Sunday, April 13, 2008

Serial killers 101

It's not just fictional horror movies and books that creep me out - it's the true crime aspect of life. Hard to imagine people can be so cruel. I've decided to touch base with a few of these unimaginable criminals from time to time.
When I watched 'The Girl Next Door' I got an itch to do some research about more ghastly crimes (told you I'm morbid) and I didn't have to look further than my own bookshelf to find some sick puppies.
First up - Albert Fish.







This is one sick bastard. He came from a family wrought with mental illness. His mother put him in an orphanage where he was routinely beaten and was said to have enjoyed it. He began raping men and molesting children. Things only escalated from there. He attempted several times to abduct children.

The demise of his reign of terror began in May of 1928. He kidnapped 12 year old Grace Budd, telling her parents he had a niece having a birthday party and thought Grace would enjoy it. Budd's parents had let this maniac into their lives unknowingly - quite unaware that the elderly gentleman had a quite different agenda for their innocent daughter.

Fish took the girl to a house in northern NYC where he proceeded to strangle her, cut her into pieces, bury part of the corpse out back and take the other parts back to his home in the city. There, he continued his ghastly plan by cooking up a stew with various portions of her flesh, and feasted on it for a week. Maybe it is a moot point to mention he masturbated while consuming her body. Isn't he already sick enough?

His downfall came when he felt compelled to write a horrendus letter to the Budd's, detailing his crime. He was tracked down by the stationary he had used. Kinda like getting Capone on tax evasion, eh?

Authorities became well aware of the ghoulish atrocities he had committed in the ensuing investigation and learned Fish was even more demented than they had originally thought. He was a sexual deviant and said he heard the voice of God who told him to commit these crimes. He got off on inflicting pain on others as well as himself - when x-rayed in prison he was found to have twenty nine needles lodged around his bladder, and he admitted to enjoying inserting rose stems into his urethra as well. Say it with me now.... holy shit!

He was, of course, found guilty by reason of insanity but was still sent to the electric chair. In 1936, he died in the chair in Sing Sing, stating directly prior that he had no idea why he was there.

Info collected from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Fish
and from the book by Harold Schechter and David Everitt: The A to Z of Serial Killers.