Serial Killers: Confessions of a Cannibal (7 page)

To anyone with even a cursory exposure to the facts of the Grace Budd murder case, one thing was obvious, the fate of Grace’s killer rested on whether or not he was found to be insane. Fish himself had raised this issue in an interview with newspaper reporters. Asked for the umpteenth time why he had killed Grace Budd, Fish had responded: “I don’t know, I guess I must be crazy. Yes, I must be insane. I’m almost sure that I am.”

Acutely aware that this was likely to be the defense raised by Fish’s legal team, Westchester D. A. Frank Coyne decided to get in a pre-emptive strike. He employed two alienists (as psychiatrists were called in those days) to examine Fish. The two men interviewed Fish separately in his cell in The Tombs and delivered the diagnosis expected of them by the D. A., that while Fish was undoubtedly a deeply disturbed individual, he understood the implications of his actions and was, for that reason, legally sane.

On the same day that that diagnosis was delivered, Fish was indicted for kidnapping in Manhattan. A few days later, he was transported to Greenburgh to face a Grand Jury. It took that body less than two hours to return an indictment for the murder of Grace Budd. Fish was then transferred to the jail in Eastview to await trial.

Over the next week, Fish received several visits from detectives hoping to clear up unsolved child murders in their jurisdictions. There were also witnesses who came forward to identify Fish as the man who had attacked or tried to attack them. Typical of these was the story of Benjamin Eiseman.

The 26-year-old Eiseman had encountered Fish ten years earlier, when he was 16. Eiseman had been sitting on a bench in Battery Park when Fish sat down beside him and struck up a conversation. He told Eiseman that he was a house painter and could use a “strapping young lad” like him as an apprentice. Unemployed at the time and desperate for any sort of work, Eiseman had agreed to accompany Fish to a job in Staten Island.

They had traveled by ferry to the terminal at St. George and from there by train to another location. After alighting, they had walked to a deserted cabin where Fish had instructed Eiseman to remain outside while he went into the house to fetch his tools. While he was waiting, Eiseman was approached by an elderly black man who had warned him to leave. “I seen many kids go into that house,” the man had said, “But none of them ever came out.” Eiseman was alarmed enough by the stranger’s warning to heed his advice.

What is remarkable about this story is the startling similarity to the Grace Budd case. Grace, too, had been taken on a train journey and lured to a deserted house. But for the stranger’s warning, Eiseman would likely have met a similar fate to her.

Another accuser was a Staten Island farmer named Hans Kiel. In February 1924, Kiel’s eight-year-old daughter, Beatrice, was approached by an elderly stranger with a gray moustache. The man offered Beatrice a nickel if she would go into the woods with him to pick wild rhubarb.

Fortunately, Kiel’s wife had witnessed the scene through the kitchen window and went outside to confront the stranger, who promptly fled. Later that night, Kiel found the old man sleeping in his barn and ran him off. Kiel was absolutely certain that the man was Albert Fish. Three days after the Kiel incident, Francis McDonnell had been murdered less than a mile away, by a man answering to the same description.

And then there was the Billy Gaffney case. Billy, as you will recall, disappeared from his home on February 11, 1927, and was spotted that same evening on a trolley, accompanied by an old man. Conductor Anthony Barone and driver Joseph Meehan had both seen the pair and had remembered them because Billy had cried throughout the journey. After seeing Fish’s picture in the paper, Meehan was sure that Fish was the man he’d seen with Billy. Barone was less certain, but felt that it “could have been” Fish.

Fish, of course, denied all of these charges. But in each case there was circumstantial evidence linking him to the crimes. He’d either been working or living in the areas where the murders occurred, or the M.O. matched what detectives knew about the Grace Budd abduction. And many of the details checked out. Benjamin Eiseman’s story for example had been reported to the police and the description Eiseman had provided at the time was an exact match to Albert Fish.

On Thursday, December 27, Richmond County D.A. Thomas J. Walsh announced that he intended filing charges against Albert Fish for the murder of Francis McDonnell. The Gray Man, who had so cruelly snuffed out Francis’ life on that summer afternoon in 1924, had been outed at last.

