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Hey weirdos, I'm Ash. And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid.
And you know what? There's a lot going on in the world right now.
One might say. It is serious and it is scary and it is heavy.
And it's something that none of us can fathom.
None of us over here, I mean, in the United States can fathom. really dealing with right up front.
But we just wanted to send a big... Before we got into anything, we just wanted to say... to any of our listeners who in any way are connected to Ukraine and what's going on with Russian troops invading.
Our thoughts are literally constantly with you.
I can't stop thinking about this. No, it's horrible.
It's horrible. I literally can't wrap my brain around it, how scary it must be.
All we can hope for is your continued safety, your family's continued safety, your friends' continued safety.
I really hope that this somehow can be... resolved in a way that is quick and without... More peaceful than it has been.
Yeah, just any kind of, any peace would be great.
But... It's terrifying. And we just wanted to tell you like we stand with you.
Our thoughts are with you. Whatever we can do, we're going to try to do from over here.
But just know that we do not see this as like... is, oh, it's happening a long way away.
That sucks. No, it's like very much. We know that we have listeners over there.
We know we have listeners who. Are connected in some way over there.
And I can't fathom. Everybody. over there right now.
Anybody really around Ukraine is probably feeling this too. it's just it's a lot and it's been weighing like really heavily on my brain and my heart so we just wanted to tell you at least like And love you.
We're so, so sorry that this is happening.
I just can't imagine. And like the videos of like parents with their children Putting children on trains and like, you know, they're staying behind to fight.
Or just like waking up and hearing bombs going off.
Yeah. next to your house, above your house.
I can't imagine. My brain can't and that's because I'm a very privileged person and I can recognize that for sure, but...
My empathy is, like, through the roof right now for you guys.
I can't imagine, but... I really hope that this takes a turn somehow.
I'm also not super well-versed on, you know... wartime things so it's like i don't either i don't know how this ends anytime there's an update i always end up having to like research a ton to like figure out what is actually happening and like john's really good at explaining this stuff in more layman's terms he's like really good at this so I always end up going to him and being like so what does this mean what does that mean What does this mean that this just happened?
But yeah, we've been talking about it a lot. our house so we just wanted to send our love and our thoughts and big safety vibes to you and yours because it's scary.
And we recognize that for sure. So we really just wanted to touch upon that.
But this is also just a really long episode.
So we're not going to do any more like chit chat. before it.
I think I mentioned in the last episode We did the lighthouse, the spooky lighthouse to keep it light.
And everybody was Excited about it, which was cool.
I'm glad you guys really liked that one.
That'll be a fun series to do. We got a ton. ton of requests for other lighthouses which is great which i'm stoked i'm like ready to do one next week oh I'm ready to I'm gonna we're gonna start writing down like a schedule of them so we can really hit like You know, everywhere in the US, everywhere outside of the US, there's so many lighthouses, guys.
All of the lighthouses. And they're all fucking haunted.
So we got to do it. But I mentioned in that episode that we were doing something more like haunted and a little looser. because we were going to be hitting a big one.
Oh yeah. And everybody was like, I wonder what it is.
What could it be? Well, here it is. We are only in part one because this is definitely going to be at least a part two.
Maybe might have a part three because there's just so much.
Yeah. We are covering Albert Fish. Yay.
This is one that I knew I was going to cover eventually.
Someday. And we've gotten a massive amount of requests for it over the years.
Oh yeah. But it was just one of those that I was like, all right, I got to really like work myself up. to get into this one because I knew it was going to be a gnarly ride.
I had no idea how gnarly a ride it was going to Yeah.
I had read this case a long time ago. It's one of those that if you're If you start reading about true crime cases, this is one that you're definitely going to come across.
You're going to read... I'm sure a lot of you, if you know this case, you know the gray spud victim. you know, the horrific letter that came along with that.
And that's really this, and you know, his, you know, tendency to hurt himself into stick pins and needles in his body.
We're going to get to all of that. But man, there's a lot more.
And it's weird because I was reading and I'm like... why don't I hear about this more?
Why didn't I read more about this stuff?
Oh, that's weird. When you go back into newspapers... of this time when all this started happening, there's a lot more to this story.
It's crazy. Okay, let's go. It's really insane.
So I just... Right up front, right off the bat, I will give another warning in part two, just so everybody knows.
This is a doozy. This is horrific. It involves children.
It involves rape. It involves... Anything horrible you can think right now that might be a trigger, it's here.
So I just want you to know that. Venture at your own risk.
I'm going to this part one. We are not going to get to the Grace Budd murder.
Okay. Because there's two more before that oh shit and they're just as brutal of course so murder And they are victims, they're children, and they definitely deserve to be talked about much more than just like, and then there was two more before that.
Which I feel like when I was reading a lot, I could find like very little about that.
And then I hit like a treasure trove of like newspaper articles.
So sweet. We're going to talk about one victim in particular, the first one like a lot.
And there's not going to be any of those letters yet.
That's going to be in part two. Yeah. When I do read those letters, I'm probably going to paraphrase a little bit because there's some parts of those letters that I literally can't read out loud.
I literally will not be able to bring myself to read out loud, but they will be in there.
So just know that's coming in part two, because I know people know those letters.
But let's start at the beginning. Okay.
Shall we? I guess we shall. Strap in. So Albert Fish was actually born Hamilton Howard Albert Fish.
Hamilton. And his actual given name was Hamilton Howard Fish.
He was born on May 19th, 1870. He was born in Washington, D.C. to Randall and Ellen Fish.
Randall was 75 years old when his son was born.
Oh, wow. And Ellen was 43. Okay. Randall was a riverboat captain.
He was, Albert was the youngest of four children.
I'll get to why he's called Albert in a second, by the way.
He was the youngest of four children. Walter, Annie and Edwin were his siblings.
And Randall, the father, actually died by the time Albert was five.
Because again, he was 75 when he was born.
Yeah, that makes sense. Now, like I said, he is known as Albert but his given name is Hamilton.
Well, all throughout his childhood and into his teens, schoolmates would call him Ham and Eggs for Hamilton, and he hated it.
So he just decided he was like, you know what?
He was 15 years old and he was like, I want to change it.
So he decided to be called Albert. He chose that name because he had a very young sibling who passed away that was named Albert.
So he decided to take the name. Weird that that was thoughtful, in a way. is a actual living, breathing monster on Earth, like a demon from the... pits of whatever is beneath us.
Understatement. But he is also the weirdest fucking conundrum of a human being because there's those little glimmers.
He... He had a very, a dichotomy of a personality for sure.
He could turn, which is, it's much scarier that he was able to turn it off at times.
Yeah. Because to me, that shows that he's in complete control of it, which is even scarier.
But you'll see, there's a lot of points where you're like, what?
Yeah, like why? What? I'm sorry, what? Like he's a demon though, what?
So... When his father died, his mother was kind of in dire straits financially.
She was very reliant on him for the money situation.
And she was financially and emotionally unable to support the children at that time.
And so she unfortunately had to place them all into orphanages while she figured it all out.
This was pretty common at that time when people couldn't pay for their children, essentially.
They would just place them into orphanages until they could.
Oh, man. Yeah. So this isn't like a weird thing for the time, but the orphanage that they were all placed in like different orphanages, which is super sad.
Yeah, and this orphanage that Albert was placed in was St.
John's, and he was five. Oh, my God. A five-year-old.
