Episode 15
[00:00:00] Mary: [00:00:00] Monsters walk with us in teens, explicit language, adult themes, violence, and may not be suitable for listeners under 18 listener discretion is strongly advised.
Kristin Thank you so much for coming on. Would you like to tell everyone how we know each other?
Kristen: [00:00:22] Oh my God.
We know each other because of a dirty little city named Providence. We love her. Yes. And we know each other because booze, because I am a world renowned liquor store clerk,
Mary: [00:00:35] Facts, big facts.
Kristen: [00:00:37] Yes.
Mary: [00:00:38] I was working at a university in Providence and I was stopping in all the time there.
I saw you a lot and then I didn't see you at all. And then I later found you on Facebook and found out you had been in a horrific car accident.
Kristen: [00:00:51] Yes.
Be careful crossing the crosswalk. They will run right through you in this dirty city.
Mary: [00:00:58] Providence also had an [00:01:00] incredible amount of public bus accidents involving pedestrians being struck. When I lived there, it incredible amount.
Kristen: [00:01:09] To the point where now the busses say, bus is turning bus is turning when it makes a left or right hand turn.
Lil rhodie,
Mary: [00:01:19] I miss you Providence. I miss all my food places. I miss you Kristin. So excited to do this for this case. I have to give every content warning ever.
It is probably one of the worst cases I've covered to date. If abuse of small children or any of the following lists are going to bother you. You're going to have to nope on out of here and check us out on a different episode, because this is not the one for you. In this episode, there's going to be discussion of child physical and sexual abuse. Self-harm Euro copra, phasia cannibalism and improper disposal of human remains.
Kristen: [00:01:54] Oh man, that's my list.
Mary: [00:01:57] It's gonna be a doozy, y'all. For [00:02:00] this case, I used Wikipedia and a YouTube video by Eleanor Neale about Albert Fish, the person we're talking about today.
Kristen: [00:02:10] Oh, my stars unrelated. I listened to something recently with one of his descendants.
Mary: [00:02:16] Wow. Really?
Kristen: [00:02:17] Yeah. Obviously she's nothing like him. She actually described him as a doting father, so I'm super here for today.
Mary: [00:02:26] Albert Fish was born in Washington, DC on May 19th, 1870. May 19th is also my sister Dierdra's birthday. He is born to Randall and Ellen Fish. His father is American of English ancestry, and his mother was Scott's Irish American.
His father Randall was 43 years older than Alan Randall is 75 years old. When Albert is born, Albert is the youngest child. He has three living siblings. Walter Annie and Edwin. And there [00:03:00] was a history of mental illness in Albert's family. His uncle had mania. One of his brothers was confined to a state mental hospital and his sister, Annie had been diagnosed with a mental affliction, no further details.
Three other relatives were diagnosed with mental illnesses and it's reported that his mother had oral and or visual hallucinations. Randall dies in 1875 after having a heart attack immediately after this happens, Ellen puts Albert up for adoption and he is taken to St. John's orphanage in Washington.
Abuse was very regular in the orphanage in every sense of the term. As we now know these poor children were at the most risk of being victimized and the least cared about by society at large. So for them, it's actually a hard knock life. Not. Annie Ms. Hannigan, the sun will come out tomorrow. Yeah.
Kristen: [00:03:56] Orphanages at the turn of the century are gnar-gnar.
Mary: [00:03:58] Yeah. I mean, [00:04:00] society was basically like, fuck them kids.
Kristen: [00:04:02] Yep. Put em' in a bucket.
Mary: [00:04:04] Albert starts being beaten on a daily basis. Eventually he starts to enjoy the pain that's being inflicted upon him. Yeah. He later says that he was in the orphanage until he was around nine.
And he saw things that were just unspeakable. He's quoted as saying that he saw boys doing many things that they should not have done. Yeah. By 1880, Ellen has a better paying job and she is able to bring him to live back home with the rest of the family. In 1882, Albert begins a relationship with a local Telegraph boy.
This boy is into some real freaky deaky stuff. I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum. Literally. This is about to be pretty out there. He introduces Albert to drinking urine, urolagnia and copropagia. Yeah, eating feces.
Kristen: [00:04:59] Those are [00:05:00] things you can do.
Mary: [00:05:01] Pee pee poo poo. Number one, number two.
Fish also starts to frequent public bathhouses very regularly. He likes to spend hours and hours there watching all the boys on dressing. Eventually he is spending essentially entire weekends there just oogling and oggaling everybody around.
Kristen: [00:05:22] As you do in bath house.
Mary: [00:05:24] That's kind of the point, right?
Kristen: [00:05:26] Yeah. That's why they exist.
Mary: [00:05:28] He also starts writing dirty letters.
Kristen: [00:05:32] Yes. This I've heard about, he was quite a writer.
Mary: [00:05:36] He was prolific.
Yes, he was.
It's not ladies that he's met in person that he's writing these letters to. It's women, whose names he bought from marriage matchmakers and women from classifieds. He continues this pattern of writing obscene letters to women throughout his life.
Kristen: [00:05:57] To the dead end.
Mary: [00:05:58] This is his [00:06:00] bag, baby. He's very into it.
Kristen: [00:06:03] Yep. He found that bag early and he smashed it and he ran with it.
Mary: [00:06:07] I wrote here Bi M seeks W for W.S. PNP, which is classifieds talk Bi man seeks woman for water sports party and play. We get the deep cuts here. I did the research.
Kristen: [00:06:22] So well done. Thank you for this.
Mary: [00:06:25] Infamously fucked up.
Kristen: [00:06:26] Yeah. Yeah.
Mary: [00:06:28] He is also a victim. He already has gone through a lot of abuse and trauma, but what he goes on to do is just the definition of a monster.
Kristen: [00:06:40] Yeah. This hollers back to one of your other episodes where like you and your guests were like, the monster was made. We don't all have to become the monster, but the monster was made. I feel like at the turn of the century, like this, especially coming up in like massive amounts of sexual horror and violence in an orphanage [00:07:00] setting, he was primed to become the human he is. Plus you have all of the genetics, like it's just a lot for a human being. That's a lot.
Mary: [00:07:09] He was dealt a really bad hand.
