WEBVTT

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Paul Kuler got Calm, New York
City, June fifth, nineteen twenty eight.

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Three little children today gave detectives their
first clues in the search for ten

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year old Grace Bud, missing since
last Sunday, when her parents permitted her

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to leave her home at four oh
six West fifteenth Street for the ostensible purpose

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of going to a children's party with
an apparently refined and well to do stranger

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who had visited the Bud home on
the pretext of employing her brother, Edward

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eighteen, on his farm. The
stranger, who gave the name of Frank

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Howard and represented himself as a farmer
of Farmingdale, Long Island, took Grace

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in a blue sedan to the fourteenth
Street Ferry, Manhattan and over to New

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Jersey. The children and told how
the stranger took Grace away in an automobile

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which had been park facing south on
the west side of ninth Avenue, a

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few feet from the corner of fifteenth
Street, so as to be out of

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view of the Bud home. The
two boys were playing at ninth Avenue in

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fifteenth Street. The girl came out
of her home a few minutes after Grace

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appeared from her own home next door
with the stranger. Loretta added, a

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body ten years old said quote,
Gracey looked nice, all dressed up in

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white. She had hold of the
man's hand, and she was so happy.

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She was jumping and skipping. I
walked up the street behind them.

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James Kenny at the corner was throwing
torpedoes on the pavement. When Gracey and

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the man came up to him,
he threw a torpedo at Grace's feet to

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frighten her. The man picked her
up in his arms and carried her across

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Ninth Avenue to the automobile. It
was all shiny blue, with two seats

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and covered with glass. He put
Gracey on the front seat and had to

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climb over her to get to the
wheel. Quote. I went over to

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the car and called, where are
you going, Gracie. The man started

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the car, and Gracie only told
me good bye. The man drove the

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car down Ninth Avenue and turned into
fourteenth Street toward the river. Unquote.

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The affable stranger completely won the confidence
of the girl's mother and father by his

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refined manner and his apparent willingness to
give Edward a farm job, for which

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he had advertised in a Manhattan newspaper. The man told them he was going

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to take Grace to a children's party
his sister was giving at her home at

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one hundred and thirty seventh Street in
Columbus Avenue. There is no such a

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dress, but the Buds did not
know this. The stranger described his alleged

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farm at Farmingdale as of twenty one
acres, with hundreds of chickens, two

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motor cars, and a Swedish cook. He said he had six children,

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one of them a cadet. At
was When the police found he was unknown

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in Farmingdale, Long Island, they
inquired for him at Farmingdale, New Jersey.

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He was equally unknown there. Albert
Budd, the father of five children,

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is a porter in the Equitable Building. He was delighted when the stranger,

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as a result of Edward's ad,
offered the youth a job on his

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farm at fifteen dollars a week and
board. Grace was a quiet, studious

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child, according to her parents and
neighbors. She was four feet in height,

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weighed about seventy pounds, and for
the party dressed up in her white

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confirmation dress with white stockings and shoes. She has blue eyes, dark hair,

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and a sallow complexion. Howard the
Buds say is five feet seven weighs

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one hundred and thirty five pounds,
has blue eyes, gray hair, small

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gray mustache, slightly bowed legs.
You wore a blue suit and dark felt

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hat. True crime historian presents an
Eye for an Eye, a special edition

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of Yesterday's News exploring the criminal justice
system at its most extreme, inflicting the

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death penalty. Episode onety one is, without doubt, the bile is case

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you'll ever hear on this program,
because I don't think I could find a

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worse one if I tried. There's
a lot of evil discuss here, torture

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and cannibalism and more. Consider this
your trigger warning turned back if I were

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you, or at least put the
kids to bed and plug it in your

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earbuds. Keep this between us,
Happy Halloween. I'm true crime historian Richard

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O. Jones, and I give
you what Happened to Grace the Atrocities of

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Albert Fish, my dear missus Bud. In eighteen ninety four, a friend

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of mine shipped as a deckhand on
the steamer Tacoma Captain John Davis. They

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sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there, he

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and two others went ashore and got
drunk. When they returned, the boat

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was gone. At that time,
there was a famine in China. Meat

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of any kind was from one to
three dollars a pound. So great was

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the suffering among the very poor that
all the children under twelve were sold for

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food in order to keep the others
from starving. A boy or girl under

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fourteen was not safe in the street. You could go into any shop and

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ask for steak, chops or stew
meat. Part of the naked body of

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a boy or girl would be brought
out, and just what you wanted cut

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from it a boy or girls behind, which is the sweetest part of the

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body, and sold as veal cutlet, brought the highest price. John stayed

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there so long he acquired a taste
for human flesh. On his return to

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New York, he stole two boys, one seven, one eleven, took

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them to his home, stripped them
naked, tied them in a closet,

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then burned everything they had. On
several times every day and night, he

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spanked them, tortured them to make
their meat good and tender, first,

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he killed the eleven year old boy
because he had the fattest ass and of

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course the most meat on it.
Every part of his body was cooked and

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eaten, except the head, bones
and guts. He was roasted in the

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oven. All of his ass boiled, broiled, fried, and stewed.

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The little boy was next went the
same way. At that time, I

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was living at four o nine East
one hundredth Street, right side. He

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told me so often how good human
flesh was. I made up my mind

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to taste it. On Sunday Day, June third, nineteen twenty eight,

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I called on you at fourh six
West fifteenth Street, brought you pot,

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cheese, strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat on my lap and kissed

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me. I made up my mind
to eat her on the pretense of taking

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her to a party. You said
yes, she could go. I took

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her to an empty house in Westchester
I had already picked out. When we

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got there, I told her to
remain outside. She picked wild flowers.

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I went upstairs and stripped off all
my clothes. I knew if I did

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not, I would get her blood
on them. When all was ready,

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I went to the window and called
her, and then I hid in the

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closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked,

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she began to cry and tried to
run down the stairs. I grabbed her,

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and she said she would tell her
mama. First I stripped her naked.

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How she did, kick, bite
and scratch. I choked her to

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death, then cut her into small
pieces so I could take my meat to

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my rooms, cook it and eat
it. How sweet and tender her little

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ass was roasted in the oven.
It took me nine days to eat her

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entire body. I did not fuck
her, though I could have had,

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I wished. She died of virgin
December fourteenth, nineteen thirty four, Albert

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H. Fish, sixty five year
old house painter, was arraigned in homicide

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Court Manhattan today for the abduction and
killing in June nineteen twenty eight Grace Bud,

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then a child of ten. He
was ordered held without bail, and

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Magistrate Stern adjourned the proceedings for a
week so the authorities might decide whether to

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bring him to trial in Manhattan,
where the girl was kidnapped, or in

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Westchester, where she was brutally killed
and where parts of the dismembered body was

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found. One aspect of the police
investigation into the Fish case pointed to the

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possibility of an adult victim slain in
the same way as Little Grace Bud.

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That developed when police found a bone
about ten inches long in the basement of

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the house in Westchester where the Bud
child was killed and near which the girl's

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skull was found yesterday and other parts
of the skeleton today. Doctor amos O's

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squire medical examiner said the bone was
probably from a human body, but certainly

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not a child. Police recalled that
nearly four years ago, the body of

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a woman about two twenty years old
was found in the woods about a mile

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away. She is still unidentified.
Residents in the neighborhood recalled that fish had

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been seen in the vicinity in the
company of a woman they thought to be

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his wife. On one occasion,
a boy was with them. No relatives

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of fishes appeared to aid him,
but at four twenty nine Astoria Boulevard,

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Astoria, missus Anna Strab revealed that
she had been his wife, but divorced

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him twenty years ago after giving birth
to six children. The eldest of these,

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Albert Fish Junior, commented, quote
the old skunk I knew something like

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this would happen sooner or later.
What was the name of the little girl

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he's accused of killing? Unquote?
When told it was Grace Bud, he

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exclaimed, my God, that was
the name he used to scream out when

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he awoke out of his sleep on
Amsterdam Avenue unquote. Fish, who led

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police to the scene of the killing
yesterday, repeated his confession today at the

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police lineup and re enacted his crime
with vivid gestures before a group of three

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officials, including District Attorney Coin of
Westchester, who will probably have the duty

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of prosecuting him for murder, with
Coin and the Missing Persons Bureau at police

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headquarters at the time, where Captain
Peter J. McQuillan of Greenberg, the

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Westchester town where Fish had pointed out
the buried skull of the sling girl,

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enacting Captain John Stein of the Missing
Persons Bureau. Here, a complete confession

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was taken down as Fish spoke it
with illustrative gestures by a stenographer for his

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signature, but as they listened to
one confession after another, all to the

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same effect. The police sought to
find out whether Fish was responsible for unsolved

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kidnappings of other children who have strangely
disappeared in the metropolitan district, and also

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whether the killer of little Grace Bud
was all also a practicing cannibal. Two

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of the numerous letters which Fish sent
to Missus Delia Bud, mother of Grace,

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and which led to his downfall,
raised the horrible possibility of cannibalism in

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New York. One of the letters, dated November seventh, spoke of a

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brother who was in the navy in
eighteen ninety four, went to China and

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ran into a famine there and quote
was forced to eat human flesh unquote.

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Four days later, in another anonymous
letter, he wrote that quote I have

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been shanghaied and am now in Shanghai
unquote, where again there was famine and

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cannibalism, and he wrote, I
have developed a great taste for human flesh

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with grim irony. The letter assured
Missus Bud that her daughter had died innocent,

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her morals unimpaired. Questioned by Coining
the police about that, he shook

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his head in denial. He also
denied he was responsible for nd any other

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kidnapping than that of the Bud girl. When he was asked about Billy Gaffney,

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who disappeared from his home on Fifteenth
Street in nineteen twenty seven, and

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about Mary Helen O'Connor, fifteen year
old schoolgirl who disappeared from her home in

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Rockaway Beach in January nineteen thirty three, her dead body being found a few

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days later in Massapequa. Fish answered, quote, I had nothing to do

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with the Billy Gaffney kidnapping or with
any others. The only thing I knew

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about was what I read in the
newspapers. Those are the kind of stories

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I used to like to read unquote. With a certain air of virtuous pride,

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he added quote, I would have
given myself up anyway, because I

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feel my days are about over.
But I would not have given myself up

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to the police unless I learned that
an innocent man was about to be convicted

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for this crime unquote. In court, Fish was arraigned on a short affidavit

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charging kidnapping and homicide. The preceding
was a earned at the request of Assistant

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District Attorney Wider. While that was
going on in New York, Westchester police

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digging among dirt covered leaves and other
debris in an old vacant house in Worthington

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Woods, not far from where the
skull of Grace Bud was found unearthed.

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Other parts of a child's skelton,
believed to be that of the Bud girl.

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Bones of a child's legs, arms, fingers, and vertebrae were found.

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The first discovery was made at a
point about eight feet from where the

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skull had been found. There was
some evidence, the police said, of

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at least an attempt on the lives
of other children, and there was also

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evidence which the authorities refused to reject, that he was a practicing cannibal.

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Two boys, respectively eleven and twelve
years old, the police said they had

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learned, were in Fish's apartment on
East's one hundredth Street, Manhattan, on

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the day in June nineteen twenty eight
when the house painter was visiting the Bud

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family. They discovered the tools which
he later used in dismembering the girl's body

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and fled. One of the boys, according to detectives, had been located,

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and Fish was closely questioned about that
and any other children with whom he

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might have been associated. After repeated
grillings through the night, the elderly prisoner

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was locked in Manhattan headquarters at two
a m. Today. There he sat

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on the edge of his cot,
stroking his forehead alternately with the right hand

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and the left. He did not
sleep, and he refused food. A

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sandwich and a cup of coffee left
for him at four thirty o'clock remained untouched.

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He wore a gray tweed suit and
a gray shirt without a collar.

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His fingerprints were taken and he was
recorded as sixty four, a painter,

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and having the aliases Frank Howard,
James Pell, and Robert Hayden. His

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address is given as fifty five East
one hundred and twenty eighth Street, Manhattan.

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He is described as five feet six
inches, weighing one hundred and eighteen

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pounds, slight of build, with
gray hair, blue eyes, a ruddy

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complexion, and with a gray mustache. He was born in Washington, d

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c. According to the record,
and carries an identifying scar behind the right

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thumb and another scar on the right
side of the mouth. He was booked

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for quote taking Grace Bud, ten
years of age, under the pretense of

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taking her to a party and killing
her in a vacant house in Worthington Woods,

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causing her death by strangulation and then
dismembering the body and burning the parts

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in various locations unquote. Police were
of the opinion it would be almost unnecessary

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to call the dentist to identify the
teeth, the likeness being remarkably obvious between

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the reins of the dead child's head
and the pictures of her. All the

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teeth were found, including two upper
back teeth with fillings. Included in Fish's

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police record is an arrest on December
fifth, nineteen thirty for distributing obscene literature.

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On that he was remanded to the
psychopathic ward of Bellevue, from which

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he was discharged as sine on probation
of six months. Detective King, almost

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alone responsible for the arrest of Fish, joined the Apartment on May fourth,

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nineteen o seven, and the Missing
Persons Bureau in nineteen twenty four. Before

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he came to the bureau, he
worked on the Chinatown and Broadway squads.

