Descendant of the Original Boogeyman: Albert Fish

Albert Fish was a cannibalistic child-murderer who loved lighting his own butt on fire. In Episode 16 Robert is joined by comedian Maggie Mae Fish who is a descendent of Albert Fish. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mmm, Hello friends, I am Robert Evans, and this is
Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything
you don't know about the very worst people in all
of history. Now, normally this podcast features me and a
guest who's coming into cold talking about a horrific person
in history, and generally I pick dictators or people who

(00:23):
have abused power in some very large scale way. That's
sort of our milieu. We don't really talk about serial
killers usually, but today we are talking about a serial
killer named Albert Fish, who was a cannibalistic child murder
who loved lighting his own ass on fire. Now we're
doing this for two reasons. The first is that my
guest today, Maggie May Fish, is a He is a

(00:45):
relative said person. So let's start there. What is the relation? Okay,
So I contacted my uncle Terry, who did our who
did our family tree, and so I have a bunch
of names here, but basically I'm related via his brother

(01:06):
became our like direct family line. So Albert Fish's brother
Uh ended up moving to Michigan, which is where the
rest of that line ended up and where I was born. Exciting, Okay, sorry,
exciting Before we get any further, Maggie, you're You're not
just the dead guy's relation. You are a wonderful comedian. No,

(01:29):
I am just this dead guy's uh gee, I mean
I'll never get out of his shadow. Look at what
he's done. I will never beat him on that. No,
that's you have for one thing, a wonderful YouTube video
series where you My favorite one is dissecting sort of
the works of Tim Burton. Yeah, I really like your

(01:49):
video on timan Um. You're talented comedian, talented writer. You
and I worked for the same site for a while,
and dauties didn't generally intersect. Yeah, I think we met afterwards. Yeah,
I don't think I met you while you were because
they didn't let me into the videos. No, no, no,
for good reason, for good reason. No one's saying that
we're wrong in that um. So Yeah, basically, the weird
thing about today is that neither of us is coming

(02:11):
in hot or cold. I don't know what you know
and you don't know what I know. So we're just
gonna We're just gonna find out. Yeah, we're gonna make
Reese's Pieces peanut butter cups of knowledge where it's like
like a knowledge truck. And then another knowledge truck backs exactly,
and the drivers have to crowd fund their medical care
because but then they become friends, and then the one

(02:32):
falls in love with that guy's sister, and then like
they're all over queer. You know, you just pitched a
really upbeat movie about our failed medical system. Okay, all right,
well let's talk about a serial killer now. Um, so,
I guess I'm going to My research for this was
mainly I read a book called Deranged by Harold Scheckter.
Have you have you given that one to read? I've

(02:53):
not given it, although it has been recommended to me
several times. If you're it's good if you're if you're
a fan of the books about real killers genre, it's
a very solid jury into that. I also watched a
documentary called Albert Fish about Albert Fish that's terrible. I
have watched that. We're going to get into that in
a little bit because we've got a couple of video
cooks from that, and I just I gotta just trying

(03:16):
to light on if you will very excited for this episode. Um,
all right, so let's talk about Albert Fish's crimes. Yeah,
the ones that we know that we know here's where
I'm confused, and maybe you can China light is. I
know like what he did, but I also know the rumors,
and I don't know which is like factually happened and
which is like, oh man, what if Albert Fish? Also yeah, yeah,

(03:41):
And I just tried to stick mostly to stuff that
we know, because we know there's three children that we
know he killed, yes, um, but he claimed to have
killed a bunch of other people after he was caught.
But he also had as we'll get into a very
rich fantasy life, very rich, which seems like and also like, uh,
you know, he's not the only serial killer to have
like made up deaths. Um. So some of this is

(04:06):
going to be up to the readers to the side,
but hopefully you and I can lock down will forever
now be the ironclad history about the Fish? This is it,
um right. So on July four, nineteen twenty four, eight
year old Frances McDonald was playing on the front stoop
of his porch in Staten Island, which was at that
time like the middle of nowhere. Yeah, it was still

(04:28):
there were like trees and ship trees and ship what's
the roly tumble weed walls? Yes, walls. There were walls, walls,
and trees. So while his mother was watching him, she
saw a strange old man with a gray mustache creeping
down the street in exactly the sort of way normal
people don't. If it had been two thousand eighteen, she
probably would have taken her kids inside and called the cops,
or at least taken him inside. But it was four

(04:50):
and she was just like, oh, what a weirdo. And
then and he was white, so I'm sure it was
like that could happen. That's the twenties. Yeah, So Francis
left after his mom went inside to play with his
brother and some neighbor kids. They were playing some sort
of ball game, probably something old timey like stickball or

(05:13):
or do you have a ball? Then polio ball? Yeah,
I don't know sports. But at some point that weird
gray man started watching them, and Francis ran over to
see what he wanted. Because again, twenties. While his friends
and brother were focused on the game, Francis and the
man both disappeared. Now, once people realized Francis was missing,
search parties were formed. A trio of boy scouts found

(05:36):
Francis's body. The newspapers described, yeah, bad time for the
what a what a. Yeah, they're having some dark campouts
after that, just these kids sitting around the fire, taking
drags a cigarettes and just staring. We've seen um. The

(05:56):
newspapers described Francis as having been quote atrociously a salted.
All of the clothing below his waist had been torn off,
he'd been strangled to death with his suspenders, and it
looked like he'd been cut up to um. Which so
sorry retroactively, I mean, not that I have any control
over an ancestor. Yeah, but you know, none of us
are responsible for what terrible people in our past. Like

(06:20):
when you think about it, everybody's got a serial killer relative.
I hope if you go back far and yeah, go
find some guys. Find you do after this episode, go
find your serial killer and your mass martin. Spoiler alert,
my relative who killed people is gonna wind up having
a camel in the story. So this is gonna be fun.
This is a massive crossover episode. So yeah. On February eleven,

(06:44):
uh four year old Billy Gaffney was playing with a
three year old friend and his twelve year old brother.
Twelve year old walked off because twelve year olds aren't
really good at babysitting. Uh, and the two little kids
wound up on the roof because again, there were no
rules in the nineteen twenties and kids could just go anywhere. Uh.
Billy's three year old friend was later found safe on
the roof, and when the adult who found him asked
where Billy had gone, he said, quote, the Boogeyman took him.

(07:09):
You are a descendant of the book. Yeah. The scariest
thing is that the photo of Albert Fish on the
Wikipedia website looks so much like my current relatives. Uh,
just his piercing eyes like they run in our family.
So it's terrifying to look at it. Yeah. I mean,

(07:29):
I don't think you look like Albert Fish, but y'all
do have piercing eyes. I was going to bring that up. Um.
So both of these abductions cost sensations when they happened, right, Uh,
It was not common for kids to be abducted in
the twenties. It was common for kids to die for
no reason because twenties and medicine was whiskey. Um. But like,
this sort of thing was not common, and so it

(07:51):
caused kind of a sensation, and local papers covered the
cases breathlessly and even got some national coverage. And if
you're feeling bad about the state of journalism right now,
which who isn't give me something to look forward to
my day, this will make you feel better, because it
turns out it's always kind of in garbage. Here's how
the New York Daily News wrote about Billy's disappearance. Somewhere

(08:16):
in New York or nearby his little Billy Gaffney or
his body. An army of detectives fifty strong is hunting
that somewhere. Watch for the results of that search, and
tomorrow's news All Caps Hoping against hope. Police continue their
search for the missing Billy Gaffney. Follow the trail and
tomorrow's All Caps News. Will the Seventh Day bring joy

(08:36):
or sorrow to the parents of little Billy? Read all
the developments of the hunt and Tomorrow's All Caps News.
That's some journalism. That was an advertisement for the News,
coupled around a tragic story of aspearing little boys getting murdered.
Time to sell some papers. Yeah yeah, So, if you've

(08:58):
paid attention to the last any length of time really
an American culture, you may have picked up on the
fact that we are a high strung bunch as a
country we are. That was such a nice way to
put it. Americans in the nineteen twenties did not take
the realization that kidnapping existed any more gracefully than Americans
today take scary news reports about MS thirteen. According to

(09:19):
Harold scheckters Deranged in the immediate aftermath abilities abduction, over
the course of a single week, three separate angry mobs
assaulted different suspected boogeyman boy to be that other man
and just to be targeted because everyone looked weird back then. Also,
I'm assuming there's no way to fix any of it.

(09:40):
Well know, and you see anybody walking around in twenties
clothing today and you're like, that's a pedophile. Yeah, that
is a that is yeah, but it's just how they
dressed dressed. Bowler hat just is so suspicious. You can
get arrested for just a bowler hat, Oh my god?
And should you should? Yeah? It's not okay. Um, so yeah,

(10:00):
here's a quote from Deranged about the first guy to
be cornered by an angry mob because of Albert Fish's cars.
A sixty three year old salesman named Giles Steele was
which Giles is precious, poor man, Giles. Steele was strolling
down East Street when a four year old strolling alive.

