Albert-o

Albert Fish

“There is no known perversion that Albert Fish did not practice,” wrote the prison psychiatrist who interviewed 66-year-old Albert Fish in 1934. A housepainter and father of six children, Fish also happened to be a multiple killer, child molester, and cannibal. Claiming to have attacked over 100 children. This he revealed in a confession so shocking that even the prosecuting attorneys were loath to read it aloud in court.

Albert fish had been born in Washington, DC, his father, a riverboat captain, was seventy-five at the time. Various members of the family had mental problems and one suffered from religious mania. One brother was fibble-minded and another an alcoholic. His father died when Fish was five years old, and he was placed in an orphanage, from which he regulary ran away.

When he was 49 years old, his wife left him for another man. After that, Fish’s personality steadily deteriorated while his behavior became increasingly bizarre, and finally murderous. His victims were children who were deceived into his clutches by his friendly manner and grandfatherly appearance. A vicious sadist who performed unspeakable tortures on young victims. Fish also a masochist who forced his own children to beat him. He also liked to collect news clippings on latter-day cannibals like Fritz Haarmann, otherwise known as “The Hanover Vampire.”

In 1928, Fish indulged his taste for human flesh on a 12-year-old girl named Grace Budd. She was the daughter of parents who knew and trusted Fish. When fish offered to take her to a party for children, they let him do so without any misgivings. Instead of a party, Fish took Grace to his cottage in Westchester county, New York. Stripping himself naked, Fish strangled the child, and then beheaded and dismembered her with a meat cleaver. He then cooked her body parts into a stew seasoned with onions and carrots. Albert Fish then consumed this grisly repast down to the last awful morsel, then he vanished.

Several years later, Grace’s parents recieved a letter from fish, telling them exactly what he had done to their little girl. The letter he had sent to the girl’s parents was traced back to a rented room in Manhattan. Fish was apprehended and brought to trial soon after. The jury discounted his insanity plea and sentenced him to death by electric chair.

A routine X-ray revealed 29 seperate needles inserted around his groin, several were large sailmaker’s needles, which were endangering his bladder and vital organs. Fish confessed that he had been inserting and removing needles for years. He also liked sticking needles into his child victims. He always seemed to enjoy inflicting pain, even soaking bits of cotton wool, saturating them with alcohol, inserting them in his rectum and setting fire to them.

He was executed on January 16, 1936. In New York’s Sing Sing. While waiting to be executed, in his final minutes, he remarked that this was “the supreme thrill, the only one I haven’t tried.” He even help the executioner to attach the electrodes to his leg.

In his own words “I learned to like the taste of human flesh many years ago during a famine in China. It is something like veal. Little girls have more flavour than little boys.”