Fish in his youth.

In principle, Fish's sexual preferences would have excited few people, except, perhaps, his wife. However, from harassment and rape of boys, Hamilton, who changed his name to Albert, moves on to murders. According to Fish, the first of them happened back in 1910, but it was not possible to find the body of the murdered Thomas Bedden.

Fish after his arrest.

And the first documented incident was the kidnapping of Francis McDonell. An 8-year-old boy was playing in the playground on July 14, 1924. Witnesses saw him leave with an elderly grey-whiskered man.
A few hours later, the body of a boy was found in the forest - raped, brutally beaten, strangled with suspenders. They searched for the killer, but to no avail.
In 1927, Billy Gafney becomes a victim of a maniac. Two children were playing near the house. They went missing, but the neighbor's boy, Billy Beaton, was found on the roof of the house. Beaton and said that his four-year-old friend was taken away by "Boogie Man" - an elderly gray-whiskered man in gray.

The events of 1928 brought Fish new "names". Under the name of Frank Howard, he met 17-year-old Edward, who was looking for work. "Howard" met the boy's family and made a wonderful impression on them as a respectable elderly gentleman. During a recent visit, Fish offered to take Edward's younger sister to the party. After that, no one saw the ten-year-old Grace Budd.
The police were looking for the girl. Pretty quickly, they managed to establish that Howard does not exist in nature. The investigation went on for several months, but even the girl's body was not found.

Dressed in her best evening dress, the gullible little girl went with Fish to the northern suburbs of New York, to an abandoned secluded house. There he strangled her, cut the body and cut several pieces out of it.
Back at home, Fish cooked this "tender meat" (as he called it) into a cannibal stew seasoned with carrots, onions, and bits of bacon. He spent the next nine days locked in his room, devouring this terrible food and masturbating.

And after 7 years, the Budd family received a letter. The mother was not strong in literacy and gave the anonymous message to her son Edward to read, who immediately turned to the police. The letter was written on behalf of the same Howard, who told how he took the girl away, recalled the details of that day, how he brought her to an empty house, strangled, butchered and ate.
It was all spelled out in sickening detail. In particular, it was indicated that it took the killer 9 days to eat all the prepared meat. That's how the maniac turned into the "Brooklyn Vampire".
It was this letter that led to the killer of Detective William King. According to a specific stamp on paper, it was possible to calculate the place of his residence, where the criminal was caught.

During the investigation, the murder of three children was proved, although it is assumed that there were 15 of them. Fish willingly shared his memories of the process, how he cut the bodies of children, how he cooked and what pleasure he received from food.
The famous New York psychiatrist Dr. Frederick Wertham, whom the defense called in to examine Fish, said that the old man engaged in "every known sexual perversion", as well as some others that no one had ever even heard of (thus, Fish took special pleasure inserting a rose cutting into your urethra).
An x-ray of the pelvic region taken by Fishu in prison showed that around Bladder he had twenty-nine needles stuck in him, which he put into himself.

Needles in Fish's crotch.

Although at the trial in 1935 the jury found Fish mentally ill, their verdict was unanimous - the highest measure. After the death sentence was pronounced, this crazy old man exclaimed: "What a delight to die in the electric chair! It will be the highest pleasure - the only one that I have not yet experienced!"
On January 16, 1936, the sixty-five-year-old Fish sat in the electric chair - he was the oldest person ever executed in Sing Sing prison.

The "Hanoverian Vampire" Fritz Harmann, one of the world's most notorious sex killers, was born into a working-class family in Hannover, Germany, in 1879. As a child, he was sullen, withdrawn and retarded; his favorite pastime is dressing up in women's clothing.
At the age of seventeen, he ended up in a psychiatric hospital after trying to seduce children. Six months later he fled to Switzerland and then returned to Hanover.