(10:26):
It's the only way people could walk into Tornet. I
guess you were either strolling or you had polio and
you could not walk, and and then you were rolling.
Because so he was strolling down East Street when a
four year old boy stepped into his path. He's told
the kid to move aside and reached down and took
the kid by the shoulder. And at that point, the
kid's mother, Miss Sadie Bernstein, came out and saw him

(10:48):
with his hand on the kid's shoulder, and she just
starts screaming. And so a crowd of quote a crowd
of neighbors immediately descended on Steel and began pummeling him.
He just started, it's not even restrain him. For the
cops beating the ship out. So Steele was safe by
a cop who took him to the station. He was
questioned and it became obvious that he had nothing to

(11:10):
do with anything illegal. Miss Bernstein eventually agreed that she
had reacted. Steele was still arranged in a kidnapping charge
because the cops just thought he seemed shady poor gild.
I know, I know you must talk about a lot
about like wrongly convicted people probably on this podcast. That

(11:30):
comes up a lot. But I always feel terrible, I
mean usually because dictators are just having people executed for
crimes they didn't commit. But yeah, this the weird thing
is the other two cases of people getting mobbed. Weird
dudes with prior convictions for quote, impairing the morals of miners. Uh.
And they were caught trying to trick young people into
dark alleyways, probably to molest them. Probably. She was like, okay,

(11:53):
so it was a movement and it was okay. Two
thirds of the time the mobs were right, which is
a really pretty good for mobs. Yeah, you see boy
scouts go out and one out of one they find
a dead body mobs or two out of three. One
thing I learned in Indiana, Jones, is if you're a
boy scout in the twenties, you're finding some dead people
and you're probably going to wind up having a fight

(12:14):
on top of a train. Oh yeah, those are the
two things that I yeah, as the two things that
twenties boy scouts for sure do. So. Yeah, the mobs,
mobs in the streets, people freaking out. So up until
May of these were just too scary, isolated unsolved crimes,
one with nobody and both of that a clear villain, right,
so people get sort of riled up. Both times these
kids get abducted, but then it's sort of fades, kind

(12:36):
of like a shooting does, only these are less common
at this point. Even then, this all changes on because
Albert Fish saw an ad in the situations wanted section
of a local newspaper that said, young man eighteen wishes
position in country Edward Bud four or six West fifteenth Street. Now,
at this point in the classified section was basically the

(12:57):
equivalent of like Craigslist today. The main difference is that
today everyone is so aware of the danger of creepy
people that like, if you're buy a couch on Craiglist,
you joke like, all right, I'll be back in an
hour unless I get murdered. Right, And then there's that
one case where that girl did go on a date
and she didn't come back exactly, there's an expectation that

(13:17):
danger can happen in this It did not exist then,
So an eighteen year old boy would just be like,
I want to work in the country and put out
an ad and two days later the doorbell rang at
Edward Bud's house. His mother opened it and saw a small,
elderly man in a suit. Uh. They were very poor,
very very poor family. His suit was not particularly nice,
but the fact that he was wearing a suitment that
he was above them on like the class rung. So

(13:39):
they were very impressed by that. He was polite and
genteel and like kissed her hand, which she was super
impressed by. He does all of like the upper class
seeming stuff. He claimed to be a former interior decorator
who had made a bunch of money and then started
a farm upstate. I like interior decorating. Do you like

(14:00):
starting farms? Oh? I could, well, I like farm video games.
I don't know where I'm going with this, because this
is this is just a lie. He used to abduct
a l I know, but I'm thinking if that's what
he wanted, what's in my jeans is basically what I'm
trying to suss out. Well, he didn't work as an
interior decorator, might have been well, maybe you can exercise

(14:22):
that part of the fish jeens and not everything We're
about to talk about today. Um So, part of his
lie was that his he'd moved out to start a
farm with his wife and kids, and she'd abandoned him
because she was terrible and he had to raise his
kids alone. But they were doing great and but now
his kids were out of the house and he needed
some help. So a good story. Willing to hire eighteen

(14:44):
year old Edward, but he called himself Frank Howard to yes, so,
have you ever found yourself wanting to go by the
name Frank Howard? Uh, only if I thought it would
be better for my job, like applications. That's a solid job.
That sounds like a banker. But anyway, Uh yeah. So
Fish's actual plan was to murder, eat, and probably moleste

(15:06):
Edward h D probably probably not. Well, it's hard he
I feel like he kind of had a dead body thing,
I think, although he claims he never fucked the dead people,
which it's hard to say. Hard to say. Yeah at
that point, that's like, you know, yeah, we'll get into

(15:29):
the things that he masturbated about. Spoiler there's a lot
of masturbation in this episode. Um So, yeah, Edward, the
kid that he was going to hire, is super excited.
This guy's gonna pay like fifteen bucks a week, which
is really good wages back then, and he's like, Hey,
I've got a friend who also wants work on a farm.
Do you have do you need any additional work? And

(15:51):
I think this at this point, Albert Fish is just
not that great at lying in the moment, and so
he says yes, But he doesn't know because number one,
this kid's already kind of big, like big enough that
Albert's worried, like I might not be able to overpower him,
because I like and I don't want to get rid
of some of them. I want to eat all of it.
You know. He's very resourceful, like retroactively, like placing like

(16:16):
good quality. He wants to use every part of the boy. Yes, yes, yeah,
I mean he he's kind of a recycling gun. Um.
So Albert Fish says, like yes, but I think it's
a panic thing. And he immediately comes up with an
excuse to delay and says that like he's not quite
ready to leave yet, but he'll be back the next day.
And then the next day, instead of coming back, he

(16:37):
sends a telegram and says, I'll be there in the
next day. When he does finally show back up. He
brings pot cheese, which is what you'll find in every
write up of this that he brought. I didn't know
what pot cheese was. It's cottage cheese that people would
bring to potlucks and pots. I don't know why, it
just it seems like a weird, old timey cheese. So
if you read about Albert Fish, you're gonna come across

(16:58):
the phrase pot cheese a lot. And I didn't know
what it was because I have a new password for
all of my advice. So he brings like some cheese
and claims that he it came from his farm, and uh,
they have like a lunch, and everybody's very impressed with
this guy. Uh. He wounds up like playing with their
young daughter Grace. And after the meal, he tells the

(17:18):
boys he can't take them until later that evening. But
he pulls out a big wat of cash, which is
like ninety bucks then, which is a lot of money
to these people. And he gives a couple of dollars
to Edward and his friend and it's like, go see
a movie with your buddies or whatever. I'll be back tonight.
And then kind of as like an afterthought, I was like,
you know, I'm heading out to this birthday party my
sister is throwing. Maybe your daughter Grace wants to come

(17:40):
with me? Is afterthoughts in quotes. I think he kind
of brought it up at the end of things, and
they say yes because there's this old man, very classic,
very genteel. He's helping out the family. So he takes Grace. Uh,
And obviously you feel bad for the parents because like
the dad, the dad is the one he makes the

(18:00):
final call, and he's Grace is a sickly kid. She's
ill a lot, and he's like, she never gets to
have any fun. Let her go have some fun. Which
it doesn't end well for Grace or the buds. They
get really pretty fucked over in this um. So he
gives them an address of where he's going to be,
which they later find out is fake, and then he

(18:20):
disappears and Grace never comes back. They never see Frank
Howard again. On Tuesday, June five, the New York Times
reports on Grace's abduction with the classy headline hunt man
and child. He took to party that is classy. It
ends on party, So I'm kind of like excited at
the end, you know our party a party. Yeah, you

(18:40):
gotta forget hunt Man. That's actually not a bad If
I was going to start a superhero hunt Man and child,
Batman and Child, I immediately know what that's about. Um, yeah,
so depraved, says the book that I read for this
says that the story unspooled and the abloids and kind

(19:00):
of the same way that the Gaffney abduction had. So
their first off, there's a shipload of false leads. People
start just sending lies into the family and we'll get
into that a little bit, a lot of sketchy witnesses,
and then there's just this big surgeon anxiety over kidnappings
for the people of New York. Um, the tabloids make
as much of this as they possibly can, and you know,
it's the same follow Nancy Gray kind of situation. Yeah, exactly,

(19:23):
And every these newspapers are all giving daily updates and
like follow this search tomorrow and the daily News and YadA, YadA, YadA.
And we'll have a list of all of our sources
on the website behind the Bastards dot Com. We're gonna
get to what happens afterwards and kind of how Albert
Fish's crimes sort of started the idea of stranger danger,

(19:46):
like we're we're influential in that concept. We were all
raised with into fear and how he sort of had
an impact on that and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. But first,
you know, it goes great with discussions of the terrible
things that serial killers do. Is products and services. You
love products and services. I use them all the time.

(20:07):
Pull out all of your cards and throw them into
the air and buy a product. Now, and we're back
and we're talking about Albert Fish, the ancestor to my
guest today, Maggie Mayfish uh and listeners, just just as

(20:27):
a heads up, Maggie is one of the nicer people
that I have met in the city of Los Angeles.
She's not a murderer. As far as I'm gonna wearing.
I mean, there's no trial, there's no wearing a red shirt.
I am. I thought blood and then I put on
the shirt exactly. Okay. Um, so I think that before everything.

