Speaker 1: Mmm, Hello friends, I am Robert Evans, and this is
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you everything
Speaker 1: you don't know about the very worst people in all
Speaker 1: of history. Now, normally this podcast features me and a
Speaker 1: guest who's coming into cold talking about a horrific person
Speaker 1: in history, and generally I pick dictators or people who
Speaker 1: have abused power in some very large scale way. That's
Speaker 1: sort of our milieu. We don't really talk about serial
Speaker 1: killers usually, but today we are talking about a serial
Speaker 1: killer named Albert Fish, who was a cannibalistic child murder
Speaker 1: who loved lighting his own ass on fire. Now we're
Speaker 1: doing this for two reasons. The first is that my
Speaker 1: guest today, Maggie May Fish, is a He is a
Speaker 1: relative said person. So let's start there. What is the relation? Okay,
Speaker 1: So I contacted my uncle Terry, who did our who
Speaker 1: did our family tree, and so I have a bunch
Speaker 1: of names here, but basically I'm related via his brother
Speaker 1: became our like direct family line. So Albert Fish's brother
Speaker 1: Uh ended up moving to Michigan, which is where the
Speaker 1: rest of that line ended up and where I was born. Exciting, Okay, sorry,
Speaker 1: exciting Before we get any further, Maggie, you're You're not
Speaker 1: just the dead guy's relation. You are a wonderful comedian. No,
Speaker 1: I am just this dead guy's uh gee, I mean
Speaker 1: I'll never get out of his shadow. Look at what
Speaker 1: he's done. I will never beat him on that. No,
Speaker 1: that's you have for one thing, a wonderful YouTube video
Speaker 1: series where you My favorite one is dissecting sort of
Speaker 1: the works of Tim Burton. Yeah, I really like your
Speaker 1: video on timan Um. You're talented comedian, talented writer. You
Speaker 1: and I worked for the same site for a while,
Speaker 1: and dauties didn't generally intersect. Yeah, I think we met afterwards. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think I met you while you were because
Speaker 1: they didn't let me into the videos. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: for good reason, for good reason. No one's saying that
Speaker 1: we're wrong in that um. So Yeah, basically, the weird
Speaker 1: thing about today is that neither of us is coming
Speaker 1: in hot or cold. I don't know what you know
Speaker 1: and you don't know what I know. So we're just
Speaker 1: gonna We're just gonna find out. Yeah, we're gonna make
Speaker 1: Reese's Pieces peanut butter cups of knowledge where it's like
Speaker 1: like a knowledge truck. And then another knowledge truck backs exactly,
Speaker 1: and the drivers have to crowd fund their medical care
Speaker 1: because but then they become friends, and then the one
Speaker 1: falls in love with that guy's sister, and then like
Speaker 1: they're all over queer. You know, you just pitched a
Speaker 1: really upbeat movie about our failed medical system. Okay, all right,
Speaker 1: well let's talk about a serial killer now. Um, so,
Speaker 1: I guess I'm going to My research for this was
Speaker 1: mainly I read a book called Deranged by Harold Scheckter.
Speaker 1: Have you have you given that one to read? I've
Speaker 1: not given it, although it has been recommended to me
Speaker 1: several times. If you're it's good if you're if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of the books about real killers genre, it's
Speaker 1: a very solid jury into that. I also watched a
Speaker 1: documentary called Albert Fish about Albert Fish that's terrible. I
Speaker 1: have watched that. We're going to get into that in
Speaker 1: a little bit because we've got a couple of video
Speaker 1: cooks from that, and I just I gotta just trying
Speaker 1: to light on if you will very excited for this episode. Um,
Speaker 1: all right, so let's talk about Albert Fish's crimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the ones that we know that we know here's where
Speaker 1: I'm confused, and maybe you can China light is. I
Speaker 1: know like what he did, but I also know the rumors,
Speaker 1: and I don't know which is like factually happened and
Speaker 1: which is like, oh man, what if Albert Fish? Also yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just tried to stick mostly to stuff that
Speaker 1: we know, because we know there's three children that we
Speaker 1: know he killed, yes, um, but he claimed to have
Speaker 1: killed a bunch of other people after he was caught.
Speaker 1: But he also had as we'll get into a very
Speaker 1: rich fantasy life, very rich, which seems like and also like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, he's not the only serial killer to have
Speaker 1: like made up deaths. Um. So some of this is
Speaker 1: going to be up to the readers to the side,
Speaker 1: but hopefully you and I can lock down will forever
Speaker 1: now be the ironclad history about the Fish? This is it,
Speaker 1: um right. So on July four, nineteen twenty four, eight
Speaker 1: year old Frances McDonald was playing on the front stoop
Speaker 1: of his porch in Staten Island, which was at that
Speaker 1: time like the middle of nowhere. Yeah, it was still
Speaker 1: there were like trees and ship trees and ship what's
Speaker 1: the roly tumble weed walls? Yes, walls. There were walls, walls,
Speaker 1: and trees. So while his mother was watching him, she
Speaker 1: saw a strange old man with a gray mustache creeping
Speaker 1: down the street in exactly the sort of way normal
Speaker 1: people don't. If it had been two thousand eighteen, she
Speaker 1: probably would have taken her kids inside and called the cops,
Speaker 1: or at least taken him inside. But it was four
Speaker 1: and she was just like, oh, what a weirdo. And
Speaker 1: then and he was white, so I'm sure it was
Speaker 1: like that could happen. That's the twenties. Yeah, So Francis
Speaker 1: left after his mom went inside to play with his
Speaker 1: brother and some neighbor kids. They were playing some sort
Speaker 1: of ball game, probably something old timey like stickball or
Speaker 1: or do you have a ball? Then polio ball? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know sports. But at some point that weird
Speaker 1: gray man started watching them, and Francis ran over to
Speaker 1: see what he wanted. Because again, twenties. While his friends
Speaker 1: and brother were focused on the game, Francis and the
Speaker 1: man both disappeared. Now, once people realized Francis was missing,
Speaker 1: search parties were formed. A trio of boy scouts found
Speaker 1: Francis's body. The newspapers described, yeah, bad time for the
Speaker 1: what a what a. Yeah, they're having some dark campouts
Speaker 1: after that, just these kids sitting around the fire, taking
Speaker 1: drags a cigarettes and just staring. We've seen um. The
Speaker 1: newspapers described Francis as having been quote atrociously a salted.
Speaker 1: All of the clothing below his waist had been torn off,
Speaker 1: he'd been strangled to death with his suspenders, and it
Speaker 1: looked like he'd been cut up to um. Which so
Speaker 1: sorry retroactively, I mean, not that I have any control
Speaker 1: over an ancestor. Yeah, but you know, none of us
Speaker 1: are responsible for what terrible people in our past. Like
Speaker 1: when you think about it, everybody's got a serial killer relative.
Speaker 1: I hope if you go back far and yeah, go
Speaker 1: find some guys. Find you do after this episode, go
Speaker 1: find your serial killer and your mass martin. Spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: my relative who killed people is gonna wind up having
Speaker 1: a camel in the story. So this is gonna be fun.
Speaker 1: This is a massive crossover episode. So yeah. On February eleven,
Speaker 1: uh four year old Billy Gaffney was playing with a
Speaker 1: three year old friend and his twelve year old brother.
Speaker 1: Twelve year old walked off because twelve year olds aren't
Speaker 1: really good at babysitting. Uh, and the two little kids
Speaker 1: wound up on the roof because again, there were no
Speaker 1: rules in the nineteen twenties and kids could just go anywhere. Uh.
Speaker 1: Billy's three year old friend was later found safe on
Speaker 1: the roof, and when the adult who found him asked
Speaker 1: where Billy had gone, he said, quote, the Boogeyman took him.
Speaker 1: You are a descendant of the book. Yeah. The scariest
Speaker 1: thing is that the photo of Albert Fish on the
Speaker 1: Wikipedia website looks so much like my current relatives. Uh,
Speaker 1: just his piercing eyes like they run in our family.
Speaker 1: So it's terrifying to look at it. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think you look like Albert Fish, but y'all
Speaker 1: do have piercing eyes. I was going to bring that up. Um.
Speaker 1: So both of these abductions cost sensations when they happened, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: It was not common for kids to be abducted in
Speaker 1: the twenties. It was common for kids to die for
Speaker 1: no reason because twenties and medicine was whiskey. Um. But like,
Speaker 1: this sort of thing was not common, and so it
Speaker 1: caused kind of a sensation, and local papers covered the
Speaker 1: cases breathlessly and even got some national coverage. And if
Speaker 1: you're feeling bad about the state of journalism right now,
Speaker 1: which who isn't give me something to look forward to
Speaker 1: my day, this will make you feel better, because it
Speaker 1: turns out it's always kind of in garbage. Here's how
Speaker 1: the New York Daily News wrote about Billy's disappearance. Somewhere
Speaker 1: in New York or nearby his little Billy Gaffney or
Speaker 1: his body. An army of detectives fifty strong is hunting
Speaker 1: that somewhere. Watch for the results of that search, and
Speaker 1: tomorrow's news All Caps Hoping against hope. Police continue their
Speaker 1: search for the missing Billy Gaffney. Follow the trail and
Speaker 1: tomorrow's All Caps News. Will the Seventh Day bring joy
Speaker 1: or sorrow to the parents of little Billy? Read all
Speaker 1: the developments of the hunt and Tomorrow's All Caps News.
Speaker 1: That's some journalism. That was an advertisement for the News,
Speaker 1: coupled around a tragic story of aspearing little boys getting murdered.
Speaker 1: Time to sell some papers. Yeah yeah, So, if you've
Speaker 1: paid attention to the last any length of time really
Speaker 1: an American culture, you may have picked up on the
Speaker 1: fact that we are a high strung bunch as a
Speaker 1: country we are. That was such a nice way to
Speaker 1: put it. Americans in the nineteen twenties did not take
Speaker 1: the realization that kidnapping existed any more gracefully than Americans
Speaker 1: today take scary news reports about MS thirteen. According to
Speaker 1: Harold scheckters Deranged in the immediate aftermath abilities abduction, over
Speaker 1: the course of a single week, three separate angry mobs
Speaker 1: assaulted different suspected boogeyman boy to be that other man
Speaker 1: and just to be targeted because everyone looked weird back then. Also,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming there's no way to fix any of it.
Speaker 1: Well know, and you see anybody walking around in twenties
Speaker 1: clothing today and you're like, that's a pedophile. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is a that is yeah, but it's just how they
Speaker 1: dressed dressed. Bowler hat just is so suspicious. You can
Speaker 1: get arrested for just a bowler hat, Oh my god?
Speaker 1: And should you should? Yeah? It's not okay. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: here's a quote from Deranged about the first guy to
Speaker 1: be cornered by an angry mob because of Albert Fish's cars.
Speaker 1: A sixty three year old salesman named Giles Steele was
Speaker 1: which Giles is precious, poor man, Giles. Steele was strolling
Speaker 1: down East Street when a four year old strolling alive.
Speaker 1: It's the only way people could walk into Tornet. I
Speaker 1: guess you were either strolling or you had polio and
Speaker 1: you could not walk, and and then you were rolling.
Speaker 1: Because so he was strolling down East Street when a
Speaker 1: four year old boy stepped into his path. He's told
Speaker 1: the kid to move aside and reached down and took
Speaker 1: the kid by the shoulder. And at that point, the
Speaker 1: kid's mother, Miss Sadie Bernstein, came out and saw him
Speaker 1: with his hand on the kid's shoulder, and she just
Speaker 1: starts screaming. And so a crowd of quote a crowd
Speaker 1: of neighbors immediately descended on Steel and began pummeling him.