For some time, Haarmann tried to lead a respectable life. He got a job at a tobacco factory and wooed a young girl. But this relatively normal period was short-lived. Haarmann left his fiancée and enlisted in the army.
Serve in the 10th Jaeger Battalion, based in Colmar (Alsace). There is no evidence that Haarmann took part in the fighting in the First World War, but after Haarmann's dismissal from the army in 1918, he received a good pension, which allowed Fritz to open a candy store in Hannover. In his shop, Haarmann sold not only cakes, but also meat, which was not unusual in those hungry times.

According to other sources, Haarmann returned to native city and became a member of a group of smugglers who traded, among other things, selling beef on the black market.
In addition, he worked for the police as a decoy duck and a snitch, which for some time provided him with protection from possible arrest. However, in 1919, Haarmann was caught in bed with a boy, and he ended up in prison.
And nine months later, after his release, his truly bloody path began. Settling in a Hanoverian slum, he fell under the influence of a homosexual Hans Grans, who was engaged in prostitution.
Together, Haarmann and Grans began to hunt down, rape and kill young male refugees, who were very numerous in the post-war city.

Hatmann and Grans.

Although Haarmann was charged with twenty-seven murders, in reality he committed, most likely, at least fifty. He always used the same method. Having lured the hungry young man into his room, Haarmann first fed him, and then beat and twisted him (often with the help of Grans), after which the victim was raped, and then Hartman dug his teeth into the unfortunate throat and pulled out the larynx. This brought him great sexual pleasure.
Haarmann and Grans then dismembered the body and sold it to buyers under the guise of beef on the black market. The clothes of the victim were also sold, and inedible bones and offal were thrown into the canal.
As the number of disappearances of young people grew, the police became suspicious of Haarmann. One woman who bought "beef" from him realized that it was human meat and contacted the police. However, for a long time, Hartmann was saved by his handler from the police.

In the summer of 1924, several skulls and a pile of bones were found on the banks of the canal. On June 22, 1924, Haarmann tried to force a young man named Fromm, who was sleeping at the station, to go with him to "eat meat."
The guy did not want to, he heard about the murders of tramps from the Hannover station and refused. Haarmann tried to take the young man away by force. Fromm resisted, the police arrived at the station and detained both. In the precinct, Fromm confidently stated that Haarmann had dirtyly pestered him. And also reminded of the rumors about the killing of people from the station.
The police listened to Fromm's words. Haarmann, despite his belonging to the police, was left in the cell. His shop was searched. They found the remains of human bodies, and Grans was found in the shop at the moment when he butchered the body of a guy who disappeared from the station a few days ago.

Eventually Haarmann confessed to his crimes. In 1924 he was tried, found guilty and sentenced to death. At the trial, Fritz Haarmann admitted that he had killed 24 boys between 1918 and 1924. However, the number of corpses, according to the investigation, was 27. All the victims were between the ages of 10 and 22 years.
Hans Grans was charged with complicity in crimes and sentenced to death. The sentence was later reviewed and changed to 12 years in prison. After hearing the verdict, Haarmann first fell into a stupor, and then laughed. - I'll be back anyway! he shouted. "You know that vampires are immortal!"

While awaiting execution, the “Hanoverian Vampire” (as the newspapermen dubbed him) composed a whole report in which he described without remorse what joy the committed atrocities brought him.
In the early morning of April 15, 1925, in the courtyard of the Hannover prison, the sentence was carried out. The head was made available to research scientists. For a long time she was in Goetingen, and the four parts of the brain - in Munich. Researchers have not been able to explain Haarman's passion for drinking other people's blood.

Hatman head.

Many media of the time claimed that Haarmann's head was cut off with a sword, which was consecrated in the church. After the arrest of the maniac, the relatives of the alleged victims of Haarmann studied his wardrobe, and it turned out that absolutely all the clothes of the Hanoverian vampire and his lover consisted of the things of their victims. Relatives of the victims argued with each other about who owns the most expensive clothes, trying to take someone else's.
Haarmann did not kill a single woman. He considered them "repositories of vice and distributors of venereal diseases." That is why he disdained their blood. The Hanoverian maniac did not want to kill just like that. And the Bible doesn't allow it. He was generally quite a religious person.

Monument to the victims of Khatman. The collected bones and fragments were buried in a mass grave.

