Albert Fish: The Sweet Little Old Man... Who Ate Children

He Looked Like Everyone's Favorite Grandpa. He Was Pure Evil.

White hair. White mustache. Kind eyes. Soft voice. Standing only 5'5" and weighing around 130 lbs. He always wore a suit, even when painting houses. Neighbors called him “Grandpa Fish.” Children waved at him on the street. Yet for over three decades this harmless looking old man was one of, if not the, most sadistic child killers in American history.

Not gonna lie this story gets pretty graphic, so fair warning...

A Childhood Forged in Pain and Madness

Born Hamilton Howard Fish on May 19, 1870, in Washington D.C. His father was 75, his mother 32. Mental illness ran deep in his family tree: one brother was in an asylum, another was an alcoholic and a sister with “religious mania.” By age five his father was dead and his mother placed him in St. John’s Orphanage. There the nuns beat the boys naked in front of the entire hall.

Fish later said: “I enjoyed it. I saw boys doing things that gave me pain and pleasure at the same time.”

At age 12 he began inserting needles into his groin area and testicles. By 15 he was a prostitute on the streets. By 20 he'd progressed to raping young boys. Surprisingly Fish was married an eighteen-year-old woman, Anna, when he was twenty-eight. They had six children, but Anna left him after almost 20 years of marriage in 1917. They never got a proper divorce, but Fish raised the children and was said to have been a good father.

It is said he had three other marriages (very short), and rumours at the time suggested he was being sexual with a stepdaughter named Mary. By 1930 Fish had already been arrested six times. He served a short term in prison, and twice in a mental-hospital. These were for passing a bad check, embezzling... and continually writing extremely graphic, sadomasochistic letters to random women.

The Kill List (Confirmed and Strongly Suspected)

• Cyrus McCormick, 4 – 1898 (Fish claimed, never verified)
• Francis X. McDonnell, 8 – July 14, 1924, Staten Island. Lured into woods, strangled, genitals cut off.
• Billy Gaffney, 4 – February 11, 1927, Brooklyn. Snatched from hallway. Fish stated: “I took him to a dump, cut him up, cooked the pieces with bacon. I ate him over nine days. His little penis I roasted and ate first.”
• Grace Budd, 10 – June 3, 1928, Manhattan. The case that finally ended him.

Fish claimed he had killed children in all 23 states he worked in. Police found suspicious matches in at least 12 cases.

The Day He Took Grace Budd

May 28, 1928 – Edward Budd, 18, places ad in the New York World: “Young man, 18, wishes position in country.” Fish sees it and decides he wants Edward… then changes his mind when he sees Grace.

June 3, 1928 – Arrives at 406 West 15th Street as “Frank Howard, Long Island farmer.” Brings strawberries, pot cheese, and charm. Spends hours talking. Offers Edward $15/week farm work. Then asks to take Grace to his “niece’s birthday party” at 137th Street and Broadway. Parents say yes. Fish takes Grace by the hand and disappears into the subway.

He never went to any party. He took her to the abandoned Wisteria Cottage in Worthington Woods, Westchester. Left her picking flowers. Stripped naked. Called her inside. Strangled her when she screamed. Beheaded her. Dismembered her with a meat saw, cleaver, and butcher knife he bought specifically for the job.

The Diabolical Nine-Day Feast

Fish cooked Grace into a stew with carrots, onions, and bacon strips. Ate her over the next nine days. During his confession he casually stated with zero remorse:

“I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as her sweet fat little behind did. I ate her entire body except the head, guts, and bones. It took me nine days.”

Jesus Christ...

The Cannibal Letter: The Most Evil Document Ever Written

November 11, 1934 – Delia Budd (Grace's Mom) receives an unsigned letter on Western Union stationery. It included...

“My dear Mrs Budd, In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the steamer Tacoma, Capt John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco to 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 12 were sold to the butchers to be cut up and sold for food.

A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak, chops or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. […] Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her.”

Police, luckily, were able to trace the envelope to a rooming house at 622 Lexington Avenue. When Fish returned for more stationery and walked straight into Detective William King and he had finally been caught.

The Needles: 29 Metal Spikes in His Pelvis

An X-ray taken December 1934 at Bellevue showed: 29 needles visible, some 3 inches long, some rusted to nubs in Fish's grion and testicles. Fish said he inserted them himself over 20+ years. When one went too deep he left it. Doctors counted 27 more too eroded to see clearly.

Other Hobbies: Coprophagia, Religious Delusions, and Self-Torture

• Ate his own feces and drank urine
• Inserted alcohol-soaked cotton balls into his anus and set them on fire
• Whipped himself with a nail-studded paddle until he bled
• Believed God commanded him to kill children (quoted Abraham and Isaac)
• Wrote obscene letters to widows from matrimonial ads

The Trial: March 11–25, 1935

White Plains Courthouse. 10-day spectacle. Jury saw the X-ray, heard the letter read aloud, listened to Fish calmly describe eating Grace’s ears “raw, like oysters.”

Defense psychiatrist Fredric Wertham: “He is the most sexually perverted human being I have ever examined.”

Jury Verdict: “Sane and guilty.”

Sentence: DEATH.

Execution: January 16, 1936, Sing Sing

Fish helped strap the electrodes.

Last meal: Steak, rare (of course).

Last words: “I don’t know why I’m here.”

First jolt: 3,000 volts. The needles short-circuited the chair – sparks flew, smoke rose.

Guards hit the switch to electrocute him again.

He was finally dead at 11:09 a.m.

His final unpublished manuscript (found in his cell) began: “I have always had the desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me…”

Theories and Likelihood

1. Extreme Sadomasochistic Psychosis + Religious Delusion
Likelihood: 100%

2. 100+ Victims Nationwide
Likelihood: 80%

3. Occult/Satanic Motivation
Likelihood: 10%

Complete Timeline

Sources

1. Harold Schechter – “Deranged” (1990) – definitive biography
2. Fredric Wertham trial testimony
3. New York Daily News & World archives 1934–1936
4. Sing Sing execution log
5. Albert Fish’s own letters and confessions (court exhibits)

Final Verdict

THE SINGLE MOST DEPRAVED MONSTER IN AMERICAN CRIME HISTORY. Albert Fish didn’t just kill children – he savoured them for days, wrote poetry about it, thanked God for the privilege, and when they finally fried him the needles in his balls made the chair explode like fireworks. From 1898 to 1936 the Boogeyman was absolutely real, and he looked like the nice old man.