Speaker 1: He just started, it's not even restrain him. For the
Speaker 1: cops beating the ship out. So Steele was safe by
Speaker 1: a cop who took him to the station. He was
Speaker 1: questioned and it became obvious that he had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with anything illegal. Miss Bernstein eventually agreed that she
Speaker 1: had reacted. Steele was still arranged in a kidnapping charge
Speaker 1: because the cops just thought he seemed shady poor gild.
Speaker 1: I know, I know you must talk about a lot
Speaker 1: about like wrongly convicted people probably on this podcast. That
Speaker 1: comes up a lot. But I always feel terrible, I
Speaker 1: mean usually because dictators are just having people executed for
Speaker 1: crimes they didn't commit. But yeah, this the weird thing
Speaker 1: is the other two cases of people getting mobbed. Weird
Speaker 1: dudes with prior convictions for quote, impairing the morals of miners. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they were caught trying to trick young people into
Speaker 1: dark alleyways, probably to molest them. Probably. She was like, okay,
Speaker 1: so it was a movement and it was okay. Two
Speaker 1: thirds of the time the mobs were right, which is
Speaker 1: a really pretty good for mobs. Yeah, you see boy
Speaker 1: scouts go out and one out of one they find
Speaker 1: a dead body mobs or two out of three. One
Speaker 1: thing I learned in Indiana, Jones, is if you're a
Speaker 1: boy scout in the twenties, you're finding some dead people
Speaker 1: and you're probably going to wind up having a fight
Speaker 1: on top of a train. Oh yeah, those are the
Speaker 1: two things that I yeah, as the two things that
Speaker 1: twenties boy scouts for sure do. So. Yeah, the mobs,
Speaker 1: mobs in the streets, people freaking out. So up until
Speaker 1: May of these were just too scary, isolated unsolved crimes,
Speaker 1: one with nobody and both of that a clear villain, right,
Speaker 1: so people get sort of riled up. Both times these
Speaker 1: kids get abducted, but then it's sort of fades, kind
Speaker 1: of like a shooting does, only these are less common
Speaker 1: at this point. Even then, this all changes on because
Speaker 1: Albert Fish saw an ad in the situations wanted section
Speaker 1: of a local newspaper that said, young man eighteen wishes
Speaker 1: position in country Edward Bud four or six West fifteenth Street. Now,
Speaker 1: at this point in the classified section was basically the
Speaker 1: equivalent of like Craigslist today. The main difference is that
Speaker 1: today everyone is so aware of the danger of creepy
Speaker 1: people that like, if you're buy a couch on Craiglist,
Speaker 1: you joke like, all right, I'll be back in an
Speaker 1: hour unless I get murdered. Right, And then there's that
Speaker 1: one case where that girl did go on a date
Speaker 1: and she didn't come back exactly, there's an expectation that
Speaker 1: danger can happen in this It did not exist then,
Speaker 1: So an eighteen year old boy would just be like,
Speaker 1: I want to work in the country and put out
Speaker 1: an ad and two days later the doorbell rang at
Speaker 1: Edward Bud's house. His mother opened it and saw a small,
Speaker 1: elderly man in a suit. Uh. They were very poor,
Speaker 1: very very poor family. His suit was not particularly nice,
Speaker 1: but the fact that he was wearing a suitment that
Speaker 1: he was above them on like the class rung. So
Speaker 1: they were very impressed by that. He was polite and
Speaker 1: genteel and like kissed her hand, which she was super
Speaker 1: impressed by. He does all of like the upper class
Speaker 1: seeming stuff. He claimed to be a former interior decorator
Speaker 1: who had made a bunch of money and then started
Speaker 1: a farm upstate. I like interior decorating. Do you like
Speaker 1: starting farms? Oh? I could, well, I like farm video games.
Speaker 1: I don't know where I'm going with this, because this
Speaker 1: is this is just a lie. He used to abduct
Speaker 1: a l I know, but I'm thinking if that's what
Speaker 1: he wanted, what's in my jeans is basically what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to suss out. Well, he didn't work as an
Speaker 1: interior decorator, might have been well, maybe you can exercise
Speaker 1: that part of the fish jeens and not everything We're
Speaker 1: about to talk about today. Um So, part of his
Speaker 1: lie was that his he'd moved out to start a
Speaker 1: farm with his wife and kids, and she'd abandoned him
Speaker 1: because she was terrible and he had to raise his
Speaker 1: kids alone. But they were doing great and but now
Speaker 1: his kids were out of the house and he needed
Speaker 1: some help. So a good story. Willing to hire eighteen
Speaker 1: year old Edward, but he called himself Frank Howard to yes, so,
Speaker 1: have you ever found yourself wanting to go by the
Speaker 1: name Frank Howard? Uh, only if I thought it would
Speaker 1: be better for my job, like applications. That's a solid job.
Speaker 1: That sounds like a banker. But anyway, Uh yeah. So
Speaker 1: Fish's actual plan was to murder, eat, and probably moleste
Speaker 1: Edward h D probably probably not. Well, it's hard he
Speaker 1: I feel like he kind of had a dead body thing,
Speaker 1: I think, although he claims he never fucked the dead people,
Speaker 1: which it's hard to say. Hard to say. Yeah at
Speaker 1: that point, that's like, you know, yeah, we'll get into
Speaker 1: the things that he masturbated about. Spoiler there's a lot
Speaker 1: of masturbation in this episode. Um So, yeah, Edward, the
Speaker 1: kid that he was going to hire, is super excited.
Speaker 1: This guy's gonna pay like fifteen bucks a week, which
Speaker 1: is really good wages back then, and he's like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I've got a friend who also wants work on a farm.
Speaker 1: Do you have do you need any additional work? And
Speaker 1: I think this at this point, Albert Fish is just
Speaker 1: not that great at lying in the moment, and so
Speaker 1: he says yes, But he doesn't know because number one,
Speaker 1: this kid's already kind of big, like big enough that
Speaker 1: Albert's worried, like I might not be able to overpower him,
Speaker 1: because I like and I don't want to get rid
Speaker 1: of some of them. I want to eat all of it.
Speaker 1: You know. He's very resourceful, like retroactively, like placing like
Speaker 1: good quality. He wants to use every part of the boy. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he he's kind of a recycling gun. Um.
Speaker 1: So Albert Fish says, like yes, but I think it's
Speaker 1: a panic thing. And he immediately comes up with an
Speaker 1: excuse to delay and says that like he's not quite
Speaker 1: ready to leave yet, but he'll be back the next day.
Speaker 1: And then the next day, instead of coming back, he
Speaker 1: sends a telegram and says, I'll be there in the
Speaker 1: next day. When he does finally show back up. He
Speaker 1: brings pot cheese, which is what you'll find in every
Speaker 1: write up of this that he brought. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what pot cheese was. It's cottage cheese that people would
Speaker 1: bring to potlucks and pots. I don't know why, it
Speaker 1: just it seems like a weird, old timey cheese. So
Speaker 1: if you read about Albert Fish, you're gonna come across
Speaker 1: the phrase pot cheese a lot. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: what it was because I have a new password for
Speaker 1: all of my advice. So he brings like some cheese
Speaker 1: and claims that he it came from his farm, and uh,
Speaker 1: they have like a lunch, and everybody's very impressed with
Speaker 1: this guy. Uh. He wounds up like playing with their
Speaker 1: young daughter Grace. And after the meal, he tells the
Speaker 1: boys he can't take them until later that evening. But
Speaker 1: he pulls out a big wat of cash, which is
Speaker 1: like ninety bucks then, which is a lot of money
Speaker 1: to these people. And he gives a couple of dollars
Speaker 1: to Edward and his friend and it's like, go see
Speaker 1: a movie with your buddies or whatever. I'll be back tonight.
Speaker 1: And then kind of as like an afterthought, I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm heading out to this birthday party my
Speaker 1: sister is throwing. Maybe your daughter Grace wants to come
Speaker 1: with me? Is afterthoughts in quotes. I think he kind
Speaker 1: of brought it up at the end of things, and
Speaker 1: they say yes because there's this old man, very classic,
Speaker 1: very genteel. He's helping out the family. So he takes Grace. Uh,
Speaker 1: And obviously you feel bad for the parents because like
Speaker 1: the dad, the dad is the one he makes the
Speaker 1: final call, and he's Grace is a sickly kid. She's
Speaker 1: ill a lot, and he's like, she never gets to
Speaker 1: have any fun. Let her go have some fun. Which
Speaker 1: it doesn't end well for Grace or the buds. They
Speaker 1: get really pretty fucked over in this um. So he
Speaker 1: gives them an address of where he's going to be,
Speaker 1: which they later find out is fake, and then he
Speaker 1: disappears and Grace never comes back. They never see Frank
Speaker 1: Howard again. On Tuesday, June five, the New York Times
Speaker 1: reports on Grace's abduction with the classy headline hunt man
Speaker 1: and child. He took to party that is classy. It
Speaker 1: ends on party, So I'm kind of like excited at
Speaker 1: the end, you know our party a party. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta forget hunt Man. That's actually not a bad If
Speaker 1: I was going to start a superhero hunt Man and child,
Speaker 1: Batman and Child, I immediately know what that's about. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: so depraved, says the book that I read for this
Speaker 1: says that the story unspooled and the abloids and kind
Speaker 1: of the same way that the Gaffney abduction had. So
Speaker 1: their first off, there's a shipload of false leads. People
Speaker 1: start just sending lies into the family and we'll get
Speaker 1: into that a little bit, a lot of sketchy witnesses,
Speaker 1: and then there's just this big surgeon anxiety over kidnappings
Speaker 1: for the people of New York. Um, the tabloids make
Speaker 1: as much of this as they possibly can, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's the same follow Nancy Gray kind of situation. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: And every these newspapers are all giving daily updates and
Speaker 1: like follow this search tomorrow and the daily News and YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 1: And we'll have a list of all of our sources
Speaker 1: on the website behind the Bastards dot Com. We're gonna
Speaker 1: get to what happens afterwards and kind of how Albert
Speaker 1: Fish's crimes sort of started the idea of stranger danger,
Speaker 1: like we're we're influential in that concept. We were all
Speaker 1: raised with into fear and how he sort of had
Speaker 1: an impact on that and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. But first,
Speaker 1: you know, it goes great with discussions of the terrible
Speaker 1: things that serial killers do. Is products and services. You
Speaker 1: love products and services. I use them all the time.
Speaker 1: Pull out all of your cards and throw them into
Speaker 1: the air and buy a product. Now, and we're back
Speaker 1: and we're talking about Albert Fish, the ancestor to my
Speaker 1: guest today, Maggie Mayfish uh and listeners, just just as
Speaker 1: a heads up, Maggie is one of the nicer people
Speaker 1: that I have met in the city of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: She's not a murderer. As far as I'm gonna wearing.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no trial, there's no wearing a red shirt.
Speaker 1: I am. I thought blood and then I put on
Speaker 1: the shirt exactly. Okay. Um, so I think that before everything.
Speaker 1: I wear on my head like a cat or a
Speaker 1: little dog. Um okay. So years go by after the
Speaker 1: Grace Bud kidnapping, which is what we had just talked
Speaker 1: about in the end, and the case like the other two,
Speaker 1: gradually starts to fade from memory, but kidnapping did not fade.
Speaker 1: The disappearances of these three children had helped to spark
Speaker 1: a new crime epidemic in American history, the kidnapping craze.
Speaker 1: And I spelled craze with a K in that sentence,
Speaker 1: thank you. I knew you'd appreciate that. Yeah, the kidnapping crazy.
Speaker 1: Uh here's a quote from Harold Scheckters deranged. In nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty two alone, there were two and eighty two reported
Speaker 1: kidnappings states, and all but sixty five of the perpetrators
Speaker 1: had gotten away scott free with their crimes. By the
Speaker 1: summer of nineteen thirty three, kidnappings were occurring so frequently
Speaker 1: that news readers required a scorecard to keep track of them.
Speaker 1: All Oh my god, yeah, well that's where we are.
Speaker 1: That's where we are. And I feel like Albert fish
Speaker 1: was is so crazy that maybe just no one had
Speaker 1: really been like, oh I could I could just take
Speaker 1: take people? What it was probably the guy who committed
Speaker 1: the first cyber crime, probably the same rush of what
Speaker 1: have I opened? I'd love to see just a movie
Speaker 1: about the man who invented mugging. Just like this poor
Speaker 1: guy on the streets seeing people pull money out of
Speaker 1: their pockets and like looking at a knife in his
Speaker 1: hand and looking at a rich guy and a knife
Speaker 1: in her and then just like so heat the rich blood, blood,
Speaker 1: blood blood. He doesn't want to get stabbed, and he
Speaker 1: has money. There's a connection between these things. You can
Speaker 1: figure this out. Um. So, yeah, most of the kidnappers,
Speaker 1: unlike Albert Fish, which again we'll get to one, we're
Speaker 1: not doing it for sex or murder. They just wanted money,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. It became very clear that it was
Speaker 1: hard for cops to catch kidnappers. Uh. And as it
Speaker 1: became clear that that was the case, intelligent criminals realized
Speaker 1: that kidnapping was very safe and very profitable. Uh. In
Speaker 1: June of nineteen thirty two, the New York Times reported
Speaker 1: on more than a dozen kidnapping cases, and one of them, Maggie,
Speaker 1: was actually committed by my ancestor, Charles pretty Boy Floyd. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw that in the book. I was like, how
Speaker 1: now I got a guy in the mix. So Pretty
Speaker 1: Boy Floyd was a gangster. He was He's generally considered
Speaker 1: to be the last of the big gangsters to die
Speaker 1: because his death. Well, he gets shot in the field,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that is cool. It's a great place to
Speaker 1: get shot. So Donald Trump and I are current president,
Speaker 1: have two things in common. One of them was a
Speaker 1: literary agent, which is weird, you know, but and the
Speaker 1: other is that Woody Guthrie wrote songs about both of
Speaker 1: our ancestors. He wrote a song about Donald Trump's dad
Speaker 1: because Donald Trump's dad denied tendency to black people. And
Speaker 1: he wrote a song about Pretty Boy Floyd, my ancestor,
Speaker 1: because my ancestor beat a cop to death of the
Speaker 1: law change. Yeah. So uh. In in that year thirty two,
Speaker 1: pretty Boy Floyd tried to kidnap an actress from Malibu
Speaker 1: in ransom her. She was to be kidnapped and flown
Speaker 1: to Mexico, but the police found out about it and
Speaker 1: like ringed the street with cops at the last minute,
Speaker 1: and Floyd somehow learned of the trap and never appeared.
Speaker 1: And that's the end of this digression. But I had
Speaker 1: to bring it up. That was so Yeah, everybody's gotten murderous.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. So the kidnapping wave grew and grew in
Speaker 1: the thirties until it reached its apex with the kidnapping
Speaker 1: of the Lindbergh Baby in nineteen two. Charles Lindberg was
Speaker 1: an aviator, first man across the Atlantic, national hero, potential
Speaker 1: presidential Canada, and anti Semitic fascist sympathizer. His wife in Lindberg,
Speaker 1: was an acclaimed author and also probably probably they probably
Speaker 1: talked about it. Probably, Yeah, I would guess y. Um,
Speaker 1: their baby, Charles Jr. Was twenty months old and a
Speaker 1: baby baby would have gon up to be racist, yeah,
Speaker 1: but at the time was just a baby. Yeah, was
Speaker 1: a baby. And he was kidnapped in March first, ninety
Speaker 1: two and immediately pretty much killed on accident, probably saw
Speaker 1: the ladder. We don't know. Um. Now. Up until this point,
Speaker 1: the only other crime in American history this famous had
Speaker 1: probably been the assassination of Lincoln. Like this is this
Speaker 1: is like it's big, uh. And it inspired the creation
Speaker 1: of the Federal Kidnapping Act and I think nine in
Speaker 1: thirty four, which made transferring an unwilling person across state
Speaker 1: lines a federal crime. Um. So the Lindberg kidnapping was
Speaker 1: sort of the crest of a wave or a crime
Speaker 1: meme that was then spreading through the culture. Uh. And
Speaker 1: that wave kicked off with the crimes of Albert Fish,
Speaker 1: although he would not be caught until nine. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is the other He went a very long time without
Speaker 1: you know, any sort of reprimand for what he'd done.
Speaker 1: And it's some of that's got to be just the
Speaker 1: fact that, like, we didn't know how to be detectives
Speaker 1: back then, and he changed his name and he doesn't
Speaker 1: he's not glued to this reality in some way because
Speaker 1: he's not like a super smooth criminal. He's messy. When
Speaker 1: he abducts Grace Bud, he keeps all of his knives
Speaker 1: wrapped up in like a kit that he calls his
Speaker 1: implements of Hell. And when he goes to pick her up,
Speaker 1: he leaves them at like a grocery store. He just
Speaker 1: hands them to the clerk consents. Can you old base,
Speaker 1: here's that poker cards I'll take I've got some extra
Speaker 1: children you can. Twenties. Yeah, what a time. So nowadays,
Speaker 1: when terrible things happened to the children of people like
Speaker 1: the Newton shootings, when like a twenty people lost their
Speaker 1: very young children to a man shooter, uh, they immediately
Speaker 1: start getting harassed horribly online by Alex Jones fans who
Speaker 1: think it's a false flag or whatever. Um, it's important
Speaker 1: to note that that's not new. Blaming the parents kind
Speaker 1: of is, but being incredibly shitty to parents who have
Speaker 1: just lost a child is at least as old as
Speaker 1: the twenties. This is a part I was not aware of.
Speaker 1: So all of these families, these people we've talked about
Speaker 1: whose kids get abducted, all of them get bombarded with
Speaker 1: crank letters from just hundreds of random people. Um, here's
Speaker 1: one letter the Gaffney family received. My dear friends, I
Speaker 1: will be fine to boy my son in water rivers sellars,
Speaker 1: look out, my god want back boy. I might have
Speaker 1: gotten that exact same message on Twitter just in my
Speaker 1: d m yea wow, you want another one? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, Wait,
Speaker 1: do not appear too anxious. Your son is in safe hands.
Speaker 1: We fought for him, but I got him. Now we
Speaker 1: will get the beaten boy for Billy to play with.
Speaker 1: For Billy is lonesome. Do not show this letter to
Speaker 1: anyone if you know what is good for you. Again,
Speaker 1: I say that Billy is safe and that we are
Speaker 1: experimenting on him. Um can I say that that sounds
Speaker 1: exactly like when people tell their alien abduction stories, Like
Speaker 1: what the aliens tell them like almost verbatim. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you can tell it's like someone actually hallucinating in their brain,
Speaker 1: just firing words out into a waking dream or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it just it sounds like a phasia. Yeah. Some other
Speaker 1: assholes sent a letter to this grieving family saying quote,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to kill him, God forgive me in
Speaker 1: giving a pand drawn map of where his corpse was
Speaker 1: supposedly buried. Police found nothing there. Uh, and the boys
Speaker 1: got troops found nothing. Those were the police back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had neckerchiefs instead of guns. It's a lot safer
Speaker 1: for yeah, um murder, It was a lot safer. The
Speaker 1: book Depraved also notes that psychic's pledged to aid in
Speaker 1: the efforts, to no effect, obviously, along with an inventor
Speaker 1: who arrived with what he called a mechanical bloodhound. Yeah
Speaker 1: at well, it was just a divining rod with a
Speaker 1: rubber tube attached to it, filled with Billy's hair. Appreciate
Speaker 1: the app Yeah why not. Yeah, it didn't work either.
Speaker 1: The Bud family also received crank letters. Depraved claims they
Speaker 1: were receiving dozens every day for a while. Many of
Speaker 1: them were like this, quote, my dear Mr and Mrs Bud,
Speaker 1: your child is going to a funeral. I still got her.
Speaker 1: Howard uh all caps uh and this I have Grace.
Speaker 1: She is safe and sound. She is happy in her
Speaker 1: new home and not at all homesick. I will see
Speaker 1: to it that Grace has proper schooling. She has been
Speaker 1: given it an angora cat and a pet canary she
Speaker 1: calls the canary Bill. I am a keen student of
Speaker 1: human nature. That's why I was attracted to Grace. She
Speaker 1: seemed like a girl who would appreciate nice surroundings in
Speaker 1: a real nice home. I drove with Grace past your
Speaker 1: house in an automobile several days ago. I saw several
Speaker 1: persons standing in front of the house and did not stop,
Speaker 1: as it looked as though they were waiting for me.
Speaker 1: I will see to it in the near future that
Speaker 1: some arrangements are made so Grace will be able to
Speaker 1: visit you for a short time. Why would you send that?
Speaker 1: What is? What is? I don't know. I don't understand this.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like at least one of those has
Speaker 1: got to be like one or two people being like
Speaker 1: if I say she's all right, maybe they'll feel better.
Speaker 1: But then like I don't care. Yeah, I don't give
Speaker 1: a ship. I'm not connected to this in any way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to be honest, I actually think these are worse than
Speaker 1: the people the Alex Jones people who are harassing the
Speaker 1: parents of dead kids on because at least those people
Speaker 1: believe there's a crazy conspiracy. You just fucking with a
Speaker 1: family for an no reason. It really makes me just
Speaker 1: like what people did for fun back then. It was
Speaker 1: a very boring time, very boring time, and one of
Speaker 1: the biggest sports in the country right now that Dollop
Speaker 1: does a great episode in this was pedestrianism, which is
Speaker 1: just people walking in circles for weeks, like days, hundreds
Speaker 1: of miles. So like, there's nothing to do at this point,
Speaker 1: right Like World War One at least gave some people
Speaker 1: something for a while. But make a victory garden, make
Speaker 1: a victory garden, go die in the Yeah, both better
Speaker 1: off in life in the twenties. Um so yeah, the letters. However,
Speaker 1: we're not all entirely negative. There was a detective named
Speaker 1: William King who was basically your stereotypical lantern jaw chain
Speaker 1: smoking twenties detective like picture Dick Tracy. Of course, of course,
Speaker 1: He's the guy if you just saw him walking down
Speaker 1: the street and you had a problem, you would run
Speaker 1: to him and be like, this is my chance to
Speaker 1: be a fix all of this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: He's that kind of detective. So he had gotten on
Speaker 1: the Bud case right after Grace was subducted and spent
Speaker 1: six fruitless years trying to track down her killer. Now
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty four, because this was the year that had
Speaker 1: the Lindbergh trial and the kid had been kidnapped in
Speaker 1: thirty two, but the trial wasn't thirty four. It was
Speaker 1: a big year for awareness of kidnapping, and Detective King
Speaker 1: decided to take one more stab at solving it. I
Speaker 1: love that. It's like set up for a story. You're
Speaker 1: giving me a hold up phase. It's great because he
Speaker 1: fucking solves this case. Spoiler, but he does it in
Speaker 1: like the most unethical way. It's super fun, so like
Speaker 1: a lumbo like whatever. His strategy for years had been
Speaker 1: to randomly call newspapers and lie about the Bud case
Speaker 1: and just give them bullshit information so they would write
Speaker 1: a story based on his lies that like said the essentially,
Speaker 1: there's been a break in the case, and he did
Speaker 1: this because every time it would happen, there would be
Speaker 1: a shipload of more letters sent into the police with
Speaker 1: tips and sent to the family, and he felt that
Speaker 1: it kept the story fresh. So some people would say
Speaker 1: it'sunethical to just repeatedly light to newspapers about a little
Speaker 1: girl's abduction, but King was like, you gotta keep people
Speaker 1: thinking about it. So his big the guy he would
Speaker 1: do this most often with was a gossip columnist named
Speaker 1: Walter Winchell. Most listeners will recognize him as one of
Speaker 1: the rapid fire names spat Out and Billy Joel's we
Speaker 1: Didn't Start the fire. He comes right before Joe to Maggio,
Speaker 1: John McCarthy, Richard Nixon's Dud. Yeah okay. Uh So before
Speaker 1: he was part of a classic song, he was America's
Speaker 1: most famous gossip columnist. His column on Broadway was probably
Speaker 1: the most influential piece of writing every given week in
Speaker 1: New York City. Um so he's a big deal and
Speaker 1: women gossip, Well, this guy, Walter Winchell probably said that
Speaker 1: because I'm sure he was super massage. I mean, you
Speaker 1: just gotta assume the woke guys have just gotten it
Speaker 1: down to being okay with women. Voting at this point,
Speaker 1: it's been it's been a long road. Um. So. Walter
Speaker 1: winchell Uh in early November, included this line or paragraph
Speaker 1: in his column I checked on the Grace Bud mystery.