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In nineteen seventeen, he resigned from
the Department and joined the Navy. For

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00:18:48.279 --> 00:18:53.000
the war, he was attached to
the destroyer Salem. He returned to the

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department after the war. The veil
was finally lifted last night from the mystery

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00:18:59.799 --> 00:19:03.680
that had surrounded the disappearance of the
child for the past six years, when

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Fish unfolded the gruesome story to detectives
and led them to a desolate spot in

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the Worthington Woods in Westchester County,
the child's grave and the body. Fish,

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00:19:17.559 --> 00:19:22.039
who six years before had led Grace
away to that same grave by gaining

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00:19:22.079 --> 00:19:26.559
the consent of her parents to take
her to a party, was cornered as

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a result of anonymous letters he had
dispatched to the parents. Confronted with these

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00:19:32.279 --> 00:19:36.480
letters, he freely admitted that he
had abducted the child, taken her to

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00:19:36.519 --> 00:19:41.240
a deserted house in the Worthington Woods, and killed her, and then interred

215
00:19:41.279 --> 00:19:45.240
her body in the shallow grave where
it was found. The wizened little man

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00:19:45.400 --> 00:19:49.759
related how posing as Frank Howard,
he went to the apartment of mister and

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00:19:49.799 --> 00:19:56.119
Missus Albert Budd at four sixty West
fifteenth Street, Manhattan, on May twenty

218
00:19:56.160 --> 00:20:00.839
eighth, nineteen twenty eight, to
offer Edward Budd, then ten eighteen,

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00:20:00.359 --> 00:20:04.720
one of the five children, a
job on his farm. The youth had

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00:20:04.720 --> 00:20:11.680
placed an advertisement in a newspaper for
a farm hand job. While Fish was

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talking to Edward about his farm,
in walked Grace, her little face wreathed

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in smiles. She immediately caught the
eye of the impostor. He took her

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00:20:22.720 --> 00:20:27.400
up on his knee, fondled her, and told her little stories. When

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00:20:27.440 --> 00:20:30.799
he left the apartment, all he
could think about was the little child he

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00:20:30.839 --> 00:20:34.640
had played with on his lap,
and he decided to go back there again

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00:20:34.799 --> 00:20:41.240
soon he did. He returned six
days later, discussing the job he had

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00:20:41.279 --> 00:20:45.119
waiting for Edward and a chum of
his, and then casually asked where Grace

228
00:20:45.359 --> 00:20:49.200
was. It was Sunday, and
the little girl was all dressed up in

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her Sunday best. She skipped in
to say hello again to this man who

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00:20:53.960 --> 00:20:59.400
was apparently so nice to her brother, and once more he grabbed her up

231
00:20:59.440 --> 00:21:03.359
on his lap. The child's parents
were quite taken with the fatherly interest he

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00:21:03.440 --> 00:21:07.319
seemed to have in their daughter,
and when he asked Grace's mother if he

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00:21:07.400 --> 00:21:11.079
might take the child to a birthday
party for one of his nieces, she

234
00:21:11.240 --> 00:21:18.839
readily consented. After cheery goodbyes,
they left the apartment together, and that

235
00:21:18.079 --> 00:21:25.240
was the last Grace's parents ever saw
of her until last night. On his

236
00:21:25.279 --> 00:21:30.559
way to the apartment that Sunday,
fish purchased a piece of canvas six feet

237
00:21:30.599 --> 00:21:36.200
long and four feet wide. Inside
were wrapped a saw, a long butcher

238
00:21:36.279 --> 00:21:40.839
knife, and a cleaver, bought
in a store somewhere near seventy fourth Street

239
00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:45.240
and Second Avenue. His intention originally
was to use them to dismember the bud

240
00:21:45.319 --> 00:21:52.319
boy's body. The bundle was left
at a newsstand at ninth Avenue in fourteenth

241
00:21:52.319 --> 00:21:57.240
Street. King continued, after taking
the bud girl from her home, he

242
00:21:57.319 --> 00:22:02.599
walked to that corner, got his
bundle, and with Grace along, took

243
00:22:02.599 --> 00:22:07.720
an L train to Sedgwick Avenue and
a Putnam Division train to Worthington, where

244
00:22:07.759 --> 00:22:11.039
he had formerly lived and where he
was known. He took her to an

245
00:22:11.039 --> 00:22:17.400
old house which was unoccupied. The
house is about seventy five feet from the

246
00:22:17.440 --> 00:22:22.519
old Dublin Road. He took Grace
to a room one flight up, and

247
00:22:22.559 --> 00:22:26.640
after a little while told her to
go out on the lawn and pick wildflowers.

248
00:22:26.519 --> 00:22:32.119
A few minutes later, he called
Grace to come back again. Fish

249
00:22:32.160 --> 00:22:37.000
confessed that he seized her, choked
her, and cut her throat unquote.

250
00:22:37.000 --> 00:22:41.319
Four days later, King said,
Fish came back to the house, picked

251
00:22:41.400 --> 00:22:45.839
up the little body, and carried
it to a thicket about two hundred feet

252
00:22:45.839 --> 00:22:48.720
from the house where he hit it. On his way to Westchester in the

253
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elevated train, Fish became so engrossed
in the child that he completely forgot about

254
00:22:55.119 --> 00:22:59.519
his bundle of murder instruments and would
have left them on the train had not

255
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Grace reminded him of them. In
arcing the events that led up to the

256
00:23:03.519 --> 00:23:08.160
trapping of the slayer, King said
that shortly after the child vanished, he

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00:23:08.279 --> 00:23:14.480
discovered a Western Union blank on which
Fish had written a telegram to Grace's parents.

258
00:23:15.039 --> 00:23:18.880
It was dated the day before the
abduction and sent from the office at

259
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Third Avenue in one hundred and fourth
Street. This, King said was the

260
00:23:22.720 --> 00:23:29.119
clue that finally nailed Fish. King
declared that he only knew the writer of

261
00:23:29.160 --> 00:23:33.079
the telegram as Howard, but he
retained the blank, hoping that in some

262
00:23:33.119 --> 00:23:37.720
way it would prove of service in
landing the child's killer. Then, on

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00:23:37.799 --> 00:23:42.400
November eleventh, last, the Bud
family received a letter postmark from the Grand

264
00:23:42.440 --> 00:23:47.599
Central Post Office. It was one
of a number of anonymous messages they had

265
00:23:47.640 --> 00:23:52.960
received since Grace disappeared. They gave
it to King. That was the beginning

266
00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:59.279
of the end for fish King said
that he found the handwriting was the same

267
00:23:59.359 --> 00:24:03.119
as that on the blank that he
had held on to so tenaciously and hopefully.

268
00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:08.519
Quote. On the back of the
envelope was a hexagon diagram with the

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letters NYPCBA. Upon investigation, this
was found to be the initial letters of

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00:24:17.240 --> 00:24:22.680
the New York Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association
of six twenty seven Lexington Avenue in Manhattan.

271
00:24:23.599 --> 00:24:27.720
Quote. I went there and informed
Arthur Innes, its president, of

272
00:24:27.759 --> 00:24:33.839
the significance of this envelope. He
cooperated and called a special meeting of the

273
00:24:33.880 --> 00:24:40.000
Association, at which I addressed the
members asking who had by any manner circulated

274
00:24:40.039 --> 00:24:44.720
those envelopes. A boy named Lee
of six point twenty two Lexington Avenue,

275
00:24:44.960 --> 00:24:49.519
who frequented the association's headquarters, admitted
taking a number of these envelopes while he

276
00:24:49.559 --> 00:24:55.039
had resided at two hundred East fifty
second Street, which is a furnished roomhouse

277
00:24:55.079 --> 00:24:59.839
at the corner of Third Avenue operated
by mister Missus Schneider. The boy had

278
00:25:00.240 --> 00:25:03.839
four envelopes on a shelf over the
bed of his room when he moved out

279
00:25:03.880 --> 00:25:07.039
of that place. I then looked
through the register of the rooming house to

280
00:25:07.079 --> 00:25:12.319
compare handwritings and finally found that an
Albert H. Fish, who had lived

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00:25:12.319 --> 00:25:17.960
there after the Lee Boy moved out, had signed the register in a handwriting

282
00:25:18.160 --> 00:25:22.680
similar to that of the telegram.
This was the first time that the suspect

283
00:25:22.759 --> 00:25:29.039
was identified by another name other than
Howard. On November twelfth, a letter

284
00:25:29.079 --> 00:25:33.359
written by Fish to a Vincent Burke
at the Holland Hotel, New York City

285
00:25:33.960 --> 00:25:38.200
was mailed in another envelope of the
Chauffeur's Association. The letter was returned to

286
00:25:38.279 --> 00:25:44.640
the association because of mister Burke was
not known at the hotel. I compared

287
00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:48.240
the handwriting on the envelope with that
of Howard and found it to be similar.

288
00:25:48.640 --> 00:25:52.519
This letter also had been mailed from
the Grand Central Post Office. I

289
00:25:52.599 --> 00:25:56.359
discovered that the center of this letter
was living at two hundred East fifty second

290
00:25:56.400 --> 00:26:02.720
Street. On November eleventh, at
four pm out I learned that the letter

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00:26:02.799 --> 00:26:07.319
came from him on December fifth,
containing a check for CCC work by his

292
00:26:07.400 --> 00:26:11.319
son, Albert, twenty four years
old at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. The

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00:26:11.480 --> 00:26:15.680
check was for twenty five dollars.
I knew that he would return for the

294
00:26:15.799 --> 00:26:21.119
check, and I kept a constant
watch on the place. I also learned

295
00:26:21.119 --> 00:26:25.680
that Fish was accustomed to hanging out
between thirty seventh and fifty fourth streets.

296
00:26:26.279 --> 00:26:30.079
Finally, at one pm yesterday,
he returned to the East fifty second Street

297
00:26:30.119 --> 00:26:34.960
to dress for the check. I
arrested him immediately and took him to police

298
00:26:36.000 --> 00:26:41.720
headquarters. After two hour questioning,
he confessed to the crime and said the

299
00:26:41.759 --> 00:27:04.640
body was in the Worthington Woods.
Fish said that something overpowered him and drove

300
00:27:04.720 --> 00:27:11.599
him to the crime. He wore
a black overcoat, a gray tweed jacket,

301
00:27:11.839 --> 00:27:15.359
black trousers, blue gray shirt,
red tie, and battered brown felt

302
00:27:15.400 --> 00:27:21.359
at When he was brought in for
questioning, he was obviously nervous, moved

303
00:27:21.400 --> 00:27:26.559
with a pronounced slout, and had
to be pushed onto the lineup platform under

304
00:27:26.599 --> 00:27:30.480
the bright lights. There, he
blinked, winced, and shook his head

305
00:27:30.519 --> 00:27:36.039
from side to side. Throughout the
proceedings, a distinguished onlooker was doctor Allan

306
00:27:36.119 --> 00:27:41.319
Dafoe, the physician who brought the
dionne quintuplets sisters into the world and has

307
00:27:41.400 --> 00:27:47.440
kept him here. His only comment
expressed at the end was that the proceedings

308
00:27:47.480 --> 00:27:52.519
were interesting. Question what prompted you
to pick on little Grace Bud when there

309
00:27:52.519 --> 00:27:57.599
are so many other girls in the
city. Answer. I had intended to

310
00:27:57.640 --> 00:28:03.400
take her brother, but when I
saw her something overtook me. I can't

311
00:28:03.440 --> 00:28:07.680
explain the feeling. I had intended
to kill the brother, but something overpowered

312
00:28:07.720 --> 00:28:14.119
me. Question did you ever take
any other children and kill them? Answer?

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00:28:14.559 --> 00:28:18.359
No? Question did you ever tell
anybody about this crime? Answer?

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00:28:18.799 --> 00:28:22.440
I never told anyone about the murder
of the girl, not even members of

315
00:28:22.480 --> 00:28:30.599
my own family. Question were you
ever confined to an institution? Answer Bellevue

316
00:28:30.599 --> 00:28:37.880
and King's County Hospitals. Question where
you ever arrested? Answer several times?

317
00:28:38.920 --> 00:28:45.599
Question ever go back to the scene
of the murder? Answer I went back

318
00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:49.400
several times, yes, but never
to the same spot. Question why did

319
00:28:49.400 --> 00:28:55.079
you write so many letters to the
mother of the girl? Answer? I

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00:28:55.079 --> 00:28:59.119
don't know. I can't give any
reason. It's writing those letters that proved

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00:28:59.160 --> 00:29:02.039
the end of me. I would
never have been arrested if I had not

322
00:29:02.119 --> 00:29:07.039
written those letters. Fish was then
let off the platform, almost brushing doctor

323
00:29:07.079 --> 00:29:12.440
Defoe, who had been observing the
proceedings at close range, and the lobby.

324
00:29:12.759 --> 00:29:18.160
Fish posed, but with all the
signs of nervousness for the photographers.

