Albert Fish is a criminal whose deeds are scary just to think about. Everything he did (and this is a whole bunch of all kinds of perversions) makes any healthy person shudder. There can be only one explanation for his behavior: Albert Fish was abnormal, and “abnormal” is the mildest definition ...
Albert, named Hamilton at birth, was born in 1870 into a noble American family. However, his family was rather dysfunctional: almost all of his relatives suffered from psychological disorders of various types, which, of course, could not but affect the formation of his personality. Hamilton spent his childhood and youth in the St. John", where Fish began to experience arousal from receiving or seeing corporal punishment. After reaching adulthood, he moved to New York and changed the hated name Hamilton, because of which he was teased all the time in college, to Albert.
Fish soon marries a young girl who bears him six children. It is worth noting that Albert was a rather caring father, albeit with oddities: for example, once, for no reason, he drove a large nail into his hand.
Fish's first arrest took place in 1903, he robbed the shop where he worked. For this crime, Fish was imprisoned for 2 years in Sing Sing prison. In the same place, by the way, he will end his days, but more on that below.
On July 14, 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDonnell goes missing. His friends say that the boy left the playground, accompanied by an elderly thin man with a gray mustache. In the middle of the day, the boy was found in a nearby forest. He was strangled with his own suspenders and severely beaten. The police launched a search for an elderly man, who was given the name "Grey Man". Unfortunately, the investigation initially went the wrong way - after all, in the 20s, crimes of this kind were rare. By the beginning of the 25th year, the investigation had reached a dead end.
On February 11, 1927, another child went missing, Billy Gafney, 4 years old. The only witness to the kidnapping was another Billy, a year younger. He described the man who stole Gafni. It was a kind of "boogie man", not at all scary, on the contrary, fabulous and interesting. He was a thin old man with thick hair. He even allowed to touch his gray mustache ... Billy's corpse was never found.
Perhaps modern investigators would have found similarities between the "Gray" and the "boogie man". But, as already mentioned, the police had little experience in this matter, and therefore no one thought to compare the cases. In the end, the case was never solved.
On June 3, 1925, that is, more than a year later, the most notorious kidnapping took place. True, it was somewhat different from the previous ones. Seventeen-year-old Edward Budd posted a job ad in the newspaper. He was answered by a certain Frank Howard, a slender old man with a gray mustache (a familiar description, isn't it?). He came to the Baddam's house, where he made an excellent impression on the head of the family. Howard was pleasant in communication, kind to children, generous, neat and polite. When Howard visited the Baddams for the last time, he met one of their daughters, ten-year-old Grace. He invites the girl's parents to take her to a holiday where he is going, and where there will be many children. At first, the parents hesitate, but then they agree - Grace has so few holidays in her life. And they make the most, perhaps, the biggest mistake of their entire life. Needless to say, Grace, who left on June 3 with Frank Howard, whose real name was, of course, Albert Fish, never saw her parents again.
The police did not wait for the prescribed two days to start searching for the missing. Almost immediately after the start of the investigation, it became known that no Howard existed at all. The search begins, but after a few months they stop - there is no reason to consider Grace Budd killed; the case should be closed.
It probably would have ended there, but Fish gives himself away. Unable to cope with his sick mind, he, almost 10 years after Grace's abduction, sends a letter to her parents. In order to imagine how terrible this man was, the text of the letter is given in full:
"My dear Mrs. Budd!
In 1894 a friend of mine sailed as a deckhand on the steamer Tacoma under the command of Captain John Davis. From San Francisco they sailed to Hong Kong, China. Upon arrival, my friend and two other sailors went ashore and got drunk. When they returned, the ship had already left.
At that time there was a famine in China. Meat of any kind cost between $1 and $3 per pound. Since the poor suffered the most, all children under 12 were sold for food in order to save their elders from starvation. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe on the street. You could go to any store and ask for a steak - and they would have prepared meat for you. You would be provided with pieces of the bodies of a boy or a girl, if you would only wish for a tenderloin from such meat. The bottom of a boy or girl is the most delicious part of the body, it was sold at the highest price.
The friend who lingered there acquired a taste for human flesh. When returning to New York, he captured two boys - 7 and 11 years old. Hiding them in his remote home, he kept them bound in the closet. He spanked them several times a day to make the meat tastier. He first killed an 11-year-old boy because he was fatter and had more meat. Every part of the body was butchered except for the head, bones, and intestines. His backside he roasted in the oven, and the rest of the parts were boiled, fried and stewed. The smaller boy repeated this path. At the time, I lived at 409 East 100th Street. A friend told me so often about the taste of human flesh that I decided to try it to form my own opinion.