(20:48):
I wear on my head like a cat or a
little dog. Um okay. So years go by after the
Grace Bud kidnapping, which is what we had just talked
about in the end, and the case like the other two,
gradually starts to fade from memory, but kidnapping did not fade.
The disappearances of these three children had helped to spark

(21:09):
a new crime epidemic in American history, the kidnapping craze.
And I spelled craze with a K in that sentence,
thank you. I knew you'd appreciate that. Yeah, the kidnapping crazy.
Uh here's a quote from Harold Scheckters deranged. In nineteen
thirty two alone, there were two and eighty two reported
kidnappings states, and all but sixty five of the perpetrators

(21:30):
had gotten away scott free with their crimes. By the
summer of nineteen thirty three, kidnappings were occurring so frequently
that news readers required a scorecard to keep track of them.
All Oh my god, yeah, well that's where we are.
That's where we are. And I feel like Albert fish
was is so crazy that maybe just no one had
really been like, oh I could I could just take

(21:52):
take people? What it was probably the guy who committed
the first cyber crime, probably the same rush of what
have I opened? I'd love to see just a movie
about the man who invented mugging. Just like this poor
guy on the streets seeing people pull money out of
their pockets and like looking at a knife in his
hand and looking at a rich guy and a knife

(22:13):
in her and then just like so heat the rich blood, blood,
blood blood. He doesn't want to get stabbed, and he
has money. There's a connection between these things. You can
figure this out. Um. So, yeah, most of the kidnappers,
unlike Albert Fish, which again we'll get to one, we're
not doing it for sex or murder. They just wanted money,

(22:35):
you know. Um. It became very clear that it was
hard for cops to catch kidnappers. Uh. And as it
became clear that that was the case, intelligent criminals realized
that kidnapping was very safe and very profitable. Uh. In
June of nineteen thirty two, the New York Times reported
on more than a dozen kidnapping cases, and one of them, Maggie,
was actually committed by my ancestor, Charles pretty Boy Floyd. Yeah.

(22:59):
I saw that in the book. I was like, how
now I got a guy in the mix. So Pretty
Boy Floyd was a gangster. He was He's generally considered
to be the last of the big gangsters to die
because his death. Well, he gets shot in the field,
but yeah, that is cool. It's a great place to
get shot. So Donald Trump and I are current president,

(23:19):
have two things in common. One of them was a
literary agent, which is weird, you know, but and the
other is that Woody Guthrie wrote songs about both of
our ancestors. He wrote a song about Donald Trump's dad
because Donald Trump's dad denied tendency to black people. And
he wrote a song about Pretty Boy Floyd, my ancestor,
because my ancestor beat a cop to death of the
law change. Yeah. So uh. In in that year thirty two,

(23:45):
pretty Boy Floyd tried to kidnap an actress from Malibu
in ransom her. She was to be kidnapped and flown
to Mexico, but the police found out about it and
like ringed the street with cops at the last minute,
and Floyd somehow learned of the trap and never appeared.
And that's the end of this digression. But I had
to bring it up. That was so Yeah, everybody's gotten murderous.

(24:07):
Yeah yeah. So the kidnapping wave grew and grew in
the thirties until it reached its apex with the kidnapping
of the Lindbergh Baby in nineteen two. Charles Lindberg was
an aviator, first man across the Atlantic, national hero, potential
presidential Canada, and anti Semitic fascist sympathizer. His wife in Lindberg,
was an acclaimed author and also probably probably they probably

(24:29):
talked about it. Probably, Yeah, I would guess y. Um,
their baby, Charles Jr. Was twenty months old and a
baby baby would have gon up to be racist, yeah,
but at the time was just a baby. Yeah, was
a baby. And he was kidnapped in March first, ninety
two and immediately pretty much killed on accident, probably saw
the ladder. We don't know. Um. Now. Up until this point,

(24:50):
the only other crime in American history this famous had
probably been the assassination of Lincoln. Like this is this
is like it's big, uh. And it inspired the creation
of the Federal Kidnapping Act and I think nine in
thirty four, which made transferring an unwilling person across state
lines a federal crime. Um. So the Lindberg kidnapping was
sort of the crest of a wave or a crime

(25:10):
meme that was then spreading through the culture. Uh. And
that wave kicked off with the crimes of Albert Fish,
although he would not be caught until nine. Yeah, that
is the other He went a very long time without
you know, any sort of reprimand for what he'd done.
And it's some of that's got to be just the
fact that, like, we didn't know how to be detectives

(25:32):
back then, and he changed his name and he doesn't
he's not glued to this reality in some way because
he's not like a super smooth criminal. He's messy. When
he abducts Grace Bud, he keeps all of his knives
wrapped up in like a kit that he calls his
implements of Hell. And when he goes to pick her up,

(25:53):
he leaves them at like a grocery store. He just
hands them to the clerk consents. Can you old base,
here's that poker cards I'll take I've got some extra
children you can. Twenties. Yeah, what a time. So nowadays,

(26:16):
when terrible things happened to the children of people like
the Newton shootings, when like a twenty people lost their
very young children to a man shooter, uh, they immediately
start getting harassed horribly online by Alex Jones fans who
think it's a false flag or whatever. Um, it's important
to note that that's not new. Blaming the parents kind
of is, but being incredibly shitty to parents who have

(26:38):
just lost a child is at least as old as
the twenties. This is a part I was not aware of.
So all of these families, these people we've talked about
whose kids get abducted, all of them get bombarded with
crank letters from just hundreds of random people. Um, here's
one letter the Gaffney family received. My dear friends, I
will be fine to boy my son in water rivers sellars,

(27:01):
look out, my god want back boy. I might have
gotten that exact same message on Twitter just in my
d m yea wow, you want another one? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Wait,
do not appear too anxious. Your son is in safe hands.
We fought for him, but I got him. Now we

(27:22):
will get the beaten boy for Billy to play with.
For Billy is lonesome. Do not show this letter to
anyone if you know what is good for you. Again,
I say that Billy is safe and that we are
experimenting on him. Um can I say that that sounds
exactly like when people tell their alien abduction stories, Like
what the aliens tell them like almost verbatim. Yeah, like
you can tell it's like someone actually hallucinating in their brain,

(27:44):
just firing words out into a waking dream or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
it just it sounds like a phasia. Yeah. Some other
assholes sent a letter to this grieving family saying quote,
I didn't mean to kill him, God forgive me in
giving a pand drawn map of where his corpse was
supposedly buried. Police found nothing there. Uh, and the boys

(28:06):
got troops found nothing. Those were the police back. Yeah,
they had neckerchiefs instead of guns. It's a lot safer
for yeah, um murder, It was a lot safer. The
book Depraved also notes that psychic's pledged to aid in
the efforts, to no effect, obviously, along with an inventor
who arrived with what he called a mechanical bloodhound. Yeah

(28:29):
at well, it was just a divining rod with a
rubber tube attached to it, filled with Billy's hair. Appreciate
the app Yeah why not. Yeah, it didn't work either.
The Bud family also received crank letters. Depraved claims they
were receiving dozens every day for a while. Many of

(28:50):
them were like this, quote, my dear Mr and Mrs Bud,
your child is going to a funeral. I still got her.
Howard uh all caps uh and this I have Grace.
She is safe and sound. She is happy in her
new home and not at all homesick. I will see
to it that Grace has proper schooling. She has been
given it an angora cat and a pet canary she

(29:11):
calls the canary Bill. I am a keen student of
human nature. That's why I was attracted to Grace. She
seemed like a girl who would appreciate nice surroundings in
a real nice home. I drove with Grace past your
house in an automobile several days ago. I saw several
persons standing in front of the house and did not stop,
as it looked as though they were waiting for me.
I will see to it in the near future that
some arrangements are made so Grace will be able to

(29:31):
visit you for a short time. Why would you send that?
What is? What is? I don't know. I don't understand this.
I don't know, Like at least one of those has
got to be like one or two people being like
if I say she's all right, maybe they'll feel better.
But then like I don't care. Yeah, I don't give
a ship. I'm not connected to this in any way. Yeah,
to be honest, I actually think these are worse than
the people the Alex Jones people who are harassing the

(29:53):
parents of dead kids on because at least those people
believe there's a crazy conspiracy. You just fucking with a
family for an no reason. It really makes me just
like what people did for fun back then. It was
a very boring time, very boring time, and one of
the biggest sports in the country right now that Dollop
does a great episode in this was pedestrianism, which is

(30:14):
just people walking in circles for weeks, like days, hundreds
of miles. So like, there's nothing to do at this point,
right Like World War One at least gave some people
something for a while. But make a victory garden, make
a victory garden, go die in the Yeah, both better
off in life in the twenties. Um so yeah, the letters. However,

(30:38):
we're not all entirely negative. There was a detective named
William King who was basically your stereotypical lantern jaw chain
smoking twenties detective like picture Dick Tracy. Of course, of course,
He's the guy if you just saw him walking down
the street and you had a problem, you would run
to him and be like, this is my chance to

(30:59):
be a fix all of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
He's that kind of detective. So he had gotten on
the Bud case right after Grace was subducted and spent
six fruitless years trying to track down her killer. Now
nineteen thirty four, because this was the year that had
the Lindbergh trial and the kid had been kidnapped in
thirty two, but the trial wasn't thirty four. It was
a big year for awareness of kidnapping, and Detective King

(31:20):
decided to take one more stab at solving it. I
love that. It's like set up for a story. You're
giving me a hold up phase. It's great because he
fucking solves this case. Spoiler, but he does it in
like the most unethical way. It's super fun, so like
a lumbo like whatever. His strategy for years had been

(31:41):
to randomly call newspapers and lie about the Bud case
and just give them bullshit information so they would write
a story based on his lies that like said the essentially,
there's been a break in the case, and he did
this because every time it would happen, there would be
a shipload of more letters sent into the police with
tips and sent to the family, and he felt that