Albert Fish is one of the most brutal maniacs in history. He only killed children and adolescents, raping and brutally torturing them and eating their flesh before dying. And then, already in prison, Fish wrote letters to the parents of his victims, describing in detail what exactly he did with the children and how they died in agony. Albert Fish was executed in the electric chair in 1936, but terrible legends about him still circulate in America. Which of these legends is true?

Fish was a racist

In the first half of the 20th century, when Fish was committing his crimes, the social and racial attitudes that prevailed in America were very different from what they are now. Racism was universal, and the attitude towards the mentally ill was far from today's political correctness. Fish was no exception. Being a racist by conviction, he chose either black or mentally ill children and adolescents as victims, considering himself to be something of a social orderly.

The investigation concealed that Fish was a cannibal

Already in the course of the hearings, the investigators and judges, by common agreement, changed the accusations against Albert Fish so as not to shock the society and relatives of the victims with information about the maniac's cannibalism. Investigators and judges unanimously declared that Fish's crimes "were sexually motivated." Although Fish himself said that when, for example, he killed 10-year-old Grace Budd, it “didn’t even occur to him” to rape her. However, at the same time, he admitted that when he strangled Grace, he experienced sexual release. This lead was enough for the court to classify his acts as "sexually motivated", hiding the terrible truth about Fish's cannibalism from the public - at least for a while.

Fish had a tough childhood

Like many maniacs, Fish came from a troubled family. His father was 43 years older than his mother. Almost all members of the family suffered from mental illness: his uncle suffered from an obsessive disorder, his brother was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, his sister suffered from depression, his father suffered from alcoholism, and his mother suffered from hallucinations. In addition, one of his brothers died of hydrocephalus - it is noteworthy that it was in honor of him that Fish took the name Albert, although at birth he received the name Hamilton.

Fish was married and had children

Despite the fact that Fish maintained relationships with men from his youth, his mother still managed to arrange his marriage to a woman 9 years younger than him. They had six children: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John and Henry. However, after Fish went to jail for theft, his wife ran away from him, leaving the children in his care. The guardian turned out to be, to put it mildly, unimportant: then his children told that their father played sexual games with them, forced them to whip himself with a whip and drive nails and needles into his body. So Fish's own family life was no better than life in his parents' house.

Fish's biography, as well as his behavior, clearly indicate that he was a mentally ill person. During the investigation, he stated that he heard a divine voice ordering him to torture and kill his victims. A forensic psychiatrist who spoke during Fish's trial confirmed that this was entirely possible, declaring the perpetrator insane. However, Fish's crimes were so resonant that, after long discussions, the court recognized the maniac as capable of being conscious of his actions, and therefore sane. So what kind of mental illness Fish had and whether he really heard voices ordering him to kill, it was not possible to find out.

Grace Budd became an accidental victim

One of Fish's most famous victims was 10-year-old Grace Budd, whom Fish brutally killed and ate in 1928, six years before his capture. However, the child fell victim to a cruel maniac quite by accident.

Fish came to the Budd house to take Grace's brother, 18-year-old Edward Budd, with him - it was he who was intended to be the victim. The previous day, Edward had posted an ad in the newspaper that he was looking for work on a farm. Fish came to Baddam, posing as a farmer, to take the young man with him and subsequently, luring him into a deserted place, kill him, mocking him. But when he saw 10-year-old Grace Budd in the house, his plans instantly changed: under a plausible pretext, he postponed his departure “to the farm” with Edward, told the girl’s parents that his niece’s birthday would be celebrated in the evening, and asked them to let Grace go with him . They agreed - and never saw their daughter alive again. Subsequently, Fish admitted that he turned his attention to Grace, deciding that her flesh would be much tastier.

Fish killed his first victim in his 40s.

At the age of 40, being a married man, Fish started a homosexual relationship with a mentally handicapped 19-year-old boy named Thomas Kedden. It was he who became the first victim of a maniac. Fish took Kedden to an empty barn, tied him up, and tortured him for two weeks with a saw and a meat axe. “I will never forget his screams and the way he looked at me,” Fish later admitted. In the end, he cut off the still living young man's genitals. Fish originally wanted to butcher him, take the meat home and eat it, but was afraid of being caught, so he simply left the body in the barn.