Kristen: [00:07:12] Incredibly, but also is a legitimate monster.
Mary: [00:07:18] There it is.
In 1890. Albert makes his way to New York City. Center of the universe. Times are shitty, but I'm pretty sure they can't get worse. It's a comfort to know, when you're singing the hit the road blues, than anywhere else you could possibly go after New York would be... a pleasure cruise.
Kristen: [00:07:38] Or Buffalo.
Mary: [00:07:40] It's from Rent. It's like one of my favorite songs in Rent.
Kristen: [00:07:44] That's a good holler.
Mary: [00:07:46] I think of it often now that I live in Colorado and not New York.
At this time Albert begins doing sex work. He is working down at the peers and in his free time, he [00:08:00] decides that he wants to begin raping young boys.
Kristen: [00:08:03] Okay. So you got me here. You got me because I didn't know he did sex work himself. I always understood that he was a solicitor of kink. We'll call it. And I knew that he did horrible things to young males. And femmes, but like, wow. Okay. So down at the docks, he goes and he's learning all of his horrible trade.
Yes. In
Mary: [00:08:25] 1898, dear old Ellen arranges a marriage for him. I assume she did not know about his side career as a rapist pedophile, but who knows?
Kristen: [00:08:35] Mm mm.
Albert marries Anna Mary Hoffman, who is nine years younger than him. And they have six children. Albert Anna Gertrude, Eugene, John, and Henry. Albert takes up work as a house painter because he got to pay for all that, the kids mouth to feed.
So by 1898, Albert is painting houses in his free time. Of [00:09:00] course, sexually abusing young boy childrens. He also takes some adult male lovers just to mix it up a bit. Years later, he would fondly recount a tale of a date with one of his male paramours. They went to a Waxworks museum. Of all of the things to enjoy at this place., Albert zooms in, towards a bisected penis and is absolutely transfixed instantly. He becomes obsessed with sexual mutilation.
Oh, you got me with that one too. You dug. Oh man. Okay.
Mary: [00:09:38] It's so depraved.
Kristen: [00:09:40] Wow. I can make that too.
Mary: [00:09:44] Ooh. Ooh.
Bleh.
Kristen: [00:09:48] Oh my stomach.
Mary: [00:09:49] Yup. Yup. I felt that. I felt that in my gut.
Yeah. It just turned.
In 1910 Fish is working in Wilmington, [00:10:00] Delaware. I once went to a jazz festival there with Rachel, the first guest on this podcast and she was back for when tiger princess attack. He's working in Wilmington, Delaware, and he meets a 19 year old man named Thomas. Kevin Thomas goes to Albert's place with him and they began a sadomasochistic relationship.
It's not known whether this and everything that happened afterwards was consensual or forced. Albert's later statements about Thomas imply that Thomas was intellectually disabled and most likely he did not fully understand the situation, if he did actually agree to doing anything with Albert.
Kristen: [00:10:39] Oh boy, that's some very, very shifting sands for consent.
Mary: [00:10:43] Yeah. I'm gonna just say, I don't think consent was at play here because you know, for some reason I feel like Albert's not the most ethical dude.
Kristen: [00:10:52] I mean, I can't imagine why you would think.
Mary: [00:10:56] After 10 days of keeping Thomas at his apartment in [00:11:00] Wilmington. Albert brings Thomas to a deserted old farmhouse for two full weeks. He tortures Thomas culminating in cutting half of Thomas's penis off.
Kristen: [00:11:11] Oh my stars. (whistles) Okay. That's a thing you do on a weird S&M honeymoon with no consent and having seen horrible art in a gallery. Okay. Wow. It's just so dark and twisted. I mean, mutilation never, ever does it for me. I'll I'll walk out on that kink plank with anyone, but like mutilation is just not my bag.
Mary: [00:11:38] I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum's. And if everybody is consenting adults in their full capacities, right. Like, sure. If, if that's what you and your partner partners are into go for it. I think it's safe to say nobody would be like, yes, I would like for you to cut off half my penis. And maybe those people are out there. And to that, I [00:12:00] say it is time to consider seeking help. I doubt they're listening, but on the off chance that I could save someone's penis. Maybe go to a doctor, if that, if that's something you're interested in.
Kristen: [00:12:13] So I've heard of people and like seen some things about people doing like genital piercings, and blood play, and like wax work.
And, but literally snipping it halfway down is not...
Mary: [00:12:27] it's. It's so... (sighs) I understand piercings. I've known people that have like Prince Albert. I get that. I get like, people like to have hooks and be suspended. Like I've seen stuff like that.
Kristen: [00:12:41] Right.
Mary: [00:12:42] I can understand that stuff. And there's some pretty clear boundaries there, but I feel like if you are doing blood play, like any other aspect of BDSM, there has to be clear boundaries. And it's really obvious that that wasn't a concern here for Albert.
Kristen: [00:12:59] Locking up your [00:13:00] paramour in a farmhouse and chopping them up. Doesn't really seem like kinky fun or safe consensual fun.
Mary: [00:13:06] Yes, exactly. Albert is quoted saying I shall never forget his scream or the look he gave me. Albert had been planning to kill Thomas dismember, his remains, and then bring the remains home. But he is foiled by the dang hot weather outside.
Kristen: [00:13:24] Oh my God. That dang hot weather.
Mary: [00:13:28] Albert, you didn't think of the smell you stupid bitch.
Kristen: [00:13:31] Oh, heaven.
Albert decides to douse thomas's half penis in peroxide, kisses Thomas, and throws a $10 bill at him before running out the door and catching the first train back home.
Wow. That is the worst dirty done with you I've ever heard in my life.
Mary: [00:13:52] I can't imagine being this poor man, having all of this happen to you. And then he [00:14:00] tries to kiss you on the way out after bandaging your half cut penis, that he just burnt the fuck out of with hydrogen peroxide. I can't, I can't.
And here's $10, have a nice life.
I can't.
If we're operating outside of consent. And then you're also trying to throw $10 at it, like get out of here.
Yeah, that's not a money can fix this problem situation, my guy. Thomas is actually never heard from him again. And Albert says he has no idea whatever happened to him.
Kristen: [00:14:33] I mean, he could have bled out somewhere on a train.