(32:01):
it kept the story fresh. So some people would say
it'sunethical to just repeatedly light to newspapers about a little
girl's abduction, but King was like, you gotta keep people
thinking about it. So his big the guy he would
do this most often with was a gossip columnist named
Walter Winchell. Most listeners will recognize him as one of
the rapid fire names spat Out and Billy Joel's we
Didn't Start the fire. He comes right before Joe to Maggio,

(32:25):
John McCarthy, Richard Nixon's Dud. Yeah okay. Uh So before
he was part of a classic song, he was America's
most famous gossip columnist. His column on Broadway was probably
the most influential piece of writing every given week in
New York City. Um so he's a big deal and
women gossip, Well, this guy, Walter Winchell probably said that

(32:45):
because I'm sure he was super massage. I mean, you
just gotta assume the woke guys have just gotten it
down to being okay with women. Voting at this point,
it's been it's been a long road. Um. So. Walter

(33:06):
winchell Uh in early November, included this line or paragraph
in his column I checked on the Grace Bud mystery.
She was eight when she was kidnapped about six years ago.
It is safe to tell you that the Department of
Missing Persons will break the case, or they expect to
in four weeks. They're holding a cocaine now at Randall's Island,
who is said to know the most about the crime.
Grace is supposed to have been done away within line,

(33:27):
but another legend is that her skeleton is buried in
the local spot. More and on. So, um, that's all
lies right, It's not gonna be broke. But it just
so happened that Albert Fish was a habitual writer. Um,
which again I write, Robert walked me away from this cliff.

(33:48):
This is when you step in and tell me that
it's not about the same. You're much better writer than him.
Thank you. I don't know what you write in your
private time, but oh, I have all of Michaels right here.
They don't want to reach out of skin. Blood is
a piece of paper made of band aids. Yes, okay. Um.

(34:08):
So eleven days after this Walter Winchell column comes up,
the Buds receive a letter in the mail. Uh. And
one of the only mercies in this entire case is
that Grace Bud's mother gets the letter and she cannot
read um. Which is the only time in history you're
gonna be like, oh, thank God for a literacy, thank you.

(34:29):
That is a mercy in this case. Her son read
it and immediately goes to the police. As soon as
I start to read an exit from it, you will
be aware this is not like the other letters, and
it is this was written by Albert fish Um and
again eleven days after Winchell's column. So it seems like
Detective King's strategy worked. Yeah, he was like he knew beforehand,
you know, the whole Zodiact. And they like attention, like attention.

(34:51):
Detective King does not play by the rules, but he
gets results, gets results here that police do whatever you want. God.
You know, he pistol whipped COKEI. You know that was
like a weekly thing for Detective paying his pistol weapon
of COKEI that one kick, Yeah, and then he tried
to stop it. Just loves pistol. Weapon. Yeah, and it's
it's more of an art than anything. I agree. Yeah. Yeah,

(35:13):
A good pisto, a solid pistol. It don't change someone's mind. Yeah,
it'll do something to their mind. Okay, um, so yeah.
The full text of the letter is available online. You
can find it if you wish. If you wish, wish,
you wish. If you do not wish, don't do not.
I will read a part of it, and I have.

(35:34):
I'm reading not the worst parts because we don't need that,
but I got to read some of it. Y have
you read this letter? I? Okay, Yeah. My dear miss
bud In, a friend of mine, shipped as a deckhand
on the steamer Tacoma Captain John Davis. They sailed from
San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there, he
and two others went to shore and got drunk. When

(35:56):
they returned, the boat was gone. At that time, there
was a famine in China. Meat of any kind was
from one to three dollars a pound. So great was
the suffering among the very poor that all children under
twelve were sold to the butchers to be cut up
and sold for food. In order to keep others from starving.
A boy or girl under fourteen was not safe in
the street. You could go into any shop and ask
for steak, chops or stew meat. Part of the naked

(36:16):
body of the boy or girl would be brought out
and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy
or girls behind, which is the sweetest part of the body,
and sold as veal cutlet, brought the highest price. John
stayed there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh.
On his return to New York, he stole two boys,
one seven and one eleven, took them to his home,
stripped them naked, tied them in a closet, then burned
everything they had on several times a day and night.

(36:37):
He spanked them, tortured them to make their meat good
and tender. Uh. He then goes on into detail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
to make the meat tender. Yeah, it's not just spanking,
Albert Fish is not. There's one accused me of many things,
but that not needless spanking. There's gonna be a lot
more spanking. Um So, Albert Fish claims that this guy

(36:59):
that he met turned him onto the idea of how
good human flesh tasted. So he made up his mind
to try some of his own, and that's why he
abducted Grace bud In And he admits in the letter
and pretty graphic detailed, that he murdered Grace, cooked and
ate her. The letter ends on this line, it took
me nine days to eat her entire body. I did
not suck her, though I could have had. I wished

(37:19):
she died a virgin, which is I don't know what
your goal is with that. I guess again, it's one
of those things, it's like, well I did this, but
I did not. You know, a lot of I mean,
serial killers kind of do that. They'll admit to like
a part of it, but then take a hard stance
on another part they're accused of. Everyone wants to feel

(37:40):
like there's that line in the wire, and it's got
to have a code. Everybody's wants to feel like even
if you're eating children. So for him, like the goalpost
is so far this way that don't worry, I'm still
in the good. No. I mean, I murdered her and
ate her, and it gave me sexual gratification, but I
did not no, no, no, no, yeah, I was pleasing

(38:02):
every other sort of yeah, every other sort of way,
and he yeah, he goes into detail about that. So
the horrible letter wound up being Fish is undoing, which
is again one of those rare times where justice happens.
That's another reason I do actually like this story. He
gets caught, only that he got caught because he just needed,
just needed to funk with this family one more time. Um.

(38:26):
So the way he got caught is he sent letters
that were stamped with the logo of the New York
Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association. So the cops eventually found a
janitor for that very specific group who admitted to having
stolen a bunch of paper and envelopes from work and
left them in his room when he moved out. The
guy who moved into the room after him was Albert Fish. Um,

(38:47):
since he had moved out. Fish had moved out by
the time they found him, but his son was in
the w p A, which is one of those new
deal organizations where you like, that's where we get National Parks.
Was these young men like building ship. So he would
send his dad regular checks. And Fish had moved out
of the room, but he had one more check coming
and he told his landlord that he would be back
for it's the landlord told the cops, this guy's not

(39:07):
here anymore, but he's gonna be back in a few
days to get his check. So the cops waited for him.
And yeah, that's how he was caught. Detective King caught
Albert Fish. He was eventually convicted of murder and sentenced
iva electric chair, which is exactly what happened. Um. So
that's the story of Albert Fish and Broad We've got
a lot more to drill into. Uh. We're gonna be
talking some more about how Maggie found out that she

(39:29):
was related to this guy, and then we're going to
go a lot deeper into Albert Fish is psyche. Uh
So it's gonna be very dark. My skin is crawling. Excellent,
that's how you should feel on this podcast. All right,
uh capitalism, we're back. Uh now when we we just

(39:53):
now kind of got through talking about the broad strokes
of the story of Albert Fish, uh, and now I
wanted to sort of talk about your personal journey of
figuring out you related to this guy. Okay, personal journey, Yeah,
your own personal fish journey like a salmon swimming to
return to Robert. I tell me about my life. What
was it like? Well, I know that I know that

(40:15):
bears are involved, and I know that you swim upstream
and then we prograte and then we sent downstream. Yes,
well I think usually you get eaten by bears. Okay, yeah,
that's I don't that's most of what I know about fish.
And we get redwoods because of fish. Oh yeah, well
you're welcome. Yeah, well what's my favorite Traine? So how

(40:36):
did I find out the first time that I heard this?
I was five or six um Grandpa's cottage and my
uncles were working on our family tree. I was playing,
like on the stairs or something, and my dad came
down and I have this as a memory on the
stairs and was like, Maggie, you're related to someone from

(40:56):
a long time ago who was a bad person and
he went to jail. And as a kid, I was like, oh,
that is so cool, Like I'm related to like an
old timey bat picture or something. Oh yeah, I was like,
ah an outlaw fun. For years I lived under that

(41:19):
delusion that it was just some sort of like nebulous
probably robbed banks to give it to poor people, that
kind of thing, like supporting, you know, his daughter that
he loved and he put her through higher education. He
had to take that hospital by armed force so that
his kid could get the surgery he need. Yeah, boy,
I respect him for it, because you know, we don't

(41:41):
want to think yeah much like the detective. The detective. Yeah,
I would be really proud to be this guy's relevant
the only cop I'll say that about. But yeah, really
actually though, yeah, yeah, So for just and then I
just kind of like forgot about it, um until it
was actually pretty recently, maybe two years ago. I was

(42:02):
listening to my favorite murderer, Oh Boy, very fun podcast.
If you guys listen to this, maybe you also listen
to them. They're great. But they had an episode in
Albert Fish, and just from the title, I was like,
oh Fish, Oh I'm related to Oh no, oh god no.