Fish is the record holder for the number of nicknames

Since Fish is still considered America's most feared maniac, it is not surprising that reporters and simple people gave him many nicknames. Among them are the “Gray Man”, “Werwolf or “Wisteria” (Fisch’s summer house was called “Wisteria Cottage”), “Boogie Man”, “Brooklyn Vampire” (he received this nickname after it became known that he drank the blood of his victims) and "Moon Maniac". In addition, Fish has repeatedly appeared as a prototype in novels and horror films: for example, he is mentioned in the novel Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub and the film House of 1000 Corpses.

Fish grew up in a shelter

After Fish's father died when the boy was five years old, his mother gave him to an orphanage, where he spent several years. The morals in the orphanage were cruel, the pupils were often flogged with rods, and the kids were also beaten by older children. It was at the orphanage that Fish first realized that pain brought him sexual satisfaction. He began to ask other boys to beat him. They, of course, did not refuse, but in return they subjected him to ridicule and mockery for his perverted tastes. So the broken psyche of Fish combined pain and pleasure in childhood.

Fish has been a sex pervert since he was 12

At the age of 12, Fish started his first homosexual romance, having entered into a relationship with a mail boy who delivered telegrams. He opened the world of sexual perversions before the future maniac. With him, Fish began practicing urophagy and coprophagy, as well as going to public baths to look at naked boys. For many years it became his favorite pastime.

Fish worked as a prostitute

At the age of 20, Fish went to New York, in order, by his own admission, to engage in prostitution there. He lived in New York for eight years, in his spare time driving around the city, where he looked out for boys with whom he spoke, seduced or took away by deceit, raping in desert places. Fish liked this practice so much that he subsequently expanded his area of ​​operations to the whole country. Already arrested, he boasted that he "raped at least one boy in every state." The investigation was unable to verify these statements due to the prescription of years, but, judging by the confessions of Fish himself and indirect evidence, during that period he raped at least a hundred boys and youths.

Fish ate only raw meat

After Fish served several years in prison for theft, his tastes completely changed. He fell in love with meat, and ate it exclusively raw. As the investigation later showed, it was during that period that he became interested in the topic of cannibalism and began to collect literature on this issue. By the way, at the same time, other oddities appeared in his behavior. At the urging of his mother, he even showed himself to a psychiatrist, who found him "a man with mental problems, but sane." Alas, psychiatry was only in its infancy at that time - if the examination had been more professional, how many troubles could have been avoided!

Fish loved self-torture

Fish specially made a nine-tailed whip for himself and often whipped himself with it. But the greatest satisfaction brought him when his own or neighbor's children whipped him with a whip. He asked to drive needles into his genitals and buttocks, and also set fire to rags soaked in kerosene on his own body. When Fish found out that he was about to be executed in the electric chair, he exclaimed: "This is going to be the most amazing adventure of my life!" After his execution, there were even rumors that at the first attempt, the electric chair shorted out due to the numerous needles that Fish drove into his flesh.

First letter from the victim's mother

Already in prison, Fish wrote a letter to the unfortunate mother of the murdered Grace Budd, in which he described in detail the process of killing the girl. He told how he lured her into an empty house, how, seeing him completely naked, the girl cried and tried to escape, how he tortured Grace and strangled her, and how, in the end, he cooked and ate her flesh. “In nine days I ate it whole,” Fish wrote. The most terrible thing in this story is that Grace's mother could not read, and Grace's older brother had to read the letter to her - the one who miraculously escaped death, because the maniac decided to kill his sister instead of him.

Second letter from the victim's mother

One of Fish's victims was four-year-old Bill Gaffney from New York. His body was never found, and after the maniac was arrested, Gaffney's mother came to his prison to beg him to tell her what had become of her son. In response, Fish wrote her a detailed letter, tastefully describing the torment of Gaffney, whom he stabbed while still alive and gouged out his eyes. In the end, Fish reports, he ate the boy's flesh and dumped the remains in a landfill along with his clothes. No one knows how true this terrible letter was. One thing is known - the boy's body was never found.