So it's like you've been with your parents for five years and now you're being put in an orphanage.
You know who your parents are. And St. John's was horrific. uh she seemed and you know what the mom seemed to honestly be trying to get it together to support them as a single mother at the time There's really no verifiable reports that there was abuse or anything like that in the home.
Mm-hmm. by either parent. There's some things that you'll see that's like, oh, the mom was abusive, but there's literally no verifiable.
Yeah, there's really not. And most reports say there was just nothing reported.
That's kind of shitty that if that, if that didn't happen, that goes down in history as an abusive household.
And again, obviously now we look at this and you're like, I would never put my child in a fucking orphanage orphanage of course but at the time this was a very like dire straits situation and this is what people did right so i'm not gonna say either way to like what I think about this.
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The sale ends 831. Don't miss it. No, there was a history of mental illness in this family, the fish family, that was dug up.
There's... a book that I used for this case called Deranged, and it's by Harold Schechter.
It's a crazy book about this case. But in that, he says... that there was an uncle who suffered from religious psychosis.
There was a half-brother that was confined to a state hospital for the insane.
That's the actual phrase that was used. there was hydrocephalus in one of the brothers, which is not a mental illness, but it's like a physical abnormality.
It's why it's, what basically it's like um there's like water basically on the brain that's how it can be described um There was also one of his sisters had what he referred to as a mental affliction.
His mother, actually neighbor, said that she would sometimes hear voices.
She would walk around the street and see things.
Aww. Seems like there was at least some stuff going on that maybe was already in there.
Right. Obviously, that does not create a murderer, but the orphanage did.
I can tell you that much. It seems it was definitely not his parents and not just mental illness, but actually the orphanage that really triggered whatever monster he had lying dormant in his five-year-old little body.
He said over and over that the orphanage and the people who ran it were the ones to show him pain first.
Oh, that's horrific. And they really showed him how fragile humanity is in people.
Now, I did a little dive into orphanages at this time. i don't recommend you do that i'm just gonna uh tell you they were hell yeah like actual hell on earth these are orphans like actual children who have lost their parents and these nuns who ran these orphanages are fucking evil.
It's so crazy too because they're nuns that's the thing that's the scariest thing and let me tell you the ones that I was reading about the ones that you know that did these awful things, they're Albert Fish.
Right. They're killers. They're murderers.
They're torturers. They're just as bad as he is.
Oh, man. It's wild. In fact, there was I read an article and I'll link it the show notes because it is, if you want to take a ride into it, I'm telling you it is a tough read. but it's about St.
Joseph's orphanage in Burlington, Vermont. where a woman named Sally actually told her story.
She was an orphan there. And she said when she was about six, she was walking with a nun outside, like being escorted into another building.
And she described seeing a nun throw a fucking child out a window to their death. in front of her and when she looked up at the nun who was walking her to the other building she said she just looked at her and said sister because she was just like What the fuck did I just see?
Right. And I guess the nun pulled her by the ear off to the side and said, you have a vivid imagination.
We're going to have to do something about you child.
Yeah. I'd be like, no, ma'am, I just witnessed a murder, a full-blown murder.
She described... Awful things. And these other children described awful things that I can't even... described to you there was one that one of them said that she watched a nun literally slam a baby's head into a table until it stopped crying Oh, no, no, no.
Okay, you can stop there. There's even more shit than that.
How they did awful thing. They should, these nuns that ran that shit should be rotting in the deepest pits of whatever the. fuck hell exists for it.
I don't know what it, whatever bad shit is happening on the other side, I hope they are in the burning and Inferno because the shit you will read in this article will change you.
It You're going to be forever changed reading this article, let me just tell you.
And the fact that they... These were children who were orphans.
Yeah. The most vulnerable people in our entire society.
Little baby orphans. Yeah. And you're literally just torturing them for your own pleasure.
Like, what is wrong? with you. Well, that's the thing.
It's like, what do you get out of throwing a child out of the window and slamming a baby's head?
And these people are just as bad as Albert Fish, but they got to hide behind this, you know, wall of societal acceptance to do it.
And they got to have complete control over these kids.
They got to literally confine them to a building where they could torture them at their will.
And it's like, how does nobody realize that this is going on?
That's what's so sad in these poor kids now that are adults.
And having to dig all this shit up. I can't even imagine.
It's wild when you really get into it. And it happened everywhere.
Oh, yeah. The St. John's was no different.
These kids at this one where Albert Fish was were beaten.
They were physically abused regularly. Kids in, you know...
He said he started, this is where he discovered that he actually liked pain okay and he would actually get like aroused getting beaten uh-huh He also found pleasure in watching other kids get beaten.
That's what he had found. And this particular orphanage also had a form of discipline called shame punishment. where they would strip the child naked and then beat them in front of all the others what the whose brain even goes there yeah That's so sexually twisted.
Oh. Beyond. That's like, it makes me nauseous.
Oh, when you read that article, I'm not going to.
I don't recommend you do it. That's what I'm telling everybody.
Like I know I'm like really harping on it, but like, If you really do want to read, I'm going to share it because it's an important article, I think.
Yeah, of course. And the person who wrote it, which I will make sure I mention them in the show notes, did an amazing job at it.
And I mean, these... I mean, former orphans who told their stories are outrageously brave.
Yeah. But let me tell you, it's hard. And I want you to know that going in that you might.
You might regret it. I don't know. But I think their stories do need to be told.
Of course. I don't think enough is really put into the fact that these people didn't really, they got away with it.
Yeah, like they got away with being actual child torturers for years and years.
That's so sad. Yeah. So again, I don't know if that doesn't create a serial killer.
I don't know what's going to. It sounds like that's like the 101.
It's taking an orphan, stripping them naked, throwing them in front of a bunch of kids and beating the shit out of them. them on the regular basis.
I feel like if something's brewing inside, that's definitely going to bring it to the surface.
Now, he was returned to his mother at around nine years old.
Oh, wow. So he was in the orphanage for four years.
Yeah. That's your entire high school experience.
Yeah. That's crazy. I know. And that's during a very...
Very big developmental, exactly, a formative time.
She got a job with the state, actually, and she was finally financially stable enough to get custody of them again.
Unfortunately, that time away in that hellhole was not something that could really be remedied when it came to Albert.
I don't know if the other kids really experienced what he did.
If they did, they were able to... To move past it somehow.
He clearly, I think, already had... As we know, he is an actual monster, so there was definitely something in there, and I think this just brought it out for sure.
Now, he came home with a habit of wetting the bed and didn't stop this until 11 years old, which we know can...
You know, it's part of that whole like McDonald triad, which is...
Is shaky at this point. You know what I mean?
Like, I think we've come to the conclusion in psychology. that it's like... A lot of kids wet the bed.
And it can have so much more to do with, like, so many other factors.
But... accompanied, to me, this speaks more to the trauma that he experienced.
This is a trauma response for sure. He also had developed an interest in eating feces and drinking urine.
Okay, so that's different. That's different.
He had also clearly He came home with an enjoyment for inflicting pain onto himself.
You have to wonder if that whole eating feces and drinking urine... came from some kind of punishment because oh it definitely did if you read the article oh great that definitely came from that Okay.
Moving on now. Yeah. In fact, like these kids would vomit out of like... being sick or scared, and the nuns would force them to eat their own vomit.