325
00:29:18.759 --> 00:29:23.519
Captain Dougan, expressing praise of Detective
King and the Post Office and other agencies

326
00:29:23.559 --> 00:29:29.200
which cooperated in running the criminal down, said quote, this is one of

327
00:29:29.200 --> 00:29:33.279
the most shocking crimes ever committed,
one of the most shocking in the annals

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00:29:33.319 --> 00:29:53.799
of the New York Police Department.
Here's a helpful hint. You can easily

329
00:29:53.839 --> 00:30:00.400
avoid the advertising by listening to true
crime historian at the safe house at www

330
00:30:00.480 --> 00:30:22.599
dot patreon dot com slash true crime
historian Edward Bud waved a raisor menacingly as

331
00:30:22.599 --> 00:30:26.359
he shaved before the mirror over the
dining room mantle. If the police have

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00:30:26.480 --> 00:30:30.559
the man who murdered my sister Grace, he said grimly. I'm going to

333
00:30:30.599 --> 00:30:36.759
see that he gets his It's the
man, Eddie, said missus Dilia Bud,

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00:30:37.200 --> 00:30:40.920
mother of the ten year old Grace, who was spirited away from her

335
00:30:40.920 --> 00:30:45.799
home in nineteen twenty eight by a
man who called himself Frank Howard. Yes,

336
00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.359
but Ma, said Albert Bud,
father of the dead girl. You

337
00:30:49.519 --> 00:30:55.000
thought it was so many men before
this. Only Missus Bud was in the

338
00:30:55.079 --> 00:31:00.920
dingy fifth floor walk up apartment at
one thirty five Less twenty fourth Manhattan,

339
00:31:00.519 --> 00:31:07.880
when detectives called yesterday with Albert Fish
in tow. She has become so confused

340
00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:11.799
by six years of apprehension and hope
that police no longer depend on her for

341
00:31:11.920 --> 00:31:19.519
identification. But both Edward and mister
Bud identified the suspect from photographs. The

342
00:31:19.559 --> 00:31:25.119
Bud family was gathered last night to
discuss the tragic ending of the six year

343
00:31:25.119 --> 00:31:30.960
old searchs We never really gave up
hope. Then the police came yesterday with

344
00:31:30.039 --> 00:31:36.400
the man they say murdered Gracie.
The father said, mister Bud is a

345
00:31:36.440 --> 00:31:41.279
middle aged man who has worked for
fifteen years as a porter in the Equitable

346
00:31:41.319 --> 00:31:47.960
Building at one twenty Broadway, Manhattan. Quote that man, Frank Coward or

347
00:31:48.000 --> 00:31:52.000
Fish, seemed like such a gentleman
to us that we were sure he wouldn't

348
00:31:52.039 --> 00:31:56.599
harm Grace. He was very impressive
when he came to answer Eddie's ad that

349
00:31:56.720 --> 00:32:00.160
afternoon. He must have been wearing
a ten dollars hat it looked that good,

350
00:32:00.519 --> 00:32:05.200
and a diamond ring, and what
a roll of bills he had with

351
00:32:05.319 --> 00:32:08.599
him. He asked Grace if she
could count. She said she could,

352
00:32:08.720 --> 00:32:13.599
and he asked her to sit on
his lap and count his money. He

353
00:32:13.680 --> 00:32:17.680
had ninety two dollars. He seemed
so kind and told us what he would

354
00:32:17.759 --> 00:32:22.160
do for Eddie and all that.
When he asked if Grace could go with

355
00:32:22.240 --> 00:32:25.279
him to a children's party his sister
was giving, we were glad to let

356
00:32:25.279 --> 00:32:34.160
her go. Unquote, missus Bud
said nothing. She listened dazedly to her

357
00:32:34.240 --> 00:32:37.440
husband's account, as if she knew
the story so well it had become almost

358
00:32:37.559 --> 00:32:43.680
meaningless to her. She sat huddled
in the corner of the room, a

359
00:32:43.759 --> 00:32:50.359
gorn green sweater over her house dress
and apron quote. We never thought anything

360
00:32:50.480 --> 00:32:54.119
was wrong until police told us that
the addressed Grace was taken to wasn't an

361
00:32:54.160 --> 00:32:59.279
address at all, that there wasn't
any one hundred and thirty seventh Street in

362
00:32:59.319 --> 00:33:04.319
Columbus out. One thing that no
one seems to mention was that a few

363
00:33:04.400 --> 00:33:09.000
days after Grace disappeared, her friend
Loretta Adabody, who lived at our old

364
00:33:09.039 --> 00:33:14.319
place, four oh six West fifteenth
Street, said that there was a young

365
00:33:14.359 --> 00:33:19.160
boy along in the car that Grace
and mister Howard or Fish went away in.

366
00:33:20.359 --> 00:33:22.759
If they can trace this youth,
maybe he can tell us something.

367
00:33:23.680 --> 00:33:30.680
The boy, said, mister Bud
was about seventeen. The Bud family Albert

368
00:33:30.799 --> 00:33:38.519
twenty, George nineteen, Beatrice eleven, and Eddie twenty four clustered around the

369
00:33:38.599 --> 00:33:45.319
mother as she seemed to collapse.
Can't you see she's ill, mister Bud

370
00:33:45.440 --> 00:33:50.400
said angrily at a room full of
reporters and photographers as he showed them out

371
00:33:50.440 --> 00:33:54.799
the door, said Eddie, quote, there's nothing else to say or do

372
00:33:55.240 --> 00:34:00.359
unless they've got the guy who killed
Gracey. Whoever killed her has been writing

373
00:34:00.400 --> 00:34:05.559
his letters all along, and the
police say that's how they traced him unquote,

374
00:34:07.319 --> 00:34:13.800
December fifteenth, nineteen thirty four,
under the foundations of the house in

375
00:34:13.840 --> 00:34:19.440
which Grace Bud was choked to death
and her body dismembered. Workmen began digging

376
00:34:19.480 --> 00:34:24.199
today for evidences of other murders that
might have been committed by the elderly Albert

377
00:34:24.280 --> 00:34:31.079
Howard Fish. On orders of doctor
amos O Squire, Westchester Medical Examiner.

378
00:34:31.480 --> 00:34:36.719
They ripped up the basement floor of
the deserted house at Greenberg, in which

379
00:34:37.039 --> 00:34:42.800
Fish has confessed he committed the crime, and started a careful thorough search of

380
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:47.079
the earth. The medical examiner said
that a man like Fish who had committed

381
00:34:47.079 --> 00:34:52.360
a murder like that of ten year
old Grace Bud quote, would be apt

382
00:34:52.440 --> 00:34:58.880
to commit other murders unquote. Though
Fish under close guard in the tomb's prison,

383
00:34:59.000 --> 00:35:02.880
Manhattan, I had specifically denied any
connection with the kidnapping of Billy Gaffney,

384
00:35:04.199 --> 00:35:07.519
or the kidnapping and slang of Mary
Helen O'Connor, or any other kidnapping

385
00:35:07.639 --> 00:35:14.000
or killing except that of Grace Bud. Doctor Squire was not ready to believe

386
00:35:14.079 --> 00:35:19.639
him. Quote. It seemed strange
to me that when I casually lifted aboard

387
00:35:19.719 --> 00:35:24.599
in the basement, I found a
bone unquote. That bone, about ten

388
00:35:24.639 --> 00:35:30.519
inches long, may be the bone
of an animal. The medical examiner conceded,

389
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:35.320
but he thought it unlikely that anyone
would hide an animal bone so carefully.

390
00:35:36.119 --> 00:35:39.960
In any event, he would make
certain by a methodical search what other

391
00:35:40.039 --> 00:35:45.599
evidence might be found that would indicate
the commission of other murders. The ground

392
00:35:45.639 --> 00:35:50.840
in the vicinity of the murder house
was also being carefully dug up and searched

393
00:35:51.119 --> 00:35:57.159
with the same purpose. Meanwhile,
the Whizzen soft voice house pain or Fish

394
00:35:57.440 --> 00:36:02.079
waited in a cell in Murderer's row
and the tombs, with suicide guards standing

395
00:36:02.159 --> 00:36:07.320
watch to prevent any attempts he might
make on his own life. As soon

396
00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:12.760
as Westchester is ready to try him, New York officials are prepared to turn

397
00:36:12.840 --> 00:36:17.599
him over. Meanwhile, they are
making sure no attempt at suicide will succeed.

398
00:36:20.039 --> 00:36:23.679
Detective William F. King has a
favorite notation in a six year diary

399
00:36:24.000 --> 00:36:29.280
of the search for the killer of
Grace Bud. It is the one under

400
00:36:29.320 --> 00:36:34.079
an October nineteen thirty four date in
which he records that he told Missus Delia

401
00:36:34.159 --> 00:36:38.280
Bud, the slain girl's mother,
that quote, at the next full of

402
00:36:38.320 --> 00:36:43.199
the moon, you're going to get
another letter from the kidnapper. Don't open

403
00:36:43.239 --> 00:36:46.079
it, for it is going to
break the case. Unquote. At the

404
00:36:46.119 --> 00:36:51.079
next full of the moon came a
letter, which Missus Budd did not open,

405
00:36:51.320 --> 00:36:55.000
but turned it over to Detective King. It was mailed the postmark showed

406
00:36:55.280 --> 00:37:00.760
at the Grand Central Annex post Office. A return address in the upper left

407
00:37:00.760 --> 00:37:05.519
hand corner had been carefully scratched out, but it had been ignored on the

408
00:37:05.559 --> 00:37:13.360
flap of the envelope. Ny pc
BA six twenty seven Lexington Avenue. King

409
00:37:13.480 --> 00:37:19.440
went to the New York Private Chauffeur's
Benevolent Association at the Lexington Avenue address called

410
00:37:19.480 --> 00:37:22.639
a meeting of the members learned from
one that several of the envelopes of the

411
00:37:22.679 --> 00:37:28.159
association had been left in a rooming
house at two hundred East fifty second Street,

412
00:37:28.199 --> 00:37:32.760
Manhattan, and it was there Detective
King trapped as man. It is

413
00:37:32.840 --> 00:37:37.719
his own private belief, which,
however, he does not permit to interfere

414
00:37:37.760 --> 00:37:42.079
with the methodical pursuit of clues.
That quote, the full of the moon

415
00:37:42.239 --> 00:37:46.079
is the time for catching people with
a sex twist unquote, like the blood

416
00:37:46.159 --> 00:37:52.960
lustful elderly Albert H. Fish,
said King. Quote. That's the time

417
00:37:52.039 --> 00:37:57.199
when they come out of their hiding
places and do things they wouldn't dare try

418
00:37:57.280 --> 00:38:01.119
any other time. They get reckless, they seemed to have been influenced by

419
00:38:01.159 --> 00:38:07.639
the moon and leave themselves open to
well good detective work. Anyhow, I

420
00:38:07.679 --> 00:38:12.480
really think the full of the moon
had something to do with my catching him.

421
00:38:15.519 --> 00:38:19.280
Fish told Detective King. He was
the youngest of a family of six,

422
00:38:19.719 --> 00:38:22.639
that he was born in Washington,
d c. And that he had

423
00:38:22.679 --> 00:38:27.440
attended school there as high as the
eighth grade. His brother, a sailor,

424
00:38:27.960 --> 00:38:31.559
told him stories of famines in China
and how young boys and girls were

425
00:38:31.639 --> 00:38:37.679
hung up like cattle, eaten alive
these gruesome tales, the slinking old man

426
00:38:37.800 --> 00:38:44.880
told King, afforded him great delight. To further satisfy his sadistic tastes,

427
00:38:45.119 --> 00:38:50.199
he would read assiduously all literature that
had anything to do with being eaten alive.

428
00:38:51.440 --> 00:38:55.840
Fish related with fiendish glee. To
Detective King, the cannibalistic episodes in

429
00:38:55.880 --> 00:39:01.199
the period expedition, I can't read
an enough of the stuff. King quoted

430
00:39:01.199 --> 00:39:07.199
the wizened old house painter, who
boasted his penchant for anything that savored of

431
00:39:07.320 --> 00:39:12.880
dissolute revelries. And in the thousands
of letters that fish has written since he

432
00:39:12.960 --> 00:39:15.960
lured little Grace Bud to a wooded
grave, he never failed to touch upon

433
00:39:16.079 --> 00:39:22.800
some sadistic pleasure. King revealed quote. He is an inveterate letter writer.

434
00:39:22.280 --> 00:39:27.280
He is known to have closeted himself
in his furnished room on East fifty second

435
00:39:27.320 --> 00:39:30.480
Street and written from nine a m. Till midnight. He would get the

436
00:39:30.559 --> 00:39:36.440
names of people who looked for furnished
rooms, parents seeking boarding school for their

437
00:39:36.440 --> 00:39:42.079
boys and girls in the newspapers.
He writes splendidly fine handwriting like a highly

438
00:39:42.199 --> 00:39:47.440
educated person. The letters would start
off in a regular businesslike fashion and then

439
00:39:47.840 --> 00:39:54.519
in would seep the sex stuff unquote. As a result of this unusual epistolary

440
00:39:54.639 --> 00:40:00.400
habit, Fish would receive many letters
by every mail, even special dy livery

441
00:40:00.480 --> 00:40:05.920
letters. Fish, several years before
the commission of the ghastly crime, worked

442
00:40:05.960 --> 00:40:10.440
as a caretaker at the Second Presbyterian
Church in Terrytown. One year before the

443
00:40:10.559 --> 00:40:15.320
murder, he told Detective King he
had worked in a similar capacity at Doctor

444
00:40:15.400 --> 00:40:21.599
Kyle's School for Boys at Flushing.
Fish has a married daughter, Missus Ralph

445
00:40:21.719 --> 00:40:27.079
Collins, living in Astoria. The
couple have two children. Fish's youngest son,

446
00:40:27.239 --> 00:40:30.360
Henry, twenty one, is living
with them. The Collins home was

447
00:40:30.400 --> 00:40:36.800
covered by Detective King for many days
and nights for the CCC check for twenty

448
00:40:36.840 --> 00:40:40.960
five dollars sent from camp by John
W. Fish, stationed at Smoke Mountain,

449
00:40:42.000 --> 00:40:46.840
North Carolina, was drawn to Missus
Collins. When the elderly Fish ascertained

450
00:40:46.840 --> 00:40:51.719
that the check could not be honored
by his married daughter because she herself was

451
00:40:51.760 --> 00:40:57.480
receiving home relief, he wrote his
son requesting that he Fish be made recipient.

452
00:40:58.920 --> 00:41:01.599
It was the information that a mister
Burke, who had moved away,

453
00:41:01.920 --> 00:41:07.239
returned periodically to the East fifty second
Street rooming house to get a C.

454
00:41:07.440 --> 00:41:10.519
C C check, which convinced King
that he was on the right trail.

455
00:41:12.719 --> 00:41:16.480
Fish had occupied room number seven at
two hundred East fifty second Street. Detective

456
00:41:16.599 --> 00:41:22.480
King, for two weeks, had
occupied room number four. As Fish walked

457
00:41:22.519 --> 00:41:27.119
in, Detective King seized him and
invited him to his tiny room for a

458
00:41:27.199 --> 00:41:31.639
heart to heart chat. Fish vigorously
denied at first that he had ever written

459
00:41:31.719 --> 00:41:37.760
letters under various aliases. He maintained
that he had always signed his letters A.