Speaker 1: She was eight when she was kidnapped about six years ago.
Speaker 1: It is safe to tell you that the Department of
Speaker 1: Missing Persons will break the case, or they expect to
Speaker 1: in four weeks. They're holding a cocaine now at Randall's Island,
Speaker 1: who is said to know the most about the crime.
Speaker 1: Grace is supposed to have been done away within line,
Speaker 1: but another legend is that her skeleton is buried in
Speaker 1: the local spot. More and on. So, um, that's all
Speaker 1: lies right, It's not gonna be broke. But it just
Speaker 1: so happened that Albert Fish was a habitual writer. Um,
Speaker 1: which again I write, Robert walked me away from this cliff.
Speaker 1: This is when you step in and tell me that
Speaker 1: it's not about the same. You're much better writer than him.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I don't know what you write in your
Speaker 1: private time, but oh, I have all of Michaels right here.
Speaker 1: They don't want to reach out of skin. Blood is
Speaker 1: a piece of paper made of band aids. Yes, okay. Um.
Speaker 1: So eleven days after this Walter Winchell column comes up,
Speaker 1: the Buds receive a letter in the mail. Uh. And
Speaker 1: one of the only mercies in this entire case is
Speaker 1: that Grace Bud's mother gets the letter and she cannot
Speaker 1: read um. Which is the only time in history you're
Speaker 1: gonna be like, oh, thank God for a literacy, thank you.
Speaker 1: That is a mercy in this case. Her son read
Speaker 1: it and immediately goes to the police. As soon as
Speaker 1: I start to read an exit from it, you will
Speaker 1: be aware this is not like the other letters, and
Speaker 1: it is this was written by Albert fish Um and
Speaker 1: again eleven days after Winchell's column. So it seems like
Speaker 1: Detective King's strategy worked. Yeah, he was like he knew beforehand,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole Zodiact. And they like attention, like attention.
Speaker 1: Detective King does not play by the rules, but he
Speaker 1: gets results, gets results here that police do whatever you want. God.
Speaker 1: You know, he pistol whipped COKEI. You know that was
Speaker 1: like a weekly thing for Detective paying his pistol weapon
Speaker 1: of COKEI that one kick, Yeah, and then he tried
Speaker 1: to stop it. Just loves pistol. Weapon. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: it's more of an art than anything. I agree. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: A good pisto, a solid pistol. It don't change someone's mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll do something to their mind. Okay, um, so yeah.
Speaker 1: The full text of the letter is available online. You
Speaker 1: can find it if you wish. If you wish, wish,
Speaker 1: you wish. If you do not wish, don't do not.
Speaker 1: I will read a part of it, and I have.
Speaker 1: I'm reading not the worst parts because we don't need that,
Speaker 1: but I got to read some of it. Y have
Speaker 1: you read this letter? I? Okay, Yeah. My dear miss
Speaker 1: bud In, a friend of mine, shipped as a deckhand
Speaker 1: on the steamer Tacoma Captain John Davis. They sailed from
Speaker 1: San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there, he
Speaker 1: and two others went to shore and got drunk. When
Speaker 1: they returned, the boat was gone. At that time, there
Speaker 1: was a famine in China. Meat of any kind was
Speaker 1: from one to three dollars a pound. So great was
Speaker 1: the suffering among the very poor that all children under
Speaker 1: twelve were sold to the butchers to be cut up
Speaker 1: and sold for food. In order to keep others from starving.
Speaker 1: A boy or girl under fourteen was not safe in
Speaker 1: the street. You could go into any shop and ask
Speaker 1: for steak, chops or stew meat. Part of the naked
Speaker 1: body of the boy or girl would be brought out
Speaker 1: and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy
Speaker 1: or girls behind, which is the sweetest part of the body,
Speaker 1: and sold as veal cutlet, brought the highest price. John
Speaker 1: stayed there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh.
Speaker 1: On his return to New York, he stole two boys,
Speaker 1: one seven and one eleven, took them to his home,
Speaker 1: stripped them naked, tied them in a closet, then burned
Speaker 1: everything they had on several times a day and night.
Speaker 1: He spanked them, tortured them to make their meat good
Speaker 1: and tender. Uh. He then goes on into detail. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: to make the meat tender. Yeah, it's not just spanking,
Speaker 1: Albert Fish is not. There's one accused me of many things,
Speaker 1: but that not needless spanking. There's gonna be a lot
Speaker 1: more spanking. Um So, Albert Fish claims that this guy
Speaker 1: that he met turned him onto the idea of how
Speaker 1: good human flesh tasted. So he made up his mind
Speaker 1: to try some of his own, and that's why he
Speaker 1: abducted Grace bud In And he admits in the letter
Speaker 1: and pretty graphic detailed, that he murdered Grace, cooked and
Speaker 1: ate her. The letter ends on this line, it took
Speaker 1: me nine days to eat her entire body. I did
Speaker 1: not suck her, though I could have had. I wished
Speaker 1: she died a virgin, which is I don't know what
Speaker 1: your goal is with that. I guess again, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things, it's like, well I did this, but
Speaker 1: I did not. You know, a lot of I mean,
Speaker 1: serial killers kind of do that. They'll admit to like
Speaker 1: a part of it, but then take a hard stance
Speaker 1: on another part they're accused of. Everyone wants to feel
Speaker 1: like there's that line in the wire, and it's got
Speaker 1: to have a code. Everybody's wants to feel like even
Speaker 1: if you're eating children. So for him, like the goalpost
Speaker 1: is so far this way that don't worry, I'm still
Speaker 1: in the good. No. I mean, I murdered her and
Speaker 1: ate her, and it gave me sexual gratification, but I
Speaker 1: did not no, no, no, no, yeah, I was pleasing
Speaker 1: every other sort of yeah, every other sort of way,
Speaker 1: and he yeah, he goes into detail about that. So
Speaker 1: the horrible letter wound up being Fish is undoing, which
Speaker 1: is again one of those rare times where justice happens.
Speaker 1: That's another reason I do actually like this story. He
Speaker 1: gets caught, only that he got caught because he just needed,
Speaker 1: just needed to funk with this family one more time. Um.
Speaker 1: So the way he got caught is he sent letters
Speaker 1: that were stamped with the logo of the New York
Speaker 1: Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association. So the cops eventually found a
Speaker 1: janitor for that very specific group who admitted to having
Speaker 1: stolen a bunch of paper and envelopes from work and
Speaker 1: left them in his room when he moved out. The
Speaker 1: guy who moved into the room after him was Albert Fish. Um,
Speaker 1: since he had moved out. Fish had moved out by
Speaker 1: the time they found him, but his son was in
Speaker 1: the w p A, which is one of those new
Speaker 1: deal organizations where you like, that's where we get National Parks.
Speaker 1: Was these young men like building ship. So he would
Speaker 1: send his dad regular checks. And Fish had moved out
Speaker 1: of the room, but he had one more check coming
Speaker 1: and he told his landlord that he would be back
Speaker 1: for it's the landlord told the cops, this guy's not
Speaker 1: here anymore, but he's gonna be back in a few
Speaker 1: days to get his check. So the cops waited for him.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's how he was caught. Detective King caught
Speaker 1: Albert Fish. He was eventually convicted of murder and sentenced
Speaker 1: iva electric chair, which is exactly what happened. Um. So
Speaker 1: that's the story of Albert Fish and Broad We've got
Speaker 1: a lot more to drill into. Uh. We're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking some more about how Maggie found out that she
Speaker 1: was related to this guy, and then we're going to
Speaker 1: go a lot deeper into Albert Fish is psyche. Uh
Speaker 1: So it's gonna be very dark. My skin is crawling. Excellent,
Speaker 1: that's how you should feel on this podcast. All right,
Speaker 1: uh capitalism, we're back. Uh now when we we just
Speaker 1: now kind of got through talking about the broad strokes
Speaker 1: of the story of Albert Fish, uh, and now I
Speaker 1: wanted to sort of talk about your personal journey of
Speaker 1: figuring out you related to this guy. Okay, personal journey, Yeah,
Speaker 1: your own personal fish journey like a salmon swimming to
Speaker 1: return to Robert. I tell me about my life. What
Speaker 1: was it like? Well, I know that I know that
Speaker 1: bears are involved, and I know that you swim upstream
Speaker 1: and then we prograte and then we sent downstream. Yes,
Speaker 1: well I think usually you get eaten by bears. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I don't that's most of what I know about fish.
Speaker 1: And we get redwoods because of fish. Oh yeah, well
Speaker 1: you're welcome. Yeah, well what's my favorite Traine? So how
Speaker 1: did I find out the first time that I heard this?
Speaker 1: I was five or six um Grandpa's cottage and my
Speaker 1: uncles were working on our family tree. I was playing,
Speaker 1: like on the stairs or something, and my dad came
Speaker 1: down and I have this as a memory on the
Speaker 1: stairs and was like, Maggie, you're related to someone from
Speaker 1: a long time ago who was a bad person and
Speaker 1: he went to jail. And as a kid, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that is so cool, Like I'm related to like an
Speaker 1: old timey bat picture or something. Oh yeah, I was like,
Speaker 1: ah an outlaw fun. For years I lived under that
Speaker 1: delusion that it was just some sort of like nebulous
Speaker 1: probably robbed banks to give it to poor people, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, like supporting, you know, his daughter that
Speaker 1: he loved and he put her through higher education. He
Speaker 1: had to take that hospital by armed force so that
Speaker 1: his kid could get the surgery he need. Yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: I respect him for it, because you know, we don't
Speaker 1: want to think yeah much like the detective. The detective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would be really proud to be this guy's relevant
Speaker 1: the only cop I'll say that about. But yeah, really
Speaker 1: actually though, yeah, yeah, So for just and then I
Speaker 1: just kind of like forgot about it, um until it
Speaker 1: was actually pretty recently, maybe two years ago. I was
Speaker 1: listening to my favorite murderer, Oh Boy, very fun podcast.
Speaker 1: If you guys listen to this, maybe you also listen
Speaker 1: to them. They're great. But they had an episode in
Speaker 1: Albert Fish, and just from the title, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh Fish, Oh I'm related to Oh no, oh god no.
