Pod Insights Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén Albert Fish About this episode This episode first aired on August 19, 2024. He’s been called many names: the Boogeyman, the Thrill Vulture, the Moon Maniac, the Werewolf of Wysteria… But in life, he was known as Albert Fish and his gruesome crimes redefined the limits of human depravity.
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Transcript 0:03 Speaker 00 Hey listeners, Chelsea here. I'm a producer on this show and I'm in your ears today to share some exciting changes coming to the feed. Rest assured, you're still gonna hear the most interesting true crime stories from all around the world, backed by the research you've come to expect. But very soon, we'll be introducing a new host to all of you. It's someone who shares our obsession with true crime and the criminal mind, a dynamic storyteller with a perspective we think you're really gonna love. And before we launch into this next evolution, we wanted to take a beat and revisit some of your favorite stories from the past eight years. Episodes that reflect the journey this show has taken while we get ready for something new. Today, we're going back to our 500th episode, where we took a fresh new look at one of
0:46 Speaker 00 the most notorious crimes we've ever covered. Enjoy.
0:55 Speaker 01 Due to the nature of this case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, abuse, torture, kidnapping, self-harm, harm against minors, and sexual abuse of minors. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen.
1:16 Speaker 01 In the United States, jury duty is considered a civic responsibility, one that comes with very different stakes depending upon the case. In 1935, 12 men from Westchester County, New York, were tasked with rendering a life or death verdict in a murder trial. The crime was so shocking, and the testimony so perverse, that the judge chose to ban women from the courtroom for portions of the trial. Witnesses felt the need to speak in euphemisms, and people routinely broke out into tears at the gruesome nature of the evidence presented. But the jury's decision on whether to send the accused to the electric chair didn't come down to, "Did he commit the crime or not?"
2:01 Speaker 01 It ultimately rested on a more complicated question. When Albert Fish abducted and murdered a 10-year-old girl in cold blood, dismembered her corpse, and ate her flesh for his own sexual gratification, did he know it was wrong?
2:23 Speaker 01 I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram, at Serial Killers Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. If you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. You're listening to our 500th episode. Can you believe it? It's been over seven years. When we first started making serial killers, we had no idea what was in store, but what a wild and amazing ride it's been. Thank you for coming along for the journey, for tuning in every week and allowing us to take up space in your busy lives. You are what drives our small but
3:05 Speaker 01 mighty team to keep going. Who knows, maybe one day we'll hit a thousand. But to celebrate this milestone, our team wanted to revisit episode one. It's still our most listened to release ever, and easily one of the most twisted cases we've ever covered. But so much has changed since 2017 that, as an experiment, we thought it would be fun to wipe the slate clean and pretend like we're starting over. How would we cover Albert Fish, the werewolf of Wisteria, today?
3:41 Speaker 01 Stay with us and find out.
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6:20 Speaker 01 Monday, May 28, 1928, New York City. Delia Budd and her family live in a small apartment on West 15th Street in Manhattan. She folds a pile of laundry in her bedroom and hears a knock at the door. It's a stranger, a man in his late 50s, dressed in a navy blue suit and black hat. He's about 5'5", 130 pounds, and introduces himself as Frank Howard. He tells Delia that he's answering an ad that was recently placed in the paper by someone named Edward Budd. Edward, or Eddie, is Delia's son. He's 18 years old and looking to get out of the city for the summer.
7:03 Speaker 01 A few days ago, he paid for a one-line classified ad to run in the New York World. It read, "Young man, 18, wishes position in country." Then listed his name and home address so people like Mr. Howard could find him. Delia tells Mr. Howard that he's at the right address, but Eddie's not home at the moment. He went over to a friend's place around the corner. She sends her youngest daughter Beatrice to go retrieve him. Then she offers Mr. Howard a lemonade while they wait for Eddie to return. As Mr. Howard sits there, sipping his drink, Delia notices a diamond ring on his pinky finger, a sign that he might be well off.