(42:24):
So you learned the details about this guy from a
podcast from a two lovely women just describing the horrors
of what you've done. So I'm putting together in my
head a story about what happened with your dad that
day in your in your family cottage, and the story
in my head is that he's with some other member

(42:45):
of your family doing genealogy and they're like, we're related
to somebody famous, and without waiting to hear more, he
runs steps to just belts down there ferns and then
goes back up learns the second half of the story,
and it's like, oh god, what if we just don't
anything else. Let's just let this be a dream in
her head. Yeah, let's just she's young, right, she will

(43:05):
forget this question. What do you think the odds are
of like a global information network arising and then needing
to like a new replacement for radio that spreads even
wider and like involves long form stories about that will
never happen, right never, We'll be fine. Now, let's just
not tell her anything else. So, boy, I like knowing
my father. That's a very like jovial man. Just got

(43:28):
so excited, excited. So you learn about Albert Fish from
a podcast, Yes, which was very surprising because I was
into true crime like a long time before that. Uh,
and I had just never come across Albert Fish maybe
because he was so old. I was more like your
Bundy or whatever. Yeah, And I had just moved to California,
so it was more interested in like, like the sacrament

(43:51):
so many it's so rich. So for just some reason,
I had never come across it um until that day.
And then I wa article and then I called my
father and he was cooking potato soup and I asked him.
I was like, Dad, so, uh Albert Fish that were
related to, and very calmly, like my father is very calm,

(44:11):
level headed. He's like, oh, let me just let me
just check my email real quick. Yeah, yep, yes, Albert Fish.
Uh yeah that's the guy. Oh God, So he didn't
know actually, I guess, yeah, I think a similar thing
he like kind of knew or like at least I
didn't know all of the details um or at least
like had just forgotten and then was like re excited by,

(44:35):
like yeah, it's Albert fisher Man killed night children. It
was called the weara Wolf, Visteria, the Gray Man, the Boogeyman. So, like,
I have very mixed feelings about true crime in general,
because like the book that I love the most that
I read in high school was probably In Cold Blood,

(44:55):
which I still think it's really good. I mean it
started the genre, but also there's definitely an extent of
and I know that my own show, because of our focus,
runs the risk of crossing this territory too. Of just
like it's important to study these people because it's always
important to study the worst and most dangerous people for
the same reason that you like, look when you hear

(45:16):
a car crash. But there's a line and I many tickle, Yeah,
doing these like film analysis, there's a lot of that
of people like having their cake and eating it too,
of like what you want to say, but then what
ends up happening, and a lot of true crime can
end up glorifying is a strong work. But making a party, yeah,

(45:42):
and this is definitely not a party story, um, and
neither are any of the other stories we have on here.
I do think like one of the things that I
think is the in terms of useful lessons that we
get from this is less about how Albert Fish actually acted,
because he was he was just he was a monster, um,
but more about how everyone else, like the fucking crank

(46:03):
letters and stuff like just how people funk with the families,
and that's always been a thing, right, and that it
is still happening and that it's just evolved with the mediums.
That's really interesting to me. Yeah, And I think there's
a lesson in there about like sort of human nature,
which is that we're garbage. We are garbage, garbage, We'll
jump on anything. And also I guess like a lesson

(46:25):
from like the mob and like that kind of mentality
that like, yeah, you know, it's it's okay to have
very strong feelings and be afraid. Like I think that
is totally okay. Um. I am curious as to like,
how did you feel like is there because this is
a story we get to it mental illness, What was
the like the thought process of accepting that this is

(46:47):
a part of your past, like your family's pass right,
It's weird. It does also seem like a cautionary tale
obviously for mental illness and what it can lead to
if it is not addressed, which I kind of blame
the rest of the family for probably because there are
just so many stories of him doing just rolling around

(47:09):
in rugs and yeah, following himself, I am christ while
beating his own as metal Paddle will delve into that
in a minute here, which again, you know, in the twenties,
what language do you use for a family member who
would like eat carpet if you left them alone? You know? Um,
but again, like they didn't do anything to stop or

(47:31):
help or and like his son kind of just like
kept giving him money, um, which you know, in a
lot of ways, we didn't have uh protocols to follow.
People also didn't want to talk about mental illness, so
it's rather let's not talk about it and just let
our crazy uncle just be yeah, which I think is
still dangerous if we don't talk about, you know, the

(47:54):
mental illnesses that we have. Um. Yeah, it's it's hugely
important to talk about mental health in general, because people
need that sort of vocabulary and need to I do think,
and this will make a little once we get a
little bit further. I'm sure we'll talking about this more.
But I do think this is a case of a
guy who very likely it's possible that he'd been killing
people for decades. It's also possible these are his only
three killings, and if he in his forties or fifties

(48:17):
even could have been potentially stopped from hurting any Right. Yeah,
it's hard, it's like we can't know for sure, but
that is a possible avenue here if his family members,
who clearly loved him, had like been like what the hell, man, Like,
let's instead of just not talking about this, let's talk
about talk about this. Let's talk about Kevin. But it's

(48:41):
always like everybody knows like you and I are both
white people, so like there's this assumption and with everybody,
it's true that like someone who you're related to far
enough alongline did something terrible, whether it was slavery or
something else, that's just the world. Um. But there's something
different when it's someone who was recent enough that like, no,
we have a specific name, we know this guy is

(49:01):
in our line, here's where he is, and here's what
he did. Yeah, um, yeah, I had a weird moment
because pretty boy Floyd was like my family is always
talking about has always talked about that. My grandma, who
was otherwise a very conservative lady, was super press. You
would always tell us, you know, you got outlaw blood,
and yeah she was proud. She was super proud. And
I read about he was like this guy was Robin
Banks and murdering cops, like the Woody Guthrie song is

(49:22):
about he's riding into town with his wife and a
cop curses in front of him and so he just
beats the man to death with a lock chain. That song.
It's interesting the way like families talk about these kind
of people and then when you actually dig into their
lives and you're like, oh man, this guy was not
a good person a person. There is definitely kind of

(49:44):
like a little bit of hangover guilt, but really you know,
there's something you can really do know and you're like
you sitting of his brother, Yeah, yeah, who didn't do
anything that I'm aware of, right, And it's like, well,
if they're going to hide Albert Fish, then like I won't.
I'm related to them. No, And there's some fucking Hitler
people around here with lyons to Hitler and like they
didn't do anything wrong because nephew just ran over here

(50:07):
during the war because yeah he had a nephew who
like joined the Navy and stuff. Yeah. It was just like,
felt real bad about having Hitler is an uncle. It's
really sorry. No, you're not responsible for your family's crimes. Yeah,
but you can inherit their wealth. Yeah, you had a
great system going here. Okay. So, in addition to reading Deranged,

(50:28):
which is legitimately good book, I also watched this documentary
Albert Fish when I was prepping for this. It's directed
by a named John Borowski, and it is one of
the worst documentaries I've ever seen. It is very ugly,
very little creativity involved, creepy voice acting, but bland recreations
of aspects of the crimes. But then then Maggie. Fifteen

(50:52):
minutes into this execrable documentary, we meet John Coleman. John
Coleman as an artist who collects serial killer memory abelia
and dresses exactly like you'd expect based on that description,
extremely ornate waistcoats. I'm gonna have you describe him. He
has Albert Fish's original letter framed in his house, and

(51:15):
I'm just gonna put him on. We're gonna plan him
for a couple of seconds. I'm gonna have you describe him,
and then we're gonna play the rest of his story
about how he came to own that letter. Okay, this
is um what I've always said is the Magna Carta
of crime artifacts. This is the Albert Fish Letter. The
most you wanna you wanna take a shot at describing

(51:39):
John Coleman described his face or my face watching his face,
I will describe your face because you you look like
you just saw a dog like start to tap dance
like that, like slack jawed, but but not in a
positive way. He looks like he's licked that letter several times,

(52:01):
like before he framed it, he tried to get us
close to that inc Yeah, he has definitely stroked that
letter while tweaking his own nipple and times. Yeah. And
he's super RNA waistcoat. Yeah yes, yeah, yeah. All right.
Here's him describing how he came to have Albert Fish's

(52:24):
original creepy murder letter. Tragic and painful document to a monster.
That's it's ever in print and I have it, so
I'm honored to have it. So I've always felt that

(52:47):
the objects themselves, um, have desires of their own, how
they come here for for their own reasons? Did he
make didn't he draw that? Oh? Yeah, yeah, he drew
that picture of Albert Fish like a severed head of

(53:08):
a little girl. Um, the horrors of the world. It's
not about trying to um, oh my god, this is
some act that Jordan Peterson. And but yeah, like the
creepy paintings that he makes that, like the painting Listeners
is a painting of Albert Fish. Very almost looks like

(53:31):
a mad magazine. Yeah, very like grimy, and it almost
looks like an our crumb drawing. Uh. And so it's
but it's the picture of Albert Fish and he's holding
the severed head of Little Grace, and it's terrifyingly creepy.
The way he says the word monster, it's with awe,

(53:52):
it's not with judgment. Yeah, this is not a guy
who is like, I don't sense respect for like the
gravity of the crimes here. He's a creepy dude. I
should email him and be like, dude, that is my relative.
I would like that letter. I think it wants to
be with me. I think I think that object wants
to travel to me. So the creepy house that he's in,

(54:13):
he calls it the auditorium. I'm gonna one guess as
to how he spells auditorium the way yeah, that way, yeah, yeah,
the way that creepy dick would spell it. Yeah. Uh.
And here's how he describes the auditorium in his website quote.
Joe Coleman is a collector. He collects fascinating friends. He
collects artifacts related to infamous historical events. He collects sideshow