What? Yeah. a nun telling you to force, you know, a six year old to eat their own vomit.
Oh my God, who, where did these women come from?
The fiery pits of whatever hell exists. is what these American women came from.
And men. These fucking priests and nuns that ran these places.
Oh my god. It's woof. You think of people actually, I've met women before that have wanted to be nuns or were nuns. and you think of them as the sweetest beacons of light.
That's the thing. It's like any nun I've met or any person who wanted to go into that line of service, they... are always like the sweetest, just like most caring people.
And that's I'm like, So what was going on back then?
But I guess were more people forced into it?
I was going to say, to be honest, and that's why I don't want to speak too much to it, I don't know a lot about that, and I don't know about that time period of... what would make someone want to join that.
I believe it's probably different than what makes someone want to join now you know and that's why we see a totally different pathology there, but I just don't understand.
How was there that many monsters all together then?
Right, because this is like we're talking about one orphanage, obviously, but we've heard stories before.
Oh, they're everywhere. like terrible, terrible things that have happened in orphanages.
Oh yeah, that time period, they were all terrible.
I don't know what I don't know what was going on with nuns and priests back then, like what was going on in these orphanages in particular it's very sad which again I didn't do any research into like what would make them join or like any of that kind of thing.
Cause I feel like there has to be some kind of, I would make an interesting episode.
I don't know if I could sit through that.
Yeah, that would be a tough one. I don't know if I could go into it.
Yeah. We passed that one article. Yeah, just doing this, I had to stop several times.
I have to be like, I got to stop here. The cases that I do, I have to stop sometimes and like, Let's be honest.
They're nowhere near the shit that you decide to cover.
This one really took me on a ride. For real.
I can tell you that. But yeah, he really enjoyed inflicting pain onto himself.
He had actually constructed his own DIY cat-of-nine-tails.
And he would use also a board with nails in it to hit himself with.
Thank you for calling that a DIY. Yeah, it was his DIY project.
So he had also started to develop a taste for pickerism. which is basically deriving sexual pleasure from shoving sharp objects into someone else. or very rarely into your own body, as is the case in Fish's case.
Yeah, he did that. Now, it can be part of bondage, I guess, pickerism, like light pickerism, if done consensually, like obviously like... little pricks here and there, like if you are both consenting people.
But it's not common and the lines can get a little blurry with it.
And normally it is associated with like... killers who will use the stabbing as a means of sexual... you know pleasure uh-huh now actually in 1886 a study found a series of lust murders where sexual pleasure was not from rape or what we see as molestation, but instead the murder got the sexual gratification out of the act of murder itself.
They get this from something like pickerism or from the screams of pain or fear they can elicit from their victims.
These are the scariest and most dangerous types of killers because they enjoy the act of torture and fear.
Right. murder is not a means to an end for them, which it can be for some murder.
Because we've covered some murderers who have said, I don't like actually killing someone.
I just like, I, you know, I did it for this or I did it for that, but they don't actually enjoy the, act of doing it, which does not make them better.
This is just a... It's also so confusing.
Exactly. But murder's the main event for these ones.
These are the cases that can be tricky when it appears a sexual motive was present, but there's no evidence of a physical sexual assault.
You know how that can happen sometimes where you're like, that looks like a sexual motivated crime, but like, we're not seeing rape.
And like, what is that? What does that mean?
It can be this kind of thing. It's always confusing when there's not that physical evidence, but... they can kind of miss a paraphilic behavior like pickerism at play. where they're not looking into that if a victim is stabbed to death but not raped or molested it doesn't count it really doesn't count out that sexual motive because that's where they could have got the enjoyment of it.
That's where they were. Right, right. which is really, really horrible.
It's wild. This is definitely Albert Fish.
For sure. He was a rapist, but there were times when the act of torture and murder itself was what he was deriving the pleasure from. and that seemed mostly to be his thing.
At some point, it's not known when, but at some point in his early childhood he did take a hard fall onto his head.
Okay. He fell out of a cherry tree onto his head.
He suffered a concussion and had dizzy spells and headaches after that.
Okay, so we got a few things working against the wedding.
We've got head trauma. We've got nuns. Yeah.
We've got actual mental illness running in the family.
Like we, we really have like a perfect storm of like.
Not great things here. A perfectly imperfect storm.
Exactly. Now he ended up when he came home, you know, like when he got into his teens, He started frequenting bathhouses, like public bathhouses, where he would just voyeuristically watch boys undress.
That was like his thing. This is the natural beginning to a lot of serial killers is voyeurism. especially lust killers or sexual sadists, it's an act of control.
They're in a safe and concealed place watching someone in their most vulnerable position.
They feel like they're in control. They feel powerful.
The risk gives them a thrill. And actually, Paul Hull's I don't know if you know him.
Our good old friend Paul Holes. You know our pal Paul Holes.
Paul holds described this kind of thing as a growing serial killer overcoming a series of incredible increasing barriers to offend.
He says to a normal person, this kind of behavior seems unbelievably inappropriate. because it is, and a societal barrier stops us from watching someone undress through their bedroom window.
Like, we just wouldn't do that. but a potential serial killer continuously will cross these societal and moral barriers and increase their danger level as they do okay so this allows them to shed this kind of moral compass we naturally have and they can get more and more brazen So eventually they may actually enter a home or a public place and do this voyeuristic shit.
Or like steal shit, like underwear from somebody's house.
And then it leads to hurting someone. Because they keep getting away with it, keep getting away with it.
Exactly. It's like a slow build up. Like he says... when somebody enters a home and is stealing things like underwear or something like that is very dangerous in their next. is definitely going to be hurting someone.
Sure. Now, soon, that's just little paw holes for you guys.
Just little paw holes, too. So he was graduating in his disgusting behavior at this point.
He started answering mail order ads where women were seeking romance and marriage.
He would answer them with horrifically obscene letters.
Oh, God. Um, he then moved on to answering land ladies who would inquire in the class and the, um, classified classified almost said the classical ads.
The classified ads about rooming spots in their boarding houses that they needed to fill.
Yeah. And he would pretend to be someone named Frank Howard, which is a name he used as an alias a lot.
He said he would always say he had a developmentally challenged brother or son.
And he would tell the landlady in detail how this relative would need to be disciplined if we were to live there.
And when he received word back, he would go further and ask if he could send someone for this woman to demonstrate this. whether she was able to take on the discipline or not.
Oh my god then if they agreed he would show up and try to get this lady to beat him Usually that's when the scam ended and they were like, you're like, no.
Sir, you're looking for a dominatrix. Again, it's like, that exists.
Go find that. That's the thing. I'm like, damn.
But I don't. So in 1890, he was 20 years old and he moved to New York City.
He started working as a painter. He was still writing vulgar letters to unsuspecting classified ads.
This is when he started escalating big time, though.
He started molesting and raping young boys.
He would lure kids into the basements of these apartment buildings where he was working as a painter.
And that's where he would assault them. Now, unfortunately, he really made it a point to do this to disabled children.
Oh God. Or black children because he figured that they wouldn't be investigated by police.
Which is sad because that was true. Very often he was right.
Yeah. In that like cool world we live in.
Now, during this time, he frequented brothels as well, and he would go there just to be beaten and whipped.
Like dominatrix style. Yeah. And honestly, I'm like, why couldn't you just do that?
Go to one daily. Right. Like get it. I'm sure people do that.