On Sunday, June 3, 1928, I addressed you at 406 West 15th Street. Brought you a basket of strawberries. We had breakfast. Grace sat on my lap and kissed me. I decided to eat it. I offered to take her to the party. You said, "Yes, she can go." I took her to an empty house in Westchester that I had chosen ahead of time.
When we got there, I told her to stay outside. She collected wild flowers. I went upstairs and took off all my clothes. I knew that if I started to do what I intended, I would stain her with blood. When everything was ready, I went to the window and called her. I then hid in the closet until she entered the room. When she saw me naked, she screamed and tried to run up the stairs. I grabbed her, and she said that she would tell her mother about everything. First I stripped her naked. How she kicked, bit and tore! I strangled her and then cut out the soft parts to take to my rooms. Cook and eat.
How sweet and cuddly her little ass is roasted in the oven! It took me 9 days to completely eat her meat. I didn't copulate with her, although I could if I wanted to. She died a virgin."
Naturally, the parents were shocked. However, they did not believe what was written in the letter - some details were indicated inaccurately. (Here it is worth noting that Fish generally remembered the events of his life, the places he visited, the people he knew, vaguely, superficially). The Budds thought that some scoundrel had cruelly played a trick on them.
However, Detective William King, who took up the investigation of this case, was of a different opinion. He began a serious investigation, many options were checked, but, as is often the case with serial killers (just remember Theodore Bundy), the criminal was found almost by accident. Through simple research, King caught him on the hook. However, when trying to arrest Fish, he rushed at the detective with a knife, which greatly aggravated his already deplorable situation.
After Albert Fish was detained by law enforcement agencies, he was charged with more than 100 child molestations. Fish himself stated that there were about 400 of them. Thus, he tried to imitate madness. The exact number of children who died at the hands of Albert Fish is unknown, it ranges from 7 to 15.
Fish also described the actions he performed with little Billy Gafney:
“I cut his cheeks, cut out his tongue, tonsils and washed them. Put everything on a baking sheet, turned on the stove. Then I laid strips of bacon on each of his cheeks and put everything on the stove. Then he cut four onions, after the meat was fried for a quarter of an hour, poured it with a liter of water to make juice, and put onions. Therefore, it had to turn out beautiful and juicy. After about two hours it was ready - beautiful in appearance, with a brown crust. I have never tasted a turkey that was even half as tasty as its sweet meat. I ate every last crumb of meat in four days. His little tongue was sweet as a nut, but I couldn't chew his tonsils. I threw them in the toilet."
During a medical examination, 27 needles were found in Fish's groin, which were inserted there by the criminal himself. It became known that once Albert, who did not allow himself irony in relation to religion, climbed a hill and, spreading his arms, shouted: “I am Jesus! Look people, I'm Jesus!" Fish said that he flogged himself with a whip, set fire to it, beat him on the chest and legs with a stick.
Despite all of the above, Albert Fish was declared sane and sentenced to the electric chair. He himself noticed that the execution in the electric chair seemed entertaining to him, although the sentence did not suit him.
In the early morning of January 16, 1936, the oldest prisoner in Sing Sing prison and, perhaps, one of the most terrible, was executed.
Albert Fish is considered the worst maniac in US history. He was called "vampire", "werewolf", "ghost" for his addiction to human meat. Fish hunted children, raped them and ate them. It is believed that Fish suffered from a severe mental disorder, but, nevertheless, a medical examination found him sane and cognizable.
Fish was born, then called Hamilton, in Washington in 1870. His father was 43 years older than his wife. Hamilton was the youngest child of four in the family. At the age of five, the boy lost his father, his mother gave him to an orphanage. There, beatings were a common method of punishment, but it turned out that Hamilton liked to watch the beating of "colleagues", and even more to receive punishment himself. The pain in him caused an erection, which in turn caused ridicule from other children.
A few years later, the mother managed to get a good job, and she took her son away from the boarding school. But life in the shelter and mental disorders among the representatives of the Fish family did not go unnoticed. At the age of 12, the boy gets his first homosexual experience with the postman.
At the same time, visiting public baths becomes Hamilton's favorite pastime. In 1890, Fish goes to New York to work as a "prostitute", simultaneously harassing boys and raping them.
