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tried to escape but her abductor was too strong for her. He strangled her, then dismembered her body. Over the next nine days he cooked up and ate as much of her remains as he could, before burying her bones in the yard.
A BDUCTED AND E ATEN
When Grace Budd failed to return home by the following morning her distraught family raised the alarm. The story was soon picked up by the newspapers, accompanied by an angelic-looking picture of Grace, and a huge manhunt was launched. It was all to no avail, however. The mysterious Frank Howard had vanished into thin air.
That might have been the end of matters if it had not been for the determination of one man, veteran detective Will King. He became obsessed with the case. Not a day would go by for years without him trying to find some new angle on the case. And finally some six years later, in November 1934, his patience was rewarded in the most grotesque of ways.
During that month Mrs Budd received an anonymous letter. It was clearly written by her daughter’s murderer as it contained details of Mr Howard’s meeting with the family. The rest of its contents were unspeakably foul. The letter writer talked of being friendly with a sailor who had eaten human flesh while stranded in China. These tales had inspired the writer to embark on his own quest for human flesh and, as a result, he had abducted and eaten Grace. He did, however, assure the grieving mother that he had not raped the little girl. ‘She died a virgin’ the letter ended.
This bizarre missive must have been unimaginably distressing to its recipient, but it provided Will King with just the fresh piece of evidence he needed. Under detailed examination he noticed that the envelope used bore a minute emblem containing the letters NYPCBA (the New York Private Chauffeurs Benevolent Association). King followed the clue with renewed energy. He assembled all 400 members of the association and checked their handwriting against that of the letter writer. When none of them matched he asked if anyone had ever taken any of the association’s stationery for personal use. One member confessed that he had and that he might have left some of it in a lodging house he’d recently stayed in.
King hurried round to the lodging house and discovered that the chauffeur’s old room had recently been occupied by a strange old man called Albert Fish. King had a hunch that this might be the guilty man. Fish was no longer staying at the lodging house, but he was in the habit of coming by once a month to pick up a cheque. So determined to catch him was King, that he rented his own room in the lodging house and waited there till Fish finally showed up four days later.
Detective King found Fish talking to the landlady. When he told the apparently harmless old man that he was wanted for questioning, he was amazed to see Fish lunge at him with a straight razor. Razor or not, King was a much stronger man and he quickly overpowered Fish and arrested him.
O BSCENE C ONFESSION
Once back at the police station Fish made no attempt to deny his guilt. Instead he embarked on a long, wandering and graphically obscene confession not just to Grace Budd’s murder but to a whole string of crimes, most of which the police had no knowledge of. Typically grotesque was his account of the killing and eating of a four-year-old boy called Billy Gaffney in 1929: ‘I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did.’
Just how many people Fish actually killed remained a mystery. He claimed to have killed dozens, but his confessions were often very vague and in the vast majority of cases no body could be found to verify his stories. Apart from Budd and Gaffney there is only one other murder that he is unquestionably linked to, that of five-year-old Francis McDonell in 1934.
In the end he was only tried for the murder of Grace Budd, as that was the case with the most supporting evidence. His defence, the
A BDUCTED AND E ATEN
When Grace Budd failed to return home by the following morning her distraught family raised the alarm. The story was soon picked up by the newspapers, accompanied by an angelic-looking picture of Grace, and a huge manhunt was launched. It was all to no avail, however. The mysterious Frank Howard had vanished into thin air.
That might have been the end of matters if it had not been for the determination of one man, veteran detective Will King. He became obsessed with the case. Not a day would go by for years without him trying to find some new angle on the case. And finally some six years later, in November 1934, his patience was rewarded in the most grotesque of ways.
During that month Mrs Budd received an anonymous letter. It was clearly written by her daughter’s murderer as it contained details of Mr Howard’s meeting with the family. The rest of its contents were unspeakably foul. The letter writer talked of being friendly with a sailor who had eaten human flesh while stranded in China. These tales had inspired the writer to embark on his own quest for human flesh and, as a result, he had abducted and eaten Grace. He did, however, assure the grieving mother that he had not raped the little girl. ‘She died a virgin’ the letter ended.
This bizarre missive must have been unimaginably distressing to its recipient, but it provided Will King with just the fresh piece of evidence he needed. Under detailed examination he noticed that the envelope used bore a minute emblem containing the letters NYPCBA (the New York Private Chauffeurs Benevolent Association). King followed the clue with renewed energy. He assembled all 400 members of the association and checked their handwriting against that of the letter writer. When none of them matched he asked if anyone had ever taken any of the association’s stationery for personal use. One member confessed that he had and that he might have left some of it in a lodging house he’d recently stayed in.
King hurried round to the lodging house and discovered that the chauffeur’s old room had recently been occupied by a strange old man called Albert Fish. King had a hunch that this might be the guilty man. Fish was no longer staying at the lodging house, but he was in the habit of coming by once a month to pick up a cheque. So determined to catch him was King, that he rented his own room in the lodging house and waited there till Fish finally showed up four days later.
Detective King found Fish talking to the landlady. When he told the apparently harmless old man that he was wanted for questioning, he was amazed to see Fish lunge at him with a straight razor. Razor or not, King was a much stronger man and he quickly overpowered Fish and arrested him.
O BSCENE C ONFESSION
Once back at the police station Fish made no attempt to deny his guilt. Instead he embarked on a long, wandering and graphically obscene confession not just to Grace Budd’s murder but to a whole string of crimes, most of which the police had no knowledge of. Typically grotesque was his account of the killing and eating of a four-year-old boy called Billy Gaffney in 1929: ‘I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did.’
Just how many people Fish actually killed remained a mystery. He claimed to have killed dozens, but his confessions were often very vague and in the vast majority of cases no body could be found to verify his stories. Apart from Budd and Gaffney there is only one other murder that he is unquestionably linked to, that of five-year-old Francis McDonell in 1934.
In the end he was only tried for the murder of Grace Budd, as that was the case with the most supporting evidence. His defence, the
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