7:46 Speaker 01 He's certainly in better straits than the Budd's, who struggle every day to get by. The man seems meek and kind, with watery blue eyes, gray hair, and a mustache that curls around the corners of his mouth. He finishes his drink before Beatrice returns with Eddie and his best friend Willie Corman. Mr. Howard and Eddie hit it off almost immediately. Every word that falls out of the stranger's mouth is like music to Eddie's ears. He says he owns a small farm out in Long Island and is looking for a strong and reliable farmhand. Eddie looks the part. If he's interested, he could stay for as long as he likes. At $15 a week, the pay is exceedingly generous.
8:31 Speaker 01 It's everything Eddie had hoped for, but the teenager decides to press his luck anyway. He asks Mr. Howard if there's enough work to go around for his friend Willie to come too. Mr. Howard says he'd be happy to have them both. He'll pick them up on Saturday and drive them out to the farm himself. When Saturday arrives, Mr. Howard doesn't show up. He sends a telegram saying he got caught up in New Jersey. He'll be there tomorrow morning instead. True to his word, Mr. Howard arrives the next day with strawberries and cheese he says he brought from his farm. Eddie's out playing stickball with some friends, so Mr. Howard chats with Delia and her husband, Albert.
9:14 Speaker 01 He also meets one of their daughters, Grace. He gives the girl some money to go buy candy for her and her friends. When Eddie and Willie Corman return to the apartment, Mr. Howard tells them they're not leaving just yet. He has to attend a family member's birthday party, but he'll come grab them once it's done. As he's about to leave, Mr. Howard asks Grace if she'd like to join him for the party. He says there will be other kids. After some brief hesitation, Delia and Albert give their daughter permission to go with Mr. Howard, the stranger who'd been so generous to their kids.
9:54 Speaker 01 They watch their daughter walk out the door, not knowing it's the last time they'll ever see her.
10:04 Speaker 01 When Mr. Howard and Grace don't return by morning, the Buds send Eddie to the police station to file a missing persons report. Police mount a search to look for the 10-year-old girl and her abductor, but they have little luck. Witnesses come forward saying that a man matching Mr. Howard's description once tried to take their child. Investigators learn about a Long Island farmer named Frank Howard, but when they track down his relatives, they find out he passed away 10 years earlier. The name must have been an alias. The only promising lead comes from the telegram Mr. Howard sent to the Buds that Saturday, the one saying he was caught up in New Jersey.
10:47 Speaker 01 According to Harold Checkter's book, Deranged, investigators are able to trace the telegram to a Western Union office at 3rd Avenue and 103rd Street. It leads them to believe their suspect is a resident of East Harlem, but they don't get any further with it. The trail ends there.
11:08 Speaker 01 Years pass. The investigation faces an untold number of dead ends and red herrings. Countless suspects are considered. Two different men are actually arrested under suspicion of kidnapping Grace Budd. One is indicted and spends three months in prison while standing trial for her murder. Delia Budd even takes the stand and falsely identifies the man as her daughter's abductor. Investigators eventually realize their mistake, but they don't get any closer to catching the actual culprit until the fall of 1934, more than six years after Grace's abduction. Out of the blue, the man who once called himself Frank Howard makes a sudden anonymous
11:53 Speaker 01 confession, and he sends it to the Budd's family home.
12:01 Speaker 01 The letter arrives on November 12th. Now, I'll warn you, it's incredibly graphic, but I want to read you a lightly redacted excerpt to give you an honest sense of the man we're talking about in his own words. Some of you may want to skip ahead until after the ad break. We'll make sure you're caught up on everything after. The letter is addressed to Grace's mom, Delia. After a long tangent about a friend's alleged experience traveling abroad, it reads, quote, "On Sunday, June 3rd, 1928, I called on you at 406 West 15th Street. Brought you pot, cheese, strawberries. We had lunch.