After a while, in 1898, the mother manages to organize her son's marriage. By the way, the wife considered her husband a good family man, bore him six children. Yes, sometimes there were oddities in his behavior, but in general everything was fine, according to his wife.
In 1903, on charges of embezzlement, Fish ends up in Sing Sing prison, where he spends two years continuing his homosexual contacts.
In principle, Fish's sexual preferences would have excited few people, except, perhaps, his wife. However, from harassment and rape of boys, Hamilton, who changed his name to Albert, moves on to murders. According to Fish's stories, the first of them happened back in 1910, but it was not possible to find the body of Thomas Bedden.
And the first documented incident was the kidnapping of Francis McDonell. An 8-year-old boy was playing in the playground on July 14, 1924. Witnesses saw him leave with an elderly grey-whiskered man. A few hours later, the body of a boy was found in the forest - raped, beaten, strangled with suspenders. The man was searched, but to no avail.
In 1927, Billy Gafney becomes a victim of a maniac. Two children were playing near the house. They went missing, but the neighbor's boy, Billy Beaton, was found on the roof of the house. Beaton and said that his four-year-old friend was taken away by "Boogie Man" - an elderly gray-whiskered man in gray.
The events of 1928 brought Fish new "names". Under the name of Frank Howard, he met 17-year-old Edward, who was looking for work. "Howard" met the boy's family and made a wonderful impression on them as a respectable elderly gentleman. During a recent visit, Fish offered to take Edward's younger sister to the party. After that, no one saw the ten-year-old Grace Budd.
The police were looking for the girl. Pretty quickly, they managed to establish that Howard does not exist in nature. The investigation went on for several months, but even the girl's body was not found.
And after 7 years, the Budd family received a letter. The mother was not strong in literacy and gave the anonymous message to her son Edward to read, who immediately turned to the police. The letter was written on behalf of the same Howard, who told how he took the girl away, recalled the details of that day, how he brought her to an empty house, strangled, butchered and ate.
It was all spelled out in sickening detail. In particular, it was indicated that it took the killer 9 days to eat all the prepared meat. This is how the maniac turned into the Brooklyn Vampire.
It was this letter that led to the killer of Detective William King. According to a specific stamp on paper, it was possible to calculate the place of his residence, where the criminal was caught.
During the investigation, the murder of three children was proved, although it is assumed that there were 7-15 of them. Fish willingly shared his memories of the process, how he cut the bodies of children, how he cooked and what pleasure he received from food. During the examination of Fish, the doctors found about 30 needles, which he himself drove into his groin, this was a natural practice for Fish - he beat himself, burned himself with iron, etc.
But still, the doctors recognized Albert Fish as a criminal offence. And in 1936, the maniac was executed in the electric chair in the same Sing Sing.
Recall others:
Appearance is deceptive - everyone knows this old, like the world, truth. And everyone knows that a criminal can be nice and sympathetic to achieve his goal. Unfortunately, this does not reduce the number of crimes. Albert Fish took advantage of this in his time.
Albert Fish was born on May 19, 1870, in Washington, D.C., into a family that at first glance looked respectable. His father was a captain in a river shipping company, but at the time of Albert's birth, who was named Hamilton at birth (later he changed his name to "Albert"), the father of the family, in which three more children were growing up, was engaged in the production of fertilizers.
Few people knew that many family members suffer from various mental disorders and religious mania. Such a "gentleman's set" could not affect the development of little Hamilton. When he was five years old, his father, Rendell, died of a heart attack. The mother was forced to give the boy to the boarding house "Saint John". Boarding life was terrible for Hamilton. He became the object of bullying by other children. Then he realized that beatings and whippings cause him sexual arousal. Perhaps even then he chose a life path for himself.
A few years later, the mother entered the service, and took her son home. But going home didn't fix anything. In 1882, the future serial killer entered into a homosexual relationship with another teenager. He began to visit public baths, where he could not see the naked bodies of other boys. He was well aware that women did not interest him much.
In 1890, the young man moved to New York, where he changed the hated name Hamilton, for which he was teased as a child, to Albert. His mother, apparently suspecting something, decided that marriage could fix everything. Albert's wife was a nineteen-year-old girl, seven years younger than him. The marriage could be called happy, the couple had six children. People who knew Albert Fish closely noted that he was a caring father. But marriage did not change his addictions, according to him, he raped children, as before, and when he was in prison on charges of embezzlement in 1903, he entered into homosexual contacts with other prisoners. Albert was released the following year, but his wife left him. He himself took care of raising his children. Albert Fish was known as a pious man, regularly attended church, and read the Bible.