Albert Fish, nicknamed "The Brooklyn Vampire", is one of the most scary maniacs XX century. His victims were only small children, whom he first killed and then ate.

perversions this person were so incredible and terrible that it seemed that not a single person doubted his sick psyche.

However, a little later, the “Brooklyn vampire” was recognized as absolutely sane, after which he was sentenced to death.

A little biography

Albert Fish's real name is Hamilton Fish. He was born in Washington in 1870 in a very prosperous family. Despite this, there are rumors that many of his relatives suffered from various mental disorders and delusions, which affected the teenager. Little Fish studied and grew up not in an ordinary school, but in a boarding school.

The discipline, it must be said, was very severe there, and therefore Hamilton, like other students, was not only constantly subjected to various corporal punishments, but also witnessed how other guys were “taught a lesson”. It was in the boarding school that Fish realized that he was experiencing sexual arousal from such spectacles, and there he had his first experience of homosexual contacts. Hamilton moved from Washington to New York when he was 18.

Bad memories of the years of study affected the young man, and he decided to change his name - so Hamilton became Albert. A few years later, at the urging of his mother, Fish married a young girl and became the father of six children. His wife, even after Albert was caught and accused of numerous murders, until the last moment assured everyone that he had always been a kind and attentive family man, although she did not deny that some strange things sometimes happened to him.

First hunt

Fish was first arrested in 1903. Then he was accused of robbing the store where he worked. After the trial, Albert spent two years in prison. It is worth noting right away that it was not this case that glorified him - Fish got into the history of forensic science not as a robber, but as a serial maniac. The man acquired such a “status” only in 1920, when his age was approaching 50. However, the police who conducted the investigation managed to find out that he committed his first murder, the victim of which was a child, in 1910 in the city of Wilmington.

In addition, during these ten years, Fish constantly raped little boys, but each time he always managed to get away with punishment. On July 14, 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDoneld disappeared from the playground. According to eyewitnesses, last time he was seen playing with a thin, gray-haired man dressed in a gray coat, after which they left together in an unknown direction.

After several hours of searching through the forest, Francis was found, or rather, his body. An examination showed that before his death, the child was severely beaten and raped, after which he was strangled with his own suspenders. So the police began a large-scale search for the killer, called the "gray man", but in this case, the investigation into the murder of Francis did not bring any results.

On February 1, 1927, four-year-old Billy Gafnia went missing near his home. According to the neighbor boys with whom the kid was playing, a certain gray-haired and thin man with thick eyebrows and mustaches approached them, and after talking a little, left with Billy. By the way, this time the body of the child was never found.

On June 3, 1928, there was another episode involving Fish, but this time it was fundamentally different from the previous two. Seventeen-year-old Edward Budd was hard at work looking for a job. Some time later, when all possible options were considered, the young man decided to place an ad in the local newspaper, after which he soon got a call from a man who introduced himself as Howard Frank. After talking with the stranger, Edward made an appointment for him at his home.

The first impression that Howard made on the Budd family was very positive - a thin old man with a gray mustache was polite, attentive to children and quite pleasant in communication - he instantly won the sympathy of the head of the family. During his last visit to the Bad Dam, Fish met one of their daughters, ten-year-old Grace. After talking with her, he suggested that parents take the baby to children's holiday, where there will be a lot of guys, assuring them that he himself is heading there now.

Those, at first a little hesitant, nevertheless released their daughter with an unfamiliar man and thereby signed Grace's sentence. Needless to say, the little girl who left with Howard, who was Albert Fish himself, never saw her parents again! After the Budds' statement about the disappearance of their daughter, the police immediately began searching for the girl, but they did not succeed in anything worthwhile. It is clear that no Frank Howard was found in New York, which means that no trace of the child was found either. A few months later, the Grace Budd disappearance case was closed, since no one could find evidence that the girl was killed.