Mary: [00:14:36] Maybe he never even made it out of the farmhouse. Like we have no idea. In January, 1917 Albert's wife leaves him for John straube. She met him when he lived with the family as a border. We actually had a border in my house growing up. He lived downstairs. Basically, there was a small one bedroom apartment and my dad built a wall, so he [00:15:00] could have his own entrance and exit through the backyard. He was a really good dude. Rest in peace, Jack Connolly, AK pop hop. He introduced me to Garfield and the far side comics and both of those things shaped my humor in a huge way.
Kristen: [00:15:14] Oh, I love that.
Mary: [00:15:16] Yeah. He was a sweet dude.
Anna Mary is like me and John Straub's domino is here. So we're going go, good bye.
Kristen: [00:15:23] Bye
Mary: [00:15:24] Goodbye, don't call, don't write.
Albert is left raising his six kids alone. Anna Mary is a petty little bitch and takes literally everything not nailed down in the house. When she leaves, she leaves her children with no possessions. Wow. Shortly after this, Albert begins to experience auditory hallucinations. Albert says he starts getting instructions from John the apostle. At least once he follows these instructions, including one instance, when he wrapped himself up in a carpet.
Kristen: [00:15:55] LIke roll it up, smoke it.
Mary: [00:15:57] I imagine like the [00:16:00] classic trope of like dead body and a carpet, but it's him alive in the middle. At this time, albert also starts to engage in some pretty severe self harm.
Kristen: [00:16:09] Yeah. He's been rolling up to this moment. All his life.
Mary: [00:16:12] It's been building. Yeah. He starts inserting and embedding needles into his groin and abdomen after Albert is eventually arrested, he is x-rayed and they determined that he had at least 29 needles stuck up in there.
Kristen: [00:16:29] That's a very specific fetish to have.
Mary: [00:16:32] He's just adding more fetish cards to the repertoire.
Kristen: [00:16:36] Most of the people I've known that have a kink about needles. There's always a place where the needle is going to come out. Doesn't stay in there.
Mary: [00:16:44] As much as we're talking about kink in a positive way, again, just to be clear, that's not what ,
Kristen: [00:16:50] I can't help myself.
Mary: [00:16:51] I'm here for it. We are kink friendly and sex work friendly and all of those things, but a lot of his shit is rooted in victimization of [00:17:00] people who are less powerful than him. And that's the part, that's a problem, not the kinks themselves. I think we're making that clear, but just to hit that one home again.
Kristen: [00:17:08] That was a really beautiful distinction. Very well said.
Mary: [00:17:12] Albert also makes himself a paddle with nails drilled through it so that he could start spanking himself with it.
Kristen: [00:17:21] Wow. Okay. So I know some paddlers and nails are not on the menu. Studs, hard surfaces on hard surfaces. Yes. Studying hard surface with metal things. Yes. But pointy metal. That's right. That's no. That's too hard for even the hard.
Mary: [00:17:42] This is the line into depraved versus a kink.
Kristen: [00:17:46] Mhmm. I can see why you brought me here today.
Mary: [00:17:53] Albert also starts to put chunks of wool soaked in lighter fluid into his [00:18:00] butthole and lighting them on fire.
Kristen: [00:18:02] Oh, my Lord. Okay, here we go.
Mary: [00:18:05] You know, people will like, like their farts. I have never, ever heard of someone being like, you know what, let me soak a chunk of, well, soak up that lighter fluid and then light it on fire while it's halfway inside me.
Kristen: [00:18:21] Oh my goodness. That's very specific. That's very specific.
Mary: [00:18:27] I got three inches of flaming butthole wool for ya.
Kristen: [00:18:34] (laughing) Oh man
Mary: [00:18:36] My god. Can you imagine the smell.
You may be wondering how Albert disciplined has children or what this home environment was like for them. Well, you may not, because you listened to this podcast about his daughter or his relative.
Kristen: [00:18:52] Descendant.
Mary: [00:18:53] Yeah. There is actually no proof that his kids were mistreated in any way. And some of the kids' friends [00:19:00] actually reported that Albert had asked them to use his little nail steady paddle to give him a few Spanx at dinner time when they came over.
Kristen: [00:19:09] Hey kids, you know, it would be really fun after dinner. If you'd just gave old pa here, a couple of taps!
Mary: [00:19:15] Can you imagine being a little kid going to dinner at someone's house? And they're like, Hey, come on. Like spank in the rear themselves to gear you up, like, come on over here. It's so fucked. How did these kids have friends coming back over? Again, at this time, everyone in society, parents included 'fuck them kids.'
Kristen: [00:19:39] Mhm. Yeah no, I wouldn't be going over ever again.
Mary: [00:19:43] That would be the one and only...yeah, we can hang out at my house only girl.
Kristen: [00:19:48] Yeah.
Mary: [00:19:49] Albert becomes obsessed with cannibalism and he starts eating dinners consisting only of raw meat.
Kristen: [00:19:56] Wow.
Mary: [00:19:58] He usually would [00:20:00] feed the kids something else, but occasionally they also get this raw Atkins diet.
Kristen: [00:20:07] Okay. Very keto.
Mary: [00:20:09] In 1919 Fish starts to escalate his crimes at a really quick rate. He begins targeting black people and people with intellectual disabilities and says that he assumed that they would not be missed at all when they were killed.
Kristen: [00:20:25] Man, that's such a fucked up sign of the times.
Mary: [00:20:29] We'd be remiss not to point out that there are still people operating with this mindset.
Kristen: [00:20:35] Yes.
Mary: [00:20:36] And that is why black and Brown women and indigenous women, women of color, trans people of color, the rates are so disproportionate incredibly.
Kristen: [00:20:48] Yeah. He's a piece of trash. The fact that he's going for like mentally differently abled people is just, that's beyond the pale to me. But that's really far out there. It's [00:21:00] victimizing again, the most marginalized community that's beyond victimizing. That's like straight up hunting with people hunting.
Mary: [00:21:10] Yeah.
Fish also confesses to paying children, to procure other children for him.
Kristen: [00:21:16] Oh my god. This is like some sort of weird Oliver twist shit right here.
Mary: [00:21:22] Yes. It's so fucked up.
Albert develops a toolbox of his favorite items to use to murder. And he calls them his implements of hell.