Speaker 1: So you learned the details about this guy from a
Speaker 1: podcast from a two lovely women just describing the horrors
Speaker 1: of what you've done. So I'm putting together in my
Speaker 1: head a story about what happened with your dad that
Speaker 1: day in your in your family cottage, and the story
Speaker 1: in my head is that he's with some other member
Speaker 1: of your family doing genealogy and they're like, we're related
Speaker 1: to somebody famous, and without waiting to hear more, he
Speaker 1: runs steps to just belts down there ferns and then
Speaker 1: goes back up learns the second half of the story,
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh god, what if we just don't
Speaker 1: anything else. Let's just let this be a dream in
Speaker 1: her head. Yeah, let's just she's young, right, she will
Speaker 1: forget this question. What do you think the odds are
Speaker 1: of like a global information network arising and then needing
Speaker 1: to like a new replacement for radio that spreads even
Speaker 1: wider and like involves long form stories about that will
Speaker 1: never happen, right never, We'll be fine. Now, let's just
Speaker 1: not tell her anything else. So, boy, I like knowing
Speaker 1: my father. That's a very like jovial man. Just got
Speaker 1: so excited, excited. So you learn about Albert Fish from
Speaker 1: a podcast, Yes, which was very surprising because I was
Speaker 1: into true crime like a long time before that. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I had just never come across Albert Fish maybe
Speaker 1: because he was so old. I was more like your
Speaker 1: Bundy or whatever. Yeah, And I had just moved to California,
Speaker 1: so it was more interested in like, like the sacrament
Speaker 1: so many it's so rich. So for just some reason,
Speaker 1: I had never come across it um until that day.
Speaker 1: And then I wa article and then I called my
Speaker 1: father and he was cooking potato soup and I asked him.
Speaker 1: I was like, Dad, so, uh Albert Fish that were
Speaker 1: related to, and very calmly, like my father is very calm,
Speaker 1: level headed. He's like, oh, let me just let me
Speaker 1: just check my email real quick. Yeah, yep, yes, Albert Fish.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah that's the guy. Oh God, So he didn't
Speaker 1: know actually, I guess, yeah, I think a similar thing
Speaker 1: he like kind of knew or like at least I
Speaker 1: didn't know all of the details um or at least
Speaker 1: like had just forgotten and then was like re excited by,
Speaker 1: like yeah, it's Albert fisher Man killed night children. It
Speaker 1: was called the weara Wolf, Visteria, the Gray Man, the Boogeyman. So, like,
Speaker 1: I have very mixed feelings about true crime in general,
Speaker 1: because like the book that I love the most that
Speaker 1: I read in high school was probably In Cold Blood,
Speaker 1: which I still think it's really good. I mean it
Speaker 1: started the genre, but also there's definitely an extent of
Speaker 1: and I know that my own show, because of our focus,
Speaker 1: runs the risk of crossing this territory too. Of just
Speaker 1: like it's important to study these people because it's always
Speaker 1: important to study the worst and most dangerous people for
Speaker 1: the same reason that you like, look when you hear
Speaker 1: a car crash. But there's a line and I many tickle, Yeah,
Speaker 1: doing these like film analysis, there's a lot of that
Speaker 1: of people like having their cake and eating it too,
Speaker 1: of like what you want to say, but then what
Speaker 1: ends up happening, and a lot of true crime can
Speaker 1: end up glorifying is a strong work. But making a party, yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is definitely not a party story, um, and
Speaker 1: neither are any of the other stories we have on here.
Speaker 1: I do think like one of the things that I
Speaker 1: think is the in terms of useful lessons that we
Speaker 1: get from this is less about how Albert Fish actually acted,
Speaker 1: because he was he was just he was a monster, um,
Speaker 1: but more about how everyone else, like the fucking crank
Speaker 1: letters and stuff like just how people funk with the families,
Speaker 1: and that's always been a thing, right, and that it
Speaker 1: is still happening and that it's just evolved with the mediums.
Speaker 1: That's really interesting to me. Yeah, And I think there's
Speaker 1: a lesson in there about like sort of human nature,
Speaker 1: which is that we're garbage. We are garbage, garbage, We'll
Speaker 1: jump on anything. And also I guess like a lesson
Speaker 1: from like the mob and like that kind of mentality
Speaker 1: that like, yeah, you know, it's it's okay to have
Speaker 1: very strong feelings and be afraid. Like I think that
Speaker 1: is totally okay. Um. I am curious as to like,
Speaker 1: how did you feel like is there because this is
Speaker 1: a story we get to it mental illness, What was
Speaker 1: the like the thought process of accepting that this is
Speaker 1: a part of your past, like your family's pass right,
Speaker 1: It's weird. It does also seem like a cautionary tale
Speaker 1: obviously for mental illness and what it can lead to
Speaker 1: if it is not addressed, which I kind of blame
Speaker 1: the rest of the family for probably because there are
Speaker 1: just so many stories of him doing just rolling around
Speaker 1: in rugs and yeah, following himself, I am christ while
Speaker 1: beating his own as metal Paddle will delve into that
Speaker 1: in a minute here, which again, you know, in the twenties,
Speaker 1: what language do you use for a family member who
Speaker 1: would like eat carpet if you left them alone? You know? Um,
Speaker 1: but again, like they didn't do anything to stop or
Speaker 1: help or and like his son kind of just like
Speaker 1: kept giving him money, um, which you know, in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, we didn't have uh protocols to follow.
Speaker 1: People also didn't want to talk about mental illness, so
Speaker 1: it's rather let's not talk about it and just let
Speaker 1: our crazy uncle just be yeah, which I think is
Speaker 1: still dangerous if we don't talk about, you know, the
Speaker 1: mental illnesses that we have. Um. Yeah, it's it's hugely
Speaker 1: important to talk about mental health in general, because people
Speaker 1: need that sort of vocabulary and need to I do think,
Speaker 1: and this will make a little once we get a
Speaker 1: little bit further. I'm sure we'll talking about this more.
Speaker 1: But I do think this is a case of a
Speaker 1: guy who very likely it's possible that he'd been killing
Speaker 1: people for decades. It's also possible these are his only
Speaker 1: three killings, and if he in his forties or fifties
Speaker 1: even could have been potentially stopped from hurting any Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard, it's like we can't know for sure, but
Speaker 1: that is a possible avenue here if his family members,
Speaker 1: who clearly loved him, had like been like what the hell, man, Like,
Speaker 1: let's instead of just not talking about this, let's talk
Speaker 1: about talk about this. Let's talk about Kevin. But it's
Speaker 1: always like everybody knows like you and I are both
Speaker 1: white people, so like there's this assumption and with everybody,
Speaker 1: it's true that like someone who you're related to far
Speaker 1: enough alongline did something terrible, whether it was slavery or
Speaker 1: something else, that's just the world. Um. But there's something
Speaker 1: different when it's someone who was recent enough that like, no,
Speaker 1: we have a specific name, we know this guy is
Speaker 1: in our line, here's where he is, and here's what
Speaker 1: he did. Yeah, um, yeah, I had a weird moment
Speaker 1: because pretty boy Floyd was like my family is always
Speaker 1: talking about has always talked about that. My grandma, who
Speaker 1: was otherwise a very conservative lady, was super press. You
Speaker 1: would always tell us, you know, you got outlaw blood,
Speaker 1: and yeah she was proud. She was super proud. And
Speaker 1: I read about he was like this guy was Robin
Speaker 1: Banks and murdering cops, like the Woody Guthrie song is
Speaker 1: about he's riding into town with his wife and a
Speaker 1: cop curses in front of him and so he just
Speaker 1: beats the man to death with a lock chain. That song.
Speaker 1: It's interesting the way like families talk about these kind
Speaker 1: of people and then when you actually dig into their
Speaker 1: lives and you're like, oh man, this guy was not
Speaker 1: a good person a person. There is definitely kind of
Speaker 1: like a little bit of hangover guilt, but really you know,
Speaker 1: there's something you can really do know and you're like
Speaker 1: you sitting of his brother, Yeah, yeah, who didn't do
Speaker 1: anything that I'm aware of, right, And it's like, well,
Speaker 1: if they're going to hide Albert Fish, then like I won't.
Speaker 1: I'm related to them. No, And there's some fucking Hitler
Speaker 1: people around here with lyons to Hitler and like they
Speaker 1: didn't do anything wrong because nephew just ran over here
Speaker 1: during the war because yeah he had a nephew who
Speaker 1: like joined the Navy and stuff. Yeah. It was just like,
Speaker 1: felt real bad about having Hitler is an uncle. It's
Speaker 1: really sorry. No, you're not responsible for your family's crimes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you can inherit their wealth. Yeah, you had a
Speaker 1: great system going here. Okay. So, in addition to reading Deranged,
Speaker 1: which is legitimately good book, I also watched this documentary
Speaker 1: Albert Fish when I was prepping for this. It's directed
Speaker 1: by a named John Borowski, and it is one of
Speaker 1: the worst documentaries I've ever seen. It is very ugly,
Speaker 1: very little creativity involved, creepy voice acting, but bland recreations
Speaker 1: of aspects of the crimes. But then then Maggie. Fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes into this execrable documentary, we meet John Coleman. John
Speaker 1: Coleman as an artist who collects serial killer memory abelia
Speaker 1: and dresses exactly like you'd expect based on that description,
Speaker 1: extremely ornate waistcoats. I'm gonna have you describe him. He
Speaker 1: has Albert Fish's original letter framed in his house, and
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna put him on. We're gonna plan him
Speaker 1: for a couple of seconds. I'm gonna have you describe him,
Speaker 1: and then we're gonna play the rest of his story
Speaker 1: about how he came to own that letter. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is um what I've always said is the Magna Carta
Speaker 1: of crime artifacts. This is the Albert Fish Letter. The
Speaker 1: most you wanna you wanna take a shot at describing
Speaker 1: John Coleman described his face or my face watching his face,
Speaker 1: I will describe your face because you you look like
Speaker 1: you just saw a dog like start to tap dance
Speaker 1: like that, like slack jawed, but but not in a
Speaker 1: positive way. He looks like he's licked that letter several times,
Speaker 1: like before he framed it, he tried to get us
Speaker 1: close to that inc Yeah, he has definitely stroked that
Speaker 1: letter while tweaking his own nipple and times. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: he's super RNA waistcoat. Yeah yes, yeah, yeah. All right.
Speaker 1: Here's him describing how he came to have Albert Fish's
Speaker 1: original creepy murder letter. Tragic and painful document to a monster.
Speaker 1: That's it's ever in print and I have it, so
Speaker 1: I'm honored to have it. So I've always felt that
Speaker 1: the objects themselves, um, have desires of their own, how
Speaker 1: they come here for for their own reasons? Did he
Speaker 1: make didn't he draw that? Oh? Yeah, yeah, he drew
Speaker 1: that picture of Albert Fish like a severed head of
Speaker 1: a little girl. Um, the horrors of the world. It's
Speaker 1: not about trying to um, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: some act that Jordan Peterson. And but yeah, like the
Speaker 1: creepy paintings that he makes that, like the painting Listeners
Speaker 1: is a painting of Albert Fish. Very almost looks like
Speaker 1: a mad magazine. Yeah, very like grimy, and it almost
Speaker 1: looks like an our crumb drawing. Uh. And so it's
Speaker 1: but it's the picture of Albert Fish and he's holding
Speaker 1: the severed head of Little Grace, and it's terrifyingly creepy.
Speaker 1: The way he says the word monster, it's with awe,
Speaker 1: it's not with judgment. Yeah, this is not a guy
Speaker 1: who is like, I don't sense respect for like the
Speaker 1: gravity of the crimes here. He's a creepy dude. I
Speaker 1: should email him and be like, dude, that is my relative.