(54:37):
and serial killer ephemera. He collects religious artifacts that call
to his obsessions with violence, with twinning, and with power.
Like his art, his collection is filled with reliquaries containing
the twin power of both the sacred and profane. Welcome
to the auditorium. So yeah, that's Joe Coleman. There has

(54:57):
definitely been like Secret Society is and just have their
meetings there. Yeah, but not the good ones. Oh no, No,
that the ones that it's like, oh, you guys are
this is where the Masons are at these days. Oh.
I think I'm just gonna go grab a beer. Yeah,
anywhere on the street. Yeah, maybe join the Mormon Church.
I'll just walk around for weeks on end because I'd

(55:19):
rather do that. Anything sound better than sitting around here
with you people. Um. You know, Joe's a painter, as
we already get into, and he believes he was put
on this earth to express the pain of the world through,
for example, elaborate face paintings with the separate heads of
small children. Um. Now, he believes the objects he collects
want to be his. And we're going to play the

(55:40):
excerpt now that actually does explain how he wound up
owning that letter because spoiler alert, he kind of stole
it from the government. Yeah. Life, I was trying to
get like the police records and this stuff, and I
go into Westchester. I'm trying to get a xerox copy
of the letter, the infamous letter that he that Albert

(56:03):
Fish wrote to the mother of Grace Bud And that's
all I want. I just wanted xerox compy with a
letter for my research. And as fate would have it,
Um secretary there takes the letter xerox a said, Um

(56:24):
goes over to me and gives me the actual letter.
I looked at it. He came as soon as that happened.
He then walked away with the xerox compy, put in
a file and put in the cabinet. Okay, then I
knew that Fisher wanted me to have it. He didn't

(56:44):
want anything. He just doesn't want anything. He didn't and
he doesn't. I'm gonna tell you something I know has
happened in that guy's life on a weekly basis. Is
he has opened a door for a woman with a
very exceptional flourish and then said after you, milady, oh yes,

(57:04):
and then kissed her hand. Oh my god. So many times,
so many times, and so many like complaints from co
workers for the hand kissing. Andy, He's been asked to stop.
He's that guy. He's a thousand percent that guy. I
don't like Joe Coleman. Um, we're gonna play one more
segment from later in the documentary where Joe Coleman tries

(57:28):
to explain why Albert Fish did not sexually assault. This
would be great to hear him explain that. That would
be I could see it on your face. You were
waiting for him to weigh in on why Albert Fish
didn't rape the child. Yeah. Fish embodies this kind of
pathology that there was something saintly and beautiful about suffering,

(57:53):
but there's something ugly and repugnant about sex. Because he
saved a little grace Bud from this terrible crime. You know,
he kept saying, I did not defile her, and I
know from my Catholic upbrand he was a Catholic. Doesn't
exist certain truth that he's saying that any Catholic is

(58:17):
going to know. Albert Fish by mutilating and cutting this
little girl up in pieces and doing this horrible thing
to her, he's made her into this martyr. You know,
he's made her into this um creature. Actually defiling a
body is against well, the Catholic Church, I'm pretty sure,

(58:38):
so cutting it up actually, uh, not that he cares
about any of the Yeah, I don't think it's definitely true.
We're going to get into this a little bit. That
Fish is peculiar personal brand of Christianity super had an
impact on his crimes. But I think what Joe was
saying there is full of ship, because yeah, any Catholic

(59:01):
knows that there's a way in which she became a martyr.
What are you talking about? No no, no, no, no,
no no no. Okay. Um. So, Albert Fish had a
history known to his family a very creepy religious behavior.
In nineteen thirty four, his son Albert Jr. Was living
with him in a small apartment. One day, he came
upon his father barrass naked in the middle of the

(59:22):
living room, holding his erect penis and paddling himself on
the ass with a nail filled paddle. His ass was
red and bloody, and he was drenched in sweat. This
made Albert Junior recall an incident in ninety two when
he was playing football with his two brothers. Here's how
Deprave describes it. Albert had just bent down to catch
a low kick Albert the younger, not the murderer, uh
And as he straightened up to boot the ball back

(59:44):
to Henry. He caught sight of his father standing in
the apple orchard on the little hill behind the bungalow.
The old man had his right hand raised high in
the air and was shouting something over and over. Albert
had strained to listen. The old man was shouting I
am Christ, which is like his catchphrase, which shout I
Am Christ a lot, particularly while beating himself. Uh. He
also had a habit of lighting his own ass on fire.

(01:00:06):
He was a huge fan of flooding. Well, you know,
once you hit it with nails, that's like a sharp pain.
You're like, what's the dull overall? Pay? Yeah, what's what
else can I do? My fire? Yeah? Burn it? Burn it?
Um so another at time, Albert Jr. Found several of
his dad's homemade nail studded, bloody and rusted paddles. He
asked his father for an explanation, which is the start

(01:00:27):
of the conversation that you should be having you uh
and Albert fish. His dad explained, quote, I use them
on myself. I get these feelings that come over me,
and every time they do, I have to torture myself
with those paddles. Period. Should have been a longer, should
have been longer. I'm punishing myself with paddles because I'm Christ,

(01:00:47):
because I'm um so. Albert Fish had a very very long,
very very long history of writing and saying and unbelievably
creepy letters to random women. He would find them in
newspapers through matrimonial agencies, classified ads. A lot of times
there were women letting out rooms who are like landladies,
and he would just like start, he would, yeah, he start,

(01:01:09):
he would start. He would just send them these crazy
letters and they would some of them would start kind
of reasonable and then would descend to him asking for
paddl ngs. Well, usually they're paddling focused one way or
the other. Uh. He would pretend to be a Hollywood
agent in some cases. Uhain. Here's a quote from one

(01:01:31):
letter he sent to a woman while he was pretending
to be Mr Hollywood. I wish you could see me now.
I am sitting in a chair naked. The pain is
across my back, just over my behind. When you strip
me naked, you will see a most perfect form. Yours, yours,
sweet honey of my heart. I can taste your sweet piss,
your sweet shit. You must peepee in a glass, and
I shall drink every drop of it as you watch me.
Tell me when you want to number two, I will

(01:01:53):
take you over my knees, pull up your clothes, take
down your drawers, and hold my mouth to your sweet
honey fat assid and eat your sweet peanut butter as
it comes that fresh and hot. This is how they
do it in Hollywood. Yeah, you know, part of me
is like, maybe he got some kicks off that way.
He was definitely getting yeah, yeah, yeah, but you think, yeah,

(01:02:15):
it probably did work with some people. Like statistically, you
send a lot of letters out, so there are a
ton of his creepy letters that you can read if
you want to read depray, if you can just lift
them up online. We're not gonna read every piece of correspondence,
she said, I don't want to go over a little
bit more of it. Though. A number of woman came
forward after he was arrested when he was like in
court and his letter was made public. And these are

(01:02:35):
people who had been freaked out by his letters before
and in some cases had kept them and hadn't known
what to do because like like nowadays, if you're a woman,
because of the Internet, men are going to send you
terrifying things. That's just what happens. But back then, some
lady would just receive a letter that's like the sixteen
pages in the mail. Yeah, have a guy talking about
wanting his ass paddled or wanting you to poop on him,

(01:02:57):
and you you just didn't have any What do you do?
What do you? And you don't tell your girlfriends, but
you don't know if like this part of being a
person really do in the Hollywood? That one I just
imagine like looking out at mailboxes and just thinking, because
everyone getting letters like this is this just life? Why
is no one talking about this? Um? So he sent

(01:03:21):
the other kind of families of letters that he would
have is he would he would message women, generally landladies,
telling them that he had an adult son who was
mentally ill and needed to be spanked regularly. And sometimes
he would send them like a dozen letters, like very
long conversations where they would agree like okay, I can
spank him if he's bad, and then he like go
on to specify, no, it needs to be done that

(01:03:42):
like why I like it? This is how I like it.
The doctor says, three or four good spankings a day
on his bear behind will do him good as he
is nice and fat in that spot. It will be
an aid to him. When he don't mind you, then
you must strip him down and use the cat on
nine tails. Say you won't hesitate to use the paddle
or cat of nine tails on him when he needs it.

(01:04:03):
Now that's one paragraph. There are pages of him detailing
how to spank his fake son. He was very concerned
about making sure it was the right way, his fake son,
my nucket spank the right way. And he's clearly doing
this to get off, which is creepy and not okay.
But this is what I suspect. This is most of
what he did up until he committed those murders. Yeah,

(01:04:24):
it feels like this was him, you know, the escalation exactly,
starting with letters doing that, always, the fascination with the
butts though that's fat butts, fat but but you know,
in a different timeline, with like right medication, he would
have just liked, uh, fat bottom girls rule the world. Well, yeah,

(01:04:45):
exactly different person. You know. Freddie Mercury could have saved
him and all of those people. He could Freddie Mercury
could have done anything, could have done. I y This
is yet another case where if we had a time machine,
you get Freddie Mercury and you just travel around time,
you'd fix a couple of fix a couple of things
here and there. Uh So, in nineteen thirty, though, Albert

(01:05:08):
Fish sent his insane creepy letters to the wrong damn woman,
a housekeeper named She sent the letter to the police,
and since he had included a return address, because he
was open to keep up this count, Yeah, they were
able to find and arrest him because it's not legal
to send horrifying like that strangers even back there, Yeah,

(01:05:28):
even back then. He was sent to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital
to be diagnosed, and he spent a few weeks there.
He was found to be sexually psychotic, which seems fair. Ye,
there's gonna be a cross wire yet. But they also though,
found that he was quiet and cooperative. They said he
conducted himself in an orderly, a normal manner, and his
bad behavior was mostly chalked up to the fact that

(01:05:49):
he was old and probably senile, so he was released
after too long. Uh Now. In one he was arrested
again for sending obscene letters to a woman who owned
a boarding school in the area. This time, the police
searched his home and found his homemade Cata nine tails,
as well as a frankfurter and a carrot, both really
gross looking. I wonder where those we have been. Well.

