Serial Killers
Albert Fish and Alfredo Galan
Albert Fish
- May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1936
- Born in Washington, D.C
- Son of Randall and Ellen Fish. His father was 43 years older than his mother and 75 years old at the time of his birth.
- Youngest child of three; Walter, Annie, and Edwin.
- Nicknames: Gray Man, Werewolf of Wisteria, Brooklyn Vampire, Moon Maniac, and The Boogey Man.
- Fish tortured, mutilated, and murdered young children with his meat cleaver, a butcher knife, and a small handsaw.
- Victims were people who were either mentally handicapped or African-American as his victims His explanation was because he assumed these people would not be missed.
Fish's family had a history of mental illness. His uncle suffered from mania. A brother was confined in a state mental hospital. His sister was diagnosed with a "mental affliction". Three other relatives were diagnosed with mental illnesses, and his mother had "aural and/or visual hallucinations"
His mother put him in Saint John's Orphanage in Washington, where he was frequently treated sadistically. He began to enjoy the physical pain that the beatings brought. Of his time at the orphanage, Fish remarked, "I was there till I was nearly nine, and that's where I got started wrong. We were unmercifully whipped. I saw boys doing many things they should not have done."
Fish arrived in New York City, in 1890. He said at that point he became a prostitute and began raping young boys. His mother arranged a marriage for him with a woman nine years his junior in 1898. They had six children: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John, and Henry Fish. His wife later then left him in 1917. He became a single parent.Fish remarried on February 6, 1930, in Waterloo, New York, to Estella Wilcox but divorced after only one week.
Victims
Known
Thomas Kedden, age 19, 1890
Francis X. McDonnell, age 8, July 15, 1924
Billy Gaffney, age 4, February 11, 1927
Grace Budd, age 10, June 3, 1928
Suspected
Emma Richardson, age 5, October 3, 1926
Yetta Abramowitz, age 12, 1927]
Emil Aalling, age 4, July 13, 1930
Robin Jane Liu, age 6, May 2, 1931
Mary Ellen O'Connor, age 16, February 15, 1932
- Benjamin Collings, age 17, December 15, 1932
First Victim
In 1910, Fish was working at Wilmington, Delaware where he met 19 year old, Thomas Kedden.
The two began a sadomasochistic relationship; it’s unclear whether Fish forced Kedden to do things or not. In his confession Fish confessed Thomas was disabled. Ten days later Fish took Kedden to an old farm house. Here he began to torture him for two weeks. Eventually Fish tied Kedden up and cut off half of his penis.
"I shall never forget his scream, or the look he gave me," Fish recalled.
Fish intended to kill Kedden, cut up his body and take it home, but he feared the hot weather would draw attention to the dead body. Instead, Fish poured peroxide over the wound, wrapped it in a handkerchief, left a $10 bill, kissed Kedden and left. "Took first train I could get back home. Never heard what became of him, or tried to find out," Fiash recalls.Second Victim
Fish met Grace Budd. At first his intent was to murder her brother Edward Budd but he met Grace he quickly made up a story to convinced the parents, Delia Flanagan and Albert Budd to let Grace accompany him to a ‘party’ that evening. Grace had a younger sister, Beatrice, two older brothers, Edward and George Budd, and a younger brother, Albert Budd II. Grace left with Fish that day but never returned.
The police arrested 66-year-old superintendent Charles Edward Pope on September 5, 1930 as a suspect, accused by Pope's estranged wife.He spent 108 days in jail between his arrest and trial on December 22, 1930 He was found not guilty.