Kristen: [00:21:36] Okay. I didn't know about that one. This has gone beyond kink. This has gone beyond this is gone. He's gone. He's literally gone. Now.
Mary: [00:21:46] He has utterly lost the plot. Entirely.
Kristen: [00:21:51] I mean, I feel like he lost it once he like saw the exhibit of the bisected penis and then tried to [00:22:00] recreate it.
Mary: [00:22:01] The bisected penis that launched a thousand ships.
July 11th, 1924. Albert Fish is on Staten Island, New York and finds eight year old Beatrice keel playing outside on her parents' farm. He asked her to come help him look for rhubarb and she says no, but after he offers her money, she's on the fence. Her mom comes outside, literally just at the right moment and realizes some rando is trying to steal her kid. She chases him away from the property.
I'm liking mom a lot. And I'm liking that this kid has a little sense.
Albert later goes back to their farm and tried to sleep in the barn. Beatrice father finds him in there and kicks him out.
Kristen: [00:22:48] Okay. We've enlisted dad.
Mary: [00:22:51] Yes. I'm like good job family.
Kristen: [00:22:54] Yeah. This family is sticking together. I'm into it.
Mary: [00:22:57] That means he listened to his wife when she was like, this [00:23:00] fucking creep was here. I have a bad feeling. Nothing happens to them. Once Albert gets kicked out of the barn, they survive.
Kristen: [00:23:09] Yes. That is the news I needed.
Mary: [00:23:12] Yes. One shred of good news in this story.
Kristen: [00:23:16] Yeah. Just something, just a tiny taste
Mary: [00:23:19] Later, Albert Fish says that pretty much for the entire year of 1924, he is suffering from severe psychosis. He believed that God was speaking to him and demanding that he torture and sexually mutilate children.
Kristen: [00:23:35] I didn't know about the religious angle in his background. That's all new to me.
Mary: [00:23:43] I'm going to say that God does not want you to sexually abuse a mutilate children. And that's a hard line that we could just draw, right?
Kristen: [00:23:51] Yeah. Just a guess, just a guess.
Mary: [00:23:53] It's the worst of the worst because he's literally human trafficking children at this point.
[00:24:00] Kristen: [00:23:59] Yeah.
Mary: [00:24:01] Albert has been regularly molesting a boy named Cyril Quinn. And Albert ran into Cyril and a friend outside playing box ball, AKA Foursquare. He asked them if they had eaten lunch and when they said no, he told them he would give them some sandwiches. When they get inside his place, the boys start wrestling on Albert's bed and they moved the mattress in their rough housing.
These so-called implements of hell pop-out and the boys Yeet themselves right out of the apartment.
Kristen: [00:24:34] Bye.
Mary: [00:24:35] They had no time for this, gotta go
ON May 25th, 1928. Albert found a classified ad in the New York world that read 'young man 18 wishes fpr position in country, Edward Budd, four Oh six West 15th street'. On May 28th now 58 year old Albert Fish goes to visit the Budd family under the [00:25:00] pretense of interviewing Edward. He introduces himself as Frank Howard, a farmer from Farmingdale New York. Farmingdale is in Nassau County, Long Island. Albert's original plans were to tie Edward up mutilate and torture him and leave him there to bleed to death. Instead he tells Edward that he's hired. Albert says, I'll call you in a few days about a bang bada boom. You work on my farm. It's going to be a great time. Albert ends up ghosting them for a little while, but then he sends a telegram to Edward apologizing and setting up a later date for them to meet. Fish comes back and meets Edward's kid, sister ten-year-old Grace Budd. He shifts his focus to Grace immediately and comes up with a fake birthday party for his niece that he's actually headed to right this second.
Kristen: [00:25:55] Oh, right now, it's time to go.
Mary: [00:25:57] We already had to go.
Kristen: [00:25:58] Yeah, I'm late. I'm [00:26:00] late. I'm late.
Mary: [00:26:01] He convinces the parents, Delia and Albert Budd to let him take Grace to this party.
Grace leaves with Albert Fish and never returns. On September 5th, 1930 police arrest Charles Edward Pope, a school superintendent, as a suspect in Grace's disappearance. He had been reported to police by his estranged wife, which bitch, why you like this?
Kristen: [00:26:25] Yeah, what's up early Karen.
Mary: [00:26:29] That's a very good way to put it.
Kristen: [00:26:33] Honestly, what... put your nose back in your own business, get to learnin.
Mary: [00:26:39] He spends 108 days in jail between when he is arrested and December 22nd, when he goes to trial.
Kristen: [00:26:47] Okay. This poor bastard though.
Mary: [00:26:50] He is found not guilty. Thank God. In 1930, Albert Fish is arrested for sending an obscene letter [00:27:00] to a woman who had answered an ad for a job as a maid, which just shows it's like all random . It's not women looking for anybody romantic. It's just random. He's picking randos to send letters to.
Kristen: [00:27:13] It's not iSO BBW for GGG. It's just literally anyone who will open his envelope.
Mary: [00:27:20] He is arrested again in 1931 for the same thing. And he sent to Bellevue Patrick's hospital as a result.
Kristen: [00:27:28] Oh man, the queen of all of the psych hospitals.
Mary: [00:27:32] November, 1934, Delia and Albert, Budd received an anonymous letter. This letter is ultimately what points and Albert's direction and culminates in his arrest.
Kristen: [00:27:43] Ooh. Who knew.
Mary: [00:27:45] The Budds were illiterate, and so one of Grace's brothers had to read this note out loud to them. This next part is truly awful. So if graphic discussion of cannibalism is going to freak you out, it's best [00:28:00] that you try to skip ahead until I'm at the end of this note. The letter reads:
My dear Miss Budd in 1894, a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the steamer Tacoma, captain John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco to Hong Kong, China. On arriving there, he and two others went to shore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At this time, there was a famine in China. Meat of any kind was from one to $3 a pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold to the butchers to be cut up and sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or a girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak chops or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl could be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl's behind, which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as a veal cutlet brought the highest [00:29:00] price.
I'm going to just pause here so you can react.
Kristen: [00:29:02] Wow. Oh, wow. Okay. This is no peking duck on canal street. This is people. Oh my God.
