked out of the dump. Then I burned his clothes. Threw his shoes in the dump. Then I walked back and took trolley to 59^th St. at 2 A.M. and walked home from there. Next day about 2 P.M., I took tools, a good heavy cat-of-nine tails. Homemade. Short handle…I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears – nose – slit his mouth from ear to ear. Gouged out his eyes. He was dead then. I stuck a knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drank his blood…Then I cut him up…I cut off the head – feet – arms – hands and the legs below the knee. This I put in sacks weighed with stones, tied the ends and threw them into the pools of slimy water you will see all along the road going to North Beach. Water is 3 to 4 ft. deep. They sank at once. I came home with my meat…I made a stew out of his ears – nose – pieces of his face and belly. I put onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt and pepper. It was good.”

GRANT (1:48:10) – What the fuck, man? Oh lord.

TIM (1:48:17) – Fish then conveyed, in obscene detail, how he prepared Gaffney’s glutes and genitals.

GRANT (1:48:22) – Oh, God. Capital ‘E’ warning coming up.

TIM (1:48:27) – This is definitely an ‘E’ episode. I don't know. I'm telling you, I like to be objective, but I could not include some of the things he said because they were just way too explicit to put on the airwaves.

GRANT (1:48:42) – Yeah like, to just say. To just utter those words, it’s like, yeah. No, I hear you. I mean, this guy…obscene correspondence, I get it.

TIM (1:48:53) – That’s certainly an understatement.

GRANT (1:48:55) – Yeah.

TIM (1:48:58) – Dr. Wertham later remarked on Fish’s nonchalant manner as he recounted the cannibalization of Billy Gaffney’s body: "His state of mind while he described these things in minute detail was a peculiar mixture. He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, like a housewife describing her favorite methods of cooking....But at times his voice and facial expression indicated a kind of satisfaction and ecstatic thrill. I said to myself: However you define the medical and legal borders of sanity, this certainly is beyond that border."

On April 3, 1935, Dempsey filed an appeal on Fish’s behalf, arguing that Judge Close had displayed “definite hostility toward the defense” and that the jury failed to consider reasonable doubt regarding Fish’s sanity.

“Albert Fish is a psychiatric phenomenon,” Dempsey’s petition declared. “It is noteworthy that no single case history, either in legal or medical annals, contains a record of one individual who possessed all of these abnormalities. The jury, undoubtedly through passion and prejudice, disregarded evidence of Albert H. Fish’s insanity. His conviction proves merely that we still burn witches in America.

I believe that is was obvious to everyone in the courtroom, including the most experienced crime reporters in the city of New York, and to the general public, that the aged killer of Grace Budd, who ate part of her body, is an insane man…It doesn’t take an “expert” to find that out.

Far above the question of whether this unfortunate man should go to the electric chair or not, there is an issue here in which the community should be vitally interested…[F]or many years, this benighted man has attacked, raped, and tortured children. He had made no secret of his propensities. He was arrested over and over and set a free man…I believe in maintaining that the proper place for Mr. Fish now and a long time ago was an institution for the insane. I am representing not only my client, but also every citizen who has a child. Do we have to wait until a madman like Fish commits one of the murders that we know he has been planning in his distorted mind for almost fifty years? Or rather, do we have to wait until the disintegration of his mind goes so far that he writes a fiendishly cruel, obviously crazy letter to the mother of his victim[?]

I don’t believe that it requires more than common sense to see that Mr. Fish is a diseased specimen of humanity, an insane man. The outstanding feature in Fish’s behavior is the extraordinary abnormality of his sexual life which is unparalleled in medical literature. His dominant trait is a mad desire to inflict pain on boys and to have them inflict it upon him. His extreme mental infantilities, the number and quantity of his morbid sexual appetites, definitely…make him to any commonsense person a suitable mental case for commitment to a state institution for the insane.”

TIM (1:51:45) – I mean, he’s got a point that yes, the jury disregarded the—the argument for insanity. But, as you said, like this guy is so beyond the pale…

GRANT (1:51:56) – I mean—and that’s why I kind of said what I said earlier, just because like I know now there’ll be appeals, they’ll try…And it’s like, the legal system will work through, and it’s just like you kind of can just—if you just skip through all the noise, it’s like, where does this end up, right? And where—what is—how is justice most, or best-served in this situation? And it’s like, now the problem for the lawyers is that they have to craft the rule and articulate how and why this should be an exception to the insanity rule. And it’s basically like, we all can kind of ethically agree this is beyond the pale. But then it’s like, okay, well now we have to justify it through some verbiage that…It’s going to be difficult because the principle is—we have that principle, and this goes against it.

That’s part of what I love about the law is it’s like—or just legal studies in general—is I think at the end of the day, the biggest skill, or the biggest service that laws provide is just articulation. It’s like we have all these thoughts and emotions and deep-seated feelings inside of ourselves about how—what justice is. And it’s like, the lawyer’s job, or the legal services provider’s job, or the judge’s job is to just articulate it. Put it down on paper in a way that everybody can kind of read and agree on, or empathize with, or…It’s all just like words. It’s wordsmithing. And that’s what they’re now going to have to do because he is insane. And under the normal…or whatever, like we all—it’s hard for any on us to look and be like, ‘he’s not insane.’ But it’s also hard for any of us to be like, ‘well because he’s insane, he should just…’ There’s something about this that is beyond. And it’s like—and then it’s like, well now we have to figure out what it is. And it’s a good—it’s worth it, but also, like let’s not go crazy, now. Like, let’s not spend—let’s not spin out wheels too much. Like, there is some human instinct of just…this guy needs to go.