12:43 Speaker 01 Grace sat in my lap and I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party, you said yes, she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not, I would get her blood on them. When all was ready, I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked, she began to cry and tried to run downstairs.
13:27 Speaker 01 I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mama." 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. It took me nine days to eat her entire body. She died a virgin.
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15:04 Speaker 01 The world eventually learns that the letter Albert Fish sends to Delia Budd in November 1934 was not an exaggeration. Abduction, murder, cannibalism, it all happened. If anything, he left out some of the more unsavory details of his crime, like the sexual gratification he experienced both during and after. Worse still, the disturbing confession turns out to be just the tip of Fish's iceberg. His "bloodlust," as he later called it, and his insatiable desire to inflict pain on himself and children seemed to know no bounds. But before we dive further into the revelations
15:49 Speaker 01 that came out after his arrest, let's rewind the clock to discuss the man the world knew up until that point. Albert Fish, the house painter, petty criminal, husband, and father of six. Let's start with Fish's work. He moves to New York in his mid-20s, a self-professed man of religion. Though he once dreamt of becoming a minister, he ultimately finds work as a hired laborer, painting old buildings. He spends a lot of time in the basements of churches and schools. The work gives him a certain sense of freedom. If he ever anticipates any trouble with the law, it doesn't cost him much to just drop everything and go.
16:33 Speaker 01 And he does run into trouble with the law, starting when he's in his early 30s and married with kids. In 1903, he's arrested on grand larceny charges and spends 16 months in Sing Sing Prison. He's later arrested, but not charged, at least five more times before police ever suspect him of murder, three times on petty theft charges, and twice for sending obscene letters in the mail. Fish had what he essentially described as a "compulsion" to write. He especially enjoyed writing letters to women whose names and addresses he'd find in the classified ads. He'd sign them with pseudonyms and create elaborate backstories for himself, like that
17:17 Speaker 01 he was a successful Hollywood producer, willing to pay women for help playing out his violent sexual fantasies, both on himself and on characters he invented. Both times he's arrested for sending obscene letters, he lands in mental care facilities, first at Bellevue for 30 days, then at Kings County Hospital for 10. He's released both times after psychiatric examinations. Coincidentally, both doctors use the same language to describe Fish, saying he was "quiet and cooperative." One said he "conducted himself in an orderly and normal manner."
17:59 Speaker 01 A doctor from Bellevue noted that he had an excellent memory for his age, but that he definitely suffered from "sexual psychopathy," a fact that was evident to anyone who knew him well, his family included.
18:14 Speaker 01 According to one psychiatric doctor, before marrying his wife Anna, Fish made sure she was interested in his sexual proclivities, or at the very least, could tolerate them. It's unclear what exactly that means, but it's unlikely that Anna knew the full extent of what she was getting into. Anna left Fish and their six kids in 1917. After more than a decade of marriage, she ran away with another man who'd been staying with them as a boarder. Though Anna and Fish never officially divorced, Fish went on to illegally wed other women. Like Anna, they apparently knew at least a fraction of Fish's tastes. Fish would send his prospective partners letters during the courting process
18:59 Speaker 01 to test the waters, to see if they'd indulge his twisted desires. None of the relationships lasted nearly as long as Anna. Some Fish only stayed with for two months before disappearing from their lives entirely. Even Fish's kids knew about their father's urges, to some extent. It seems he didn't keep them very well hidden. Fish had four sons and two daughters. Two of his sons walked in on him shoving needles into his body because he enjoyed the pain. A third opened a door to his father, flogging his back with a nail-studded paddle while pleasuring himself.