Mary: [00:29:15] John stayed there so long. He acquired a taste for human flesh on his return to New York. He stole two boys, one seven, one 11, took them to his home, strip them naked, tied them in a closet, then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night, he spanked them, tortured them to make their meat good and tender. First, he killed the 11 year old boy because he had the fattest ass. And of course the most meat on it.
We've gone from hunting humans to charcuterieing humans.
Kristen: [00:29:45] Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except head bones and guts. He was roasted in the oven, all of his ass boiled broiled, fried, stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way [00:30:00] at that time. I was living at four Oh ninth, East 100 street, the rear right side. He had told me so often how good human flesh was. I made up my mind to taste it.
Mary: [00:30:11] ...Just what the fuck.
On Saturday, June 3rd, 1928. I called on you at four Oh six West 15th street. I brought you pot, cheese and strawberries. We had lunch grey sat in my lap and kiss me. I made up my mind to eat her on the pretense of taking her to a party. You said? Yes, she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester. I had already picked out when we got there. I told her to remain outside. She picked wild flowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not, I would get her blood on them. When all was ready, I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked, she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mama first, they stripped her naked, how she did kick by and scratch. I choked her to [00:31:00] death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, cook it and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me nine days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her though I could have, if I wished. She died a Virgin.
Kristen: [00:31:15] We have just left this mortal plane. Okay. That whole piece about, I took my meat to my room.
Mary: [00:31:23] It's inhumane.
Kristen: [00:31:25] That's complete depersonalization.
Mary: [00:31:28] Not only to do that, but then to want to torture the parents in this way, where he met them, he may have known they were illiterate and now her brother and her parents have to hear this awful, awful letter.
Kristen: [00:31:44] That's literally the worst piece of mail ever.
Mary: [00:31:47] Police do investigate all of the claims that were made in this letter, but they can't verify captain Davis or any such famine in Hong Kong. The aspects discussing Grace were [00:32:00] accurate, but it was never confirmed if Fish had it actually eaten any of Grace's remains. Fish is caught because like an idiot, he used a very distinctive envelope. The envelope had a small hexagon emblem with the letters N Y P CBA on it. This stands for New York private chauffeurs benevolent association.
Cops tracked down the company and find out that a janitor in the building had taken the stationary home. But he says that he left it behind in his old rooming house at 200 East 52nd street when he moved out.
Kristen: [00:32:36] I've heard about this. I've heard about this as the clincher that caught him.
Mary: [00:32:40] PS, don't leave shit behind when you're moving out and deeply clean before you leave. No matter what it was like when you moved in having lived in university housing, it was very 50/50 on whether or not your apartment to actually be cleaned. Like the deposit said it was supposed to be. And it's not about the people [00:33:00] renting it to you. It's about the people who have to move in after you, so clean up after yourself. Wipe your own ass.
Kristen: [00:33:06] Yeah, please. With good paper, not stolen paper.
Mary: [00:33:11] Cops tracked down the landlady. And she says that Albert Fish moved out suddenly a few days after the murder, she was surprised because Fish's son had sent him some money there and Albert had asked her to hold his next check. The cop, William F. King says, you know what, I'm going to sit my ass right over there. Don't mind me. I imagine he packs up a little corncob pipe and just lights it and hangs out.
Kristen: [00:33:40] Yeah, lil toke, lil smoke.
Mary: [00:33:42] He's parked up at the door when Albert Fish walks back in looking for his money. He convinces Albert to go back to police headquarters, but before they leave, Albert pulls out a razor blade.
Kristen: [00:33:55] Ohhhh...
Mary: [00:33:56] william King says, LOL, that's cute. Disarms [00:34:00] him and takes him right down to the station.
Kristen: [00:34:02] Okay. Here we go. The beginning of the end.
Mary: [00:34:05] I mean , he's not a small child so .You're not going to be able to overpower him with your razorblade dude. You're 60 something.
When Albert is interrogated, he doesn't even try to deny that he was the one who killed Grace.
He tells them that at first he had intended to kill Edward and Albert also denies raping Grace, but later he admits to his attorney that he had ejaculated twice involuntarily while he was strangling her.
Kristen: [00:34:33] Murder being that exciting is so fucked up.
Mary: [00:34:38] They do use this as evidence at his trial to prove that the kidnapping was in fact sexually motivated and this means they don't have to try to prove cannibalism charges when there is no evidence.
Kristen: [00:34:51] That's canny.
Mary: [00:34:52] They can't prove that cannibalism, but they know they can get him on the horrific rape and murder of a child.
Kristen: [00:34:58] I mean, that's [00:35:00] ideally what we want in the course of investigation.
Mary: [00:35:03] They also discover a series of other crimes. That Albert had committed July 14th, 1924 nine-year-old Francis McDonnell was reported missing by his parents. He had failed to return home after playing catch with friends in the port Richmond neighborhood of Staten Island. A search was organized and his body was found hanging by a tree in a wooded area near his home. He had been sexually assaulted and then strangled with his own suspenders.
Wow. Ah, that's so devastating. That poor family.
Yeah. According to the autopsy, Frances had also suffered extensive lacerations to his legs and abdomen. His left hamstring had been almost entirely stripped of its flesh.
Kristen: [00:35:48] I mean, were we snacking? Like what the fuck?
Mary: [00:35:54] Albert Fish refuses to claim responsibility for this. Although later he [00:36:00] said that he intended to castrate the boy, but had to run when he heard someone approaching them.
Kristen: [00:36:06] Are you trying to tell me that a hamstring is a miss? Like what? No, really. I meant to castrate him, but I just nearly, almost severed that hammy. What.
Mary: [00:36:17] Francis McDonnell's friends tell the police that Francis was taken by an elderly man with a gray mustache. A neighbor also tells police that he saw Francis with a similar looking man walking along a grassy path into the nearby woods. Francis's mother, Anna McDonnell says she saw the same man earlier that day. She tells reporters that he came shuffling down the street, mumbling to himself and making queer motions with his hands. I saw his thick, gray hair and his dripping gray mustache. Everything about him seemed faded and gray. That's the description. This description results in the mysterious stranger becoming known as the grey man.
Kristen: [00:36:57] Oh, I wondered where that [00:37:00] came from.