TIM (1:54:02) – Fish even solicited New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman for clemency: “Never can anyone say I ever harmed the hair of the head of any child. When I was arrested, police and others tried to make me confess to many other crimes. If I was to face my Maker today, I can say—that in confessing this one—I have cleared my soul. I lay the beginning of all my trouble to my wife. [When the children] were at the [movies], she stripped the house bare. Unknown to the children she had made arrangements—to sell everything in the house and go off with the boarder. Not so much as a blanket to wrap about our youngest child, then four months of age. Now, Your Excellency, you are a husband and a father, can you imagine what my four children thought. Place any man you know of in the same position, and once more imagine what a shock he would get.”

On the eve of Fish’s scheduled execution, members of his defense team, including Dr. Wertham, likewise appealed to Governor Lehman to commute the death sentence: “If you uphold the judgment of sanity implicit in the death sentence of this obviously ill man, you uphold officially…abstruse psychiatric sophistries…A man who practices cannibalism under these circumstances has a deranged mind…If he is electrocuted as sane, then you—to whose personal conscience the law entrusts this case at this moment—will give your stamp of approval to all the callousness and unconcern of those whose duty it was to protect the children of the community.”

But the governor remained impassive. The execution would proceed as scheduled.

On the evening of January 16, 1936, guards escorted Fish into Sing Sing’s death chamber. Executioner Robert G. Elliott placed a black mask over the condemned killer’s face, then secured an electrode to his shaven head. After attaching a second electrode to Fish’s right leg, Elliott stepped back to the control panel and administered two lethal shocks.

At precisely 11:09 p.m., the attending physician placed a stethoscope against Fish’s chest and pronounced him dead. He was buried without ceremony in an unmarked grave at the prison cemetery.

“Speculation was rife as to what might happen when the current coursed through him,” Elliott recalled, referencing Fish’s paraphilic needle fetish.

GRANT (1:56:13) – Oh God, I forgot about that! He’s got these metal needles in him! Oh lord, oh God.

TIM (1:56:23) – “Some expected to see sparks fly in all directions, but nothing unusual happened.”

GRANT (1:56:27) – Could you imagine like…oh my God.

TIM (1:56:34) – After the execution, Dempsey met with reporters and disclosed that he possessed Fish’s final statement, penned just hours before his death. When pressed to reveal the document's contents, Dempsey refused. "I will never show it to anyone. It was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read."

GRANT (1:56:51) – His final words. This man is just devil spawn. Like, his final words are just—we’re not even reading that shit, man. Do you have any last words? Nah, you don’t. Goodbye. Did any—did they have a record of it? Like, does anybody have it? Now I’m kind of curious.

TIM (1:57:10) – I don’t think they have a record of it anymore. I think he wrote it down, and I think his lawyer got rid of it.

GRANT (1:57:15) – They read it and they were just like…

TIM (1:57:18) – This needs to be burned.

GRANT (1:57:20) – Yeah! How bad—after everything—like, how bad was that? Oh my God. Oh.

TIM (1:57:30) – Albert Fish was officially linked to the murders of three children—Francis McDonnell, Billy Gaffney, and Grace Budd—but authorities believe that these victims represent only a fraction of his crimes. Fish had traveled extensively over four decades and made numerous claims about his exploits, though many were impossible to corroborate. While we may never know the full extent of Albert Fish’s brutality, his legacy endures like a festering wound upon the American conscience. His crimes cast a harsh light onto the darkest recesses of human depravity, exposing an unsettling truth—that the most terrifying forms of evil do not hide behind a grotesque mask, but beneath the familiar features of normalcy.

GRANT (1:58:10) – I like that, yeah.

TIM (1:58:12) – On a lighter note, football season is in full swing. And while our teams have given us more reasons for frustration than celebration, no string of disappointing performances will keep us from watching America’s favorite spectator sport. But did you know that football was almost outlawed in the United States? Tune in February 13, 2027—just in time for the Super Bowl—to learn more about this watershed moment in sports history.

But before we get into that, join us on January 2, when we release our Patreon-exclusive episode to the public. It’s a story of partisan wrangling, labor unrest, socioeconomic struggles, and an unsolved murder that defined Arkansas’s political landscape for nearly a century. Hear the full story next time on The American Narrative: Histories of a Nation.  

RESOURCES

1. Borowski, John. Albert Fish in His Own Words: The Shocking Confessions of the Child Killing Cannibal. Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.

2. Keller, Robert. Confessions of a Cannibal: The Shocking True Story of Depraved Child Killer Albert Fish. United States: 2016.

3. Schechter, Harold. Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer. United Kingdom: Pocket Books, 2009.

LINKS

• https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/serial-killers/albert-fish/

• https://www.thoughtco.com/serial-killer-albert-fish-973157

• https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/albert-fish