Eat Thy Neighbour Page 11

  Next day about 2 pm, I took tools, a good heavy set of cat-of-nine-tails. Home made. Short handle. Cut one of my belts in half, slit these halves in six strips about 8 inches long. I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. (After describing in blood-chilling detail his torture, mutilation and murder of the child, Fish recounted his dismemberment of his small victim.)

  I stuck the knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drank his blood. [Then] I picked up four old potato sacks and gathered a pile of stones. Then I cut him up. I had a [small suitcase] with me. I put his nose, ears and a few slices of his belly . . . in my [suitcase] with a lot of paper. I put [the remaining pieces of the body] in sacks weighted with stones, tied the ends and threw them into the pools of slimy water . . . along the road going to North Beach.

  I came home with my meat . . . I made a stew out of his ears, nose, pieces of his face and belly. I put [in] onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt and pepper. It was good.

  Then I split the cheeks of his behind open . . . I put strips of bacon on each cheek . . . and put them in the oven. Then I picked four onions and when the meat had roasted for about ¼ hour, I poured about a pint of water over it for gravy and put in the onions. At frequent intervals I basted [him] with a wooden spoon. So the meat would be nice and juicy.

  In about 2 hours, it was nice and brown, cooked through. I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet, fat little behind. I ate every bit of the meat in four days.

  While Albert Fish was torturing, murdering and devouring Billy Gaffney, Billy’s father had called in fellow police officers from across the five boroughs of New York. They organised a massive search and interviewed everyone they could find who might have seen the boy. The one thing they did not do, however, was take much notice of three-year-old Bill when he kept trying to tell them that the bogeyman had taken his friend Billy. Even when he tried his best to explain that it was a skinny old man with a moustache, no one made the connection between Bill’s bogeyman and the Grey Man who had abducted and murdered Francis McDonnell almost three years earlier. Once again, the Grey Man would simply vanish like vapour. Fifteen months later he reappeared.

  When Delia Budd answered the door to her family’s shabby New York City tenement on Monday 28 May 1928 she found herself face-to-face with a small, frail-looking man at the top end of middle age. He was wearing a rumpled, worn suit and a battered old bowler hat that he removed politely when Mrs Budd asked who he was. He said his name was Frank Howard and he had come in answer to an advertisement placed in the New York World by Edward Budd.

  Mrs Budd asked Mr Howard to come in and told her youngest daughter, Beatrice, to go and find her brother Ed. While they waited, Delia sized up the stranger who had answered her son’s request for employment on a farm. He seemed quiet, almost shy; his diffident air was only accentuated by his silver hair and drooping moustache. He was polite even if he did look a bit shabby, but that was just what you might expect from a farmer who was unaccustomed to coming into the big city. Besides, the Budds were so poor that almost anybody looked good by comparison.

  When the strapping, eighteen-year-old Edward arrived, Frank Howard appraised him with a smile. He explained that he had a small farm in Farmingdale, Long Island, and that he ran it with the help of a few farmhands, a cook and his six youngsters. Unfortunately one of his hands was leaving and he needed a good, strong young man to take his place. There was no doubt that Ed Budd was strong, but was he willing to work hard? Edward assured Mr Howard that he was and in return the man offered him $15 a week along with room and board. Ed Budd was delighted. Replacing his hat, Albert Fish – in the guise of Frank Howard – promised he would return on Saturday to pick Ed up and take him to the farm where he could begin work immediately.

  Leaving the 15th Street tenement, Fish stopped at a hardware store long enough to buy the tools he would need to murder and dismember Edward Budd. He bought a meat cleaver, a hacksaw and a butcher’s knife, asking the clerk to wrap them up for him.

  Saturday 2 June came and went without any sign of Mr Howard. A telegram from him did arrive, however. In it he explained that something had come up making Saturday impossible, but that he would be at the Budds’ on Sunday morning. True to his word, an hour before noon the next day the Grey Man appeared at the Budds’ door. This time he was bearing gifts. He handed a small pot of soft cheese and a box of strawberries to Delia Budd, explaining that they were produce from his farm. Delighted at such thoughtfulness, Mrs Budd insisted that he stay for Sunday dinner. Demurely, Fish accepted the invitation.

  As the family and their guest were seating themselves round the table, a beautiful, dark-haired, pale-skinned, ten-year-old girl appeared in her best Sunday dress. Mrs Budd introduced her as their daughter Gracie, who had just come home from church. Albert Fish was enraptured. Asking the child to show him how well she could count, he handed her a wad of money that amazed the entire Budd family. Scooting herself on to the old man’s lap, Gracie carefully counted out the $92 and 50 cents. When Fish beamed at her, she kissed him on the cheek as though he were her favourite uncle. Albert Fish made an immediate change of plans.

  After dinner, Fish told the Budds he would be back later in the evening to pick up Ed, but that he had to go to his sister’s house because it was his young niece’s birthday and he had been invited to the party. Almost as an afterthought, he asked Mrs Budd if it would be all right if Gracie came along. Delia was uncertain, but her husband – a man whose face showed every beating life had doled out to him – shook his head. ‘Let the poor kid go,’ he said to his wife. ‘She don’t see many good times.’ The matter was settled and Mr Howard promised faithfully to have little Gracie back by nine o’clock at the latest. It was the last time the Budd family ever saw Gracie.