Mary: [00:37:01] When several eye witnesses positively identified Albert Fish as the gray man, Richmond County, DA Thomas J. Walsh announced his intention to seek an indictment against Fish for the boy's murder. At first Albert Fish denies the charges. But in March 1935, he confesses to the murders of Francis McDonnell and Billy Gaffney on February 11th, 1927.
Three-year-old Billy Beaton and his 12 year old brother were playing in the apartment hallway in Brooklyn with four year old Billy Gaffney. When the twelve-year-old left for his apartment, both younger boys disappeared. Beaton was later found on the roof of the apartments when asked what happened to Gaffney.
Beaton said the boogeyman took him. And Gaffney's body was never recovered.
Kristen: [00:37:47] It's really interesting how he's gone from like Delaware to DC, to New York, where it's just a lot more people and a lot more like this sounds ghoulish, but like hunting [00:38:00] grounds,
Mary: [00:38:01] it's more densely populated and you're right. There's more areas to target.
Kristen: [00:38:07] And the fact that he likes all of these tenements with families and children are just. That's goals for him as far as I can say.
Mary: [00:38:16] Right. Initially serial killer Peter Kudzinowski was a suspect in the boy's murder, but then Joseph Meehan, a motorman on a Brooklyn trolley, saw a picture of Albert Fish in the newspaper and identified him as the old man who he saw February 11th, 1927. The old man had been trying to quiet a little boy sitting with him on the trolley. The boy was not wearing a jacket, was crying for his mother, and was dragged by the man on and off the trolley. Beaton's description of the boogeyman matched Albert Fish.
Kristen: [00:38:49] Can you imagine the guilt having seen this and like not having done anything beyond reporting what you saw later, not knowing what it was in the moment that's going to be [00:39:00] so horrifying.
Mary: [00:39:01] The thing nobody tried to intervene and nobody called the fucking cops, like call the fucking cops.
Kristen: [00:39:11] People still don't though.
Mary: [00:39:13] If it looks off and you see that something is not right in a situation like yeah. Kids scream and cry, but I think it's pretty obvious when they don't know someone or something's wrong. That can be obvious at times. And if you see something that gives you pause, call the cops.
Kristen: [00:39:30] Yeah. Say something, say something to somebody.
Mary: [00:39:33] Society again is like, fuck them kids. It's just so fucked up to know that there was a trolley full of people.
Kristen: [00:39:41] Mhm. And it's interesting that it parlays also with how he's getting older and older and older, so therefore less and less fit to be a Hunter slash mutilators slash raper slash killer slash eater.
Mary: [00:39:55] That's a really good point. I never thought about that, but he had to [00:40:00] adapt like that over time.
Kristen: [00:40:02] I mean, had to. (sarcasm)
Mary: [00:40:03] It's this disgusting evolution of everything that's been building up to this point now is just like the depths of the depravity and sickness.
Kristen: [00:40:16] Where's God now, Albert? Where's God now.
Mary: [00:40:19] Police matched the description of the child to Gaffney and detectives of the Manhattan Missing Persons Bureau were able to establish that Albert had been employed as a house painter by a real estate company in Brooklyn during February, 1927. On the day of Billy Gaffney's disappearance, Albert had been working just a few miles away from where Billy was abducted. Motive, location, opportunity. All these things are coming together. Albert Fish wrote an extremely graphic and awful letter to his attorney describing the murder in cannibalism. Again, if you're faint of heart, this is goddamn [00:41:00] gruesome, like almost worse than the first one. In my opinion, I'm only going to read selective quotes because it was very awful and very long.
I brought him to the Riker Avenue dumps. There is a house that stands alone, not far from where I took him. I took the Gaffney boy there, stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag that I picked out of the dump. Then I burned his clothes, threw his shoes in the dump.
I walked back and took the trolley to 59th street at 2:00 AM. I walked home from there next day, about 2:00 PM. I took my tools, a good heavy cat of nine tails. Homemade short handle cut. One of my belts in half slip. These half in six strips, about eight inches long. I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears and nose slit his mouth from ear to ear gouged out his eyes. He was dead. Then I stuck the knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drink his blood. I picked up four old potato sacks and gathered a pile of [00:42:00] stones.
Kristen: [00:42:00] That's incredibly gruesome. That's incredible. Oh man, this is going to sound awful, but I really real hope that that child was quite dead. By the time he started really, really applying mutilation.
Mary: [00:42:14] I agree with you. I hope that it was very quick and that there was no suffering. I hope that it was just as quick as possible, please.
Kristen: [00:42:23] Now I don't pray to God, but that's a good prayer.
Mary: [00:42:26] Fish dismembers the body describing saving parts to bring home and disposing of the rest of the remains in nearby shallow pools of water by weighting them down.
Kristen: [00:42:37] So you know enough procedurally to scatter.
Mary: [00:42:42] He's become more savvy over time.
Kristen: [00:42:46] That's really interesting. That means he knows what he's doing. If you asked me.
Mary: [00:42:51] Right. He has enough mental faculties to realize that he had to make this disgusting [00:43:00] evolution and was going to have to find new ways to get away with as time started to change.
Kristen: [00:43:06] Also hiding evidence is straight up like animal rule number one of I did something wrong.
Mary: [00:43:12] He proceeds to go ahead and give his recipe, which what the actual fuck am I about to read. Like, ugh, writing these notes.
I came home with my meat. I had the front of his body. I liked best his monkey and peewees and a nice little fat to roast in the oven and eat. I made a stew out of his ears, nose pieces of his face and belly. I put onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt, and pepper. It was good. Then I split the cheeks of his behind open, cut off his monkey and peewees and wash them. I put strips of bacon on each cheek of his behind and put it in the oven. Then I picked four onions. And when the meat had roasted for about a quarter hour, I poured a pint of water over it for gravy and put in the onions. At frequent intervals, I based at his behind with a wooden [00:44:00] spoon. So the meat would be nice and juicy in about two hours. It was nice and Brown cooked through. I never ate any roast Turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet, fat little behind it. I ate every bit of the meat and about four days, his little monkey was sweet as a nut, but his Pee-wee's, I could not chew.