Albert Fish committed his first murder in 1910, in the state of Delaware, by killing a certain Thomas Bedden, a few years later he killed a mentally retarded boy in Virginia. The killer in both cases was not found, since the murders occurred at intervals of several years, and in different states, no one linked them to one case. But still, the killer was not always lucky. On a summer afternoon in 1924, eight-year-old Beatrice Keel was playing on her family's farm in Staten Island when a most handsome-looking elderly man approached her and promised her money if the girl would go with him to look for rhubarb in a nearby field. The girl's mother prevented Fish from taking the child away. Failure did not stop him, and Beatrice Keel's peer, Francis MacDonald, was soon killed, his body was found in a nearby forest, the child was raped and strangled with his suspenders. In February 1927, four-year-old Billy Gaffney goes missing and has never been found, dead or alive. Subsequently, Albert Fish spoke about the terrible fanaticism that he did with a defenseless child, including cannibalism.
The witnesses who were the last to see the living victims of the maniac, most often their little friends, agreed in their testimony that their friends were taken away by an elderly man with a gray mustache. His appearance was pleasant, there was nothing repulsive in it, he was friendly, and the children willingly went with him. Among the police, this man was called the "Gray Man", or "Boogie Man".
In the summer of 1928, there was a high-profile kidnapping in New York. At the end of May, a young man, Edward Budd, advertised in the Sunday paper that he was looking for work in the countryside. A few days later, following an announcement, farmer Frank Howard came to the Budds' house - this is how the head of the family, Albert Fish, introduced himself. At the house, he ran into Edward's younger sister, Grace. A few days later, he came back and invited the girl's parents to take her to their sister's birthday party. The parents hesitated a little, but gave their permission, Frank Howard made the most pleasant impression on them. On June 3, 1928, Grace Budd left home with "farmer Frank Howard" and was never seen again.
Needless to say, the police spent a lot of time looking for the non-existent Frank Howard, the case again, like in previous cases, came to a standstill. And Albert Fish, reveling in his elusiveness, continued his bloody path. Several times he tried to cohabit with women, but each time he returned to the old one again.
Serial killers thrive on vanity and the blind certainty that they will never be caught. This is what played a cruel joke with Albert Fish. Confident in his invulnerability, he sent a letter to Grace Budd's parents in 1934, in which he spoke of the atrocities that he committed with the child. The Budd family was horrified, they thought that someone had played a cruel joke on them, but Detective William King seriously took up the investigation of this case.
Experts compared the handwriting in Frank Howard's letter and telegram, and came to the conclusion that this is one and the same person. From the stamp on the letter, the detective managed to identify Albert Fish. He was arrested, and a trial took place the following year.
Albert Fish confessed to several more murders, he tried to present himself as crazy, claimed that he heard voices from above that ordered him to kill children. The doctors never agreed on Fish's sanity. At the trial, which took place on March 11, 1935, his stepdaughter, Mary Nichols, also testified, she said that Albert Fish, cohabiting with her mother, tried to draw her children into his "games", including Mary. The court hearings lasted ten days, and in the end, Albert Fish was sentenced to death. Which was carried out in January 1936.
Albert Fish left a trail of blood and broken destinies in his wake. His gloomy image has repeatedly appeared in books and on television, there is an opinion that it was the serial killer Albert Fish who became the prototype of the protagonist of the cult film The Silence of the Lambs.