  Fish took Gracie by train from New York to rural Worthington in Westchester County. From the railway station they wandered down country lanes until they came to a deserted house that Fish had reconnoitred for the occasion. His disposition of Gracie’s small life appears below in Fish’s own words.

  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 the 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 me. I choked her to death.

  It would appear, from a disjointed, later version of his statement, that Fish then drained Gracie’s blood into an old paint bucket he had found lying in the house. We now return to Fish’s own version of the story.

  [I] then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, cook and eat it. How sweet and tender [she] was, roasted in the oven. It took me nine days to eat her entire body.

  When Gracie Budd failed to return home her family became frantic. In the morning Ed Budd went to the police station to report her disappearance and probable abduction. He gave them all the information he had on the mysterious Mr Howard, including the location of his farm in Farmington and the address he gave for his sister’s apartment. It only took the police a few minutes to discover that both addresses were fictitious. Anxious to track down the man calling himself Frank Howard, the police asked the Budd family to go through the mugshots of all known kidnappers, child molesters and mental patients known to be at large. There was no sign of Albert Fish.

  The New York Police Department put an extraordinary effort into the case. More than twenty detectives and officers were assigned to the Gracie Budd disappearance and 1,000 fliers were printed and posted off to police stations all over the East Coast. Eventually solid evidence did turn up. They located a street vendor who had sold the strawberries and cheese to the little man with the grey moustache and found the Western Union office from which Fish had sent
word that he would be delayed in picking up Edward Budd. Fortunately, Western Union still had Fish’s original, handwritten copy of the telegram against which a possible ransom note could be compared. Because both the street vendor and the Western Union office were in East Harlem, this area was scoured for any sign of Gracie or a man matching Mr Howard’s description. No suspects were found and no ransom demand ever arrived.

  Four and a half years later any hope of finding Gracie Budd had long since been given up. Still, there are always officers who refuse to give up no matter how ‘cold’ a case has become. One of these was Detective William King of the New York Metropolitan Police. Like a dog worrying a bone, he continued toying with the Budd case. Occasionally he would leak some tiny bit of information to the press which, true or not, would hopefully make the unknown suspect reveal himself. On 2 November 1934 King placed one such item with gossip columnist and radio personality Walter Winchell. Winchell broadcast the story, stating that a break had come in the Gracie Budd case and an arrest was expected at any time.

  Ten days after Winchell’s radio broadcast, the Budds received a letter from Albert Fish. In it, he rambled on about cannibalism in general, gave a fictitious account of how he was introduced to eating human flesh and, finally, gave the graphic description of how he killed and ate their daughter, which was included above. A few lines from the letter will serve to illustrate its tone.

  My Dear Mrs. Budd,

  On Sunday June 3, 1928, I called on you at 406 W. 15 St. Brought you pot cheese, strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat on my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her.

  He ended the letter with what, for the monstrously deranged Fish, may have been intended as a note of reassurance: ‘I did not fuck her tho I could have had I wished. She died a virgin.’

  Fortunately for her, Delia Budd was illiterate. But when she handed the letter to her son Edward, now twenty-three, he ran straight to the police in a blind fury. Since the only person who was still up-to-date on the case was Detective King, Ed Budd and the letter were directed to him.

  The letter was carefully examined and compared with the original, hand-written version of the telegram. The handwriting matched. King also noticed that the envelope was imprinted with the letters NYPCBA inside a hexagonal shield. This turned out to be the logo of the New York Private Chauffeurs’ Benevolent Association. While police checked through the Association’s membership cards trying to find a handwriting match, King requested any association member who had knowledge of any blank stationery which had left the club’s offices to come forward. A janitor at the NYPCBA, Lee Siscoski, admitted he had taken a few sheets of stationery and some envelopes for his own use and carried them back to his rooming house on 52nd Street.

  When Detective King interviewed Siscoski’s landlady, she said that of course she knew a man who fitted that description. It was Albert Fish, and he had been a tenant in her house until very recently. When King explained the situation, the woman was shocked to say the least, but said she expected to hear from Mr Fish again. It seemed that his son often sent money to him and Fish had asked her to hold any letters that might arrive for him. It took almost exactly a month, but on 13 December the landlady called Detective King to inform him that Albert Fish was in her parlour. When King arrived, Fish was calmly balancing a teacup on his knee.

  As King stepped into the room and asked if he was Albert Fish, the Grey Man stood up and nodded yes. But before King could even announce his arrest, Fish whipped a straight razor from his pocket and made a slash at the detective. King grabbed the old man’s arm, twisted it aside and handcuffed him.

  It seemed only fair that after having cracked the case it was Detective William King who took Fish’s first statement. Amazingly, Fish seemed completely cooperative. He stated that young Edward Budd had been his intended victim right up until the minute he laid eyes on sweet little Gracie. He described where he took her and what he had done to her. Appalled, King asked him the most obvious question in the world. Why? Fish answered calmly, ‘I never could account for that.’ That cold, detached reply was to become typical of Albert Fish’s attitude throughout the remainder of his examination and trial – it was the same attitude he had when describing dozens of other murders he had committed.