Kristen: [00:44:17] Okay. So what I'm hearing in this recipe is monkeys and peewees repeatedly. So he's literally cooking and eating penis and testicles.
Mary: [00:44:28] Yes.
Kristen: [00:44:29] Okay.
Mary: [00:44:29] That's what he means with the monkey and pee-wees.
Kristen: [00:44:33] Wow. Those words will never again come out of my mouth ever.
Mary: [00:44:39] Well, it disturbed me so much to read that and now have to say it, I had to watch some, my little pony to balance the scales and go back to my Brony days. Not episodes, just songs, everyone listening, do some self care after this one, if you need it. It's so dark.
Kristen: [00:44:59] Let's all, you [00:45:00] know, light a candle, put on some Enya, soak in the tub and not think about monkeys and Pee-wees for a while. Something nice for yourself. Not that that's my self-care metric, but like that's the thing you can do. Can we stare at a lava lamp? Can we, can we color? Like I'm still on self-care like, I'm fine because I am who I am and I've done what I've done. And I know what I know and stuff, but like this is dark ass shit. As a foodie, that was a recipe card I never needed in my brain.
Mary: [00:45:37] Gaffney's mother Elizabeth visits, Albert Fish in sing. Sing. Accompanied by detective King and two other men. She wanted to ask him about her son's death, but Albert Fish refuses to speak with her. He begins to weep and asked to be left alone. After two hours of asking him questions through his lawyer, James Dempsey, Mrs. Gaffney gives up [00:46:00] and she is still unconvinced that Albert Fish is responsible for her son's murder.
Kristen: [00:46:06] Do you know that I used to live in Peekskill New York, which is literally like a train hop away from sing sing. And so this has given me too much realness in this moment.
Mary: [00:46:18] Albert Fish's trial for the murder of Grace Budd began on March 11th, 1935 in White Plains, New York.
Kristen: [00:46:25] Oh my God.
Mary: [00:46:27] Fish's defense counsel was James Dempsey, a former prosecutor, and one time mayor of Peekskill New York.
Kristen: [00:46:34] Now I'm screaming. I'm inwardly screaming. I lived in Peekskill New York for 10 years. I lived in the Harriet Beecher Stowe house.
Mary: [00:46:46] Some people listening are going to know what you're talking about.
Kristen: [00:46:50] This is too nuts. I could see yellow brick road that had been laid in the late eighteens from my apartment, which was right next to the train [00:47:00] track. There's a side fund fact with the yellow brick road, Frank L O bombs on lived in Peekskill and he was, he was placed with them and it theorized that the yellow brick roads of the Hudson Valley are the yellow brick roads referred to in his Oz books.
Mary: [00:47:18] The trial lasts for 10 days, Fish pleads insanity, and claims to have heard the voices from God telling him to kill children, which went over like a fart in church.
Kristen: [00:47:29] I mean, that ship sailed Fish.That ship sailed.
Mary: [00:47:32] Several psychiatrists testify about Fish's many sexual fetishes. Which include sadism, masochism, flagellation, exhibitionism, voyeurism, piquerism, which is sexual interest in penetrating the skin of another person with sharp objects. Cannibalism, coprophagia, urophagia, hematolagnia, which is a sexual fetish for blood, which evokes arousal [00:48:00] when present on a sexual partner, especially if they a nude, pedophilia and necrophilia.
Kristen: [00:48:06] I'm not especially here for poo or pee or dead things, but I get that they exist. So I understand that they're fetishes, but like, what a laundry list.
Mary: [00:48:20] I think it's the pedophilia necrophilia that are really the deal breakers for me, all the other stuff, like okay, sure. But those two that ain't a fun kink or fetish anymore, buddy. Yeah.
Kristen: [00:48:34] Yeah, sorry, Albert, but I don't think God is conscripting your pedophilia.
Mary: [00:48:39] I have a feeling the creator did not co-sign that decision-making process for you.
Dempsey in his summation notes that Albert Fish is a psychiatric phenomenon and nowhere in legal or medical records was there another individual who possessed so many sexual abnormalities.
Kristen: [00:48:57] Sounds like somebody didn't read psychopathic [00:49:00] sexualis, but okay.
Mary: [00:49:02] The defense is chief expert witness was Frederick Wortham, a psychiatrist with an emphasis on child development who conducted psychiatric examinations for the New York criminal courts. During two days of testimony worth them. Explain Fish's obsession with religion. Specifically his preoccupation with the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis 22, one through 14.
Wortham said that fish believed that similarly, quote, sacrificing a boy would be penance of his own sins. And even if the act itself was wrong, angels would prevent it. If God did not approve, show me how it makes sense somebody. Cause I don't understand.
Kristen: [00:49:41] Yeah. I'm not buying that line. Sorry. Absolutely not.
You know, I just really feel like if your logic is like, Oh, someone would stop it. If they didn't want it to happen, you got to sit down and really let's examine those choices. Let's look at your life. Look at your choices.
Especially the fact that he's [00:50:00] cornering people in farmhouses, he's abducting small children, he's scattering evidence. Yeah. I think that, you know what you did.
Right. Edward Budd was Albert's next intended victim, but Edward turned out to be much larger than Fish had expected. So he decided to quote unquote, settle on grace. Although he knew grace was female, it's believed that Fish perceived her as a boy.
I've heard that he mistook the younger sister as a younger boy.
Mary: [00:50:31] Wertham then detailed Fish's cannibalism, which Fish allegedly associated with communion. The last question. Dempsey asks Wortham was 15,000 words long. It detailed fish's entire life and ended with asking how the doctor considered his mental condition based on this description of his life, worth them answers. He is insane.
Kristen: [00:50:55] Yeah, without a doubt beyond certifiably.
Mary: [00:50:58] No question [00:51:00] about that.
Kristen: [00:51:00] Oh yeah. Like I said, I'm super here for anybody's kink and fetish. Do you boo. But I'm pretty sure that the level of victimization that is attendant to that is really wrong. Really, really wrong.
Mary: [00:51:13] Thank you for the truth, but we already knew the tea Albert fish. Gallagher cross-examined Wortham on whether fish knew the difference between right and wrong. And Wortham said that Albert did know, but it was a perverted knowledge based on his own opinions of sin, atonement, and religion. And thus, it's an insane knowledge.