That's the thing. Like get it done and move.
Focus on painting. Go get your coin for painting and that's it.
And that's it. By 1898, when he was around 28 years old, a marriage occurred.
Can you imagine having been married to Albert Fish?
No. I could not. I do. Like what? No, no, no.
Thank you. Talk about regrets. Well, in this woman, by a lot of sources I read, he met this woman through his mother.
His mother, like, set them up. Okie dokie.
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Rules and restrictions apply. Now this woman was nine years younger than he was.
She was 19 years old. Her name was Anna Mary Hoffman.
They had six children together.
Gertrude, Eugene, John, Anna, Henry, and Albert Jr.
It's so funny. It's been a long time since I listened to anything about Albert Fish.
I think when I like first got into true crime i probably listened to like an episode i forgot that he was a father yep A father to six children.
Six children. What's weird... He never hurt them.
And we'll see more about this in part two when we start talking about what his kids had to say and everything.
His children later said that he was a kind father to them.
Never abused them physically, never verbally abused them.
They literally said he was a decent father and he worked hard and supported us.
Do you think that that happens as almost like like these murderers see their kids as an extended form of themselves and they would never hurt themselves?
But he liked hurting himself. Yeah, actually.
That was a thing for him. That is interesting.
I don't know what it is. Yeah. He... Sometimes I feel like there's just no rhyme or reason.
There isn't. I feel like there's none. I don't think we'll ever be able to explain this kind of thing.
Like who they will not hurt, but who they will.
I just don't think we're ever going to be able to explain it just because it doesn't make sense.
I can't make it make sense. Then there's killers that are so horrible to their own children.
Exactly. Like, who did we just cover? Fucking the cousins there.
Oh, the Hillside Stranglers? Exactly. Yeah.
He was horrible to his children. Absolutely.
Horrible. probably would have killed them.
Doesn't make any sense. No sense. So crazy.
They even said it on the stand later. That like...
But they also said, like, he was a weird guy.
He was eccentric. We knew he was eccentric.
And they would say, you know... He would play weird games with us and want us to hit him with things.
He would have his children hit him with things.
Oh, see, that's weird because then he's deriving some kind of sexual pleasure from that.
So he is abusing them in a sense. Exactly.
Like, he's like... Yeah, it's abusive. Exactly.
And it's like, So for them to find that out later, it's like, that's a whole different. layer of trauma for them because in the moment they're kids.
They don't understand that that's why he's doing it.
Like, you jump on your dad and, like, you know... And, like, beat him with a brush.
That's what they would do. And, like, they don't... what the fuck would they think that he's getting any kind of pleasure out of this besides you having fun?
Yeah. And it's like, but he's actually getting some sick perverted pleasure out of it. out of this yeah and then they find that out later as adults and it's like wow that opens up a whole new wound of like holy shit Because now every memory is tainted with what that actually was.
But... We'll get into it in part two, that he would write letters to them and was genuinely concerned for their well-being.
Interesting. And was like... you know, talked to his granddaughter and was like very grandfatherly with his granddaughter. what it's a and it's like very jarring to see and it's like that's albert fish and it's like how do you kids yeah how do you not look at these other children and think like this could be my grandkid this could be my kid this is somebody's kid He tortured kids.
Yeah. Like tortured them. Yes. Like an oven comes into play at some point, right?
And then he literally is like... Talking to these kids, I don't get it.
And I'm glad I don't get it. I never want to get it.
No, thank you. But we'll talk about that more later for sure though.
So once the kids started coming, Albert continued his job as a painter, And he tried to just quell these deranged thoughts that he was thinking and just kind of grind to support his family.
But it didn't work. He still had fantasies of raping and other nightmares.
And he stopped just fantasizing and he went right back to molesting boys.
Now, he was incarcerated in 1903 for a stint at Sing Sing Prison Oh, wow.
When he was arrested for larceny and petty theft and he would be in and out of prison for brief times. like only small little students, but always released and deemed sane during his medical That is bananas.
Somebody dropped the ball many times. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
Later he would tell a story of this time when one of his young lovers, because while he was with Anna, obviously he was also taking on quote unquote quote, lovers.
Some of them were like 19 and stuff like her age.
And were they like, oh, were they like willing to be?
Some of them were. and a lot of them were not.
And so they were women? No, these were boys.
Oh, okay. And he took, one of them took him to a waxworks museum at the time.
Apparently wax museums were different back then because when I found out what he saw, I was like, that's not Madame Tussauds. i was like what is it it was um a wax representation of a bisection of a penis Yeah, Madame Tussauds doesn't have one of those.
Not that I've seen. I was gonna say at least I never saw that.
But they also had other body parts that were bisected.
So to me, it sounds more like that Body Worlds exhibit.
Yeah. John has taken me to like eight times and I love it every time.
But they have like bi-sections of things.
That's good that you and Albert have that in common.
Yeah, that's something we have in common.
But he saw this. See, I saw it and was like, wow.
Fascinating. Medicine is really fascinating.
He saw it and was like, wow, I would love to do that to someone.
And then he also became obsessed with castration at this point.
Yep. Now, it was in Wilmington, Delaware in 1910 that he committed his first mutilation.
Oh. He entered into a relationship with a 19-year-old guy named Thomas Kedden.
Now, this was sadomasochistic. relationship but it was not consensual okay thomas was not consenting to this but he was bullied and threatened into it by fish.
Now it culminated into fish essentially abducting this young man and bringing him to an old abandoned farmhouse where he kept him bound there for two full weeks while he brutally tortured him daily.
Oh, man. After two weeks of pure hell, he was tied up again while Fish manually bisected his penis while he was alive no no no what he said about it later was quote i shall never forget his scream or the look he gave me I bet.
Now, he was planning to kill him after this and dismember him and then bring the meat back to his home to eat.
Because he was also becoming interested in cannibalism.
He just chucks off all the boxes. But it was hot out and it had been hot out for the two weeks and he figured the meat would go rotten.
Okay. And he didn't want that. No. Like... you know, pain, slapping myself with, you know, like nails on a board.
You know, bisecting someone's penis. Not rotten meat, though.
Food poisoning? Hard pass for Mr. Fish. He does not want the tummy grumblies.
He's not into that. I mean, yeah. Are you kidding me?
You're worried about food poisoning, you sick fuck?
Truly. What? Do you think that he was going to share the meat and that's...
Well, he did at one point. He started eating raw meat.
Yeah. And he would sometimes like offer his children raw meat.
Okay. So again, abusive without his children actually knowing that that's abusive.
Right. Like no... physical punishments, just weird shit that is abusive to children.
Now, honestly, I don't know if death would have been honestly merciful to this to Thomas at that point. because fish just ended up dousing the gaping wound with peroxide.
Oh, my God. Slathering Vaseline all over it, wrapping it in a dirty rag.
He then kissed the boy goodbye, gave him 10 bucks and sent him on his way never to be heard from again.
What? Yep. I wonder if that man lost his penis.
Well, and... And there's also, there's certain sources that say that he may have been developmentally challenged.
Oh my God. It's not confirmed, but that was his victim profile.
It seems he did prey on vulnerable people.
Oh, that's horrific and so sad. That like ruins me.
Yeah. Now, in 1917, his wife, Anna, abandoned him and her six.
Why? Yeah, but she also abandoned her six children, so she's also an actual gaping piece of shit.
Yeah, you don't leave your kids with a man like that.