OUR STORY.... """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" """""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""" """""""""" How Nicholas II wanted to make Korea a colony of Russia At the end of the 19th century, Nicholas II had an adventurous plan to invade Korea. Intrigues of concessionaires On August 29, 1896, at the height of dreams of creating Zheltorossiya - the capture of northern Manchuria, a merchant from Vladivostok, Yuli Briner, managed to buy a forest concession from the Korean government (that is, rights to use forest resources) near the Yalu River for 20 years. Yalu passes the modern border of China and North Korea.The concession extended to the territory of the basins of the Tumen and Yalu rivers - that is, in fact, from the Yellow to the Sea of \u200b\u200bJapan, and its length was about eight hundred miles.The agreement implied almost complete freedom of the owner - for twenty years it was possible to build roads, buildings iya, to conduct a telegraph, to launch steamboats along the river. The owner of the concession for twenty years acquired the whole of North Korea with all the important military mountain passes and strategic points. However, Briner could not maintain concessions for Yalu for a long time - there was not enough capital. Then the merchant decided to profitably sell his business - and one of the well-known supporters of Russia's aggressive policy in the Far East, a retired officer of the Cavalier Guard Regiment Alexander Bezobrazov, the ideological inspirer of the so-called "bezobrazovtsy" - courtiers who influence the foreign policy of the Russian Empire and are largely responsible for the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. Bezobrazov's wife commented on her husband's influence on the tsar in the following way: “I just can't understand how Sasha can play such a huge role. Can't they see that he's half-mad?" The concessions were sold in 1901 to the Russian Timber Company, that is, to Bezobrazov. In order to find money for this scam, he found himself rich and eminent sponsors - Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, the imperial son-in-law, and Count I. I. Vorontsov-Dashkov. Alexander Mikhailovich saw in this scam the fulfillment of his own aspirations - he weaved intrigues against Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich and wanted to take his place as Admiral General. Since he did not succeed, with the help of the purchase of concessions, Alexander Mikhailovich wanted to get himself control of the merchant fleet. Secret Expedition to Korea In 1898, the Most Submissive Note was brought to the Tsar, which outlined the idea of seizing Briner's concessions and sending a secret expedition to North Korea, which would ascertain the presence of natural resources in those lands. Manipulating the king's decision, the future concessionaires noted that the Japanese and other countries would covet the resources of Korea, and only now there was the only chance to seize the coveted lands peacefully. The trick of the plan was that it was actually planned to make a puppet state out of Korea - among other things, it was supposed to strengthen the power of the Korean emperor, since it was he who, by law, was the owner of the subsoil of Korea. The organization under him of a special Russian administration would have made him an accomplice of the Russian Empire, and the seizure of the country would have turned out to be quiet and imperceptible. As stated in one of the notes, “For Russia ... the almost exclusive settlement of the Japanese in Korea would obviously be undesirable. It was necessary to obtain for Russia such large private commercial interests in Korea, the protection of which would give us the right to interfere in Korean affairs and thereby establish a counterbalance to Japanese influence. The plan of the concessionaires seemed profitable: from 1896 Russia could keep its troops in Korea, and then founded the Russo-Korean Bank and sent its military and financial advisers to Seoul. Thus, at first, Russia had more political influence than rival Japan. Nicholas II gave the go-ahead and sent a special expedition to North Korea with state money, and made Alexander Mikhailovich and Count Vorontsov-Dashkov the heads of the concession. Bezobrazov was the main performer. For 94 days, the entire North Korea was studied by the expedition. The head of the expedition, engineer Mikhailovsky, sent a telegram: "In Manchuria I saw a lot of wealth, wonderful forests of larch and cedar - three million acres - a lot of gold, silver, red copper, iron, coal." Compared to the 235,070 rubles that His Majesty's Cabinet spent on acquiring the concession and the expedition, these were real treasures. Even before it had time to move on to the development of concessions, it was divided into 400 shares for 45 concessionaires. 170 shares belonged personally to His Majesty. Lumberjacks in civilian clothes In 1902, work began on the Yalu River. A couple of hundred Chinese were hired to guard the concession, and fifteen hundred Siberian riflemen were sent there. Such actions caused outrage even in Russia - for example, the Minister of Finance S. Yu. Witte condemned such a policy of the sovereign, for which he soon paid with his post. Bezobrazov, on the contrary, was elevated to the rank of Secretary of State of His Majesty. At the same time, a Russian governorship was created in the Far East (the Russian Far East and the Kwantung region). Foreign Minister Izvolsky spoke negatively about the tsar's grandiose plans: "This (bezobrazovsky concession plan) is an absolutely fantastic enterprise, one of those fantastic projects that always struck the imagination of Nicholas II, always prone to chimerical ideas." General Kuropatkin commented on the concession project in a similar way: "The sovereign dreams not only of annexing Manchuria and Korea, but even of capturing Afghanistan, Persia and Tibet." The most important task of the concessionaires was, of course, not logging, but the military development of border territories. Under the guise of security guards, Russia brought troops into Korea, often dressed in civilian clothes. Riflemen from Siberia quietly replaced the hired Chinese guards and began not only to cut down the forest, but also to build military roads. While a revolution was brewing in the country, it seemed to the government that foreign policy successes could resolve the internal crisis: simultaneously with the development of Korea, the Russian government was slow to withdraw troops from Manchuria, which caused discontent in both China and Japan. Nevertheless, the inevitable escalating conflict was not resolved in favor of Russia. In May 1903, a hundred Russian soldiers were brought into the village of Yongampo at the mouth of the Yalu River, ostensibly to build timber warehouses there. In December, barracks, a stable and a pier protecting the port from storms were already built there. The construction of military buildings did not go unnoticed - Great Britain and Japan paid attention to this and realized that Russia was seeking to fix its military resources in Korea. Despite the fact that the "lumberjacks"-soldiers had already managed to harvest timber for 3 million rubles, the concession had to be hastily sold to the Americans - a peaceful and imperceptible seizure of the territory would not have happened. The short-sighted actions of the Russian government led to the loss of the Yalu concession, and some historians believe that Nicholas II's adventure in Korea was one of the causes of the Russo-Japanese War. “We have clearly placed Korea under Japanese dominance,” Witte wrote. The Russo-Korean Bank was closed, and the Russian financial adviser to the King of Korea was recalled.