Speaker 1: I would like that letter. I think it wants to
Speaker 1: be with me. I think I think that object wants
Speaker 1: to travel to me. So the creepy house that he's in,
Speaker 1: he calls it the auditorium. I'm gonna one guess as
Speaker 1: to how he spells auditorium the way yeah, that way, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the way that creepy dick would spell it. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: And here's how he describes the auditorium in his website quote.
Speaker 1: Joe Coleman is a collector. He collects fascinating friends. He
Speaker 1: collects artifacts related to infamous historical events. He collects sideshow
Speaker 1: and serial killer ephemera. He collects religious artifacts that call
Speaker 1: to his obsessions with violence, with twinning, and with power.
Speaker 1: Like his art, his collection is filled with reliquaries containing
Speaker 1: the twin power of both the sacred and profane. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the auditorium. So yeah, that's Joe Coleman. There has
Speaker 1: definitely been like Secret Society is and just have their
Speaker 1: meetings there. Yeah, but not the good ones. Oh no, No,
Speaker 1: that the ones that it's like, oh, you guys are
Speaker 1: this is where the Masons are at these days. Oh.
Speaker 1: I think I'm just gonna go grab a beer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: anywhere on the street. Yeah, maybe join the Mormon Church.
Speaker 1: I'll just walk around for weeks on end because I'd
Speaker 1: rather do that. Anything sound better than sitting around here
Speaker 1: with you people. Um. You know, Joe's a painter, as
Speaker 1: we already get into, and he believes he was put
Speaker 1: on this earth to express the pain of the world through,
Speaker 1: for example, elaborate face paintings with the separate heads of
Speaker 1: small children. Um. Now, he believes the objects he collects
Speaker 1: want to be his. And we're going to play the
Speaker 1: excerpt now that actually does explain how he wound up
Speaker 1: owning that letter because spoiler alert, he kind of stole
Speaker 1: it from the government. Yeah. Life, I was trying to
Speaker 1: get like the police records and this stuff, and I
Speaker 1: go into Westchester. I'm trying to get a xerox copy
Speaker 1: of the letter, the infamous letter that he that Albert
Speaker 1: Fish wrote to the mother of Grace Bud And that's
Speaker 1: all I want. I just wanted xerox compy with a
Speaker 1: letter for my research. And as fate would have it,
Speaker 1: Um secretary there takes the letter xerox a said, Um
Speaker 1: goes over to me and gives me the actual letter.
Speaker 1: I looked at it. He came as soon as that happened.
Speaker 1: He then walked away with the xerox compy, put in
Speaker 1: a file and put in the cabinet. Okay, then I
Speaker 1: knew that Fisher wanted me to have it. He didn't
Speaker 1: want anything. He just doesn't want anything. He didn't and
Speaker 1: he doesn't. I'm gonna tell you something I know has
Speaker 1: happened in that guy's life on a weekly basis. Is
Speaker 1: he has opened a door for a woman with a
Speaker 1: very exceptional flourish and then said after you, milady, oh yes,
Speaker 1: and then kissed her hand. Oh my god. So many times,
Speaker 1: so many times, and so many like complaints from co
Speaker 1: workers for the hand kissing. Andy, He's been asked to stop.
Speaker 1: He's that guy. He's a thousand percent that guy. I
Speaker 1: don't like Joe Coleman. Um, we're gonna play one more
Speaker 1: segment from later in the documentary where Joe Coleman tries
Speaker 1: to explain why Albert Fish did not sexually assault. This
Speaker 1: would be great to hear him explain that. That would
Speaker 1: be I could see it on your face. You were
Speaker 1: waiting for him to weigh in on why Albert Fish
Speaker 1: didn't rape the child. Yeah. Fish embodies this kind of
Speaker 1: pathology that there was something saintly and beautiful about suffering,
Speaker 1: but there's something ugly and repugnant about sex. Because he
Speaker 1: saved a little grace Bud from this terrible crime. You know,
Speaker 1: he kept saying, I did not defile her, and I
Speaker 1: know from my Catholic upbrand he was a Catholic. Doesn't
Speaker 1: exist certain truth that he's saying that any Catholic is
Speaker 1: going to know. Albert Fish by mutilating and cutting this
Speaker 1: little girl up in pieces and doing this horrible thing
Speaker 1: to her, he's made her into this martyr. You know,
Speaker 1: he's made her into this um creature. Actually defiling a
Speaker 1: body is against well, the Catholic Church, I'm pretty sure,
Speaker 1: so cutting it up actually, uh, not that he cares
Speaker 1: about any of the Yeah, I don't think it's definitely true.
Speaker 1: We're going to get into this a little bit. That
Speaker 1: Fish is peculiar personal brand of Christianity super had an
Speaker 1: impact on his crimes. But I think what Joe was
Speaker 1: saying there is full of ship, because yeah, any Catholic
Speaker 1: knows that there's a way in which she became a martyr.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? No no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no. Okay. Um. So, Albert Fish had a
Speaker 1: history known to his family a very creepy religious behavior.
Speaker 1: In nineteen thirty four, his son Albert Jr. Was living
Speaker 1: with him in a small apartment. One day, he came
Speaker 1: upon his father barrass naked in the middle of the
Speaker 1: living room, holding his erect penis and paddling himself on
Speaker 1: the ass with a nail filled paddle. His ass was
Speaker 1: red and bloody, and he was drenched in sweat. This
Speaker 1: made Albert Junior recall an incident in ninety two when
Speaker 1: he was playing football with his two brothers. Here's how
Speaker 1: Deprave describes it. Albert had just bent down to catch
Speaker 1: a low kick Albert the younger, not the murderer, uh
Speaker 1: And as he straightened up to boot the ball back
Speaker 1: to Henry. He caught sight of his father standing in
Speaker 1: the apple orchard on the little hill behind the bungalow.
Speaker 1: The old man had his right hand raised high in
Speaker 1: the air and was shouting something over and over. Albert
Speaker 1: had strained to listen. The old man was shouting I
Speaker 1: am Christ, which is like his catchphrase, which shout I
Speaker 1: Am Christ a lot, particularly while beating himself. Uh. He
Speaker 1: also had a habit of lighting his own ass on fire.
Speaker 1: He was a huge fan of flooding. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: once you hit it with nails, that's like a sharp pain.
Speaker 1: You're like, what's the dull overall? Pay? Yeah, what's what
Speaker 1: else can I do? My fire? Yeah? Burn it? Burn it?
Speaker 1: Um so another at time, Albert Jr. Found several of
Speaker 1: his dad's homemade nail studded, bloody and rusted paddles. He
Speaker 1: asked his father for an explanation, which is the start
Speaker 1: of the conversation that you should be having you uh
Speaker 1: and Albert fish. His dad explained, quote, I use them
Speaker 1: on myself. I get these feelings that come over me,
Speaker 1: and every time they do, I have to torture myself
Speaker 1: with those paddles. Period. Should have been a longer, should
Speaker 1: have been longer. I'm punishing myself with paddles because I'm Christ,
Speaker 1: because I'm um so. Albert Fish had a very very long,
Speaker 1: very very long history of writing and saying and unbelievably
Speaker 1: creepy letters to random women. He would find them in
Speaker 1: newspapers through matrimonial agencies, classified ads. A lot of times
Speaker 1: there were women letting out rooms who are like landladies,
Speaker 1: and he would just like start, he would, yeah, he start,
Speaker 1: he would start. He would just send them these crazy
Speaker 1: letters and they would some of them would start kind
Speaker 1: of reasonable and then would descend to him asking for
Speaker 1: paddl ngs. Well, usually they're paddling focused one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Uh. He would pretend to be a Hollywood
Speaker 1: agent in some cases. Uhain. Here's a quote from one
Speaker 1: letter he sent to a woman while he was pretending
Speaker 1: to be Mr Hollywood. I wish you could see me now.
Speaker 1: I am sitting in a chair naked. The pain is
Speaker 1: across my back, just over my behind. When you strip
Speaker 1: me naked, you will see a most perfect form. Yours, yours,
Speaker 1: sweet honey of my heart. I can taste your sweet piss,
Speaker 1: your sweet shit. You must peepee in a glass, and
Speaker 1: I shall drink every drop of it as you watch me.
Speaker 1: Tell me when you want to number two, I will
Speaker 1: take you over my knees, pull up your clothes, take
Speaker 1: down your drawers, and hold my mouth to your sweet
Speaker 1: honey fat assid and eat your sweet peanut butter as
Speaker 1: it comes that fresh and hot. This is how they
Speaker 1: do it in Hollywood. Yeah, you know, part of me
Speaker 1: is like, maybe he got some kicks off that way.
Speaker 1: He was definitely getting yeah, yeah, yeah, but you think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it probably did work with some people. Like statistically, you
Speaker 1: send a lot of letters out, so there are a
Speaker 1: ton of his creepy letters that you can read if
Speaker 1: you want to read depray, if you can just lift
Speaker 1: them up online. We're not gonna read every piece of correspondence,
Speaker 1: she said, I don't want to go over a little
Speaker 1: bit more of it. Though. A number of woman came
Speaker 1: forward after he was arrested when he was like in
Speaker 1: court and his letter was made public. And these are
Speaker 1: people who had been freaked out by his letters before
Speaker 1: and in some cases had kept them and hadn't known
Speaker 1: what to do because like like nowadays, if you're a woman,
Speaker 1: because of the Internet, men are going to send you
Speaker 1: terrifying things. That's just what happens. But back then, some
Speaker 1: lady would just receive a letter that's like the sixteen
Speaker 1: pages in the mail. Yeah, have a guy talking about
Speaker 1: wanting his ass paddled or wanting you to poop on him,
Speaker 1: and you you just didn't have any What do you do?
Speaker 1: What do you? And you don't tell your girlfriends, but
Speaker 1: you don't know if like this part of being a
Speaker 1: person really do in the Hollywood? That one I just
Speaker 1: imagine like looking out at mailboxes and just thinking, because
Speaker 1: everyone getting letters like this is this just life? Why
Speaker 1: is no one talking about this? Um? So he sent
Speaker 1: the other kind of families of letters that he would
Speaker 1: have is he would he would message women, generally landladies,
Speaker 1: telling them that he had an adult son who was
Speaker 1: mentally ill and needed to be spanked regularly. And sometimes
Speaker 1: he would send them like a dozen letters, like very
Speaker 1: long conversations where they would agree like okay, I can
Speaker 1: spank him if he's bad, and then he like go
Speaker 1: on to specify, no, it needs to be done that
Speaker 1: like why I like it? This is how I like it.
Speaker 1: The doctor says, three or four good spankings a day
Speaker 1: on his bear behind will do him good as he
Speaker 1: is nice and fat in that spot. It will be
Speaker 1: an aid to him. When he don't mind you, then
Speaker 1: you must strip him down and use the cat on
Speaker 1: nine tails. Say you won't hesitate to use the paddle
Speaker 1: or cat of nine tails on him when he needs it.
Speaker 1: Now that's one paragraph. There are pages of him detailing
Speaker 1: how to spank his fake son. He was very concerned
Speaker 1: about making sure it was the right way, his fake son,
Speaker 1: my nucket spank the right way. And he's clearly doing
Speaker 1: this to get off, which is creepy and not okay.