She had been having an affair with a man who rented a room in the fish home.
Wow. He was a handyman named John Straub.
She left with him while Fish was at work, and she just left all the kids alone.
And when he returned home, that's what he found.
So at one point she actually came back She came back with John and begged to stay there because they were not able to support themselves.
Are you shitting me? And he said, you can stay, but John can't.
Yeah, duh. And she tried for a while to actually keep John secretly in the attic.
But Fish found out and gave one more chance for her to stay and John to leave, but she refused and left again.
Unreal. And then when him and the kids were not home, She and John came back and stole all their furniture, including the mattresses for the children.
Why do you even need those? I have no idea.
I was like, wow, these pork kids what a bitch like and this was when it really dove like he dove really hard into self mutilation now, like this was his real big turn into self mutilation and self masochistic behavior.
It also really sent, he had like religious mania. because he was brought up with religious mania.
And this kind of sent it into overdrive. he was suddenly doing a lot of weird things in the name of religion.
Like he would... And it's like things like he would run outside like naked and like scream, you know?
Because like God told him to. Or something, you know, like things that you would see and be like, oh no, that's a mentally ill person.
Yeah. Was he making the kids do like weird religious shit?
He wasn't. That's the other, again, weird.
He wasn't putting it on them. He was real, but he was doing it in front of them. which is harmful abusive because he was he was not doing like regular like religious things right he was like like at one point um in deranged it said that he wrapped himself in a carpet and was just laying there and when like one of his kids was like what are you doing he was like john the apostle told me i have to do this And it's like, that's damaging to a kid, man.
That's also so sad, because, like, obviously he was going through, like...
A sane person does not do that. No. So that is sad to a degree.
And what's weird is he was placed in the...
He was actually evaluated by psychiatric hospitals numerous times during this period.
And deemed to be safe. He was even placed in Bellevue a couple of times.
And they released him saying he was sane.
See, that's strange. So this was not... But like Ed Kemper, when he was held in like that.
Well, that's what I mean. They weren't. doing their due diligence here.
That's their thing. He said he figured out how to pass the test.
Yeah. It's like... I think they just weren't.
At this time, I think it was maybe overrun.
They were overwhelmed and they didn't do their job. they just weren't as extensive as they are today.
Because also, they didn't know as much as we know today about psychology.
They didn't know about these things. Because remember, This is the early 1900s.
Yeah, like, they don't know that people are sticking pins into their penises and, like, getting off from that they have no idea that that's a thing right they don't know of course i barely know I did not know.
Yeah. So this is when he started pushing needles into his groin.
Yeah. Um, but he would mainly do it between, and this is like really graphic, but I'm sorry.
It is what it is. You play on Albert fish.
You're going to get a lot. Well, and so many people requested this.
You're getting it. I'm giving it to you.
He would mainly do this between the area of his anus and scrotum, because that's a very sensitive area.
He also would put them directly into his testicles, but he said that even that was too much pain for him.
That hurts to hear. I don't even have testicles.
I was just going to say, I do not have testicles.
One or two. No. Remember when I asked? Yeah.
One or two. Yeah. Like, no. That's a lot.
Yeah. And we'll find out more about that infamous x-ray that you can find on there.
I'll talk about that in part two, too. Two, two.
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Shopify.com slash listen. He still was enjoying to hit himself with that nail-studded wooden paddle, which he would also have the kids hit him with sometimes.
Okay, so, like, hi, guys. Exactly. He even went as far to encourage, like...
If his children's friends were around, he was like, do you all want to play a game and like hit me with this paddle?
Like, what the fuck? What? And these are kids.
Imagine, like, getting home from, like, spending time at the Fish's house, and you're like, Mom, we hit Albert's.
Or so-and-so's dad with like a paddle with nails on it.
Mr. Fish let us hit him with a nail-studded paddle.
I'd be like... You're never going anywhere again.
I'm calling the authorities. Immediately.
But holy shit. And then he would... Insert.
No. Already. Don't look at me right now.
I was just going to say, I said the word insert and already you're like...
Uh-uh. He would insert a lighter fluid soaked wooden dowel into his anus and set it on fire.
What? Yeah. What? So he was burning his rectum?
Yep. How did he not, like, go ablaze? How did he not go ablaze?
You know what I mean? That's just the way that sounds.
How did he not go poof? How did he not go ablaze?
I'm a little damaged here right now, so forgive the lack of English.
From over here? I have no valid answer for that.
I really don't. Your anus is full of lighter fluid.
I don't have a good answer for that. We know he did it, though.
Okie dokie. So what's really scary about this... Is everything?
Yeah, it's like he's doing this to himself.
And it's like, if he's doing this to himself, that's one thing.
It's like... I can't stop you. Like, that's you.
I can't stop. But he's also... He's doing things to other people.
He's raping young men. He's hurting people.
So in 1919, he actually began a habit of just stabbing young men that he would lure into different places.
And he again chose like disabled boys or black homeless children.
And he definitely murdered some people here. but was never tried.
We just don't know who these victims are, which is so sad.
And such a testament to the times. But there's no way he didn't fatally harm someone during this time because he would literally just because it was pickerism.
Right. So July 11th, 1924. This is pretty crazy.
Is it? He came across eight-year-old Beatrice Keel. at her Staten Island farm home.
This is like the crazy leading up to the really crazy.
She was playing outside in a field and he walked right up to her in a field outside of her home and started striking up a conversation.
Okay. He was horrifically good at engaging with children.
Yeah. And with coming across as a trustworthy companion to them in like an old school. grandfather type.
And he would also be able to do it to parents sometimes, as we see in the Bud case.
So nuts. On this particular day, he offered Beatrice some money to help him find some rhubarb bushes in a field nearby.
And she was like, cool. She happily agreed, took her by the hand and began to lead her away from her home.
No. Very luckily, her mother saw this happen and ran outside and literally chased his ass away with like a broom.
Let's get the fuck away from my kid. Like, I will kill you.
He probably loved that. Well, brazen as fuck, as always.
He came back to the keel farm that night and snuck into their barn and was literally sleeping in their barn.
Luckily, the Keels were likely on high alert after what had happened with Beatrice early Absolutely.
So her father Hans found Albert and like literally tried to like beat the shit out of him like got him out of there. which is so weird exactly now next he attempted another escalation He came across a young boy and his friend and offered them some lunch at his home.
Yeah. And again, this is a different time.
This is a different time because all this right now sounds like, what the actual fuck?
What are all these kids doing? Right. And it's like, but it still happens today sometimes.
Well, and kids were like walking around the street.
Oh, kids could do whatever the fuck they wanted back then because...
This just wasn't known to be a widespread thing, but it was.
Yeah. And again, even today we find out that these kind of manipulative monsters can... engage with your child.
And do. That's why it's like now that we know this, these parents didn't know this.
Of course not. So it's like, now that we know this, we have to teach our kids. that no adult needs to have a secret with you.
No adult needs your help. No adult needs help from you.
It's just scream as loud as you can when you see somebody that freaks you out.
Like no adult other than this one or two, these one or two people are going to be picking you up from school.
It's so many conversations that you have to have with your kids.
It's so true. And it's so sad that parents have to do that with their kids.
Yeah, it sucks because you feel like you have to scare them to make them understand.
And the older they get, like they have more questions and you have to explain it.