10 years later…

Albert Fish, whose mind had become even more confused during all this time, betrayed himself - he wrote a letter to Grace Budd's parents, in which he described in detail everything that he had done with the poor baby. It follows from his words that he rented a house in advance, where he brought the unfortunate child, after which he undressed her, strangled her, and then cut off all the soft parts from her body and ate them for nine days, after roasting them in the oven.

After such a letter, submitted by Grace's parents to the police, the case of the girl's disappearance was resumed, but the maniac was identified, as usual, quite by accident. It is not known exactly how many children the serial killer "Brooklyn Vampire", aka "Gray Ghost", "Moon Maniac", "Boogie Man" killed, but this number ranges from 7 to 15, although Fish himself claimed that there were much more victims .

During interrogations, he told in detail how he raped the unfortunate kids, how he killed them, after which he cooked food from them. It is worth noting that Fish tried to pretend to be a mentally ill person, but doctors recognized him as sane and, as a result, the death penalty in the electric chair.

By the way, the verdict of the maniac naturally did not suit him, although he considered such a punishment very entertaining. On the morning of January 16, 1936, Albert Fish, who was considered the oldest prisoner in Sing Sing prison and, perhaps, one of the most terrible maniacs in the United States, was executed ...

"Mysticism", No. 10, 2013

For more than 30 years, cannibal Albert Fish hunted children in 23 states of America, remaining elusive. The number of his victims ranges from 4 to 20. From impunity, he lost his sense of fear and wrote a letter to the parents of the girl he had killed. And it helped the police get on his trail.

Most likely, Albert Fish, a native of the District of Columbia (USA), was destined to remain forever in the history of mankind as a bloody cannibal. I must say that many of his relatives had a bad heredity - a predisposition to mental illness and not only.

Hamilton Fish's mother suffered from hallucinations and sleepwalking. Later, one of the brothers died of hydrocephalus, the second drank himself and degraded, and Hamilton's sister went crazy. By the way, in the police files, he most often went under the pseudonyms "Moon Maniac" or "Gray Ghost".

May 19, 1870 in Washington, in the family of the former captain of the river steamer Randall Fish, the fourth child was born. History is silent about whether the elderly father was glad (Fish was 43 years older than his wife!), This addition to the family. He already had a daughter, Annie, and two sons, Walter and Edwin. Judging by the later life of the youngest son, named Hamilton, his birth was clearly superfluous. With the difference that in the 19th century, women gave birth many and often, having no idea about modern methods contraception. And abortion was considered a crime.

In 1875, the elderly father of five-year-old Hamilton died of a heart attack, and then life showed the boy that he was really superfluous in the family - his mother immediately gave him to an orphanage. There, the future cannibal maniac was born in him. Orders in the shelter were to match the prison. The educators mercilessly punished the children for the slightest offense, and the older pupils themselves mocked the younger ones as they wanted.

Little Hamilton immediately became the subject of ridicule and bullying - he peed in bed at night for fear of beatings. For his cowardly nature, he was nicknamed "Ham and Eggs", a nickname that haunted him for many years. But it was then that Hamilton (he could not stand his name and wanted everyone to call him Albert) realized that he got some especially pleasant sensations from beatings - an erection began from physical pain. This was an occasion for new ridicule and bullying from peers, but the boy did not care about them - he enjoyed himself.

In 1879, his mother was able to pick up Albert from the orphanage - she finally found a job. She did not know what was happening with her son, who mentally already lived somewhere there, in his terrible dreams and dreams. In 1882, 12-year-old Albert Fish became a homosexual - entered into a relationship with a boy, a peddler of mail. Then he needed
eat your excrement and drink your urine. The mother did not know about all this, just as she did not know that her son disappears in a public bathhouse on weekends in order to be able to see naked boys, and, if possible, touch them.