Hannibal Lector, played by Anthony Hopkins, terrifies us, but at the end of the day, it's just a movie. The cannibals that live among us are a terrible reality. Their crimes seem especially cruel and vile, and the story of Albert Fish is no exception.
Fish can rightly be called one of the most perverted criminals: he became a cannibal after he "found" himself in pedophilia. Already being arrested, Fish admitted that more than 400 (!) Children became victims of his inclinations, he tortured and killed several more. At the same time, the sadist looked completely harmless: a short stature citizen with an intelligent appearance who seemed so kind and understanding.
The fact that this is just a mask, under which a cruel monster is hiding, could never have occurred to anyone. That is why his crimes seemed completely wild. Even his own execution was rumored to be the embodiment of one of his fantasies.
Fish, who was born on May 19, 1870, seemed destined to become a criminal: the boy was born into a family that had a long history of mental illness. After the death of his father, his mother gave the five-year-old Fish to a Washington orphanage. There, Albert was constantly beaten and mocked at him, but he seemed to even like it: the beatings caused him an erection. He received a very mediocre education and learned to work only with his hands, but not with his head.
In 1890, Fish moved to New York, where he began searching for his little victims. Fish's modus operandi was quite established: first he lured children away from home, tortured him (one of his favorite instruments of torture was a paddle studded with nails), and then raped them. Over the years, his passion for violence only grew, and now bullying children often ended in killing and devouring parts of their bodies.
In 1898, Fish married, and for 19 years seemed to be a completely normal family man: a young wife and six children, marriage as a marriage. However, in 1917, Albert's wife ran away with another man, and then he turned in full force. To begin with, he began to involve his own children in his sadomasochistic games. One of the entertainments was this: Fish handed the child the same oar with nails that he used to torture his victims, and asked him to beat him until blood began to flow in streams through his body. No less pleasure was given to him by sticking needles deep into the body.
Having suffered a fiasco in family life, Fish hit writing - he sent letters to women who placed acquaintances in newspapers, in which he described exactly how he would like to have sex with them. The messages were so disgusting that they were never made public, although they appeared in court as evidence. None of the women of Fishu answered, which is not surprising: he asked for their hands not for what she is usually asked for, but in order to hurt him.
Although Fish would not have been able to do intellectual work with all his desire, he worked well with his hands - the maniac skillfully painted houses and often traveled to work in other states. Some believe that he specifically chose those where the black population predominated - Fish, they say, thought that the police would put less effort into searching for a missing black child than if a white child disappeared. Indeed, among his victims there were quite a few dark-skinned children, on whom he tested his "instruments of hell", as he himself called them: his favorite oar, a meat cleaver and all kinds of knives.
In 1928, Fish came across an ad posted by 18-year-old Edward Budd, who was looking for a part-time job to help his family solve financial problems. Fish, posing as Mr. Frank Howard, met with Edward and his family to discuss terms of employment. According to legend, Frank was a Long Island farmer and was willing to pay an au pair $15 a week. The job seemed perfect to Edward, and he immediately agreed to hire.
To the Budd family, Fish promised that he would be back next week and that's when he would take Edward with him. On the appointed day, he did not appear, but sent an apology telegram and set a new date. On June 4, he came to the Baddams, as promised, and presented all the children in the family with gifts. The Budds were fascinated - Frank seemed like a typical loving grandfather.
After dinner, Fish told Buddam that he would pick up Edward later, and now, they say, he must go to a children's party at his sister's house. The maniac persuaded the couple to let Evard's sister, ten-year-old Grace, go with him. Unsuspecting parents agreed, Grace in a smart dress left the house with Fish, and the girl was never seen alive again.