One of the things that like really stuck with me always and my mom always told me was no adult needs a help from a child.
Nope. So that's a red alert, run away. And also, and now it's like no adult You tell your kids no adult should ever have a secret with you.
Yep. Because that's how child molesters will get. your kid to trust them is like, this is our little secret.
Yup. No, no kid, no kid has a secret with an adult.
The end. No. End of story. and it sucks but back then shit was going down it was so different Now these kids agreed, they followed him and they were playing around in his house like kids do.
Oh my God. While waiting for him to make lunch.
And while roughhousing, the mattress in Fish's bedroom flipped up.
And they got a look at what was under it.
No. Inside were what Albert Fish would later self-describe as his, quote, implements of hell.
That's what he described his tools as. Implements of hell. implements of hell and before anybody says cool band name i call it that is an actual band Oh, I just wanted to put that out there.
What a choice. Now, they were a butcher knife, a handsaw and a meat cleaver, among other things.
These are what he used to literally torture young kids.
Oh, my God. The boy saw these things in his bedroom under his mattress and immediately ran the fuck out of that house.
So glad they did. Whew. By this point, he was frustrated and angry because his intent was now to torture and kill a child and eat them.
And if he was failing. So this only increased his bizarre behavior and self-mutilation at this point.
Now July 14th, 1924, only a few days later, Now, he found what he had been searching for. just right in his lap at this point.
So at around 2pm on this day, And this was in Staten Island.
Anna McDonald watched her eight-year-old son, Francis McDonald, play outside.
During this time, she spotted an older man with gray hair, a skeletal frame, and a gray mustache walking down the street.
There's Albert. He was acting bizarrely and he was like wringing his hands and he seemed nervous.
And she was like, I've never seen that fucker before.
Like who the hell? She didn't recognize him, but he looked at her, tipped his hat to her and then was just gone.
So she was like, all right, that was weird, but whatever.
Yeah. Now, a couple of hours later, Francis and his little brother Albert, who was only five and a half.
Yeah. I know, weird. There's a lot of Alberts, like, floating around.
Yeah. The Times. They went down the street to play with some other boys, because that's what...
You do. Yeah. Francis had a favorite rubber ball with him.
It had circus animals on it. And while they played, they were playing with that ball for a little while and just playing some other stuff. that same old man that his mother had seen suddenly appeared and was calling these kids over to him.
Oh, no. When the other boys went back to playing their game, it was only about a minute before they realized Francis had not come back.
And they looked and he was completely gone.
Oh my God. Now a neighbor... Jacob Stern saw Francis at 430.
He was the last person to see him. He was entering the woods with an older man and he described this man as a frail man, older, gray hair, gray mustache, wearing a hat.
Also, sir, you're seeing a little child enter the woods with a large skeletal man with a mustache and a hat.
Here's the thing. He was entering the woods, which leads to a park that all the kids would play at.
And he said... He was nobody, he was like, at this time, yes, We would all say, what the fuck?
No. Like, I'm calling someone. Then it just wasn't that weird.
Well, and I guess... And he wasn't struggling... they were walking like they knew each other.
He said it didn't look like they didn't know each other.
There was no sense of urgency. Yeah. in my mind about it.
And he was like, and they were going towards the park.
So I figured like they weren't technically I guess these woods like lead to a park, but there's a part where you can go deeper into the woods.
Of course. But he assumed they were just walking there. to the park.
And he was like, honestly, it looked like his grandfather just walking him to a park.
Oh God. So he's like, I just didn't think anything of it, but I took note of it because I just... It just happened in front of me.
Sure. And he's like, and I knew... I think he knew Francis and his family, but he was like, I didn't know his extended family.
Extensive family members. So when he didn't come home that night, And Albert did.
His parents panicked. And his father, who was also Albert, Albert McDonald, McDonald Sr., He was actually a police officer in Manhattan.
Crazy. He immediately knew that something is wrong here.
Um, then little Albert told them about the gray man, the gray man.
And that's what he became known as. Oh, yeah.
He became, so he said there was a gray haired older man who talked with Francis and the alarm bells went bonkers to his parents. because his mom had seen that man his mom was like i fucking saw that like i know So they searched on foot and then contacted the rest of the police force and a massive search went underway. that had police volunteers and Boy Scouts.
It was the next day when I think it was three Boy Scouts ended up finding Francis McDonald in the woods. um henry lazarno thomas passoni and henry wood were the three scouts They literally tripped over the murdered body of Francis.
You also think about sending Boy Scouts in the woods to find you.
Same thing happened in the Dorothy Eggers case.
Yeah, exactly. I was like, who the fuck is sending like that was part of the boy scouts back then go find this body like you learn how to make a fire and you also are our makeshift cadaver dogs?
Like, what the fuck? What is going on? And this was still happening.
And they ended up finding him. Now... The way it is described in all of the things that I've found is that all the clothing below the waist had been violently torn from his body.
Oh, yeah. It wasn't just a strangulation, though.
The suspenders had been pulled so tightly around his throat. and so aggressively around his throat that they had actually cut through the skin and drawn blood.
Wow. That saying A lot. The rage that is involved in the...
The hunt was on for this boy's killer and his own father actually moved from his Manhattan precinct.
They transferred him into the Staten Police for this case so that he could be on the case.
According to Deranged, he said, quote, if I catch the killer, I'll turn him right over to Captain Van Wagner, who was the lead on the case.
And he said, I'll not harm a hair on his head.
I want to see him punished as he deserves, but the law must take its course.
Wow. So he was like, you can trust me. Like, I'm not gonna fuck this guy up right when I find him, which I'm like, whoa, you are a better person than I am.
For real. but he also is like not right away he's like yeah there's something he's like he's leaving room He's like, immediately I will turn him over.
I'm not saying that I'm not going to go into his cell at night and rip him to shreds.
No, definitely not. Like I deserve to. Now, the news went wild, even though this was at the same time as the Leopold and Loeb trial.
Oh, wow, that's crazy. Yeah, the Reading Times had an article called, this is like so...
It's funny what becomes a common thread through these articles.
So this article was entitled... Also, the grammar is terrible.
What would solve mystery of child killing by gland clue?
What? Yeah. In the article they say that science says murder is caused by busted glands in our body.
Busted glands that'll always get you. It's a real wild ride to read. that they're like science has figured it out everybody you got busted glands you're probably gonna murder someone so you need to take care of those busted glands And it's like, what?
I don't think that's it. But man, they really hung on to it.
I found several articles that were like, breaking news, science has figured out what creates a murderer.
It is glands. And it's like, what? I don't know about that.
I was like, I had no idea this was such a fucking like... moment in time that they were like, glands.
It's all about glands. Glands be damned. glands are doing it uh but it's a wild ride they said um and in this article was the beginning of them really harping on the idea that this could not have been an older man.
This was a young man who did this. Oh, okay.
Well, probably because of the strength that it took. but they had a lot of people who were like, no, I literally saw who it was.
And they were like, no, It definitely was a young man.
And they were fucking wrong. Of course. So it says, quote, medical experts are agreed that the murderer was a strong, virile man. and not a senile degenerate.
Well, let me tell you. Let me tell you. About senile degenerates.
No, I went on like a bender into these old newspapers.
I just could not stop. Oh, as soon as you can get the newspaper, especially like 1920s newspapers you're like what a time the way they describe things and it's it's so blunt yeah Now, the Knoxville News Sentinel also had the same gland thing going on.