Speaker 1: But this is what I suspect. This is most of
Speaker 1: what he did up until he committed those murders. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels like this was him, you know, the escalation exactly,
Speaker 1: starting with letters doing that, always, the fascination with the
Speaker 1: butts though that's fat butts, fat but but you know,
Speaker 1: in a different timeline, with like right medication, he would
Speaker 1: have just liked, uh, fat bottom girls rule the world. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly different person. You know. Freddie Mercury could have saved
Speaker 1: him and all of those people. He could Freddie Mercury
Speaker 1: could have done anything, could have done. I y This
Speaker 1: is yet another case where if we had a time machine,
Speaker 1: you get Freddie Mercury and you just travel around time,
Speaker 1: you'd fix a couple of fix a couple of things
Speaker 1: here and there. Uh So, in nineteen thirty, though, Albert
Speaker 1: Fish sent his insane creepy letters to the wrong damn woman,
Speaker 1: a housekeeper named She sent the letter to the police,
Speaker 1: and since he had included a return address, because he
Speaker 1: was open to keep up this count, Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: able to find and arrest him because it's not legal
Speaker 1: to send horrifying like that strangers even back there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: even back then. He was sent to Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital
Speaker 1: to be diagnosed, and he spent a few weeks there.
Speaker 1: He was found to be sexually psychotic, which seems fair. Ye,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be a cross wire yet. But they also though,
Speaker 1: found that he was quiet and cooperative. They said he
Speaker 1: conducted himself in an orderly, a normal manner, and his
Speaker 1: bad behavior was mostly chalked up to the fact that
Speaker 1: he was old and probably senile, so he was released
Speaker 1: after too long. Uh Now. In one he was arrested
Speaker 1: again for sending obscene letters to a woman who owned
Speaker 1: a boarding school in the area. This time, the police
Speaker 1: searched his home and found his homemade Cata nine tails,
Speaker 1: as well as a frankfurter and a carrot, both really
Speaker 1: gross looking. I wonder where those we have been. Well.
Speaker 1: The cops asked him why he had these in his dresser,
Speaker 1: and Fish replied, I stick him up my ass, mr St.
Speaker 1: You know, to his credit, he was honest because he
Speaker 1: was crazy and doesn't realize was not hiding it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh So during the trial, you know, when he was
Speaker 1: finally caught and stuff, it was revealed that Fish's original
Speaker 1: plan had been to abduct a teenage boy rather than Grace.
Speaker 1: He had planned to tie up Edward, slice off his penis,
Speaker 1: and then skipped down while the boy bled to death
Speaker 1: because he didn't want to kill him. He just wanted
Speaker 1: the penis and well, he wanted to kill him, but
Speaker 1: he wanted to take a long time. Yeah. Yeah, Grace
Speaker 1: was a consolation murder victim. Uh and he usually he
Speaker 1: would sometimes refer to Grace as a hymn, just because
Speaker 1: I guess he wanted it that way. I think he
Speaker 1: wanted it that way. Um So. In interviews with police,
Speaker 1: Albert Fish reported a general sort of amusement and confettlement
Speaker 1: over why he had killed Grace, saying, first, you know,
Speaker 1: I never could account for it. Um. He would later
Speaker 1: claim that his brother had served in the navy in China,
Speaker 1: because he claimed it before. Later he said it was
Speaker 1: his brother. I don't think yeah, I don't think either
Speaker 1: was there was. The family was kind of just like
Speaker 1: doing normal things, which is so. And all his kids
Speaker 1: turned up really normal. Yeah, and they seem in the story,
Speaker 1: they seem pretty normal, like they have a range of
Speaker 1: different reactions. Um, because his daughters are kind of in
Speaker 1: his court. And so he was always a good dad,
Speaker 1: like all the kids. Really, he was a good dad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's he's He never even hit his kids, which
Speaker 1: is weird for that period of year because everybody hit
Speaker 1: kids in twenties, but not Albert Fish. He would just
Speaker 1: hit himself yea again and the kids. Yeah, the gold poster. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So he would later tell a detective King that he
Speaker 1: traced his problems back to the fact that when he
Speaker 1: was five years old, he was placed in an orphanage
Speaker 1: by his mother. His dad was seventy five when he
Speaker 1: was born, and his dad had died when he was
Speaker 1: very young, and as soon as that happened his mom
Speaker 1: put him in the orphanage. He said he saw a
Speaker 1: lot of things a child of seven should not see. Um.
Speaker 1: I yea, not to say that there's not truth too.
Speaker 1: I'm sure some either it was. He's always like, had
Speaker 1: you know this mental problem? Or yeah, there's usually an
Speaker 1: inciting incident. He says they were whipped in the orphanage,
Speaker 1: which definitely happened in the orphanages back then, So maybe
Speaker 1: that's where it started. Yeah. And if you're you know,
Speaker 1: developing sexually and on someon's a little due and you're
Speaker 1: getting hit on all the time, that's your thing. That's
Speaker 1: how it works. Yeah, we're amazing machines. Um, we should
Speaker 1: be trusted with so much great we have missiles. It
Speaker 1: was a real solid element for species with our sorts
Speaker 1: of impulse control. Um. Yeah. So further investigation determined that
Speaker 1: Fisher's legal troubles had actually started back in nineteen o three,
Speaker 1: when he had spent sixteen months in prison on grand larceny.
Speaker 1: He'd been arrested six times just since Grace Bud subduction,
Speaker 1: sometimes for sending horrible letters to people, sometimes for vagrancy
Speaker 1: or for passing bad checks. Uh in court he was
Speaker 1: no clearer on why he'd killed Grace, saying, quote, the
Speaker 1: temptation just came over me. That's all I can say.
Speaker 1: I can't account for it. I don't understand it. But
Speaker 1: he was always emphatic that he had not had sex
Speaker 1: with her, saying, no sirer, no cer, no sex at all.
Speaker 1: I did not outrage her, which I think murdering someone
Speaker 1: outrages them. Probably, yeah, I guess. And also I think
Speaker 1: he was probably gay, So that's that's probably a huge
Speaker 1: reason why he didn't with Grace. Yeah, and he does
Speaker 1: seem to be the who will talk about in a
Speaker 1: minute here. The psychiatrist who diagnosed him did come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that he was on the second um, but
Speaker 1: he was a lot of things and I wouldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's almost like why you even mention it, because
Speaker 1: his sexuality is like a pollock painting, like it is.
Speaker 1: It is a mess, it's all over the place. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So the media was as gross as you would expect
Speaker 1: from everything we've talked about in this story when they
Speaker 1: covered the trial Depraved. The book notes that a single
Speaker 1: article in The Mirror called fish the ogre of murder Lodge,
Speaker 1: the vampire man, an orgiastic fiend, and the werewolf of Wistaria,
Speaker 1: all in the same article, the same that pros is
Speaker 1: so purple it's red. Yeah. Uh, here's a quote from
Speaker 1: that article. Out of the slime of the sadistic butchery
Speaker 1: of Grace bud By, the benign looking Albert Howard fish
Speaker 1: there emerged last night the hint of an even greater horror,
Speaker 1: a horror of multiple killings, revealing a new type of
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper in the guise of a kindly old gentleman. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's weird that they describe him as kind and like
Speaker 1: normal looking, because he wasn't because he looks creepy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's it's clear like at the time when you
Speaker 1: talk about his first crimes, people noticed him, like they
Speaker 1: were like, there was a creepy looking gray dude walking
Speaker 1: around that must be who abducted the child. And then
Speaker 1: we're not wrong. No, No, he was the guy, like, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: he looks like the guy that if you like see
Speaker 1: him walking around the plague, I'm just going to call
Speaker 1: the cops like this, No, I feel like there should
Speaker 1: just be some armed me around. I would I Like,
Speaker 1: I hate doing that because there are plenty of wonderful
Speaker 1: people who do look creepy and vice versa, but he
Speaker 1: is the one that you look at and was like no, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: uh no, yeah, and in fact, go to our website
Speaker 1: to look at those pictures. Um Fish's case was confusing,
Speaker 1: as that last quote to people of the time, because he,
Speaker 1: aside from his criminal record, he didn't fit society's profile
Speaker 1: of a sex murderer. Um. He was a descendant of
Speaker 1: American aristocracy, which I guess you are too. Yeah, something
Speaker 1: revolution senary dude, right, yeah, famous revolutionary dude. And he
Speaker 1: was also related to guess he was like a in
Speaker 1: the treasury in d c Um Hamilton's Fish. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: sounds like a treasury name. Yeah. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: official checks with his like ostentatious signature on it. Um
Speaker 1: and Hamilton's Fish actually deleted some historical records that connects
Speaker 1: them as yes, which we ran into that big gap
Speaker 1: while doing our family trees, Like ge, why did he
Speaker 1: seems like a welcome up to try to cover up
Speaker 1: he was related to this man that's amazing, same last name,
Speaker 1: oh man, Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, okay, so who's worse
Speaker 1: it came out during all this that his wife had
Speaker 1: abandoned him and the kids were very young and left
Speaker 1: the kids with him. Um and again, as we said,
Speaker 1: he'd been a decent dad. And you can't blame because
Speaker 1: the wifes gave testimony at the trial and we're just
Speaker 1: talked about the same things that kids had seen. They
Speaker 1: had seen, but they were not okay with it. They
Speaker 1: were fucking terrified of him, right left, which fair, totally fair,
Speaker 1: especially in a time when no one has a vocabulary
Speaker 1: to discuss something. Again, not cool to leave the kids
Speaker 1: with him, that's a questionable move. I don't agree with
Speaker 1: that choice, which is made weirder by the fact that
Speaker 1: he was apparently fine as a dad. Yeah, but there's
Speaker 1: no way that woman could have no no, they just ran. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I guess some of it's probably that I imagine
Speaker 1: at that time, if you went to court for custody
Speaker 1: of the kids, it was probably easier for the man
Speaker 1: to win back then. I don't know enough about how
Speaker 1: the laws were. But also maybe she was a little homophobic,
Speaker 1: insults something like that she didn't like, so it was
Speaker 1: just like you know, or maybe yeah, maybe it was
Speaker 1: oddly woke and that they just thought he was gay,
Speaker 1: and we're like, well, gay people can raise kids just fine.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to be Yeah. Who knows. But
Speaker 1: he was clearly very angry at his wife for leaving,
Speaker 1: and he in fact stated a number of times yeah.
Speaker 1: He wrote a letter to his daughter Gertrude and said,
Speaker 1: all I hope for, all I want to live for
Speaker 1: is to be able to go in court that I
Speaker 1: may tell what a bitch of a mother you all had,
Speaker 1: the kind of wife I had? Wow, And you know what,
Speaker 1: he I bet he got it, like I bet he
Speaker 1: got to say he did. He wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: his daughter Annie and said, tell old peg Leg, you're
Speaker 1: a bitch of a mother that the day I go
Speaker 1: into court and take a stand will be a sorry
Speaker 1: one for her. It's weird. The only time he sounds
Speaker 1: like a normal guy is where he's being really angry
Speaker 1: at his ex wife, Like he reaches clarity, because I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's like a clear, like solid thing on this
Speaker 1: earth that he can be mad at and then like
Speaker 1: everything else will just spiral in evantasy. But he's got
Speaker 1: this like anchor point of being pissed at his wife.
Speaker 1: So there are also a bunch of stories from his kids,
Speaker 1: who had all just sort of chalked up his weirdness
Speaker 1: to daddy weird. Uh. In court, Fish express deep concern
Speaker 1: for his children and point asked a reporter to send
Speaker 1: them Christmas baskets. That's sweet. Yeah. He claimed he regretted
Speaker 1: the murder of Grace Bud as soon as he committed it. Um.
Speaker 1: Depending on the day of the trial, he would veer
Speaker 1: from asserting he was ready to die for his crimes
Speaker 1: to trying to get a lesser sentence. So I didn't.
Speaker 1: It was not totally consistent. Yeah. Fish was a very
Speaker 1: religious guy. He had a lot of the Bible memorized,
Speaker 1: and his favorite Bible passage was Isaiah, I'm gonna read it.