Rapist pedophile

Fish arrived in New York in 1890 as a twenty-year-old youth, experienced in all carnal sins. Later, after his arrest, he said that the goal was to engage in prostitution - he wanted to earn money. But unexpectedly, he went into all serious trouble as a rapist pedophile. He worked according to one scenario - he lured small children away from home by deceit, and then in a secluded place he first tortured (his favorite torture is a paddle with nails!), And then he raped. Most often, such torture "ended with the killing of victims and the eating of human flesh.

In 1903, he was arrested for theft and briefly imprisoned. Most likely, the mother suspected of his sins, or even knew, and therefore hastened to marry the dissolute son. A modest wedding took place in 1898, his wife was nine years younger than Albert Fish. Soon they had a son, named Albert, and then five more children - two daughters and three sons. Family life lasted almost 19 years, until in 1917 the wife ran away from Fish with her lover.

Her escape was followed by a series of new crimes. Now Albert Fish deliberately roamed the states looking for gullible little victims. Most often in black neighborhoods, believing that the impoverished parents of the child will not particularly look for him. The orgies of the maniac began with the fact that the child, at the request of Uncle Albert, beat him with the same oar with nails and stuck needles into his body, and the bloodied Albert Fish literally trudged from this. Then the beaten Albert Fish armed himself with a cleaver and knives for cutting meat and killed his "executioner". This was followed by rape and a terrible cannibal meal.

On July 14, 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDonell disappeared from the playground. Witnesses saw the boy playing with a gray-haired man, with whom he left in an unknown direction. The boy's body was found after several hours of intense searching. It was terrifying to look at - the child was severely beaten, raped and strangled with his own suspenders. The killer was never found.

Once again, a killer with the same signs appeared on February 1, 1927, when four-year-old Billy Gafnia, who was playing near his house, went missing. This time the child was not found, dead or alive.

In June 1928, Albert Fish slightly changed the script for searching for victims. In the newspaper, he found an ad for 18-year-old Edward Budd, the guy was looking for a part-time job. Calling himself Frank Howard, Fish met with the guy and his family and made them pleasant impression. Albert Fish posed as a farmer in need of seasonal workers. The guy and his parents liked the job and the salary was good. A few days later, Fish came again, brought gifts for the children - well, just a loving grandfather! After dinner, he said that he was invited to a children's party, and persuaded him to let ten-year-old Grace go with him. The girl disappeared, and her six-year search was never successful.

At the same time, Albert Fish was busy writing disgusting letters to women who placed ads in newspapers about acquaintances. True, he did not receive any answers - the women were in shock. Later in court, these letters became one of the evidence.

Letter from Albert Fish

On the trail of a cannibal maniac, the police came out only a few years later. On November 11, 1934, Grace's parents unexpectedly received an anonymous letter, the author of which told in chilling detail how he killed Grace and other children and ate their flesh. Lines from this letter were later quoted in court:

“... On Sunday, June 3, 1928, I addressed you at the address: house 406, Boya West Street. Brought you a basket of strawberries. We had breakfast. Grace sat on my lap and kissed me. I decided to eat it and did it ... - wrote Albert Fish. “…Oh, how she kicked, bit and scratched!” But I strangled her, and then cut out the soft parts of the body ... It took me 9 days to completely eat her meat. I didn't copulate with her, although I could if I wanted to. She died a virgin!"

Criminologists found a rooming house, the guests of which used the postal paper on which this letter was written, and went to Fish. True, he had already managed to move out of there, but the exiled chase overtook him.

After the arrest, Fish literally shocked the investigators with the details of his bloody feasts ... He savored every detail, as if he were experiencing the same pleasure again. He told how he butchered children's bodies, from which he prepared breakfast, lunch and dinner ...

Grace Budd's murder trial began on March 11, 1935 in New York City. In court, Albert Fish played weird, pretended to be crazy and assured the respected court that he was mentally ill, that he constantly heard the voice of God, who ordered him to kill children. The psychiatrists who conducted Fish's sanity tests were never able to come to a unanimous conclusion. As a result, Fish was recognized as sane. By the way, the 17-year-old stepdaughter of the maniac spoke on the side of the defense in court, who told how he taught from childhood
them to sado-masochistic games.