Albert Fish’s case was due to come to trial in March 1935, and although Fish professed not to care about what happened to him, he took a key interest in his defense. Initially, a lawyer named Carl Heyser was assigned to defend Fish. But Fish soon grew dissatisfied with the young attorney’s efforts and moved to have him dismissed. The lawyer he wanted was James Dempsey, formerly an Assistant District Attorney of Westchester County and a man who had been recommended to him by other inmates. Fish was ecstatic when the trial judge agreed to replace Heyser with Dempsey, praising his new counsel in a letter to his son Gene. “I now have a high-grade man who knows every trick in the book,” he boasted.

One of Dempsey’s first moves was to appoint two alienists of his own, to refute the findings of the state’s experts and support the insanity defense he intended pursuing. And the men Dempsey brought on board were heavyweights. Smith Ely Jelliffe was one of the country’s leading psychoanalysts, a man who had been called as a witness in the sensational murder trial of millionaire playboy Harry Thaw. Frederic Wertheim was a German born psychiatrist, whose achievements included the establishment of the LaFargue Clinic in Harlem. A controversial figure, Wertheim would go on to become a leading campaigner against comic books as a corruptor of youth.

Of the two psychiatrists it would be Wertheim with whom Fish formed the closer bond. The two would spend many hours in consultation and it would be to Wertheim that Fish eventually opened up and told the full, horrific story of Grace Budd’s murder.

At first, even an experienced psychiatrist like Wertheim found it hard to believe Fish’s bizarre outpourings. But over the many hours spent questioning Fish (and the many more spent in verifying some of Fish’s more outlandish claims) Wertheim eventually began to build up a picture of the grotesquely depraved old man. Wertheim would later admit that he never encountered another case remotely like that of Albert Fish. “Fish’s life was one of unparalleled perversity,” he wrote. “There was no known perversion that he did not practice, and practice frequently.”

Just what were these perversions that Wertheim was referring to? We have already alluded to many of them. Fish enjoyed inflicting pain and enjoyed having pain inflicted on him, he was aroused by taunting faceless women with vile letters, he was a chronic masturbator, he enjoyed drinking urine and eating feces.

But the one perversion that he had thus far been silent on (despite admitting to it in the infamous letter to the Budds) was cannibalism. To Frederic Wertheim, Fish at last admitted that he had eaten parts of Grace Budd’s body.

According to Fish, he had tried drinking Grace’s blood from the paint bucket after he decapitated her. However, the thick, warm liquid had made him feel queasy and he’d stopped after just a few swigs. He’d then got to work with his butcher’s knife, slicing about four pounds of flesh from Grace’s buttocks and abdomen, and also cutting off her ears and nose. These he had wrapped in a piece of old newspaper and carried with him back to New York. Riding the train to Manhattan, Fish had been in such a heightened state of excitement that he had spontaneously ejaculated.

Back at his apartment Fish had sliced the flesh into chunks and cooked it in a stew with potatoes, carrots and bacon. He’d eaten the stew bit by bit over the next nine days, during which he remained in a near constant state of sexual arousal. He masturbated often as he relived the murder and savored the taste of human flesh. He had also tried eating the nose and ears but had found them too gristly and had eventually discarded them. 

Frederic Wertheim took meticulous notes of his conversations with Albert Fish, passing them on at the end of each session to James Dempsey. Dempsey was delighted with Fish’s confession of cannibalism. It proved surely that Fish was insane. How could any court in the land judge a man sane who had admitted to butchering a young girl and cooking her in a stew?

The trial of Albert Hamilton Fish for the murder of Grace Budd got underway at the Westchester County Supreme Court in White Plains, New York on March 11, 1935. The proceedings were a media sensation, dominating all of the New York dailies and drawing huge crowds to the courthouse. Many of the spectators were women, jostling for admittance to the public gallery. A dozen deputies were posted to control access, admitting spectators one by one until the public benches were full, leaving scores of curiosity seekers locked out.

At around 10 o’ clock, Judge Frederick P. Close entered the chamber, followed soon after by the accused, led in between two deputies. Fish was dressed in a scruffy getup of gray coat and dark trousers. A rumpled blue shirt and striped tie completed the ensemble. He kept his head down, a boney hand shielding his face. A murmur went up from the public benches as he entered, but Judge Close soon stilled it, warning the spectators that he intended running an orderly trial and would have anyone removed who caused a disturbance.

The first day was taken up entirely by jury selection, with defense counsel Dempsey and his opponent, Assistant D. A. Elbert F. Gallagher, interviewing 70 prospects. The questions posed by the attorneys hinted at the strategies they intended employing during the trial. Dempsey made much of Fish’s mental state, and suggested that his client might be suffering from lead colic, a common affliction of housepainters during that era, which was said to cause dementia.