460
00:41:38.159 --> 00:41:43.400
H. Fish, King said.
After King showed him a batch of

461
00:41:43.519 --> 00:41:47.480
missives bearing the alias John M.
Pell, Frank Howard, Robert E.

462
00:41:47.519 --> 00:41:52.440
Hayden, Albert H. Fish,
Robert E. Haslin, the prisoner is

463
00:41:52.480 --> 00:41:59.000
said to have admitted they were all
his handwriting. Fish also admitted having written

464
00:41:59.000 --> 00:42:05.280
many letters to the dead girl's mother. The contents of these letters King refuses

465
00:42:05.320 --> 00:42:09.440
to divulge at this time. The
police have a trunk full of letters purported

466
00:42:09.480 --> 00:42:15.119
to have been written by Fish.
They will be used for investigation going deeper

467
00:42:15.159 --> 00:42:21.079
into other cases. King said numerous
decoy letters had been sent out to trap

468
00:42:21.159 --> 00:42:25.519
the old painter, but he somehow
never called for them. When Deductive King

469
00:42:25.679 --> 00:42:30.920
was assigned to the case. On
June fourth, nineteen twenty eight, he

470
00:42:30.960 --> 00:42:35.639
said he called at the Bud home
at four six West fifteenth Street and learned

471
00:42:35.679 --> 00:42:40.039
that the Bud family consisted of five
children in a border quote. The day

472
00:42:40.079 --> 00:42:45.599
before Little Grace was taken away,
Fish called at the house and presented them

473
00:42:45.639 --> 00:42:51.159
with pot cheese and strawberries contained in
Agate quart cans. King later learned that

474
00:42:51.199 --> 00:42:54.519
Fish had bought the Gray Agate cans
from a pushcart peddler on Second Avenue.

475
00:42:54.960 --> 00:43:00.559
It was after thus ingratiating himself into
the Bud family that Fish Fish made the

476
00:43:00.599 --> 00:43:05.440
overtures to take Little Grace to a
birthday party. Fish at this time lived

477
00:43:05.440 --> 00:43:07.760
at forty East one hundredth Street,
on the ground floor in the rear.

478
00:43:08.920 --> 00:43:14.679
A clever piece of police work was
the composite picture Detective King Maid of eight

479
00:43:14.760 --> 00:43:20.119
pictures he had missus Bud view.
These were photos of suspects and of persons

480
00:43:20.119 --> 00:43:24.519
resembling an appearance the kidnapper. The
composite bears a striking resemblance to the old

481
00:43:24.559 --> 00:43:30.760
prisoner and was said by King to
have aided him materially in finding his man

482
00:43:36.559 --> 00:43:42.519
in the grim gray abandoned house at
Greenberg, Westchester, in which elderly Albert

483
00:43:42.760 --> 00:43:45.800
H. Fish had murdered, by
his own confession, ten year old Grace

484
00:43:45.920 --> 00:43:52.920
Bud. Evidence was unearthed yesterday of
other homicides which he may have committed,

485
00:43:53.480 --> 00:43:59.199
although the wizened, hawk faced house
painter in the tombs persisted that he never

486
00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:05.840
killed anyone except the one little girl. Westchester's county medical examiner, doctor Amos

487
00:44:05.840 --> 00:44:09.920
O. Squire, expressed the belief
that Fish was quote apt to commit other

488
00:44:10.079 --> 00:44:15.599
murders unquote, and seeking evidence along
that line, sent a squad of men

489
00:44:15.760 --> 00:44:22.599
digging under the basement of the Greenberg
house late yesterday afternoon. They dug up

490
00:44:22.639 --> 00:44:29.119
some thirty bones, which resembled human
bones, varying in length from an inch

491
00:44:29.199 --> 00:44:34.159
to ten inches each. Said doctor
Squire, quote, of course, it's

492
00:44:34.239 --> 00:44:37.920
possible that people who lived in this
house used to bury their dogs under the

493
00:44:37.920 --> 00:44:42.079
basement floor, but I would be
better satisfied of that if I could find

494
00:44:42.079 --> 00:44:45.760
a few dog skulls. So far, no skulls of any sort have been

495
00:44:45.800 --> 00:44:51.840
found unquote. That made him believe
that it was not animal bones he was

496
00:44:51.920 --> 00:44:57.599
dealing with. He would at any
rate submit them to professors of anatomical research

497
00:44:57.639 --> 00:45:01.920
at Columbia, who he believed could
determine whether they were human or animal bones

498
00:45:02.840 --> 00:45:07.840
two wells on the property or to
be pumped dry and search. Doctor Squire

499
00:45:07.960 --> 00:45:13.440
said he requested the county authorities to
throw police lines around the house today or

500
00:45:13.559 --> 00:45:19.719
he was afraid souvenir hunters would carry
the house away. As the excavation work

501
00:45:19.800 --> 00:45:23.199
was being concluded for the day,
a dentist who had extracted two teeth from

502
00:45:23.239 --> 00:45:29.599
Grace Bud in nineteen twenty seven when
she was nine, called at police headquarters

503
00:45:29.679 --> 00:45:35.239
in Manhattan and tentatively identified the little
girl's skull as that of Grace Bud.

504
00:45:36.079 --> 00:45:40.960
While the identification was practically positive,
Detective King last night appealed to the press

505
00:45:40.960 --> 00:45:46.360
to publish a call for another dentist's
identity unknown who could identify three fillings in

506
00:45:46.400 --> 00:45:52.599
the child's teeth as that of Grace
Bud. Such an identification would be final

507
00:45:52.760 --> 00:46:15.119
and would have establish the corpus delecti
in the murder trial of Fish. I

508
00:46:15.159 --> 00:46:20.679
am a man of passion. You
don't know what that means unless you are

509
00:46:20.719 --> 00:46:25.519
my kind. At the orphanage where
they put me just before Garfield was assassinated,

510
00:46:27.000 --> 00:46:30.400
there were some older boys that caught
a horse in a sloping field.

511
00:46:30.599 --> 00:46:35.000
They got the horse up against a
fence down at the bottom of the field

512
00:46:35.039 --> 00:46:39.320
and tied him up, an old
horse. They put kerosene on his tail

513
00:46:39.400 --> 00:46:44.280
and lit it and cut the rope, and away went that old horse,

514
00:46:44.400 --> 00:46:47.639
busting through the fences to get away
from the fire. But the fire went

515
00:46:47.679 --> 00:46:53.880
with him, that horse. That's
me. That's the man of passion.

516
00:46:54.599 --> 00:46:59.119
The fire chases you and catches you, and then it's in your blood.

517
00:47:00.119 --> 00:47:05.440
After that. It's the fire that
has control, not the man. Blame

518
00:47:05.559 --> 00:47:13.360
the fire of passion for what Albert
Hfish has done? What has Albert Hfish

519
00:47:13.440 --> 00:47:17.960
done? Sometimes I myself am not
sure what is real and what is not,

520
00:47:20.239 --> 00:47:22.480
what I've really done, and what
are things I wanted to do and

521
00:47:22.599 --> 00:47:25.679
thought about doing so long that it
got to be as if I had done

522
00:47:25.719 --> 00:47:30.800
them, so that I remember them
just as clearly as the real things,

523
00:47:30.239 --> 00:47:35.320
just as clearly as that hot sunday
in June when I went to the window

524
00:47:35.400 --> 00:47:39.639
and whistled to that little grace Bud, and she stopped picking daisies and came

525
00:47:39.679 --> 00:47:45.079
in. There are a lot of
us, but some of these other things

526
00:47:45.119 --> 00:47:50.119
are just as real. Though I
can see that people don't believe me when

527
00:47:50.119 --> 00:47:54.119
I tell them. That makes me
mad. I mean, not being believed

528
00:47:54.239 --> 00:47:59.159
makes me mad. What's the matter
with these people? Don't they want to

529
00:47:59.159 --> 00:48:02.079
believe the truth about me? Do
they just want to close their eyes and

530
00:48:02.159 --> 00:48:06.880
ears and make believe to themselves that
the sort of thing I can tell about

531
00:48:07.039 --> 00:48:13.679
doesn't exist. Well, it does, and plenty. There are lots of

532
00:48:13.760 --> 00:48:17.039
us. We know how to find
each other and get together and have fun.

533
00:48:19.400 --> 00:48:22.199
We use the matrimonial agencies and the
want ads, and there are hundreds

534
00:48:22.199 --> 00:48:28.360
of other ways. We have our
own language, a sort of code.

535
00:48:28.559 --> 00:48:31.280
I'll tell you all about it when
I get to it, but I want

536
00:48:31.280 --> 00:48:35.760
to make things clear at the start. Is that I'll put down the things

537
00:48:35.800 --> 00:48:38.880
I know to be true, things
I actually did. When I put down

538
00:48:38.960 --> 00:48:43.719
something that was imagined and not carry
out, I'll come right out and say

539
00:48:43.719 --> 00:48:46.000
so. I'll say, now,
that's one of the things I thought about

540
00:48:46.000 --> 00:48:51.679
doing but never got around to doing
it, principally because some ideas that you

541
00:48:51.800 --> 00:48:54.599
get if you're a man of passion
are so hard to carry out that you

542
00:48:54.679 --> 00:48:59.559
never get around to it. And
here I am sixty five years old,

543
00:48:59.599 --> 00:49:04.800
and in so it looks like they'll
have to be dropped after all. And

544
00:49:04.840 --> 00:49:08.400
if they insist some of the things
the biggest things I've ever done are imaginings.

545
00:49:09.039 --> 00:49:14.079
Why I can answer them with if
I am being tried for the murder

546
00:49:14.119 --> 00:49:17.679
of that little girl, certainly that
was not imagining, was it? And

547
00:49:17.719 --> 00:49:24.000
if that really happened, why not
the others. The thing that started me

548
00:49:24.039 --> 00:49:29.639
on the real big things I've done
in the last fifteen years was the trouble

549
00:49:29.679 --> 00:49:35.719
I had in nineteen seventeen with my
wife and that man John strab Marriage is

550
00:49:35.760 --> 00:49:38.519
not all it's cracked up to be, but it certainly serves one purpose.

551
00:49:39.280 --> 00:49:44.199
So long as the man and woman
keep the bargain, they will both stay

552
00:49:44.239 --> 00:49:47.719
out of other trouble. It is
a good safety valve. As long as

553
00:49:47.760 --> 00:49:51.800
Ana is stuck to me, and
the children kept coming one after the other

554
00:49:51.960 --> 00:49:55.280
until there were six, I might
have my outside fancies, but would keep

555
00:49:55.320 --> 00:50:01.599
my into the bargain and fancies they
would stay thing more. But when the

556
00:50:01.679 --> 00:50:07.639
dog sniffed at the attic door and
I found straw lying up there waiting for

557
00:50:07.719 --> 00:50:12.199
my wife to bring him the cuts
she sneaked from the family table, my

558
00:50:12.320 --> 00:50:16.760
eyes were open to the fact that
no bargain holds and that only fools know

559
00:50:16.880 --> 00:50:24.079
any restraints. That freed me.
It threw off my chains. I had

560
00:50:24.119 --> 00:50:30.199
a right after that to any fun
I could find or grab. We were

561
00:50:30.239 --> 00:50:34.480
living then in a house at number
ten thirteen Fifth Avenue, College Point,

562
00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:38.800
the eight of us Anna and myself
and the six children, headed by Albert

563
00:50:38.880 --> 00:50:43.800
who was eighteen and had a job
at the John W. Rapp Works at

564
00:50:43.800 --> 00:50:47.920
tenth Avenue in Third Street. We
were getting along fine. I've always been

565
00:50:47.960 --> 00:50:52.119
pretty good at my trade of house
painting, and we set a good table

566
00:50:52.199 --> 00:50:55.119
and paid the rent. We had
a small dog, and it was always

567
00:50:55.199 --> 00:51:00.719
my custom to keep a pretty good
track of income and outgo it all down,

568
00:51:00.880 --> 00:51:04.519
I say, and you'll never be
fooled. I kept track and a

569
00:51:04.559 --> 00:51:07.440
little book I carried with me,
not only of the money, but of

570
00:51:07.480 --> 00:51:13.079
food and clothing and all. And
my book showed me about the time that

571
00:51:13.159 --> 00:51:17.519
we were using up more food than
I saw going down anybody's throat. I

572
00:51:17.599 --> 00:51:22.480
asked Anna, what's become of all
this food? The way I figured,

573
00:51:22.480 --> 00:51:24.760
if there's about ten pounds of meat
a week or other stuff over and above

574
00:51:24.800 --> 00:51:30.360
what I can check. If I
had any suspicions, I would have noticed

575
00:51:30.400 --> 00:51:34.960
how she got confused when she passed
it off by saying that the dog was

576
00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:38.719
eating his hat off. That drew
my attention to the dog, which was

577
00:51:38.880 --> 00:51:43.719
just a cur the children had picked
up. I wondered how such a small

578
00:51:43.800 --> 00:51:46.920
dog could get away with so much
food. I figured it out, he

579
00:51:47.000 --> 00:51:52.320
must be cashing the food the way
animals do. I set a watch,

580
00:51:52.760 --> 00:51:55.320
and one evening I saw that dog
start up the stairs, and I followed

581
00:51:55.400 --> 00:51:59.960
him. The dog went on up
to a door leading into a kind of

582
00:52:00.280 --> 00:52:06.079
attic storeroom and began sniffing and whining
at the crack. I thought to myself,

583
00:52:06.360 --> 00:52:08.079
now I found the place where you
cash all that stuff, and what

584
00:52:08.199 --> 00:52:13.159
a mess that will be. I
opened the attic door and went in.

585
00:52:14.039 --> 00:52:15.760
It was a bit dark in there, and I stumbled over a heap on

586
00:52:15.800 --> 00:52:22.400
the floor. It was this stroup, sound asleep on the floor, snug

587
00:52:22.440 --> 00:52:24.440
as a bug and a rug and
a spread of some of the best blankets

588
00:52:24.440 --> 00:52:29.679
and quilts in the house. He
sat up, half asleep and mumbled something

589
00:52:29.679 --> 00:52:45.960
about what have you got for me
this time? I've always liked things to

590
00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.960
be easy and pleasant around me.
Men of my type are like that,

591
00:52:50.719 --> 00:52:53.199
even those I've handled rough. I
would like it. If they liked it

592
00:52:53.239 --> 00:52:57.920
too, if you know what I
mean, if only pain were not so

593
00:52:58.079 --> 00:53:04.119
painful. But my main thought was
that this might be excitement, something new,

594
00:53:04.360 --> 00:53:07.760
Live and let live. It was
pretty funny. Leading It was pretty

595
00:53:07.760 --> 00:53:13.639
funny, leading Strawb downstairs and walking
into the dining room and telling him to

596
00:53:13.679 --> 00:53:17.239
pull up a chair. He was
struck dumb, so was my wife.

597
00:53:19.280 --> 00:53:46.960
They didn't know what was coming next, neither did I. If I had

598
00:53:47.039 --> 00:53:52.079
any definite idea in mind at all
when I fetched Anna's lever down from the

599
00:53:52.119 --> 00:53:55.239
attic and made him sit at the
table across from me, with Anna between,

600
00:53:57.159 --> 00:54:02.239
it was certainly no idea of violence
that came after when he and Annas

601
00:54:02.239 --> 00:54:07.599
sold the furniture to a junk man
and left me the six children and took

602
00:54:07.599 --> 00:54:13.920
a honeymoon in Bridgeport on the money. That was going too far after a

603
00:54:13.920 --> 00:54:16.719
couple have been married nineteen years and
had brought up six children. I think

604
00:54:16.760 --> 00:54:22.039
it must be the rule that early
passion is pretty well petered out. Why

605
00:54:22.079 --> 00:54:24.880
not be frank about it. If
the vitality peter's out with the passion,

606
00:54:25.280 --> 00:54:29.760
everything comes out all right at the
end, and the old folks sit around

607
00:54:29.760 --> 00:54:34.280
getting their fun if any out of
crossword puzzles and a pack of cards.

608
00:54:35.280 --> 00:54:38.599
But the trouble is that vitality doesn't
always peter out at the right time.

609
00:54:39.239 --> 00:54:45.440
And why not be frank about this
too? There are thousands, probably millions

610
00:54:45.440 --> 00:54:49.079
of old people going around who have
stuck up on the shelf and are too

611
00:54:49.199 --> 00:54:52.960
lively to stay there. When I
got looking around in the last few years,

612
00:54:53.039 --> 00:54:57.559
hunting my own kind, why,
I found that this world is simply

613
00:54:57.639 --> 00:55:00.760
littered with people of both sexes on
the wrong longside of fifty to the calendar,

614
00:55:01.159 --> 00:55:15.760
but still twenty and full of old
nick in their minds. Read this

615
00:55:17.320 --> 00:55:22.960
m five twenty lonely widow would be
a companion to some old man, love

616
00:55:23.039 --> 00:55:27.719
home, and would do all of
my power to make some man happy one

617
00:55:27.760 --> 00:55:31.000
a man with a loving disposition,
considered very nice looking for a lady of

618
00:55:31.039 --> 00:55:36.440
my age, which is sixty,
have dark brown hair and dark gray eyes.

619
00:55:36.719 --> 00:55:40.360
Five five one hundred and eighty pounds, very friendly and sociable, have

620
00:55:40.559 --> 00:55:47.400
some property. This is an ad
from one of the matrimonial magazines. I

621
00:55:47.440 --> 00:55:52.199
know all about these lonely widows.
I married three of them in nineteen thirty

622
00:55:52.920 --> 00:55:57.599
one. Was all right, and
her daughter even better, as I shall

623
00:55:57.639 --> 00:56:00.679
tell when I get to the story
of my adventure with mRNA and Mary of

624
00:56:00.719 --> 00:56:06.599
Ohio. But the best that can
be said for the matrimonial agencies is that

625
00:56:06.639 --> 00:56:10.199
the contracts they provide are better than
nothing, better than sitting in the rocker

626
00:56:10.320 --> 00:56:15.199
waiting for the undertaker. But the
old don't want the old. The desire

627
00:56:15.320 --> 00:56:20.880
for youth and beauty does not get
less with time, but greater and greater

628
00:56:20.960 --> 00:56:25.519
as the years go by. What
to do? I must have found the

629
00:56:25.519 --> 00:56:32.039
wrong answer. All this is meant
to explain how I felt discovering that my

630
00:56:32.079 --> 00:56:37.159
wife of nineteen years, mother of
my six children, was keeping this fellow's

631
00:56:37.159 --> 00:56:42.599
strawb in the attic. It was
an anger, I felt, it was

632
00:56:42.800 --> 00:56:47.719
envy. The anger came later when
she did the really disloyal thing, walked

633
00:56:47.760 --> 00:56:52.559
out on our bargain, which was
to do the fair thing by our children,

634
00:56:52.960 --> 00:56:59.119
and left me to shoulder that burden
alone. A few days after I'd

635
00:56:59.119 --> 00:57:02.960
heaped coals of on Strab's head by
putting him at my table, he vanished,

636
00:57:04.559 --> 00:57:07.239
and then I myself left the home
in College Point to go out on

637
00:57:07.320 --> 00:57:13.880
a job. A house painter usually
moves in on his job I was a

638
00:57:13.920 --> 00:57:17.079
good one in building and remodeling was
booming, and that meant I was away

639
00:57:17.079 --> 00:57:22.119
from home more than I was in
it. My custom was to leave my

640
00:57:22.280 --> 00:57:27.320
forwarding address with my eldest daughter,
named Anna after her mother, and who

641
00:57:27.360 --> 00:57:32.000
is missus Anna Collins now and lives
in Astoria. The job was an interior

642
00:57:32.039 --> 00:57:37.679
decorating one in White Plains, the
same town where I face a murder trial,

643
00:57:37.800 --> 00:57:43.239
now a bad place for me.
The weather was bitter cold that winter,

644
00:57:43.760 --> 00:57:47.679
and this was in the middle of
January. I got daughter Ana's telegram

645
00:57:47.760 --> 00:57:53.159
on January nineteenth, nineteen seventeen,
at twelve Brookfield Street and White Plains,

646
00:57:53.480 --> 00:57:58.239
which is in the Colored district now, but it was a white rooming house.

647
00:57:58.320 --> 00:58:04.039
Then the Graham said, Papa,
Mama is gone. Come home on.

648
00:58:05.119 --> 00:58:07.559
I put two and two together and
knew instantly that she had run off

649
00:58:07.599 --> 00:58:13.079
with Straw. But it wasn't until
I got to College Point that night that

650
00:58:13.159 --> 00:58:15.320
I knew the whole damage she had
done. When I went into the house,

651
00:58:16.360 --> 00:58:20.800
the first thing that struck me was
that the hall tree had been moved.

652
00:58:21.679 --> 00:58:24.119
A neighbor woman met me in the
hall and said, she's gone,

653
00:58:24.159 --> 00:58:30.800
mister Fish and everything you had is
gone with her. I heard the children

654
00:58:30.880 --> 00:58:35.400
crying in the dining room and went
in. The room was absolutely bare.

655
00:58:36.079 --> 00:58:39.719
Even the stove was gone, along
with the three leaf maple table and twelve

656
00:58:39.840 --> 00:58:45.239
chairs of a set, and the
sideboard and rug. Because of the icy

657
00:58:45.360 --> 00:58:50.760
cold, the children were all huddled
together at the street window and their hats

658
00:58:50.760 --> 00:58:54.960
and coats, and I got the
story from the mall. Mama gave us

659
00:58:55.000 --> 00:58:59.400
all a dime and sent us to
the movies at four o'clock. They all

660
00:58:59.440 --> 00:59:04.639
screamed. Ten minutes after they all
left for the movies, a van that

661
00:59:04.760 --> 00:59:08.000
was waiting down the street moved up
to the door, and John Strab showed

662
00:59:08.079 --> 00:59:13.719
up. A neighbors said, the
van men and Strab moved every stick out

663
00:59:13.800 --> 00:59:17.960
of the house and drove off,
and then your wife left two I rushed

664
00:59:17.960 --> 00:59:22.519
through the place like a blind man. It was like being struck blind,

665
00:59:22.639 --> 00:59:25.920
seeing nothing where there had been a
home. The beds and even the bedclothing

666
00:59:25.960 --> 00:59:30.760
were gone, so that, in
pure pity, like after a fire or

667
00:59:30.920 --> 00:59:34.440
shipwreck or something, the neighbors had
to take us in for the night to

668
00:59:34.519 --> 00:59:39.239
keep warm and to have time to
think what to do next. The next

669
00:59:39.320 --> 00:59:45.280
day I found out that the van. Everything I possessed in the world had

670
00:59:45.320 --> 00:59:49.719
been sold by honor for next to
nothing to the first second hand man she

671
00:59:49.760 --> 00:59:52.840
had found. It was enough to
get her and her lover over the state

672
00:59:52.920 --> 00:59:58.320
line to Bridgeport, Connecticut. I
had to rent a furnished flat by the

673
00:59:58.320 --> 01:00:02.119
week. I remember the landlady took
one look at my string of children and

674
01:00:02.199 --> 01:00:06.960
boosted the rent to twenty five dollars
a week, and also made me pay

675
01:00:07.000 --> 01:00:10.960
ten dollars down on the breakage.
We left that place two weeks later.

676
01:00:12.679 --> 01:00:15.800
I had to make a complete new
start in life as a mother and father

677
01:00:15.960 --> 01:00:20.000
of six mouths. But I never
got that ten dollars back, even though

678
01:00:20.039 --> 01:00:23.840
one glass was all we broke all
the time we were there. No trouble

679
01:00:23.880 --> 01:00:29.079
for one is profit for two.
My eldest son, Albert, was working

680
01:00:29.119 --> 01:00:32.239
for a foreman named William Conzitt,
who used to visit us at times.

681
01:00:32.639 --> 01:00:37.000
Conzat looked me up. He was
angrier about the whole fair than I was.

682
01:00:37.880 --> 01:00:43.320
I was too stunned to feel rage. Conza told me I could get

683
01:00:43.360 --> 01:00:46.159
strawb on the Man Act and at
least get back the money value of what

684
01:00:46.280 --> 01:00:51.880
had been stolen. I traced Anna
and strawbed to a rooming house at twenty

685
01:00:51.920 --> 01:00:55.920
one Harrison Avenue, Bridgeport and got
a police, but when we crashed in

686
01:00:57.400 --> 01:01:01.760
the birds had flown. I heard
from once about three years later my three

687
01:01:01.880 --> 01:01:06.280
youngest children had come down with the
measles, and I was at my WIT's

688
01:01:06.400 --> 01:01:09.920
end. She had heard about this
and some roundabout way and wrote to daughter,

689
01:01:10.000 --> 01:01:14.960
Anna, strab can't get a job, and your mother is literally starving

690
01:01:15.039 --> 01:01:17.760
up here with her two new babies. I've heard about Jean and Girt and

691
01:01:17.840 --> 01:01:22.239
Johnny having the measles, And if
your father isn't too mad at me,

692
01:01:22.559 --> 01:01:25.079
I would come back simply as a
housekeeper and work for my keep and work

693
01:01:25.159 --> 01:01:29.840
hard. Only one thing you are
to tell him if he takes me in,

694
01:01:29.920 --> 01:01:31.960
I have to bring these two babies
with me, but not Strab.

695
01:01:34.159 --> 01:01:37.920
Anna sounded me out on the letter, but I'd had enough and said so

696
01:01:37.920 --> 01:01:42.480
Strab. I ran into once a
few years later when I was working on

697
01:01:42.519 --> 01:01:45.199
a building about a mile away,
and I went over there and saw an

698
01:01:45.280 --> 01:01:52.079
unfurnished two story house and Strab carrying
a stack of shingles up an outside ladder.

699
01:01:52.960 --> 01:01:55.639
I went after him. He saw
me coming and ducked in a window

700
01:01:55.679 --> 01:02:00.880
on the second floor. I went
in after him and saw finished flight of

701
01:02:00.920 --> 01:02:04.920
stairs ahead of me, and went
up full speed. What I did not

702
01:02:05.119 --> 01:02:07.559
know was that there was a piece
of closet space to the one side of

703
01:02:07.599 --> 01:02:12.840
the stairs, and that Strab had
dived in there to hide while I rushed

704
01:02:12.920 --> 01:02:15.840
by. I was going so fast
when I got to the top that I

705
01:02:15.880 --> 01:02:21.039
pitched over the edge of nothing and
barely saved myself from a nasty fall by

706
01:02:21.119 --> 01:02:25.719
hugging upright as I went over.
Strob slipped down inside the house and out

707
01:02:25.760 --> 01:02:30.719
the back while I was climbing back
to safety, and left the job and

708
01:02:30.840 --> 01:02:36.199
that part of the world over in
Astoria, where he and Anna live now.

709
01:02:36.639 --> 01:02:38.559
He must be one of those who
figure that the worst the jury can

710
01:02:38.599 --> 01:02:43.159
do to me here is all to
the good. I can only hope and

711
01:02:43.239 --> 01:02:46.639
pray that my faithless wife does not
share that feeling against the husband whose only

712
01:02:46.679 --> 01:02:54.360
offence against her is that she did
I'm wrong. Children are solace for some

713
01:02:54.480 --> 01:03:00.400
things, and I cherish and have
cherished my own everyone. But they are

714
01:03:00.440 --> 01:03:06.119
not solace for the loneliness that strikes
a man when fate tells him that his

715
01:03:06.239 --> 01:03:10.760
pleasures in life are over. I
was driven in on myself in those years

716
01:03:12.440 --> 01:03:16.679
years after the earthquake that demolished my
home. That was when I began to

717
01:03:16.679 --> 01:03:22.719
write the letters. I was visited
by the peculiar dreams that got me through

718
01:03:22.760 --> 01:03:52.800
the nights. The letters continued those
dreams through the days. Dear miss,

719
01:03:52.440 --> 01:03:58.119
the name does not matter. I
got it from a nurse's registry. I

720
01:03:58.159 --> 01:04:02.119
am a widower of some mean a
stockbroker and standard oil of New Jersey.

721
01:04:02.760 --> 01:04:06.760
I am sixty five years of age
and in very feeble health. I have

722
01:04:06.800 --> 01:04:13.000
a son of nineteen. He is
a semi invalid. When five years of

723
01:04:13.039 --> 01:04:17.800
age, he fell down the cellar
stairs sustained a brain concussion. When twelve,

724
01:04:18.199 --> 01:04:24.440
he had a severe attack of infantile
paralysis. He cannot walk, run,

725
01:04:24.840 --> 01:04:29.320
jump, and get in and out
of a bathtub without assistance. There

726
01:04:29.360 --> 01:04:32.480
is no lifting to do or a
wheelchair to push. However, Bobby has

727
01:04:32.599 --> 01:04:36.519
very little use of his hands and
arms. He has to be washed,

728
01:04:36.880 --> 01:04:42.960
dressed and undressed, given a bath, and rubbed all over daily with alcohol.

729
01:04:43.920 --> 01:04:46.199
He has had one woman in charge
of him for the past seven years,

730
01:04:46.639 --> 01:04:51.519
Miss Helen Brown. She is leaving
because of her coming marriage. Now

731
01:04:51.599 --> 01:04:56.880
though Bobby is going on twenty,
is good looking, well built, and

732
01:04:56.920 --> 01:05:00.199
weighs one hundred and sixty five pounds. He is just as easy to spank

733
01:05:00.320 --> 01:05:05.239
or switch as a boy of ten. Frequently he gets cranky and does not

734
01:05:05.400 --> 01:05:12.079
mind. Miss Brown has a paddle
in Cat of nine Tales. On such

735
01:05:12.119 --> 01:05:16.000
occasions she did not hesitate to use
one or both quite freely. In fact,

736
01:05:16.280 --> 01:05:20.159
that is the only way you can
handle them. I want a young

737
01:05:20.199 --> 01:05:25.559
woman, not a mere girl,
who can and will take full charge of

738
01:05:25.639 --> 01:05:29.840
him. There is no woman in
the house to butt in. You will

739
01:05:29.880 --> 01:05:34.320
be entirely his boss, and mine
as well. What he doesn't mind,

740
01:05:34.559 --> 01:05:38.840
do exactly as Miss Brown did,
and go as far as you like.

741
01:05:39.519 --> 01:05:43.760
Don't be stingy. If I don't
take my medicine or mind, you give

742
01:05:43.840 --> 01:05:46.480
me the same as you do the
boy. It is not a question of

743
01:05:46.519 --> 01:05:54.559
money, good pay, good times, for good service. Signed Albert H.

744
01:05:54.800 --> 01:06:24.639
Fish. The letter I have copied
here is one of the kind I

745
01:06:24.639 --> 01:06:28.119
got in the habit of writing after
my wife left me to brood and face

746
01:06:28.159 --> 01:06:30.880
old age alone. Of course,
it is not the kind I wrote to

747
01:06:30.920 --> 01:06:35.119
myself, not the kind I wrote
to lots of people, the principally women,

748
01:06:35.599 --> 01:06:40.400
after I had sounded them out and
found out that their ideas ran along

749
01:06:40.440 --> 01:06:45.079
the same as mine. Those other
letters are freer and say exactly what was

750
01:06:45.119 --> 01:06:47.800
on my mind. But I understand
they cannot be printed, which is too

751
01:06:47.880 --> 01:06:51.719
bad. There would be a lot
less trouble in the world, lots less

752
01:06:51.760 --> 01:06:57.159
of people keeping the lid on until
they pop if you could write and print

753
01:06:57.199 --> 01:07:00.599
things just as they come to mind, one free space talking to another free

754
01:07:00.639 --> 01:07:05.280
spirit. And I found lots of
free spirits to talk with and write to

755
01:07:05.719 --> 01:07:11.719
after I got the hang of things
and looked around. But this letter illustrates

756
01:07:11.760 --> 01:07:15.000
something I wrote a while back about
my kind having a way to find each

757
01:07:15.000 --> 01:07:19.440
other out, a kind of code. I found out after I had been

758
01:07:19.440 --> 01:07:24.320
in trouble a couple of times that
in this letter writing business, you have

759
01:07:24.400 --> 01:07:28.800
to sound people out before you let
go and write what you want. This

760
01:07:28.920 --> 01:07:32.199
letter is a sounding out letter.
I might call it a good old number

761
01:07:32.239 --> 01:07:38.800
one. Now. It is full
of code. All that about alcohol,

762
01:07:38.960 --> 01:07:43.360
rubs and the cat of nine tales
and good pay and good times. That's

763
01:07:43.400 --> 01:07:47.480
all code. If the party understands
and answers in the same code, then

764
01:07:47.519 --> 01:07:51.920
everything is clear sailing, and the
beauty of it is that if the party

765
01:07:51.960 --> 01:07:59.159
misunderstands and writes back about some real
professional nursing, no harm is done.

766
01:07:59.280 --> 01:08:01.679
You just write back, I can
say sorry, the job is filled.

767
01:08:02.679 --> 01:08:08.840
Bobby was my own special invention.
I have no son named Bobby who is

768
01:08:08.840 --> 01:08:12.719
an invalid. But you can't come
write out in the first letter and say

769
01:08:12.760 --> 01:08:15.600
that Bobby is yourself, that you
are the one who needs to be handled

770
01:08:15.600 --> 01:08:20.800
like a spoiled child and worse.
Some people would think it silly, some

771
01:08:20.840 --> 01:08:26.079
would think worse. But Bobby got
to be more than a code to me.

772
01:08:26.760 --> 01:08:30.039
He got to be real. Sometimes
he drove me into a fury,

773
01:08:30.359 --> 01:08:35.239
having to be babied intended day and
night by me who had six other real

774
01:08:35.319 --> 01:08:40.720
children on my hands. A big, blubbering lout of a fellow, though

775
01:08:40.800 --> 01:08:44.920
handsome and well formed, it drove
me to violence to be saddled with his

776
01:08:45.079 --> 01:08:48.079
care. Then would come out the
whip and strap, and he would get

777
01:08:48.119 --> 01:08:54.680
what for. I believe those beatings
I experienced were the origin of the habit

778
01:08:55.119 --> 01:09:00.479
I contracted later of sticking needles into
myself. The trouble with pain is that

779
01:09:00.560 --> 01:09:05.720
you get tough and always have to
invent something that hurts worse. In a

780
01:09:05.760 --> 01:09:11.920
curious way too. Bobby was something
else, neither me nor a code figure,

781
01:09:12.279 --> 01:09:17.159
but a person long dead Albert H. Fish. Now, don't jump,

782
01:09:17.680 --> 01:09:23.600
I'm not suggesting that I myself was
long dead. That Albert Hfish did

783
01:09:23.760 --> 01:09:28.560
die at the age of eighteen months
in Washington, d C. In eighteen

784
01:09:28.680 --> 01:09:33.520
sixty five. Mark Twain has a
funny story about a pair of twins which

785
01:09:33.560 --> 01:09:39.479
sort of applies in my case.
The Twain story is told by the surviving

786
01:09:39.560 --> 01:09:43.680
twin of a pair, one of
which died in the cradle without the nurse

787
01:09:43.760 --> 01:09:46.920
exactly knowing which of the two had
died, and the story ends up with

788
01:09:46.960 --> 01:09:53.840
the living twin saying the twin who
died was me. I was not baptized

789
01:09:53.920 --> 01:09:59.560
Albert H. Fish. Before I
was born the nineteenth of May eighteen seventy

790
01:09:59.600 --> 01:10:02.199
in washing Washington, d C.
My parents had another boy who had been

791
01:10:02.239 --> 01:10:06.399
baptized by that name just before he
died from having been born with water on

792
01:10:06.439 --> 01:10:11.199
the brain. The doctor in that
case, and one who brought me into

793
01:10:11.239 --> 01:10:15.960
the world, was a famous Washington
doctor by the way, doctor Robert Rayburn,

794
01:10:15.439 --> 01:10:19.960
one of the two specialists who later
attended President Garfield on his deathbed when

795
01:10:19.960 --> 01:10:27.079
he was shot and later got big
congressional grants as fees. While Albert H.

796
01:10:27.159 --> 01:10:30.560
Fish died in the cradle, and
later I came along and was baptized

797
01:10:30.560 --> 01:10:34.600
with a name that got me called
insulting names in the orphanage, where I

798
01:10:34.720 --> 01:10:41.439
lived three years of early childhood and
learned most of the things which developed into

799
01:10:41.479 --> 01:10:46.600
some of my unusual habits later on, the nicknames were unbearable. When my

800
01:10:46.680 --> 01:10:50.920
mother got going after my father's death
and took me out of the orphanage and

801
01:10:50.960 --> 01:10:55.600
I was to go to public school, I told her all about the nicknames

802
01:10:55.640 --> 01:10:59.279
and begged her to give me a
new name. I remember how she looked

803
01:10:59.279 --> 01:11:01.680
at me and past at my hand
and sat me in her apron and said,

804
01:11:02.439 --> 01:11:06.079
you can have the name of your
baby brother. You never saw Albert

805
01:11:06.800 --> 01:11:12.159
anyway. Getting you back from the
orphanage was like getting my son back from

806
01:11:12.199 --> 01:11:32.279
the dead. Sometimes I think there
is no such thing as time. My

807
01:11:32.439 --> 01:11:39.880
childhood seems yesterday, and yesterday seems
long ago. You will have to follow

808
01:11:39.920 --> 01:11:44.600
me if I jump back and forth
from century to century. I'm old enough

809
01:11:44.640 --> 01:11:48.920
to have done a lot of living
in two. What I want to tell

810
01:11:49.000 --> 01:11:55.760
now is partly in eighteen seventy five, partly in nineteen thirty one. Just

811
01:11:55.800 --> 01:11:59.840
the other day in the steeple Chase
Hotel at Rockaway Beach, where I got

812
01:12:00.079 --> 01:12:02.840
to that trouble from tossing over the
wall of that high school girls school.

813
01:12:03.239 --> 01:12:08.279
There was a connection between my childhood
and that trouble about the girls school.

814
01:12:08.319 --> 01:12:12.640
You see, I had also been
shut up in an orphanage, and I

815
01:12:12.720 --> 01:12:15.960
knew just how those girls felt,
being shut up in those finishing school grounds

816
01:12:16.239 --> 01:12:23.359
with all their temperament going to waste. People who run schools and orphanages don't

817
01:12:23.399 --> 01:12:26.319
know what they are doing when they
try to keep the lid on the boys

818
01:12:26.359 --> 01:12:30.520
and the girls under them. I
do. The orphanage people were very strict.

819
01:12:31.199 --> 01:12:34.199
They kept the boys and girls separate, and of course we all thought

820
01:12:34.239 --> 01:12:39.600
of how to get together. The
higher ups never found out about those loose

821
01:12:39.720 --> 01:12:45.199
planks and the dormitory floor. That
sort of thing went on under cover while

822
01:12:45.239 --> 01:12:48.560
the preying and the learning went on
in the open. It was like living

823
01:12:48.600 --> 01:12:55.760
two lives. One they knew about, one they didn't. And also I

824
01:12:55.840 --> 01:13:01.479
learned in the orphanage to beg lie
and steal. The orphanage was a charity

825
01:13:01.520 --> 01:13:05.760
place, and their biggest expense was
feeding the herd. They used to dress

826
01:13:05.800 --> 01:13:10.039
us up in a kind of uniform
and give us each a big cloth bag.

827
01:13:10.520 --> 01:13:13.840
The bag had painted on it in
big letters. Filled me up.

828
01:13:14.960 --> 01:13:17.960
We went into the grocery stores and
meat markets and stood near the door and

829
01:13:18.039 --> 01:13:23.199
spread the bag so that the begging
words showed. And then we folded our

830
01:13:23.239 --> 01:13:27.880
hands and looked like praying until the
owner saw that the customers expected it of

831
01:13:27.960 --> 01:13:31.760
him, and filled the bag.
And here is how I learned to steal

832
01:13:31.880 --> 01:13:38.319
and lie. The Orphanage sent out
the bigger boys with ten boxes with slits

833
01:13:38.319 --> 01:13:43.800
in the top for dropping coins from
pennies to half dollars. The last year

834
01:13:43.840 --> 01:13:45.600
I was there, I was sent
out with a bigger boy to learn.

835
01:13:46.439 --> 01:13:50.279
We went to the right places and
the box got filled. And then on

836
01:13:50.319 --> 01:13:55.000
the way back, the bigger boy
took me up an alley and showed me

837
01:13:55.039 --> 01:13:58.479
a strip of ten he had hidden
in his stocking. In how to use

838
01:13:58.520 --> 01:14:01.640
it by poking it into the half
dollar slot and getting the money to slide

839
01:14:01.640 --> 01:14:06.279
out along it. I got rehearsed
also in how to tell the orphanage heads

840
01:14:06.319 --> 01:14:12.760
a long story about how people weren't
giving quarters and halves anymore, but dimes

841
01:14:12.800 --> 01:14:16.039
at the most, so I was
as good a thief and liar as the

842
01:14:16.119 --> 01:14:20.399
rest, and they let me on
the tin box pool. So it was

843
01:14:20.479 --> 01:14:25.439
really memories of all that had happened
to me when I was behind walls that

844
01:14:25.600 --> 01:14:29.640
drove me to toss those letters over
the wall of the girls school near Rockaway

845
01:14:29.680 --> 01:14:32.199
Beach. They were not the plainest
letters I can write, either, but

846
01:14:32.399 --> 01:14:38.319
just written for fun to make the
girls laugh. But the head mistress Scott

847
01:14:38.319 --> 01:14:42.560
one and complained to the detectives,
and they came up and got me at

848
01:14:42.600 --> 01:14:45.279
the Steeple Chase Hotel, where I
had a job as a dishwasher and a

849
01:14:45.319 --> 01:14:49.880
back room in the staff way.
That was the second time I was taken

850
01:14:49.920 --> 01:14:55.319
to a doctor for observation. I
was taken to Bellevue in nineteen thirty and

851
01:14:55.359 --> 01:14:59.720
the doctors there said I was harmless. This time I was taken to King's

852
01:14:59.720 --> 01:15:04.079
count by doctor Lewis Burlatt of Rockaway
Beach Hospital. But they let me go

853
01:15:04.119 --> 01:15:09.920
again. And I think that this
is what will happen a third time.

854
01:15:09.960 --> 01:15:13.880
At the end of this trial of
mine for putting that little bud girl out

855
01:15:13.880 --> 01:15:40.840
of the way, I just got
one thing to say, Www. Dot

856
01:15:40.880 --> 01:15:55.039
Patreon dot com slash true crime historian
That's It, White Plains, New York,

857
01:15:56.640 --> 01:16:06.319
March eleventh, nineteen thirty five.
Albert H. Fish, sixty five

858
01:16:08.000 --> 01:16:13.199
went on trial in Supreme Court here
today and indicated through his attorney that he

859
01:16:13.239 --> 01:16:17.479
would seek to escape the death penalty
by pleading that he was insane. The

860
01:16:17.520 --> 01:16:23.960
slow squeaking machinery by which a jury
is chosen in New York State had ground

861
01:16:23.960 --> 01:16:28.800
out four accepted jurors by two thirty
pm, out of thirty five men.

862
01:16:29.000 --> 01:16:34.079
Questioned. Fish himself, with two
deputy sheriffs seated just behind, sat through

863
01:16:34.119 --> 01:16:40.319
the proceedings with eyes closed, his
head resting on his hand, all together

864
01:16:40.439 --> 01:16:45.439
unaware apparently of what was going on. Gray haired, hollowed cheeks, his

865
01:16:45.560 --> 01:16:50.000
shoulders hunched up, he looks like
a weird and motionless gargoyle. At the

866
01:16:50.119 --> 01:16:55.760
end of the defense table, as
the talismen were examined one after another,

867
01:16:56.199 --> 01:17:00.239
it became evident that the best which
the defense expected was a verdict of not

868
01:17:00.319 --> 01:17:05.319
guilty for reason of insanity, and
the defense expected also that the aged Fish

869
01:17:05.560 --> 01:17:11.439
would be accused of more than the
mere slaying of the bud girl. Defense

870
01:17:11.479 --> 01:17:16.880
attorney James Dempsey playing for the sympathy
of jurors, showed a keen anxiety lest

871
01:17:16.960 --> 01:17:23.479
their sensibilities be hurt by the harrowing
testimony to be given. Some of the

872
01:17:23.560 --> 01:17:28.520
testimony, he asked, again and
again, would be quote gruesome, shocking?

873
01:17:28.840 --> 01:17:34.000
I'm afraid bloodthirsty? Is that going
to upset you too much? Unquote?

874
01:17:34.319 --> 01:17:39.319
None of the jurors thought he would
be upset or inflamed too much.

875
01:17:40.079 --> 01:17:43.600
There was an objection at one point
to the phrasing of one such question,

876
01:17:43.920 --> 01:17:47.680
and Dempsey explained, I understand they
are going to charge that this defendant not

877
01:17:47.760 --> 01:17:53.119
only killed the little girl, but
also eight or I have a right to

878
01:17:53.199 --> 01:17:58.880
know whether that would be the state's
accusation. Supreme Court Justice Frederick P.

879
01:17:59.159 --> 01:18:03.000
Close ruled that the prosecution did not
have to commit itself on the subject for

880
01:18:03.039 --> 01:18:08.920
the time being. Again and again, Dempsey, who was a former District

881
01:18:08.960 --> 01:18:14.439
Attorney of Westchester and a former mayor
of Peaksgill, asked whether the prospective juror

882
01:18:14.520 --> 01:18:17.840
had any prejudice against the plea of
insanity in a murder case, and pointed

883
01:18:17.880 --> 01:18:23.199
out that it was incumbent on the
state to prove the defendant sanity and that

884
01:18:23.279 --> 01:18:27.880
the only test of sanity or insanity
is whether the defendant knew the difference between

885
01:18:27.920 --> 01:18:30.880
right and wrong and knew the nature
and quality of his act at the time

886
01:18:30.960 --> 01:18:35.439
he committed the act. Fish,
his attorney, said, at one point,

887
01:18:35.720 --> 01:18:40.680
quote has thirty needles in him.
Will that prevent you from giving a

888
01:18:40.760 --> 01:18:45.359
fair verdict? Unquote? Fish came
hobbling into the court room, held up

889
01:18:45.399 --> 01:18:50.600
and almost carried in by deputy sheriffs
Charles Ingall and John Tucher. He left

890
01:18:50.600 --> 01:18:55.159
the courtroom again when a recess was
called at twelve thirty p m. In

891
01:18:55.199 --> 01:19:00.720
the same way, dragging his feet, his shoulders hunched forward. He had

892
01:19:00.760 --> 01:19:04.319
spoken no word throughout the session,
and only once before the judge mounted the

893
01:19:04.359 --> 01:19:10.239
bench did he look around the court
room. Judge, close before the first

894
01:19:10.399 --> 01:19:14.720
name was called for jury service,
announced from the bench that this would be

895
01:19:14.760 --> 01:19:17.439
an orderly trial, that the public
would be permitted as long as there were

896
01:19:17.479 --> 01:19:25.720
available seats. No one would be
permitted to stand. Fish was suffering from

897
01:19:25.720 --> 01:19:29.760
the effects of his latest self torture. To day, he jabbed himself in

898
01:19:29.800 --> 01:19:34.479
the pelvic region with a pin sharp
sliver of chicken bone Saturday night. Grassland

899
01:19:34.560 --> 01:19:41.279
Hospital doctors said he was in no
danger. A constant guard will be maintained,

900
01:19:41.439 --> 01:19:46.319
the warden said, scouting the suggestion
that Fish's acts were suicidal, he

901
01:19:46.359 --> 01:19:51.359
said that the prisoner, pronounced sane
by alienists, used the chicken bone to

902
01:19:51.399 --> 01:19:56.119
try to cut out some of them
more than a score of needles which he

903
01:19:56.159 --> 01:20:01.720
had previously pushed into his flesh in
a masochistic frenzy. Court attendants reserve special

904
01:20:01.800 --> 01:20:06.720
seats for mister Missus Albert Budd,
the slain child's parents, and her brother

905
01:20:06.920 --> 01:20:15.640
Edward, who will be witnesses.
March twelfth, nineteen thirty five. Grace

906
01:20:15.720 --> 01:20:21.439
Bud's family, her mother, father, and brother, today identified shriveled little

907
01:20:21.520 --> 01:20:28.239
Albert Howard Fish as the man who
lured her away to be slain in a

908
01:20:28.279 --> 01:20:33.039
lonely abandoned East Irvington, New York
cottage. In a dramatic scene in Supreme

909
01:20:33.119 --> 01:20:40.399
Court where Fish, described as sexually
abnormal by the prosecution and insane by the

910
01:20:40.439 --> 01:20:45.279
defense, is on trial for the
slaying of Grace. Her parents and brother

911
01:20:45.439 --> 01:20:50.079
pointed out the defendant as the Frank
Howard they allowed to take the child to

912
01:20:50.119 --> 01:20:59.199
a birthday party June third, nineteen
twenty eight. She never returned. First

913
01:20:59.520 --> 01:21:05.279
the matre mother dressed in black,
identified Fish. Then Grace's brother Edward named

914
01:21:05.319 --> 01:21:12.359
him as Frank Howard. The father, Albert Bud, provided the dramatic touch.

915
01:21:13.159 --> 01:21:15.399
He said he was near sighted.
The court told him to look at

916
01:21:15.479 --> 01:21:21.279
Fish closely. Stepping from the stand, Bud, a powerfully built man,

917
01:21:21.680 --> 01:21:28.039
walked over to the wizened Fish.
He peered into Fish's eyes, his face

918
01:21:28.439 --> 01:21:33.199
less than six inches away from the
defendant. Suddenly he started to weep.

919
01:21:34.000 --> 01:21:42.159
Fish slumped in his chair, his
face expressionless, never flinched. Bud said,

920
01:21:42.399 --> 01:21:45.520
his voice breaking, that's the man
who took my child away, this

921
01:21:45.680 --> 01:21:53.760
man right here. Bud continued his
testimony, describing how Fish won the family's

922
01:21:53.800 --> 01:21:59.520
confidence by offering his son Edward,
a job on his farm. The Buds

923
01:21:59.560 --> 01:22:02.399
were the first whose witnesses called.
After the completion of the jury and the

924
01:22:02.439 --> 01:22:10.039
opening statements by the prosecution in defense, revolving largely around a taunting letter allegedly

925
01:22:10.079 --> 01:22:14.520
written by Fish, telling how he
had choked the child to death, dismembered

926
01:22:14.520 --> 01:22:19.199
her body, and of his cannibalistic
tendencies. Detective William King of the New

927
01:22:19.279 --> 01:22:26.399
York Missing Persons Bureau told the jury
how this unsavory letter was traced and ultimately

928
01:22:26.479 --> 01:22:32.159
led to Fish's arrest and confession.
December fourteenth, nineteen thirty four, a

929
01:22:32.199 --> 01:22:36.279
brown fragment of bone dug from a
mat of dead leaves on the grounds of

930
01:22:36.319 --> 01:22:42.159
the abandoned East Irvington, New York
cottage, was placed in evidence as that

931
01:22:42.359 --> 01:22:46.920
of the slain Grace Bud by the
prosecution. The moment the exhibit was displayed

932
01:22:47.000 --> 01:22:53.520
by Assistant District Attorney Albert T.
Gallagher Defense Council Dempsey was on his feet,

933
01:22:53.880 --> 01:23:00.279
fighting furiously for a mistrial, which
was denied by Supreme Court Justice closevidence

934
01:23:00.399 --> 01:23:04.399
was introduced during the questioning of Detective
William King, who arrested the little sixty

935
01:23:04.439 --> 01:23:10.319
five year old man and testified that
Fish led him and other officers to the

936
01:23:10.399 --> 01:23:16.359
cottage old wisteria, where he helped
them dig up the child's remains. Fish

937
01:23:16.399 --> 01:23:21.279
slumped in his chair, his head
resting on his right hand, opened one

938
01:23:21.319 --> 01:23:28.000
of his pale, gray eyes.
His face was expressionless. A moment later

939
01:23:28.479 --> 01:23:33.239
he closed his eye. Supreme Court
Justice Frederick P. Close denied the motion

940
01:23:33.760 --> 01:23:40.960
and permitted King to examine the skull
on the witness stand. Fish told King

941
01:23:41.079 --> 01:23:45.039
how he cut off her head with
the butcher knife. After luring her from

942
01:23:45.039 --> 01:23:48.640
her home in New York to the
deserted house, Fish told the child to

943
01:23:48.680 --> 01:23:55.199
pick flowers outside the uninhabited mansion.
King said. Meanwhile, Fish spread a

944
01:23:55.239 --> 01:23:58.119
canvas on the floor of a room
on the upper story of the house,

945
01:23:58.520 --> 01:24:02.960
disrobed, and then grace to come
in. When the child saw him,

946
01:24:03.000 --> 01:24:08.560
According to the detective's testimony of what
Fish told him, she screamed, I'm

947
01:24:08.600 --> 01:24:14.079
gonna tell my mama. Then,
Detective King testified, Fish declared, I

948
01:24:14.159 --> 01:24:17.159
grabbed her by the throat, and
she scratched and kicked. I dragged her

949
01:24:17.159 --> 01:24:20.880
into the room. I put my
knee on her chest and choked her more

950
01:24:21.039 --> 01:24:25.920
so as to be sure she was
dead. Then I put a pail under

951
01:24:25.960 --> 01:24:29.960
her neck and I cut off her
head with the butcher knife. I put

952
01:24:30.000 --> 01:24:32.359
all her clothes on the floor,
and then I cut her in two about

953
01:24:32.359 --> 01:24:36.880
the navel. I first used the
butcher knife, and then I used the

954
01:24:36.920 --> 01:24:42.239
meat cleaver. I did not use
the saw at all. I put the

955
01:24:42.279 --> 01:24:45.720
torso and legs behind the door and
took the head out behind the house.