  The next day he led King and other officers to the abandoned house in Westchester County where they recovered the scant remains of Gracie Budd; and he did so without the slightest sign of emotion.

  During their routine investigation into Fish’s background, police found that even though his most horrible crimes had gone undiscovered, Albert had been a very bad boy. His record began in 1903 with a conviction for grand theft. There had been six subsequent arrests including several for sending obscene letters, but each of them had been dismissed. Still, there had been several trips – some extended – to mental institutions. But each time he had been committed, Albert Fish, murderer and child eater, had been released as ‘cured’.

  The only thing left to do before formally charging Fish with the murder of Gracie Budd was to call in the Budd family for a formal identification of the suspect. Gracie’s father and brother Edward agreed to undertake the nasty job themselves. When the Budds entered the room where Fish was being held, Ed launched himself towards the old man shouting, ‘You old bastard. You dirty son of a bitch!’ Only quick action by King and several officers kept him from tearing Fish limb from limb. Amazingly, Fish hardly blinked during the fracas. Gracie’s father stared at the little man for a minute before he could ask, ‘Don’t you know me?’ Fish answered politely, ‘Oh, yes. You’re Mr Budd.’

  With Fish safely in custody, the police sent out requests for anyone who might be able to tie him to any unsolved crimes regarding children. In a matter of days witnesses started bringing in their evidence. From Staten Island came a man who recognised Fish as the person who had tried to lure his son into the woods in July of 1924, only three days and a few hundred yards from the spot where Francis McDonnell was found beaten and murdered. A retired trolleybus driver from Brooklyn identified the man he had seen in 1927, dragging four-year-old Billy Gaffney on and off his trolleybus. Others led police to connect Fish to crimes in which the Grey Man had never even been a suspect. One tied him to fifteen-year-old Mary O’Connor who had been found mutilated in woods near her home in Far Rockaway in 1932. At this point, Fish’s approaching trial seemed to be no more than a formality. The only question was, was he sane enough to be held responsible for all the obscene things he had done?

  The court ordered a mental examination which was carried out by the noted psychiatrist, or ‘alienist’ as they were then known, Dr Fredric Wertham. Wertham’s initial reaction to Fish was identical to everyone else’s: ‘If you wanted someone to entrust your child to, he would be the one you would choose.’ Fish was cooperative and chatty, never stinting on the details of his life and crimes, but almost as universal as his willingness to talk was his complete emotional detachment. He showed no more interest in what he was saying than someone reading the telephone directory. He told of his childhood and his feelings towards pain: ‘I always had a desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me. I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurt.’ Knowing full well that he would be put on trial for his life, he talked about that, too, ‘I have no particular desire to live. I have no particular desire to be killed. It is a matter of indifference to me. I do not think that I am quite right.’ Jumping on this last statement, Wertham asked Fish if he thought he was insane. ‘Not exactly,’ he answered, ‘I could never understand myself.’ At no point did Fish seem to think he had done anything wrong and attached this belief to his religious delusions. ‘What I did must have been right or an angel would have stopped me, just as an angel stopped Abraham in the Bible [from offering his son as a sacrifice].’

  When Fish began to recount his history of self-inflicted torture, Wertham simply could not believe what he was hearing. He ordered X-rays to be taken to verify Fish’s claims that he had shoved needl
es so far into his groin they could not be removed. To the surprise of everyone but Fish, the X-rays showed 29 needles embedded deep in his pelvic region. Wertham’s notes catalogued Fish’s bizarre history of tortures. ‘[He described] experiences with excreta of every imaginable kind [both] active and passive. He took bits of cotton, saturated them with alcohol, inserted them in his rectum and set fire to them. He also did this with his child victims.’ It would seem that Albert Fish, the mild little man with the droopy moustache, had more sexual fetishes than the psychiatry of the day had names to describe.

  Fish’s recounting of his innumerable murders led Wertham to conclude that while claiming to have killed – and sometimes eaten – more than 100 children in 23 states, he had, in fact, been guilty of at least fifteen murders and responsible for over a hundred mutilations from which the victims survived. Fish credited his long run to having satisfied himself primarily with black children. The police, he said, were never as interested in finding them as they were when it was white children who disappeared. Tragically, he was all too right.

  Although the degree, and amount, of Fish’s ghoulish fetishes were unique, Wertham unearthed records showing that Albert was the predictable product of a family with a history of problems. ‘One paternal uncle suffered from a religious psychosis and died in a state hospital. A half-brother also died in a state hospital. A younger brother was feeble-minded and died of hydrocephalus [water on the brain]. A paternal aunt was considered “completely crazy”. A brother suffered from chronic alcoholism. A sister had some sort of “mental affliction”.’

  Wertham’s conclusion was that Albert Fish suffered from ‘sado-masochism directed against children, particularly boys [and had a] sexually regressive development.’ In an elaboration of that conclusion, Wertham wrote: