Famous Serial Killers — “Albert Fish — The Brooklyn Vampire”

In my novels, I write about serial killers. Sometimes I let myself be inspired by real murderers. I write about these killers here now. Today it’s about Albert Fish, also known as “The Brooklyn Vampire.”

Life

Albert Fish was born in May 1870 in Washington, D.C.

Like many other serial killers, Fish came from difficult backgrounds. When Fish was only five years old, his father died, and his mother sent him to a reform school. Alone she was overwhelmed with the care of her son.

The early loss of his father was because his father, Randall Fish, was already seventy-five years old at the time of Albert’s birth. Albert’s mother was an amazing forty-three years younger than her husband.

It is also interesting that there were many mentally ill people in Fish’s family. His mother hallucinated, two of his uncles died in psychiatric institutions, and his brother suffered from hydrocephalus and was classified as mentally weak.

Fish had two other siblings who also had severe mental problems. His second brother was an alcoholic, and the sister is said to have been insane.

After Fish went to reform school, his life didn’t get any better. There he was neglected and abused by carers. However, Fish later testified that the abuse had sexually aroused him. At that time, he had discovered that he was sadomasochistic.

He stayed in the children’s home until he was nine years old. Then his mother took him back. She now had a secure job and felt able to take care of him again. But Fish was already seriously disturbed by the violence he had experienced.

At the age of twelve, he started a relationship with a newspaper boy. He had a penchant for sexual practices in which excrement played a central role. He introduced Fish to these practices, and Fish apparently liked them.

Fish did not develop healthy sexuality at a young age. He visited public baths to observe other boys changing clothes and wrote anonymous obscene letters to women.

In 1890 Albert Fish moved to New York, where he stayed afloat as a prostitute. It was at this time that he raped little boys for the first time. Albert Fish spent unstable years in New York.

When his mother found him a wife in 1898, some structures seemed to come into Albert’s life. He had six children with his wife and worked as a painter.

For outsiders, it looked as if Albert Fish led a relatively normal life. According to his own statements, he never stopped abusing boys. Also, his fascination with sexual mutilation began at this time.

This fascination escalated in 1910 when he entered into a sadomasochistic relationship with a man. On the tenth day of this relationship, Fish lured his lover to an old farmhouse where he tortured him for over fourteen days.

Later, Fish testified that he planned to kill his friend at the end. Instead, he simply slashed his penis and left him tied up in the house.

Fish testified that he didn’t know what had become of his friend. He never tried to find out either.

His mental condition deteriorated rapidly when his wife left him in 1917, and he became the single father of six children.

Fish developed acoustic hallucinations and inflicted increasingly severe injuries on himself.

He hit himself with a needle-spiked paddle, shoved long needles into his body, and put cotton wool soaked in flammable liquid into his anus and set it on fire.

Although he didn’t use physical force on his children, he forced them and their friends to spank him with the nail-spiked paddle. One can imagine which Taraumata triggers such experiences in children.

Fish had committed many violent crimes up to that point but had not yet killed anybody. But that was about to change.

The murders

He committed his first real murder attempt in 1919 when he stabbed a mentally handicapped boy. Fish later explained that he chose mentally handicapped and African-Americans as victims because he assumed that no one in these groups would be missed. This clearly shows how little reality Fish still had.

After the first attempted murder, it took until 1924 for him to try again. One day he saw a little girl playing alone on the grounds of a farm. He approached her and persuaded her to come with him.

Fortunately, the girl’s mother got there in time and drove Fish off the property. Fish reappeared on the farm a little later, but this time he was discovered and driven away by the girl’s father.

Fish was now in the middle of a psychotic episode and believed that God had ordered him to torture and sexually mutilate small children.

Another failed attempt followed when two boys escaped at the last minute because they discovered his torture tools while playing in his apartment, got scared, and ran away.

After these three attempted murders, Fish did not give up but continued to search for his first victim. The circumstances in which he finally found his victim were confusing.

Fish was actually planning to kill an eighteen-year-old man whose job application he had seen in a newspaper. Fish planned to pretend to the young man that he had a job for him and to lure him to a place where he could kill him.

But then, while visiting the young man and his family, Fish met a relative of his intended victim — ten-year-old Grace Budd. Fish decided that she, not the young man, should become his victim.

He told the girl’s parents that he still had to go to his little niece’s birthday party today and persuaded her to let little Grace go with him.

When the parents agreed, Grace Budd’s fate was sealed. Fish tortured, mutilated, and killed Grace. Then he dismembered her body and ate her flesh for days.

Persecution, arrest, and conviction

Albert Fish may never have been held accountable for the murder of Grace Budd. After Grace disappeared, another man was quickly arrested. His wife, with whom he had quarreled, had reported him to the police. The man spent 108 days in prison before being acquitted in court.

But Albert Fish wrote an anonymous letter to Grace’s mother in which he described all the horrors of her daughter’s murder. He also and especially described how he later cooked and ate her.

Since he also wrote in the letter about the circumstances in which he had Grace under his control, it was quickly understood that only the stranger who visited the Budd family on the day of Grace’s disappearance could be the author.

But no one knew his real name or where he lived. The only clue was the envelope with the letter to the mother.

On it was the emblem of a company, which the sender had apparently not made unrecognizable out of carelessness.

The police visited the company and took samples from all 400 employees. But there was no hit.

The company’s caretaker then remembered that he had once taken the company’s stationary home with him. According to his statement, he had left it in the apartment when he moved out.

Now the investigators had an address. They arrested Albert Fish for the murder of Grace Budd.

It was only after his arrest that it gradually became clear that a serial killer had been caught, not a simple murderer.

Fish was quickly associated with two more murders, which he finally admitted after initial resistance.

After a trial that was mainly about his sanity, Fish was sentenced to death even though he was classified as mentally ill.

Albert Fish died on 16 January 1935 on the electric chair in Sing Sing.

Albert Fish could be proved in court three murders. In four other cases, he is still considered a probable perpetrator.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish

https://www.onlinepsychologydegree.info/worst-serial-killers-of-all-time/

https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/THE-ARREST-Hannibal-Lecter-and-Albert-Fish

https://web.archive.org/web/20110608130819/http://www.prairieghosts.com/fish.html

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