956
01:24:46.920 --> 01:24:50.880
My hands were covered with blood.
There was no water, and so I

957
01:24:50.960 --> 01:24:56.720
cleaned them on the grass. Then
I went back and wrapped the tools and

958
01:24:56.760 --> 01:25:00.600
put them behind the door. Four
days later I returned and got the body

959
01:25:00.640 --> 01:25:05.159
and the legs. I threw them
onto the lawn behind the house. I

960
01:25:05.199 --> 01:25:09.880
carried out the torso. Then I
laid out the body as it would be

961
01:25:09.960 --> 01:25:14.760
in life. I got the head
and put it where it belonged. I

962
01:25:14.800 --> 01:25:17.640
did not bury the body. Then
I got the tools and threw them over

963
01:25:17.680 --> 01:25:25.680
the wall. King told of the
graphic portrayal of the crime that Fish in

964
01:25:25.840 --> 01:25:30.880
pantomime gave the cordon of policemen he
led to the abandoned house after his confession

965
01:25:30.960 --> 01:25:36.319
in New York. It ended.
The detective said when Fish grubbed in the

966
01:25:36.359 --> 01:25:42.600
dead leaves, Dempsey, assigned by
the court to defend Fish, and who

967
01:25:42.640 --> 01:25:45.960
is contending the defendant is insane,
leaped to his feet and said, I

968
01:25:46.039 --> 01:25:50.800
move for a mistrial. This showing
to the jury is prejudicial. These gruesome

969
01:25:50.840 --> 01:25:56.319
bones are prejudicial. I submit I
am titled to the withdrawal of the jury

970
01:25:56.359 --> 01:26:00.680
and the declaration of a mistrial.
The state placed evidence a letter Fish is

971
01:26:00.720 --> 01:26:05.479
alleged to have written a detective King
after his arrest, which said Fish poured

972
01:26:05.479 --> 01:26:12.920
alcohol in his flesh and ignited it
to torture himself. The letter stated quote,

973
01:26:13.159 --> 01:26:17.039
misery leads to crime. I saw
so many boys whipped and strip naked

974
01:26:17.039 --> 01:26:21.479
in that home. The letter did
not specify where that I've been led to

975
01:26:21.560 --> 01:26:28.600
a life of crime. I have
stripped myself and whipped my body. March

976
01:26:28.680 --> 01:26:35.680
fifteenth, nineteen thirty five, Albert
H. Fish thought he was Christ and

977
01:26:35.760 --> 01:26:42.279
at times beat himself with nail studded
paddles. His son, Albert H.

978
01:26:42.359 --> 01:26:47.600
Fish Junior, testified today. The
younger Fish, who is thirty five years

979
01:26:47.600 --> 01:26:53.439
old and lives at eight oh seven
Franklin Avenue, was called as the first

980
01:26:53.479 --> 01:26:59.680
witness for the defense. He is
a painter and a decorator. Fish testified

981
01:26:59.720 --> 01:27:03.720
that nineteen twenty two, while he
was playing football with his brothers at Worthington,

982
01:27:04.279 --> 01:27:09.159
he saw his father in a nearby
apple orchard, stand with his hand

983
01:27:09.239 --> 01:27:14.039
raised and repeat I am Christ,
I Am Christ, I Am Christ.

984
01:27:15.199 --> 01:27:19.399
Early in nineteen thirty four, when
he and his father serviced three apartment houses

985
01:27:19.439 --> 01:27:26.119
at eighteen eighty three Amsterdam Avenue in
Manhattan, he entered his father's bedroom unexpectedly

986
01:27:26.239 --> 01:27:30.319
and found his father nude, jumping
up and down and beating himself with a

987
01:27:30.439 --> 01:27:34.600
nail studded paddle. He said his
father's face was red and his eyes looked

988
01:27:34.640 --> 01:27:41.479
wild. In nineteen thirty, the
younger Fish testified he found two paddles in

989
01:27:41.520 --> 01:27:45.600
his father's home on seventy fourth Street. They were nail studded. Fish said

990
01:27:45.640 --> 01:27:49.239
that when he questioned his father about
them, he was told, quote,

991
01:27:49.279 --> 01:27:53.880
sometimes I get a certain feeling,
and when I get that feeling, I

992
01:27:53.920 --> 01:28:00.119
have to torture myself with those paddles
unquote. March nineteenth, nineteen thirty five,

993
01:28:02.119 --> 01:28:06.840
a police record disclosing that Albert H. Fish was placed in King's County

994
01:28:06.880 --> 01:28:14.399
Hospital for observation for sadism was put
in evidence by the defense, which is

995
01:28:14.439 --> 01:28:19.079
seeking to prove the aged defendant insane. Detective John Paul Smith of the New

996
01:28:19.119 --> 01:28:25.279
York City Police testified he made out
the card on August twenty seventh, nineteen

997
01:28:25.399 --> 01:28:30.000
thirty one, three years after Fish
had allegedly slain the child and mutilated her

998
01:28:30.039 --> 01:28:35.600
body in a deserted East Irvington,
New York cottage. Smith described resting Fish

999
01:28:35.640 --> 01:28:42.520
at the Steeplechase Hotel, Rockaway on
suspicion of sending obscene letters through the mails

1000
01:28:42.920 --> 01:28:47.800
and of having him taken to King's
County Hospital in an ambulance. Quote we

1001
01:28:47.880 --> 01:28:53.000
searched his room. He was a
handyman. There. We found in his

1002
01:28:53.119 --> 01:28:56.319
room a cat of nine tales,
and I asked him what he used it

1003
01:28:56.399 --> 01:29:00.680
for. He said he used it
to beat himself, and what business was

1004
01:29:00.720 --> 01:29:05.560
it of ours. The last of
the Fish children, Eugene twenty seven,

1005
01:29:05.960 --> 01:29:11.279
broke down on the stand and wept
as he told of his father's self torture.

1006
01:29:12.359 --> 01:29:16.199
Afterward, the Reverend Harold G.
Willis, rector of Saint Mark's Episcopal

1007
01:29:16.319 --> 01:29:21.000
Church, West Orange, New Jersey, testified that Fish had been employed as

1008
01:29:21.000 --> 01:29:27.359
a sexton at Saint Anne's Episcopal Church
in New York. Defense Council James E.

1009
01:29:27.479 --> 01:29:31.600
Dempsey Junior again started reading into the
record the obscene letters the old man

1010
01:29:31.640 --> 01:29:36.359
had sent. Through the mails,
women were excluded from the court by Justice

1011
01:29:36.439 --> 01:29:43.680
Close. During a recess, Detective
William King, who arrested Fish, introduced

1012
01:29:43.800 --> 01:29:47.560
Edward Budd, brother of the slain
child, to the Fish children. One

1013
01:29:47.600 --> 01:29:55.119
of them, Missus Gertrude de Mario, broke down and started crying. March

1014
01:29:55.159 --> 01:30:02.199
twenty second, nineteen thirty five,
Albert Howard Fish was described by his attorney

1015
01:30:02.239 --> 01:30:06.880
today as an insane fiend who should
be confined for the rest of his life

1016
01:30:06.880 --> 01:30:13.520
in an asylum rather than be sent
to the electric chair. Pointing to his

1017
01:30:13.600 --> 01:30:17.640
wizened client, James E. Dempsey
Junior, summing up the defense, said,

1018
01:30:17.760 --> 01:30:21.119
quote, if I were a jurre, and even if there was a

1019
01:30:21.159 --> 01:30:26.399
reasonable doubt as to some technical point, I would not want it upon my

1020
01:30:26.560 --> 01:30:30.279
soul that I turned this man free
to walk the streets. I haven't spared

1021
01:30:30.359 --> 01:30:34.159
this man, I said, and
I say now that this man is a

1022
01:30:34.239 --> 01:30:41.640
fiend unquote. The defendant, his
face covered by his hand, a man

1023
01:30:41.680 --> 01:30:46.760
who admittedly criminally assaulted at least one
hundred children, sat motionless as his counsel

1024
01:30:46.880 --> 01:30:53.800
described his unnatural life. Asserting that
Fish should have been sent to an insane

1025
01:30:53.840 --> 01:30:58.720
asylum years ago. Dempsey said it
was a breakdown in the police system that

1026
01:30:58.840 --> 01:31:03.640
left him free to commit a more
unspeakable crimes. Describing his client as a

1027
01:31:03.680 --> 01:31:12.039
degenerate, gruesome, obscene, and
homicidal, Dempsey criticized Bellevue Hospital for declaring

1028
01:31:12.119 --> 01:31:17.640
him sane after three weeks observation in
January nineteen thirty one, following his arrest

1029
01:31:17.800 --> 01:31:24.720
for sending obscene letters through the mail
Fish, peeking through his hands which covered

1030
01:31:24.760 --> 01:31:29.239
his face, broke down and wept
as Dempsey neared the end of the summation.

1031
01:31:30.319 --> 01:31:32.960
E. T. Gallagher, Assistant
District Attorney, said, quote,

1032
01:31:33.159 --> 01:31:38.399
he wasn't insane on June third,
nineteen twenty eight, that was the day

1033
01:31:38.520 --> 01:31:43.800
Grace was murdered and mutilated. He
wanted to satisfy a desire and he did

1034
01:31:44.199 --> 01:31:47.880
regardless of the cost. And the
state wouldn't be asking for the electric chair

1035
01:31:48.199 --> 01:31:55.279
if it was not positive that Fish
was sane. Unquote. He described Fish

1036
01:31:55.600 --> 01:32:03.960
as a scheming and plotting, unnatural
person. January seventeenth, nineteen thirty six,

1037
01:32:06.079 --> 01:32:11.600
The state has exacted the extreme penalty
for the slaying of ten year old

1038
01:32:11.640 --> 01:32:16.560
Grace Bud, described by penologists as
one of the most revolting crimes in New

1039
01:32:16.680 --> 01:32:24.520
York Police annals. Wizened little Albert
H. Fish, sixty six, who

1040
01:32:24.600 --> 01:32:29.439
said as lust for blood led him
to strangle the girl and dismember her body

1041
01:32:29.520 --> 01:32:33.199
nearly eight years ago, was put
to death last night in the electric chair

1042
01:32:33.279 --> 01:32:40.920
at Sing Sing Prison. The watery
eyed, stooped shouldered man followed John Smith,

1043
01:32:41.239 --> 01:32:45.560
a one legged man, in a
double execution. He was the seventh

1044
01:32:45.600 --> 01:32:51.079
man to die in as many days
at the hand of executioner Robert Elliott,

1045
01:32:51.960 --> 01:32:58.119
a devotee of self torture. X
rays showed that he had thrust more than

1046
01:32:58.199 --> 01:33:02.640
thirty needles into his own abdot.
Fish was quoted as having remarked that the

1047
01:33:02.680 --> 01:33:09.800
electric chair would be the supreme thrill
of his life. Shortly before he died,

1048
01:33:10.239 --> 01:33:13.960
Fish said goodbye to three of his
grown children, a daughter and two

1049
01:33:14.039 --> 01:33:18.119
sons, Ward and Lewis. E. Laws quoted Fish as saying, I

1050
01:33:18.239 --> 01:33:21.600
love children. I must have been
out of my mind when I killed that

1051
01:33:21.760 --> 01:33:28.760
girl. When he shuffled into the
death chamber, however, he clasped his

1052
01:33:28.920 --> 01:33:33.319
hands in silent prayer, and his
parchment like skin turned a ghastly gray.

1053
01:33:35.000 --> 01:33:41.720
The Reverend doctor Anthony Peterson, Protestant
chaplain, accompanied him to the death chamber,

1054
01:33:41.960 --> 01:33:46.720
where about fifty witnesses were waiting.
Four guards strapped Fish in the chair.

1055
01:33:47.600 --> 01:33:54.159
Then executioner Elliot stepped quickly into a
control room and closed the switch.

1056
01:33:55.479 --> 01:34:10.560
Three minutes later, two doctors pronounced
Fish dead. It was reported that before

1057
01:34:10.560 --> 01:34:15.359
his execution, Albert Fish gave a
handwritten manuscript to his court appointed attorney detailing

1058
01:34:15.439 --> 01:34:20.359
many of his crimes, including the
murders of Billy Gaffney and Francis MacDonell,

1059
01:34:20.520 --> 01:34:26.319
which he had previously denied. While
the lawyer admitted to having the document,

1060
01:34:26.359 --> 01:34:30.279
he told the press he was going
to destroy it quote, I will never

1061
01:34:30.319 --> 01:34:33.439
show it to anyone. It is
the most filthy string of obscenities that I

1062
01:34:33.439 --> 01:34:39.359
have ever read. Many of Fish's
letters are out there, though some of

1063
01:34:39.399 --> 01:34:44.760
them in the files of the Smithsonian
Institution. I recorded one of these confessions,

1064
01:34:45.039 --> 01:34:48.920
the story of his satomasochistic relationship with
a young man named Thomas, but

1065
01:34:49.039 --> 01:34:54.479
I edited it from this episode because
I couldn't bear to listen to it again.

1066
01:34:55.600 --> 01:34:59.199
If you're interested to hear the unedited
tape, however, I'll post an

1067
01:34:59.319 --> 01:35:04.359
MP three file at Truecrimehistorian dot com. Slash Fish. Don't say I didn't

1068
01:35:04.399 --> 01:35:27.079
warn you. That was what happened
to Grace. The Atrocities of Albert Fish.

1069
01:35:27.479 --> 01:35:31.760
Theme music by Dave Sam's and Rachel
Shott, engineered by David Hish at

1070
01:35:31.800 --> 01:35:38.680
Third Street Music. Media management by
Sean R. Jones, Production assistance by

1071
01:35:38.680 --> 01:35:42.880
Emily Seymer Brawn. And as for
me, the only thing I knew about

1072
01:35:43.079 --> 01:35:46.560
was what I read in the newspapers. I'm true Crime historian Richard O.

1073
01:35:46.800 --> 01:36:01.680
Jones signing off for now. Oh
good.