19:40 Speaker 01 Even Fish's granddaughter walked in on him spanking himself with a stick one time. For the most part, Fish's kids just viewed their father as a particularly eccentric man. For as long as they could remember, he behaved in bizarre ways. They had plenty of examples they could point to. The same year that their mother left, Fish's oldest daughter Anna walked in on him in the living room, rolled up in a carpet with only his head sticking out. When asked why, he said, "Saint John the Apostle told him to." His son Henry once found his father trying to fill cracks in their house with oatmeal for three straight days. While playing a game in an apple orchard,
20:24 Speaker 01 his children watched him stand on a hill and shout, quote, "I am Christ." The list goes on. One son called Fish a "firebug" who liked watching houses burn. Another said he enjoyed eating raw meat, especially during a full moon. Fish once asked a building superintendent for something to "kill a black cat." But according to one of his sons, the cat didn't exist. Despite Fish's complaints about it crossing his path multiple times, it was a figment of his imagination. The behavior was strange, but it was all just part of who he was, for as long as they could remember.
21:07 Speaker 01 And he didn't seem to be hurting anyone, besides himself. Of course, Fish's children eventually realize that couldn't be further from the truth. After Fish mails that letter to Delia Budd in November 1934, investigators match the handwriting to the telegram Frank Howard sent back in 1928. The letter and its envelope eventually lead them to the name Albert Fish. By mid-December, the lead detective on the Budd case finds himself in a room with the man he's been waiting more than six years to catch.
21:48 Speaker 01 Fish reaches into his vest and pulls out a razor blade, but he's quickly disarmed, and taken down to the police station. When news reaches Fish's children, most are shocked. His daughters swear he was a loving father, he never beat them, and always did his best to support his children, sending them loving messages and money when he could. Fish's oldest daughter tells investigators that he acted as both a father and a mother after their mom left. Only one child doesn't seem surprised by the arrest: Fish's son and namesake, Albert Jr. Reporters track Albert down to get a statement out of him, and he says to them, quote, "The old skunk.
22:31 Speaker 01 I knew something like this would happen sooner or later. I want nothing to do with him, and I won't do anything to help him." When Albert Jr. learns Grace Budd's name, he has a revelation. He recognizes it. Back when they shared an apartment, his father used to scream the name "Budd" in his sleep. Now he knows why. At the police station in his first interview with detectives, Fish initially denies having anything to do with Grace's murder. But after he's confronted with the sheer amount of evidence police have against him, he makes a full confession. Turns out, he didn't plan to kill Grace that day. He was looking for a sacrificial male.
23:15 Speaker 01 Fish, as detectives learn, was obsessed with the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Book of Genesis, where God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son to prove his faith. But after meeting Eddie in person, he got cold feet. Fish was worried that he wouldn't be able to overpower the 18-year-old, especially after Eddie's friend Willie unexpectedly entered the picture. Fish is emotionally detached during questioning, like he's discussing the weather and not the brutal murder of an innocent child. He takes a similar tone when he later leads investigators to the murder scene and walks them through the crime, step by step,
23:57 Speaker 01 before bringing them to the location of Grace's remains. It comes out that while traveling to the murder scene that day, Fish forgot his weapons on the train to Westchester: a butcher's knife, a meat cleaver, and a handsaw wrapped in canvas. It was actually Grace who realized the mistake. She ran back and retrieved the parcel for him. When asked, "Why did he do it?", Fish tells them, "The temptation just came over me. That's all I can say. I can't account for it. I don't understand it."
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25:14 Speaker 07 I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you.
25:20 Speaker 05 You're having a midlife crisis.
25:22 Speaker 07 I'm not ready for this. I'm older. I'm wiser. And sharper than ever. Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter Resurrection. New season now streaming on the Paramount Plus Premium Plan.
25:45 Speaker 01 Police search Albert Fish's home in December 1934. What they discover provides more insight into the man's mind. First, there's a copy of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket", a story about some characters who become stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean with no food or water. It ends with everyone agreeing to kill and eat whoever draws the shortest straw. Investigators also learn that Fish liked to hoard newspaper clippings. Some are stories about nudist colonies, kidnappings, and forced sterilizations. But the most disturbing is a stack of clippings Fish took the time to bind together with
26:30 Speaker 01 sewing needles, all reports related to the same topic: a German serial killer named Fritz Harman, aka "The Vampire of Hanover". We covered Harman back in 2019. Between the years 1918 and 1924, the German killed upwards of 20 people, mostly teenage boys. He'd lure them back to his place for food and drink before sexually assaulting and killing them, often with the help of his lover and accomplice. Harman usually asphyxiated his victims, but he earned his nickname because he bit their necks, sometimes piercing their trachea while they were still alive.
27:13 Speaker 01 He'd then dismembered their bodies afterwards. Rumors claimed he sold his victims' flesh as animal meat on the black market. Given everything, investigators become convinced that Grace Budd wasn't Fish's only victim. They question him about countless unsolved cases, but he denies having a hand in any. He swears Grace was his only murder. So investigators continue to ask him to revisit that day. For the most part, Fish remains consistent in his story. But at some point, he includes an emotional beat that was absent from his first few confessions: guilt.
27:55 Speaker 01 He now claims he experienced overwhelming remorse immediately after killing Grace. He says he would have given his life for hers if he could have in that moment. Then he launches into a story that feels completely unrelated, but might be his attempt at an explanation or an excuse. He says his oldest brother served in the Navy and traveled to China. When his brother came home, he told stories about a famine so severe, the people of the area resorted to cannibalism. He claims that ever since that day, the idea basically infected his mind like a disease. He just couldn't shake it.
28:36 Speaker 01 He then makes an offhand comment about how he spent some time in mental institutions before. In jail, Fish tells reporters he's ready to die, that he's made peace with his fate. But his actions eventually tell a very different story. He works tirelessly to get the best defense lawyer in Westchester County assigned to his case. And before his trial starts, he tells reporters that he's willing to be a "human guinea pig" if it means life. He begs God to save him from the electric chair and volunteers to donate his body and brain to science. At some point, newspapers report that Fish tried to die by suicide in his cell, but
29:21 Speaker 01 in actuality, he stole a chicken bone from his dinner, sharpened it to a point, and tried to harm himself in an act of auto eroticism. He later repeats the trick with a pork bone and manages to carve a cross in his abdomen before guards intervene.
29:40 Speaker 01 By the time of Fish's murder trial in March 1935, he's found out to be many things besides a killer: a sadist, a masochist, a pedophile, a rapist, and a cannibal, just to name a few. At the time, his known paraphilias, or atypical sexual interests, and paraphilic disorders include: exhibitionism, voyeurism, flagellation, peacuerism, euralagnea, coprophasia, castration, and self-castration. During the proceedings, the jury learns a bit about Fish's childhood: how his father died when he was five, and his mother wasn't well, so she sent him away.
30:24 Speaker 01 He spent around four years at an orphanage with caretakers who routinely whipped and abused him and the other boys, often in front of each other. On top of that, at least seven of his relatives had severe mental illnesses. His mother experienced auditory and visual hallucinations, and two of his relatives reportedly died in mental health facilities, or asylums as they were called at the time. A psychiatric doctor named Frederick Wertham testifies for the defense. He calls into question the evaluations Fish received at Bellevue and Kings County Hospitals earlier in his life. In fact, the prosecution intentionally casts blame on those doctors for releasing Fish back into the world.
31:09 Speaker 01 Dr. Wertham's time on the stand is easily the most shocking portion of the trial. Based on his frank and thorough interviews with Fish, he believes Fish sexually assaulted at least 100 different children over the course of his life, from New York to Montana, specifically targeting young boys from the age of 5 to 16. The doctor says Fish would gain their trust by offering the kids candy or pocket change before abducting, assaulting, and torturing them in unimaginable ways. And he derived pleasure from hearing their pained cries, some he kept locked away in shacks for weeks.
31:54 Speaker 01 Dr. Wertham testifies that, in his expert opinion, there's no doubt in his mind: Albert Fish is insane.