Speaker 1: And you try to figure out why he might have
Speaker 1: liked it. But rab Shaka and apologies to listeners named
Speaker 1: rab Shackath if I pronounced that wrong. Uh. But rab
Speaker 1: Shakath said, hath not my master sent me to thy
Speaker 1: master and to the to speak these words? Hath he
Speaker 1: not sent me to the men that sit upon the wall,
Speaker 1: that they may eat their own dung and drink their
Speaker 1: own piss with you? Do you think it's that he's
Speaker 1: a big fan of rab Shack. Yeah, that's why you like.
Speaker 1: When he was in jail one Sunday during a mass
Speaker 1: for prisoners, a guard heard grunting coming from his son
Speaker 1: and walk over to look. He saw Fish with his
Speaker 1: pants down and just enormous erection stroking his you know,
Speaker 1: to the sounds of the Lord's prayer. Uh. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he loved God super um. Frederick Wortham distinguished psychiatrist who
Speaker 1: comics fans will no one hate for originating the comics code. Um.
Speaker 1: That guy was the guy who assessed Albert Fisher's mental
Speaker 1: state for the court and just tried to decide whether
Speaker 1: or not he was too crazy to be convicted. Um.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, there was no known perversion that he
Speaker 1: did not practice and practice frequently, which yeah, in a
Speaker 1: way in accomplishment. Yeah, normally that's a positive. You haven't
Speaker 1: murdered people, right, Yeah, yeah yeah. Wortham linked all of
Speaker 1: Fish's weirdness back to a desire for pain. Uh. And
Speaker 1: Fish did tell him that quote, I always seem to
Speaker 1: enjoy everything that hurt. The desire to inflict pain that
Speaker 1: is all that is uppermost to Wortham. Fish explain the
Speaker 1: details of what he dide to Grace Bud. He claimed
Speaker 1: that he'd first right to drink her blood, but had
Speaker 1: not been able to handle it. Instead, he'd cut off
Speaker 1: four pounds of flesh from her buttocks, breast, belly, and
Speaker 1: ears and nose. Not a lot of them. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So he wrapped them up in newspaper and took them
Speaker 1: back to his homes. Uh. This excited him so much
Speaker 1: that he ejaculated while riding the train back home before
Speaker 1: he even got home. Yes, of course. Uh. Once he
Speaker 1: was back, he used Grace's flesh to make a stew
Speaker 1: with carrots, onions, and strips of bacon. He said he'd
Speaker 1: eaten the stew for nine days. Oh no, that our
Speaker 1: family recipe. Dear God. My caller was making soup when
Speaker 1: I called, and he talks. When he talks about eating
Speaker 1: the boy, he talks about the potatoes that he used
Speaker 1: in the like he makes like a biskue. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: do have a really good potatoes stup family recipe. I
Speaker 1: kind of want it. It's they're spam in it. It's spam. No,
Speaker 1: we all know that. I mean, taste buds. It's inherited
Speaker 1: to an extent. You want to come over for dinner?
Speaker 1: Kind of I can tell you that burning human flesh
Speaker 1: smells almost exactly like cooking bacon. Okay, yeah, I would
Speaker 1: absolutely buy that. So, yeah, he ate her for nine
Speaker 1: days and uh pleasure himself and stuff. We all know
Speaker 1: where this is going. We're all adults. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: that's the kind of guy he is. Okay. So it
Speaker 1: was also in prison where Worth him and Detective King
Speaker 1: discovered Albert Fish's other favorite hobby. He loved shoving needles
Speaker 1: inside himself, did yeah, usually pushing them into his taint
Speaker 1: or somewhere else around his pelvis. The doctors actually gave
Speaker 1: him an X ray because he had chronic pain, and
Speaker 1: he came back just filled with needles. They found twenty
Speaker 1: nine needles inside of him. There's the X ray if
Speaker 1: you se, I think I have, but I love it
Speaker 1: so much because he's just full of needles. He's just
Speaker 1: full of needles everywhere, industrious fellow. You gotta give him that.
Speaker 1: There's one right there, like in the lower butt cheeks
Speaker 1: of dangling, Yeah, because a lot of times he would
Speaker 1: try to get him out, but a lot of times
Speaker 1: you just got him into teep. Which old Ian Malcolm
Speaker 1: quote from Jurassic park. He didn't stop to think of
Speaker 1: if you should Yeah, no, I thought he did. He
Speaker 1: decided yes. This was a reason decision from Albert Fish. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also found that Fish liked to soa cotton and alcohol,
Speaker 1: shove it up his ass and light his ass on fire. Um.
Speaker 1: He claimed to have tortured many children the same way. Ah,
Speaker 1: he did claim there were many children, a line full
Speaker 1: of victims. Wortham said quote. He started his sexual career
Speaker 1: to so to say, at the age of seventeen at
Speaker 1: the time he became a painter. Now that professional painter
Speaker 1: this man has used as a convenience. He worked in
Speaker 1: many different institutions. He worked in y M c as,
Speaker 1: He worked in homes for the tubercular. He worked in
Speaker 1: any kind of home where there were children, where they
Speaker 1: thought he could get children. In all these places, he
Speaker 1: made his headquarters the basement or the seller. And he
Speaker 1: had a habit of wearing painters overalls over his nude
Speaker 1: body because he could he could get So either it's
Speaker 1: true in this kind siload of people, or he's lying,
Speaker 1: And it's totally credible because he definitely it was important
Speaker 1: to him to be a good father. I think it's
Speaker 1: totally possible. He spent all of his time working and
Speaker 1: doing masturbating in weird ways, and sending letters to people.
Speaker 1: And it was when he was no longer working and
Speaker 1: his kids were supporting him that he really got the
Speaker 1: time to actually commit horrible crimes, right to enact his fantasies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll never know. That's my read on it. And that
Speaker 1: he was getting off on talking to the psychiatrist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that was also part of it, because he
Speaker 1: told him lurid stories about seducing kids into basements with
Speaker 1: bribes of candy and money, uh, and doing terrible things
Speaker 1: to them. Uh. He did claim that most of his
Speaker 1: victims were colored because the authorities didn't care if black
Speaker 1: kids went missing. Yeah. Um. I don't know if he
Speaker 1: actually did that, but I'm gonna bet it's easier to
Speaker 1: get away with yeah. Uh. And it's still today. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we'll never know how many of these victims are
Speaker 1: real or not worth him did uncover more religious influences.
Speaker 1: He found now that Fish was obsessed with the story
Speaker 1: of Abraham and Isaac, which he claims convinced him he
Speaker 1: needed to sacrifice a child. Uh. He figured that if
Speaker 1: God didn't want the boy to die. He'd send an
Speaker 1: angel down to stop Fish. So God's the real guy.
Speaker 1: Come on, God, don't write a book like that and
Speaker 1: just leave us to interpret it. We'll do things like this,
Speaker 1: send some angels down, like we're not you know, you
Speaker 1: made us. You know we're not smart enough to figure
Speaker 1: the ship out. We're sticking needles in our asses. Come
Speaker 1: on on purpose, purpose um. In the end, Wortham concluded
Speaker 1: that Fish was in fact far too mentally ill for
Speaker 1: the state to execute. Ah. He is, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: a man not only incurable and unreformable, but also unpunishable,
Speaker 1: which is probably accurate. Probably. I don't think there's anything
Speaker 1: anyone could have done to be like, do you realize
Speaker 1: what you've I mean, at that point when you were
Speaker 1: you talking to in the court didn't disagree with this guy. Nobody.
Speaker 1: None of the jurors thought that Fish was not criminally insane,
Speaker 1: but they all wanted him killed anyway, just because they
Speaker 1: thought he needed to die. Yeah. I mean, and I
Speaker 1: don't really disagree with that either. Quality of life, if
Speaker 1: that is a factor. He's not lying, he's hurting himself, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's it's Yeah. So he was taken to the electric chair.
Speaker 1: He was killed on January sixteenth, ninety six. He left
Speaker 1: behind a final statement to his lawyer, Jack Dempsey, who stated, quote,
Speaker 1: I will never show it to anyone. It was the
Speaker 1: most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read,
Speaker 1: my dear lawyer. So that's all I've got on Albert Fish. Um,
Speaker 1: is there anything else that you brought to the table
Speaker 1: that we haven't gotten to yet? I really you covered
Speaker 1: a good amount of it. I think, yeah. Just the
Speaker 1: kind of the rest of the family and the Hamilton's
Speaker 1: Fish like not only trying to not talk about it,
Speaker 1: but like you race records of being destroy the evidence. Um,
Speaker 1: I think yeah, it kind of speaks to the I
Speaker 1: guess shame of it all, which again is tied into
Speaker 1: mental health, which is tied into like sexuality, and just yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we have at least a couple more
Speaker 1: nets to catch things like before and now in a
Speaker 1: society where maybe a guy who grows up like Albert
Speaker 1: Fish and wanting to have his ass paddle bloody and
Speaker 1: wanting to paddle other people and be lit on fire,
Speaker 1: Now that guy can just go to a dungeon dungeon
Speaker 1: light his own have his ass lit on fire, light
Speaker 1: other people asses on fire, and there can be consent
Speaker 1: and it's all fine, right, and he doesn't have to
Speaker 1: and not to say that he didn't choose to also, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he's not a monster because he shove needles up
Speaker 1: his ass. That's respect stable way to pass the time,
Speaker 1: Like you want to, you do whatever you want to
Speaker 1: your own Assis America. Yeah, I just don't eat children. Yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you're adults. Maybe be the rich, maybe maybe eat
Speaker 1: the rich. Doritos dorito. Yeah. The only thing tastier than
Speaker 1: the flesh of the rich. Yeah, that's the only thing
Speaker 1: holding society together right now is that doritos are tastier
Speaker 1: than that and as and if they ever dip in quality,
Speaker 1: which they never will, which they never are, amazing, but
Speaker 1: if they ever did, society would collapse because we would
Speaker 1: start eating. We would, we will, we would go right
Speaker 1: for the bangers. Really, we just owe a lot to doritos,
Speaker 1: don't we We do, we do. And that's a positive
Speaker 1: note to in this horrible, horrible episode about a terrible criminal. Maggie,
Speaker 1: you want to plug your plug, Dobles, Yes, yeah, you
Speaker 1: can find me. Maga may fish that's May also named
Speaker 1: after my great great grandmother who is in the same line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bet she was really horrified when all this came out. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know if she ever knew, and thank god.
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining members of your family like picking up
Speaker 1: the news over in Michigan and like reading about the
Speaker 1: trial and going, oh, I'm gonna throw this newspaper in
Speaker 1: the trash. You don't let the kids see this color
Speaker 1: cousin in d C. I think we need to have
Speaker 1: some files burned. Uh yeah, So find me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: UM I have a podcast about friendship called my Top
Speaker 1: eight of the Small Beans Network UM and you can
Speaker 1: catch my videos at Breakdown Film and Society on my
Speaker 1: YouTube channel. They're fantastic videos. Check them out. Check out
Speaker 1: Maggie's work. She's one of the most talented people I've
Speaker 1: ever worked with. UM. I'm Robert Evans and next week,
Speaker 1: next Tuesday, we'll be back as we are every week,
Speaker 1: with another story about someone terrible, so please tune in
Speaker 1: for that. It will probably be a dictator other than
Speaker 1: a mass murderer, but you know, one and the same, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one in the same, not as different as you might expect.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. You can find this podcast on Twitter at
Speaker 1: at Bastard's Pod Instagram too. You can find us on
Speaker 1: the internet at behind the Bastard's dot com. Have a
Speaker 1: cool ranch Day and I love h