They had an article called Medical Science Seeks to Solve Murder by Glands.
If only everyone was just sure that glands were the key to unlocking the centuries old mystery of why humans murder each other.
What was wrong with the glands? Only you know. better get it fixed or you're gonna murder someone how are you supposed to know if your glands are busted i guess when you murder someone you know that your glands are busted like what But I'm like, I don't know.
We've been wondering this for centuries.
I don't know if you've unlocked it with glands.
I'm not quite sure. Also, glance is losing all meaning.
Glance. Unfortunately, the newspapers also decided now was the time to place a real indictment upon the whole of Staten Island, which I was like, rude.
Yeah. The New York Times actually said that, quote, Sixty square miles of territory in Staten Island include large areas of uncultivated land with woods and wild undergrowth. which are believed to be used as hiding places and meeting places by robbers, bootleggers, fugitives from justice and criminals of various kinds.
Yeah, they're all just having like little fucking meetings.
So they were like, Staten Island is just fucking...
Full of degenerates. People have always been.
There's good people in there too. People have always been horrible about stat lines.
No. Like, to this day, people are terrible about Staten Island.
I'm like, let's not, like... thrust an indictment on everybody who lives there like jesus they're not all criminals exactly Now, an autopsy was conducted by the assistant medical examiner of Richmond County, and that was Dr. George Mord, who which is almost morgue, and I was like... Pretty close.
You did good there. How on the nose, bud?
Morgue. He found that Francis had died from strangulation and internal hemorrhage.
Which lends itself to a very grim conclusion.
Yeah. He was severely beaten. He had bruises and scratches all over his body.
This led Dr. Mord to be insistent that because of the brutality of the beating and the strength used in that strangulation, It had to be a very young, very strong man, possibly two men, he said.
Wow. He also was found to have undigested raisins in his stomach This was notable because he was not given any at home, and the boys that he was playing with said they were not eating raisins.
So they think the man lured him into the woods that day by giving him raisins.
And then his younger brother Albert, who is the five and a half year old, said that he had also given him a silver coin.
Now, anyways, during this time they began rounding up potential suspects.
This is the time... So this murder in particular, I feel like...
Doesn't get enough, like... Attention? Attention.
Yeah. This one and the next one, which I think I will end up covering in part two because...
But they don't get enough attention. I know the Grace Budwin deserves attention, for sure.
Of course. so do these like every child these are children and they are attention wowzers And this is a very like winding case.
It's like, I feel like when you go back into the newspapers, you really see everything that went into this, but I think a lot of books don't cover it a lot.
Yeah. that's it i wonder why i know it is i think it's because everybody knows the grace bud one and it's like the one that I think you can find the most stuff on.
But if you really dig into those newspapers, you can find stuff on these other ones.
Of course. Just not as much. You just have to try.
The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea and sex.
But lately, life on the coast has taken a strange turn.
The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community, has been arrested for corruption.
His wife claims He's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant.
Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.
I am the Archangel Michael. The whole town has been thrown into chaos.
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Now, they're rounding up potential suspects now because they want to... Not only is this a brutal murder of a child...
But it's the murder of a policeman's child.
So now everybody's on this. Yeah. So... A man named Clyde Patterson, who was a kitchen helper at a local hospital, and an orderly named Jacob Gottlieb were two men who got poisoned.
They worked at the nearby Seaview Hospital in New Dorp.
This hospital is pretty close to the Port Richmond neighborhood. in Charlton Woods area where Francis was last seen and found.
The hospital was a sanitarium for tuberculosis patients.
They were both described and it's also like not around anymore.
Like it's not a sanitarium anymore, obviously.
Gotcha. They were both described in various ways as degenerates and perverts by several news outlets during the time.
Okay. Clyde was 42. Jacob was 18. They are among some of the men in the area to tell police, actually, and this is what kind of put a lot of suspicion on them. was they told police about a place in the Charlton woods where Francis was found.
They all referred to it as the rattlesnake's nest. oh this was where francis's body was found and like in this rattlesnake's nest And these men said, this is where perverts and criminals go to do their dirty deeds.
And so it became clear to most authorities that they were looking for probably a known perv in the area.
Okay. They were wrong. Yeah. Now this is what's worse.
Authorities spoke to Jacob Stern, the neighbor that last saw Francis entering the woods with the suspects. with the suspect, excuse me, he described Albert Fish to a tee.
He's like an old man. Like, and obviously no one knew who Albert Fish was yet in this whole thing, but he described an older man, frail looking and very grizzled with a gray mustache. the same way the neighborhood kids and Francis's own five-year-old brother Albert described him.
In fact, they brought Jacob Stern in and had him look at Clyde Patterson to see if this was the man he saw that day.
And he said, absolutely not. He said, like before this man was much older than that.
And he's like, I've described you to him.
You guys can definitely go off of what you've scene, that's great.
But if you have multiple people in a case telling you what the suspect looks like, do you think you could even just give that an ounce of attention? something and no they in fact we're going to get into this he kept saying he was like no this was an older guy but police said to the newspapers that they were completely discounting Jacob's description Because there was simply no way it was an older gentleman who did this.
But it was. It had to be a young man. According to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle at the time, it said, the police have virtually eliminated the man seen by Stern.
The autopsy on the dead boy showed that his assailant was a man in the prime of his life.
But it's also like, have you never met a strong older man before?
Well, that's the thing. It's like people when they're really into something will go ham.
Yeah. Like there's 70 year old people that run marathons.
Of course. And it's like, how are you just discounting the last stranger that this kid was seen with?
And it's not just like a little kid saying this.
It's like a grown up. adult as well and his own mother and remember anna mcdonnell saw albert fish that day right his own mother his hat to her before brutalizing her child hours later which is so fucked and she said quote he came shuffling down the street mumbling to himself, making queer motions with his hands.
I'll never forget those hands. I shuddered when I looked at them.
I shudder every time I think of them. how they opened and shut, opened and shut, opened and shut.
I saw him look towards Francis and the others.
I saw his thick gray hair, his drooping gray mustache.
Everything about him seemed faded and gray.
I saw my neighbor's two police dogs spring at him, and I saw Philip, the hired man, call them off.
The gray man turned to me and tipped his cap, and then he went away.
She knew this was her son's killer. It's so crazy too how animals just know.
They know. She said it every time she said it.
She said those two dogs leapt at him. It's so nuts to me.
They knew. And they brought in a ton of dudes around the area.
And one of them was an escaped inmate from a mental health facility in the area.
He was Jacob Herman and he had been brought in because he claimed to have seen and touched Francis's body.
Oh. He had escaped either the day Francis was murdered or the day before.
And while running through the woods on his journey, he came across his dead body.
He said, quote, Tuesday I was going through the woods.
I stumbled upon the body. I touched it. It felt like putty.
I was afraid. I ran. Why did you touch it?
It was later determined that he had not been at the scene when the murder occurred and they were able to verify this.
He was just kind of talking off of what he had seen in the papers.
That's really annoying. Oh, it gets even more annoying.
Within the same week, police brought in a man named Melvin Ware, who was a 33 year old dishwasher at a restaurant in Manhattan.
He was brought in not initially for this case, but because he was caught assaulting a 14 year old boy.
So this piece of shit was brought in and within a month of, within a month, within a few hours of being arrested, he admitted to strangling Frances McDowell.