(01:06:12):
The cops asked him why he had these in his dresser,
and Fish replied, I stick him up my ass, mr St.
You know, to his credit, he was honest because he
was crazy and doesn't realize was not hiding it. Yeah.
Uh So during the trial, you know, when he was
finally caught and stuff, it was revealed that Fish's original

(01:06:34):
plan had been to abduct a teenage boy rather than Grace.
He had planned to tie up Edward, slice off his penis,
and then skipped down while the boy bled to death
because he didn't want to kill him. He just wanted
the penis and well, he wanted to kill him, but
he wanted to take a long time. Yeah. Yeah, Grace
was a consolation murder victim. Uh and he usually he
would sometimes refer to Grace as a hymn, just because

(01:06:56):
I guess he wanted it that way. I think he
wanted it that way. Um So. In interviews with police,
Albert Fish reported a general sort of amusement and confettlement
over why he had killed Grace, saying, first, you know,
I never could account for it. Um. He would later
claim that his brother had served in the navy in China,
because he claimed it before. Later he said it was

(01:07:16):
his brother. I don't think yeah, I don't think either
was there was. The family was kind of just like
doing normal things, which is so. And all his kids
turned up really normal. Yeah, and they seem in the story,
they seem pretty normal, like they have a range of
different reactions. Um, because his daughters are kind of in

(01:07:38):
his court. And so he was always a good dad,
like all the kids. Really, he was a good dad. Yeah,
and he's he's He never even hit his kids, which
is weird for that period of year because everybody hit
kids in twenties, but not Albert Fish. He would just
hit himself yea again and the kids. Yeah, the gold poster. Yeah. Um.

(01:08:01):
So he would later tell a detective King that he
traced his problems back to the fact that when he
was five years old, he was placed in an orphanage
by his mother. His dad was seventy five when he
was born, and his dad had died when he was
very young, and as soon as that happened his mom
put him in the orphanage. He said he saw a
lot of things a child of seven should not see. Um.
I yea, not to say that there's not truth too.

(01:08:23):
I'm sure some either it was. He's always like, had
you know this mental problem? Or yeah, there's usually an
inciting incident. He says they were whipped in the orphanage,
which definitely happened in the orphanages back then, So maybe
that's where it started. Yeah. And if you're you know,
developing sexually and on someon's a little due and you're

(01:08:44):
getting hit on all the time, that's your thing. That's
how it works. Yeah, we're amazing machines. Um, we should
be trusted with so much great we have missiles. It
was a real solid element for species with our sorts
of impulse control. Um. Yeah. So further investigation determined that

(01:09:06):
Fisher's legal troubles had actually started back in nineteen o three,
when he had spent sixteen months in prison on grand larceny.
He'd been arrested six times just since Grace Bud subduction,
sometimes for sending horrible letters to people, sometimes for vagrancy
or for passing bad checks. Uh in court he was
no clearer on why he'd killed Grace, saying, quote, the
temptation just came over me. That's all I can say.

(01:09:28):
I can't account for it. I don't understand it. But
he was always emphatic that he had not had sex
with her, saying, no sirer, no cer, no sex at all.
I did not outrage her, which I think murdering someone
outrages them. Probably, yeah, I guess. And also I think
he was probably gay, So that's that's probably a huge
reason why he didn't with Grace. Yeah, and he does

(01:09:49):
seem to be the who will talk about in a
minute here. The psychiatrist who diagnosed him did come to
the conclusion that he was on the second um, but
he was a lot of things and I wouldn't. Yeah,
And that's almost like why you even mention it, because
his sexuality is like a pollock painting, like it is.
It is a mess, it's all over the place. Yeah. Um.

(01:10:12):
So the media was as gross as you would expect
from everything we've talked about in this story when they
covered the trial Depraved. The book notes that a single
article in The Mirror called fish the ogre of murder Lodge,
the vampire man, an orgiastic fiend, and the werewolf of Wistaria,
all in the same article, the same that pros is

(01:10:34):
so purple it's red. Yeah. Uh, here's a quote from
that article. Out of the slime of the sadistic butchery
of Grace bud By, the benign looking Albert Howard fish
there emerged last night the hint of an even greater horror,
a horror of multiple killings, revealing a new type of
Jack the Ripper in the guise of a kindly old gentleman. Wow. Yeah,

(01:10:57):
that's weird that they describe him as kind and like
normal looking, because he wasn't because he looks creepy. Yeah,
And it's it's clear like at the time when you
talk about his first crimes, people noticed him, like they
were like, there was a creepy looking gray dude walking
around that must be who abducted the child. And then
we're not wrong. No, No, he was the guy, like, yeah, uh,

(01:11:21):
he looks like the guy that if you like see
him walking around the plague, I'm just going to call
the cops like this, No, I feel like there should
just be some armed me around. I would I Like,
I hate doing that because there are plenty of wonderful
people who do look creepy and vice versa, but he
is the one that you look at and was like no, no, no, no, no, no,
uh no, yeah, and in fact, go to our website

(01:11:43):
to look at those pictures. Um Fish's case was confusing,
as that last quote to people of the time, because he,
aside from his criminal record, he didn't fit society's profile
of a sex murderer. Um. He was a descendant of
American aristocracy, which I guess you are too. Yeah, something
revolution senary dude, right, yeah, famous revolutionary dude. And he
was also related to guess he was like a in

(01:12:06):
the treasury in d c Um Hamilton's Fish. Yeah, that
sounds like a treasury name. Yeah. There's a lot of
official checks with his like ostentatious signature on it. Um
and Hamilton's Fish actually deleted some historical records that connects
them as yes, which we ran into that big gap

(01:12:28):
while doing our family trees, Like ge, why did he
seems like a welcome up to try to cover up
he was related to this man that's amazing, same last name,
oh man, Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, okay, so who's worse
it came out during all this that his wife had

(01:12:48):
abandoned him and the kids were very young and left
the kids with him. Um and again, as we said,
he'd been a decent dad. And you can't blame because
the wifes gave testimony at the trial and we're just
talked about the same things that kids had seen. They
had seen, but they were not okay with it. They
were fucking terrified of him, right left, which fair, totally fair,
especially in a time when no one has a vocabulary

(01:13:10):
to discuss something. Again, not cool to leave the kids
with him, that's a questionable move. I don't agree with
that choice, which is made weirder by the fact that
he was apparently fine as a dad. Yeah, but there's
no way that woman could have no no, they just ran. Yeah,

(01:13:33):
And I guess some of it's probably that I imagine
at that time, if you went to court for custody
of the kids, it was probably easier for the man
to win back then. I don't know enough about how
the laws were. But also maybe she was a little homophobic,
insults something like that she didn't like, so it was
just like you know, or maybe yeah, maybe it was
oddly woke and that they just thought he was gay,

(01:13:54):
and we're like, well, gay people can raise kids just fine.
I just don't want to be Yeah. Who knows. But
he was clearly very angry at his wife for leaving,
and he in fact stated a number of times yeah.
He wrote a letter to his daughter Gertrude and said,
all I hope for, all I want to live for
is to be able to go in court that I
may tell what a bitch of a mother you all had,

(01:14:14):
the kind of wife I had? Wow, And you know what,
he I bet he got it, like I bet he
got to say he did. He wrote a letter to
his daughter Annie and said, tell old peg Leg, you're
a bitch of a mother that the day I go
into court and take a stand will be a sorry
one for her. It's weird. The only time he sounds
like a normal guy is where he's being really angry

(01:14:35):
at his ex wife, Like he reaches clarity, because I'm
sure it's like a clear, like solid thing on this
earth that he can be mad at and then like
everything else will just spiral in evantasy. But he's got
this like anchor point of being pissed at his wife.
So there are also a bunch of stories from his kids,
who had all just sort of chalked up his weirdness

(01:14:55):
to daddy weird. Uh. In court, Fish express deep concern
for his children and point asked a reporter to send
them Christmas baskets. That's sweet. Yeah. He claimed he regretted
the murder of Grace Bud as soon as he committed it. Um.
Depending on the day of the trial, he would veer
from asserting he was ready to die for his crimes
to trying to get a lesser sentence. So I didn't.