Gallagher warned the jurors that they would be exposed to gruesome testimony, including accusations of cannibalism. “Would evidence that Fish killed and ate a little girl so shock you that you were not able to properly weigh the evidence?” he asked the prospects. Many said that it would and were promptly excused. Meanwhile, the man accused of these heinous crimes sat slumped at the defense table. He appeared to be dozing.

Albert Fish at his trial

Three jurors and one alternate remained to be selected on the second day. This process carried the proceedings through to the lunchtime recess at 1 o’ clock. An hour later, prosecutor Gallagher rose to make his opening statement.

“In 1928, the people will prove, there lived in the city of New York, a family named Budd,” Gallagher began. That set the tone for his statement, a blow-by-blow account of the crime, from the abduction to the eventual capture of Albert Fish. Gallagher’s retelling went into so much detail that the defense at one point objected, and the judge asked the prosecutor to move things along. Thereafter, Gallagher upped the pace only slightly.

Dempsey’s opening was the polar opposite to Gallagher’s. He made no mention of the crime at all, focusing instead on Fish’s bizarre life history. His intention was clear. There was no doubt at all that Fish had killed Grace Budd, indeed Fish had admitted the crime. The only chance Dempsey had of saving his client from the electric chair was to convince the jury that Fish was insane. He had plenty of material to work with.

With the opening statements concluded, the first prosecution witness was called to the stand. Delia Budd, dressed somberly in black, looked more massive than ever. Gallagher took her through the events of June 3, 1928, then asked her if she saw the man who had taken her daughter in the courtroom. Mrs. Budd immediately pointed out Albert Fish.

Next to the stand was Edward Budd, who provided much of the same testimony as his mother had. Then Willie Korman was called and again confirmed the known facts. A visibly emotional Albert Budd was next. Speaking softly, in a voice that appeared close to breaking, Mr. Budd recounted the events of that dreadful day. When it came time for him to identify his daughter’s abductor, Budd told the judge that his eyesight was poor and that he could not see that far. He was then instructed to leave the stand and approach the defense table.

Fish, who had thus far appeared bored with proceedings, suddenly came alert when Albert Budd stood before him. “This is Frank Howard,” Budd said, raising his hand as though to strike. Fish immediately shrank back in his seat, throwing up an arm to protect himself. A deputy stepped forward to intercede, but Albert Budd had already turned away and was walking back to the witness box. On the way there, he threw his hands up to his face and began to weep bitterly.

The final witness on that second day was Albert Fish’s nemeses, Detective William King. King’s testimony focused on the clues that had identified Albert Fish as the killer of Grace Budd, and on Fish’s arrest and subsequent confession. On redirect, Dempsey tried to get King to admit that the confession had been beaten out of the old man, a claim that the detective vehemently denied. Court was recessed at 5 p.m. with the jury sequestered to the nearby Roger Smith Hotel.

King was back on the stand on the morning of the third day, Wednesday, March 14. This time he focused on the initial visit to the house in Wisteria, Fish’s reenactment of the crime, and the discovery of Grace Budd’s skull and other bones. At this point two bailiffs marched into the courtroom carrying Grace’s bones in a cardboard box and drawing loud protests from defense counsel Dempsey. The judge overruled him. Dempsey then called for a mistrial, which was promptly denied.

With this mini-drama played out, Dempsey began his cross-examination of Detective King. Almost immediately he zeroed in on the issue of cannibalism. It was quiet obvious what Dempsey was doing. He wanted to establish beyond doubt that Fish had eaten parts of Grace’s body, something that surely must prove that the old man was insane. King, however, was unflappable. While he admitted that Fish had mentioned cannibalism in his letter, he insisted that there was no evidence that he had indeed consumed Grace’s flesh. Dempsey continued to probe, King to rebuff him. Eventually, in frustration, the attorney asked King if Fish’s children had spoken to him about their father’s strange eating habits. King admitted that they had. Fish apparently enjoyed eating raw meat.

The rest of the third day and all of the morning of the fourth was taken up with Greenburgh detectives and forensic experts, including a dentist who testified that the skull found at Wisteria cottage was undoubtedly that of Grace Budd. Finally, at 11:53, the State rested its case.

Gallagher had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Albert Fish was the killer of Grace Budd. It was now up to defense counsel Dempsey to convince the court that Fish should not pay with his life for the crime.