What? But he wouldn't give any other details.
Because he didn't have any. That was one that was in the paper, like, that he was strangled.
Right. So it's not very compelling. Mm-hmm.
No, interestingly enough, he had a rubber ball in his pocket.
No. This ball was incredibly similar, if not the same as Francis's favorite ball with the circus animals on it.
How strange. The one he had with him that day and the one that they had not been able to find since he was gone.
He also appeared at the police station with scratches all over his face.
Then as soon as he made it, like the confession, he recanted that confession the next day.
Okay. He claimed he had been drinking before he made it and he thought he wouldn't have to face the charges about assaulting the 14-year-old boy because he would have been taken to Staten Island for this murder charge. they would find out he didn't do it, and then they would just forget about the assault in Manhattan.
That's usually how that works. This guy's mind is really like a treasure here.
Yeah. maybe. And they also brought in Jacob Stern to look at him and he was like, no guys, I said he was old.
This guy is 33. Like, why are you wasting my time?
And Anna came in and was like, nope, that's not him either.
Show me some old men. He was kind of a dud.
They had no actual evidence on him in that ball.
Anna initially said that. Francis's ball, but she was hysterical.
And then she came back in and she was like, I don't know if that's his ball.
I think it just like freaked me out when I saw a ball.
Of course. And one to be so similar. Of course.
And so he was released with no real evidence against him.
God. Now, meanwhile, they also were holding a man whose name is different in every single source I found.
But his last name is Esposito. So I'm just going to call him Mr. Esposito.
OK. He was 55. He had been working as a laborer in the area right near the McDonald home.
He had been arrested on suspicion of a connection to this case because of his location at the time. and the fact that he had been released from Sing Sing Prison only three months prior.
And he had been working on a road gang right near the McDonald home.
The McDonald home, excuse me. The day of the murder.
And he had been released from his shift that day at 4pm.
Oh, so that's pretty. compelling if we remember francis was lured away and last seen entering the woods with the suspect at around 4 30 p.m by jacob stern yes who we're now ignoring, even though he had a perfect description of the real killer.
So like, okay, cool, cool, cool. Interestingly, a woman and her daughter who lived at the same boarding home that this guy did, Mr. Esposito. said the day of the murder, he had arrived home around 6 p.m. and had spoken about a missing boy.
And the news of the disappearance was not actually known at the time.
That's weird. So they were like, how do you know there's a boy missing?
And he said, I know this because I saw his mother crying and saying how worried she was. about him and so that was how he said he knew and they were like i guess that could have been it And then they also said they couldn't find the overalls he wore to work that day.
They were nowhere in his home. so that's a weird thing do we think that like he may have helped i don't I don't think so.
I think this just happens to be a situation where like, look how many of these guys look like they could be the guy.
Yeah, that's scary. I'd move. yeah it's a little scary now the issue here like i'm saying these all look like great suspects but they're not people who did it Everyone else thought these looked like great suspects too, and the newspapers were very sensational about how they released information.
They would release information without actually verifying the information first.
So a lot of it was like mistaken information. and that would come out, then be retracted.
That's the hard thing about the newspapers too from that time.
Some of them are so completely wrong that you're like, wait, what?
You're like, wait. And then you have to double check it with another source.
Now they had a vigilante mob awaiting justice in that neighborhood.
And who can really blame people? No. This was the rape, beating, and murder of a child and a policeman's child who they all liked. you know they all liked Albert McDonald of course I get I can definitely get the hostility but it can get really ugly really fast and it So the newspapers I found were all really focused on drifters and homeless people.
Like the poor community in the area? The people they love to target?
Yeah, and they were basically saying it had to be from those communities that this person came from. they were clearly wrong in hindsight.
Well, because of this, the people in the area were really side-eyeing like every single person in these communities.
And a man named John Askowski was living briefly and temporarily in an abandoned shack about 10 miles away from the crime scene.
And it was a temporary situation for him at the time, which we'll get into after.
And a teenager came across him just like squatting in the shack.
And in all this madness, this teenager saw him and was like, that's him.
That's the killer. Just decided. He is homeless and dirty.
That must be why. So he ran into the gas station nearby and got the owner of it, a guy named Salvatore Pace.
Salvatore followed him back to the area where John was staying in the a shack in the woods and he actually brought a gun with him, obviously, because he didn't know what he was going to come across. and made john get up and led him out of the woods like was leading him out of the woods with the gun to his back And they thought they had him.
They were like, this is the guy. He was staying in the shack.
He killed Francis. He's in a shack. So John thought he was being robbed because he was like, I didn't do any like he's not thinking he's like, He's like, what?
So he thinks he's being robbed. So he pulled his gun and then ran to hide behind like a tree or something.
They ended up shooting at each other. No one got hurt in that, but police were called. and immediately police on horseback show up, followed by literally hundreds of townspeople who are essentially armed with pitchforks in this and they're in the forest here And because word had gone around that the murder of Frances McDonald might have been apprehended in these woods.
So a firefight began in the woods. They were shooting at each other.
John was actually, John Askowski was hit in the side and he stumbled out into the middle of the crowd, fell to his knees, declared that he was just a farmer who had left his home after a bad argument with his wife.
And then he put the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
Oh. It was later confirmed that he was just a farmer from Pennsylvania He was living on that farm in Pennsylvania when Francis was murdered.
He had absolutely nothing. to do with it that's so sad but even it was like obviously like so scared nuts it got And no one talks about this part.
I'm like, this is madness. Why are we not talking about how wild this was?
Because I've never heard that. I've never heard that story.
I found it in a newspaper. That's so sad.
And then they talk about it in Deranged. by the Harold Schechner book.
It's like crazy. Yeah. So with this, the gray man got away for years.
Wow. That's so crazy. Until he's struck again in 1927 in Brooklyn.
And that's where we're going to leave you today.
All right, bye. Because that second one, it's only going to get worse from here on out.
Yeah. I think we've done enough. I think so.
One might say. But we're going to get into the second murder, Billy Gaffney. who was only, he was a toddler, essentially.
Oh, God. It's a really bad one. I just want to let you guys know ahead of time, I'm going to be as gracious and respectful telling it as I possibly can, because trust me, it's going to be hard for me to get out of my mouth, but...
We got to tell the story. So and we're also obviously going to get into the murder of Grace Budd, which is another one that will just destroy your life.
Yeah. And then we'll get into the trial, which is a whole other experience.
Absolutely bananas. I feel like this is going to be three parts.
It might be three parts because I feel like When we get through the murders of Billy Gaffney and Grace Budd, I think we're going to have to break at that point. break we're all gonna need a break and then we'll get to the trial okay guys the the next month of your life almost This is going to be something if you're a morbid listener.
Yeah. So everybody strap in. If you're listening to this and you're a morbid listener.
I hope you are. Of course. Because I'm sorry.
If you just joined now, I'm terribly sorry.
Hello. Welcome. Sometimes it's lighter.
It is. Sometimes it can be lighter. Sometimes I do Hollywood cases.
Sometimes we talk about lighthouses. But yeah, this is part one of Albert Fish and we're all in this together. as they said in High School Musical, and as we will be.
All right. Well, with that being said, we hope that you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. And I don't feel like I have to tell you not to keep it this weird because if you don't know at this point not to keep it that weird, then you should really just like not be here.
Bye. Bye. Thank you. If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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