(01:15:15):
It was not totally consistent. Yeah. Fish was a very
religious guy. He had a lot of the Bible memorized,
and his favorite Bible passage was Isaiah, I'm gonna read it.
And you try to figure out why he might have
liked it. But rab Shaka and apologies to listeners named
rab Shackath if I pronounced that wrong. Uh. But rab
Shakath said, hath not my master sent me to thy

(01:15:37):
master and to the to speak these words? Hath he
not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall,
that they may eat their own dung and drink their
own piss with you? Do you think it's that he's
a big fan of rab Shack. Yeah, that's why you like.
When he was in jail one Sunday during a mass
for prisoners, a guard heard grunting coming from his son

(01:15:59):
and walk over to look. He saw Fish with his
pants down and just enormous erection stroking his you know,
to the sounds of the Lord's prayer. Uh. Yeah, yeah,
he loved God super um. Frederick Wortham distinguished psychiatrist who

(01:16:20):
comics fans will no one hate for originating the comics code. Um.
That guy was the guy who assessed Albert Fisher's mental
state for the court and just tried to decide whether
or not he was too crazy to be convicted. Um.
He wrote, quote, there was no known perversion that he
did not practice and practice frequently, which yeah, in a
way in accomplishment. Yeah, normally that's a positive. You haven't

(01:16:42):
murdered people, right, Yeah, yeah yeah. Wortham linked all of
Fish's weirdness back to a desire for pain. Uh. And
Fish did tell him that quote, I always seem to
enjoy everything that hurt. The desire to inflict pain that
is all that is uppermost to Wortham. Fish explain the
details of what he dide to Grace Bud. He claimed
that he'd first right to drink her blood, but had
not been able to handle it. Instead, he'd cut off

(01:17:03):
four pounds of flesh from her buttocks, breast, belly, and
ears and nose. Not a lot of them. Yeah yeah, yeah,
So he wrapped them up in newspaper and took them
back to his homes. Uh. This excited him so much
that he ejaculated while riding the train back home before
he even got home. Yes, of course. Uh. Once he

(01:17:24):
was back, he used Grace's flesh to make a stew
with carrots, onions, and strips of bacon. He said he'd
eaten the stew for nine days. Oh no, that our
family recipe. Dear God. My caller was making soup when
I called, and he talks. When he talks about eating
the boy, he talks about the potatoes that he used
in the like he makes like a biskue. Yeah, we
do have a really good potatoes stup family recipe. I

(01:17:45):
kind of want it. It's they're spam in it. It's spam. No,
we all know that. I mean, taste buds. It's inherited
to an extent. You want to come over for dinner?
Kind of I can tell you that burning human flesh
smells almost exactly like cooking bacon. Okay, yeah, I would

(01:18:08):
absolutely buy that. So, yeah, he ate her for nine
days and uh pleasure himself and stuff. We all know
where this is going. We're all adults. Yeah, that's that's
that's the kind of guy he is. Okay. So it
was also in prison where Worth him and Detective King
discovered Albert Fish's other favorite hobby. He loved shoving needles
inside himself, did yeah, usually pushing them into his taint

(01:18:32):
or somewhere else around his pelvis. The doctors actually gave
him an X ray because he had chronic pain, and
he came back just filled with needles. They found twenty
nine needles inside of him. There's the X ray if
you se, I think I have, but I love it
so much because he's just full of needles. He's just
full of needles everywhere, industrious fellow. You gotta give him that.
There's one right there, like in the lower butt cheeks

(01:18:54):
of dangling, Yeah, because a lot of times he would
try to get him out, but a lot of times
you just got him into teep. Which old Ian Malcolm
quote from Jurassic park. He didn't stop to think of
if you should Yeah, no, I thought he did. He
decided yes. This was a reason decision from Albert Fish. Uh.

(01:19:16):
They also found that Fish liked to soa cotton and alcohol,
shove it up his ass and light his ass on fire. Um.
He claimed to have tortured many children the same way. Ah,
he did claim there were many children, a line full
of victims. Wortham said quote. He started his sexual career
to so to say, at the age of seventeen at
the time he became a painter. Now that professional painter
this man has used as a convenience. He worked in

(01:19:37):
many different institutions. He worked in y M c as,
He worked in homes for the tubercular. He worked in
any kind of home where there were children, where they
thought he could get children. In all these places, he
made his headquarters the basement or the seller. And he
had a habit of wearing painters overalls over his nude
body because he could he could get So either it's
true in this kind siload of people, or he's lying,

(01:19:57):
And it's totally credible because he definitely it was important
to him to be a good father. I think it's
totally possible. He spent all of his time working and
doing masturbating in weird ways, and sending letters to people.
And it was when he was no longer working and
his kids were supporting him that he really got the
time to actually commit horrible crimes, right to enact his fantasies. Yeah,

(01:20:18):
we'll never know. That's my read on it. And that
he was getting off on talking to the psychiatrist. Yeah.
I think that was also part of it, because he
told him lurid stories about seducing kids into basements with
bribes of candy and money, uh, and doing terrible things
to them. Uh. He did claim that most of his
victims were colored because the authorities didn't care if black

(01:20:40):
kids went missing. Yeah. Um. I don't know if he
actually did that, but I'm gonna bet it's easier to
get away with yeah. Uh. And it's still today. Um. Yeah,
So we'll never know how many of these victims are
real or not worth him did uncover more religious influences.
He found now that Fish was obsessed with the story

(01:21:01):
of Abraham and Isaac, which he claims convinced him he
needed to sacrifice a child. Uh. He figured that if
God didn't want the boy to die. He'd send an
angel down to stop Fish. So God's the real guy.
Come on, God, don't write a book like that and
just leave us to interpret it. We'll do things like this,

(01:21:22):
send some angels down, like we're not you know, you
made us. You know we're not smart enough to figure
the ship out. We're sticking needles in our asses. Come
on on purpose, purpose um. In the end, Wortham concluded
that Fish was in fact far too mentally ill for
the state to execute. Ah. He is, in my opinion,

(01:21:44):
a man not only incurable and unreformable, but also unpunishable,
which is probably accurate. Probably. I don't think there's anything
anyone could have done to be like, do you realize
what you've I mean, at that point when you were
you talking to in the court didn't disagree with this guy. Nobody.
None of the jurors thought that Fish was not criminally insane,

(01:22:06):
but they all wanted him killed anyway, just because they
thought he needed to die. Yeah. I mean, and I
don't really disagree with that either. Quality of life, if
that is a factor. He's not lying, he's hurting himself, Yeah,
he's it's Yeah. So he was taken to the electric chair.
He was killed on January sixteenth, ninety six. He left

(01:22:28):
behind a final statement to his lawyer, Jack Dempsey, who stated, quote,
I will never show it to anyone. It was the
most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read,
my dear lawyer. So that's all I've got on Albert Fish. Um,

(01:22:51):
is there anything else that you brought to the table
that we haven't gotten to yet? I really you covered
a good amount of it. I think, yeah. Just the
kind of the rest of the family and the Hamilton's
Fish like not only trying to not talk about it,
but like you race records of being destroy the evidence. Um,

(01:23:13):
I think yeah, it kind of speaks to the I
guess shame of it all, which again is tied into
mental health, which is tied into like sexuality, and just yeah,
I'm glad that we have at least a couple more
nets to catch things like before and now in a
society where maybe a guy who grows up like Albert

(01:23:34):
Fish and wanting to have his ass paddle bloody and
wanting to paddle other people and be lit on fire,
Now that guy can just go to a dungeon dungeon
light his own have his ass lit on fire, light
other people asses on fire, and there can be consent
and it's all fine, right, and he doesn't have to
and not to say that he didn't choose to also, Yeah,

(01:23:56):
but he's not a monster because he shove needles up
his ass. That's respect stable way to pass the time,
Like you want to, you do whatever you want to
your own Assis America. Yeah, I just don't eat children. Yea, yeah,
maybe you're adults. Maybe be the rich, maybe maybe eat
the rich. Doritos dorito. Yeah. The only thing tastier than

(01:24:17):
the flesh of the rich. Yeah, that's the only thing
holding society together right now is that doritos are tastier
than that and as and if they ever dip in quality,
which they never will, which they never are, amazing, but
if they ever did, society would collapse because we would
start eating. We would, we will, we would go right

(01:24:38):
for the bangers. Really, we just owe a lot to doritos,
don't we We do, we do. And that's a positive
note to in this horrible, horrible episode about a terrible criminal. Maggie,
you want to plug your plug, Dobles, Yes, yeah, you
can find me. Maga may fish that's May also named
after my great great grandmother who is in the same line. Yeah,

(01:25:01):
I bet she was really horrified when all this came out. Oh,
I don't know if she ever knew, and thank god.
I'm just imagining members of your family like picking up
the news over in Michigan and like reading about the
trial and going, oh, I'm gonna throw this newspaper in
the trash. You don't let the kids see this color

(01:25:22):
cousin in d C. I think we need to have
some files burned. Uh yeah, So find me on Twitter.
UM I have a podcast about friendship called my Top
eight of the Small Beans Network UM and you can
catch my videos at Breakdown Film and Society on my
YouTube channel. They're fantastic videos. Check them out. Check out

(01:25:45):
Maggie's work. She's one of the most talented people I've
ever worked with. UM. I'm Robert Evans and next week,
next Tuesday, we'll be back as we are every week,
with another story about someone terrible, so please tune in
for that. It will probably be a dictator other than
a mass murderer, but you know, one and the same, Yeah,
one in the same, not as different as you might expect.

(01:26:07):
Uh yeah. You can find this podcast on Twitter at
at Bastard's Pod Instagram too. You can find us on
the internet at behind the Bastard's dot com. Have a
cool ranch Day and I love h