32:06 Speaker 01 Which is exactly what the defense needs to prove. They pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. But in any criminal case, insanity is not a medical term. It's a legal one. And for the defense to prove it, they need to show that Albert Fish didn't know what he was doing was wrong. There's no question that Grace Budd's murder was premeditated. Even if she wasn't Fish's initial target, the crime took time, planning, and deception. Throughout his life, Fish made serious efforts to evade capture. In fact, he admitted that he intentionally targeted black victims and kids from lower-income
32:46 Speaker 01 communities because he assumed police would be less likely to pursue their cases. And he was right. He may have written that letter to Delia Budd for reasons he couldn't explain, but he intentionally didn't sign his name. He knew there were consequences to his actions. But does having an understanding of cause and effect mean that he understood the wrongful nature of his acts? It's one of many questions the jury has to consider. Did Fish really experience remorse? How much weight should be given to his alleged delusions of religious grandeur? To the statements Fish made about God telling him to torment and castrate boys?
33:31 Speaker 01 To him drawing parallels between cannibalism and the act of holy communion? What in the testimony was true? And what was an attempt at avoiding death? When the prosecution calls their own psychiatrist to the stand to rebut Dr. Wertham's testimony, they each affirm the conclusions made at Bellevue and Kings County years earlier. One draws a distinction between someone who operates under a psychosis and someone who has a psychopathic personality. He says Fish is the second: troubled but sane.
34:10 Speaker 01 In the end, the jury renders their verdict. They find Fish guilty of first-degree murder, a decision that carries a mandatory sentence of death. They throw out the insanity defense. Fish and his lawyers file for an appeal, but the decision is ultimately upheld. And in prison, Fish adjusts to the idea of dying. For a piece that runs in the Daily News, he apparently tells a reporter that he thinks the electric chair will be a "supreme thrill," the only one he hasn't tried. In his final days, Fish confesses to two more murders: an eight-year-old boy from Staten
34:54 Speaker 01 Island named Francis McDonnell, who was found dead in the summer of 1924, and a four-year-old from Brooklyn named Billy Gaffney, who disappeared in 1927 and whose body was never found. But based on statements and interviews Fish gave in his lifetime, he's believed to have sexually assaulted, tortured, and disfigured hundreds of children in the United States over a 20-year period. And he's suspected of killing as many as 15 and cannibalizing at least a handful of them. The exact truth, however, dies with him.
35:41 Speaker 01 On January 16, 1936, at 65 years old, Albert Fish eats his final meal. He's then brought to the electric chair, sits down with his hands clasped in prayer, and becomes the oldest person ever executed at Sing Sing Prison. And whether he knows it or not, most of the jurors that put him there had, in fact, decided he was insane. They just felt it was probably best if he died anyway.
36:27 Speaker 01 Thanks for tuning in to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. We'll be back Monday with another episode. In the meantime, we're celebrating our 500th episode over on Instagram. When did you start listening? What has this podcast meant for you over the years? I'd be so grateful for your comments. One more time, that's at Serial Killers Podcast on Instagram. For more information on Albert Fish, we recommend checking out Harold Schechter's book, Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer. Among the many sources we used, we found it extremely helpful to our research. We've actually used many of Schechter's books over the years, and we always find them to be a wealth of information.
37:12 Speaker 01 Stay safe out there. This episode was written and researched by Connor Sampson, fact-checked by Lori Siegel, and sound designed by Alex Button. Special thanks to Chelsea Wood and Maggie Admire. Our head of programming is Julian Barrow. Our head of production is Nick Johnson, and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. I'm your host, Vanessa Richardson.
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38:12 Speaker 07 Now streaming on Paramount+. I'm Dexter Morgan. I've been killing killers for half my life. It gets to you. You're having a midlife crisis. I'm not ready for this. He's back. I'm older. I'm wiser. And sharper than ever. Things are gonna get messy. But if I can't believe in myself, I can't believe in anything. Dexter Resurrection. New season now streaming on the Paramount+ Premium Plan.
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