The court found Albert Fish guilty and sentenced him to death in the electric chair. And then Albert Fish remembered another murder of a child, eight-year-old Francis McDonell, and testified. In total, 3 murders were proven, although he himself confessed to twenty ...

Albert Fish is considered the worst maniac in US history. He was called "vampire", "werewolf", "ghost" for his addiction to human meat. Fish hunted children, raped them and ate them. It is believed that Fish suffered from a severe mental disorder, but, nevertheless, a medical examination found him sane and cognizable.

Fish was born, then called Hamilton, in Washington in 1870. His father was 43 years older than his wife. Hamilton found himself in the family youngest child out of four. At the age of five, the boy lost his father, his mother gave him to an orphanage. There, beatings were a common method of punishment, but it turned out that Hamilton liked to watch the beating of "colleagues", and even more to receive punishment himself. The pain in him caused an erection, which in turn caused ridicule from other children.

A few years later, the mother managed to get Good work, and she took her son from the boarding school. But life in the shelter and mental disorders among the representatives of the Fish family did not go unnoticed. At the age of 12, the boy gets his first homosexual experience with the postman.

At the same time, visiting public baths becomes Hamilton's favorite pastime. In 1890, Fish goes to New York to work as a "prostitute", simultaneously harassing boys and raping them.
After a while, in 1898, the mother manages to organize her son's marriage. By the way, the wife considered her husband a good family man, bore him six children. Yes, sometimes there were oddities in his behavior, but in general everything was fine, according to his wife.

In 1903, on charges of embezzlement, Fish ends up in Sing Sing prison, where he spends two years continuing his homosexual contacts.

In principle, Fish's sexual preferences would have excited few people, except, perhaps, his wife. However, from harassment and rape of boys, Hamilton, who changed his name to Albert, moves on to murders. According to Fish's stories, the first of them happened back in 1910, but it was not possible to find the body of Thomas Bedden.

And the first documented incident was the kidnapping of Francis McDonell. An 8-year-old boy was playing in the playground on July 14, 1924. Witnesses saw him leave with an elderly grey-whiskered man. A few hours later, the body of a boy was found in the forest - raped, beaten, strangled with suspenders. The man was searched, but to no avail.

In 1927, Billy Gafney becomes a victim of a maniac. Two children were playing near the house. They went missing, but the neighbor's boy, Billy Beaton, was found on the roof of the house. Beaton and said that his four-year-old friend was taken away by "Boogie Man" - an elderly gray-whiskered man in gray.

The events of 1928 brought Fish new "names". Under the name of Frank Howard, he met 17-year-old Edward, who was looking for work. "Howard" met the boy's family and made a wonderful impression on them as a respectable elderly gentleman. During a recent visit, Fish offered to take Edward's younger sister to the party. After that, no one saw the ten-year-old Grace Budd.

The police were looking for the girl. Pretty quickly, they managed to establish that Howard does not exist in nature. The investigation went on for several months, but even the girl's body was not found.

And after 7 years, the Budd family received a letter. The mother was not strong in literacy and gave the anonymous message to her son Edward to read, who immediately turned to the police. The letter was written on behalf of the same Howard, who told how he took the girl away, recalled the details of that day, how he brought her to an empty house, strangled, butchered and ate.

It was all spelled out in sickening detail. In particular, it was indicated that it took the killer 9 days to eat all the prepared meat. This is how the maniac turned into the Brooklyn Vampire.

It was this letter that led to the killer of Detective William King. According to a specific stamp on paper, it was possible to calculate the place of his residence, where the criminal was caught.

During the investigation, the murder of three children was proved, although it is assumed that there were 7-15 of them. Fish willingly shared his memories of the process, how he cut the bodies of children, how he cooked and what pleasure he received from food. During the examination of Fish, the doctors found about 30 needles, which he himself drove into his groin, this was a natural practice for Fish - he beat himself, burned himself with iron, etc.

But still, the doctors recognized Albert Fish as a criminal offence. And in 1936, the maniac was executed in the electric chair in the same Sing Sing.
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