Kristen: [00:51:35] Wow.
Mary: [00:51:38] So he knows right and wrong, but only by his own constructs of right and wrong that are informed by compounded trauma, mental illness, years of victimization and depersonalization of children. And therefore
Kristen: [00:51:51] God is not in the room. Your gods specifically is not in the room at that point. As soon as you yourself are declared God in that way, [00:52:00] anything that you are holding higher does not exist. You're making single swipe decisions and you're fucking with young children's lives. I'm sorry, no. There's a Legion of Satanists that wanna have a problem with you doing any of this.
Mary: [00:52:14] This is not anything that anyone anywhere can rationalize or justify.
Kristen: [00:52:19] This is straight up monster territory.
Mary: [00:52:21] The defense ends up calling two more psychiatrists who both support Wertham's findings.
Kristen: [00:52:27] Oh yeah. They probably just went. Yes. Yep. Well, he's that guy? That guy said it.
Mary: [00:52:31] They literally pull out the check mark and they're like, yup. Yup, yup. Yup. Yup. Here's your sign.
The first of four rebuttal witnesses is men are Gregory the former manager of the Bellevue psychiatric hospital, where fish was treated during 1930. He testifies that fish is abnormal, but sane under cross-examination. Dempsey asked if coprophagia, urophagia and pedophilia indicated a sane or insane [00:53:00] person.
Gregory replied that such a person was not mentally sick. And these were common perversions that were socially perfectly. All right. And fishes, no different from millions of other people. Some very prominent and successful who suffered from the very same perversion,
not, not wrong, but pedophilia is so fucked up.
That's such a bad look for you as a doctor. The PP poopoo number one, number two. Yeah. Yeah. Let's not lump pedophilia in with that. I will say, like, in terms of the coprophagia, urophagia very open-minded at the time to say a lot of people are actually into this, you'd be surprised
Kristen: [00:53:42] THat's concurrent with, like I said, there's there's texts like sick of habeas sexualis, which kind of like mainstreamed those practices as fetishes.
Mary: [00:53:52] The next witness was the resident physician at the tombs, Perry Lichtenstein. Dempsey objects to a doctor with no [00:54:00] training in psychiatry testifying on the issue of sanity. But the judge overrules on the basis that the jury could decide what weight to give this prison doctor. When asked whether Fish is causing himself pain indicated a mental condition, Lichtenstein replied. That's not masochism. As he said, fish was only punishing himself to get sexual gratification.
Kristen: [00:54:21] I think you don't understand what masochism is, friend.
Mary: [00:54:24] Yeah. Yeah. The next witness Charles Lambert testifies that coprophilia was a common practice. And that religious cannibalism may be psychopathic, but was a matter of taste and not evidence of a psychosis.
Can we talk about phrasing?
Kristen: [00:54:39] Yeah. Phrasing bad puns, something, something, something.
Mary: [00:54:42] Dude, choose your words?
Yes.
Please read the room.
Yay. Hello courtroom
Jesus Christ
Kristen: [00:54:51] on a Pogo stick, eating crackers.
Mary: [00:54:55] The last witness, James Vavasour repeats Lambert's opinion. [00:55:00] Another defense witness was Mary Nichols, fish's 17 year old stepdaughter. She described how fish taught her and her brothers and sisters, several games involving overtones of masochism and child molestation.
Kristen: [00:55:13] Ooh.
Mary: [00:55:15] So eventually he was devolving enough to go after his children and victimize at home as well. Whereas before that had been outside of the house, only none of the jurors doubt that Albert fish is insane, but ultimately one later explains they felt that he should still be executed anyway.
Kristen: [00:55:33] Oh yeah.
Mary: [00:55:34] So I would have fit right in on this jury.
Kristen: [00:55:36] I'm not super pro death penalty. And I really want there to be some kind of rehabilitation effort. But at the same time, this is clearly a person who has gone so long. So far out on the water.
Mary: [00:55:49] It's beyond the pale.
Kristen: [00:55:52] Yeah, that's the thing.
Mary: [00:55:54] They found him to be sane and guilty and the judge ordered the death sentence. Fish [00:56:00] arrived at prison in March, 1935. He was executed on January 16th, 1936 in the electric chair at sing sing. He entered the chamber at 11:06 PM. And was pronounced dead. Three minutes later, he was buried in sing, sing prison. Cemetery. Fish is said to have helped the executioner position, the electrodes on his body. His last words were reportedly. I don't even know why I'm here.
Kristen: [00:56:23] Just a couple of guesses. Also. Can we talk about that F'ed up masochistic piece, where he was like, here, let me help you. With the electrodes. Side note. When I was a kid, I went to visit some family in Florida and we were going to go to, you know, the land of the Disney and the center of the Epcot.
Mary: [00:56:43] The Florida things.
Kristen: [00:56:45] Yes, the Florida things that you do when you're 14 and this was during Ted Bundy's his light up and they were showing people picketing on the news outside of the jail. And one of the signs that this lady was carrying, had an [00:57:00] electric chair, and it just said buckle up Ted.
Mary: [00:57:03] That footage of the people outside the prison, waiting for Ted Bundy to be executed, and the college students specifically it's so wild,
Kristen: [00:57:11] Almost as horrific as the crimes.
Mary: [00:57:13] Yeah. It's also just trolling, like a lot of those people. Yes. They felt strongly about what he did and him deserving to die. It becomes this like gross group think. According to one witness present, it took two jolts before Albert Fish died, creating the rumor that the electric chair was short-circuited by all the needles that fish had inserted into his body.
Kristen: [00:57:36] Oh, heavens.
Mary: [00:57:37] These rumors were later regarded widely as untrue, as fish reportedly died in the same fashion and timeframe as others who had been put to death in the electric chair at a meeting with reporters after the execution, Albert Fish's lawyer, James Dempsey reveals that he was in possession of his client's final statement. This amounted to several pages of handwritten notes that fish apparently [00:58:00] wrote in the hours just before his death, when pressed by journalists. To reveal the documents, contents Dempsey refused stating I will never show it to anyone. It was the most filthy string of obscenity that I have ever read.
Kristen: [00:58:14] Fish, always writing them letters.
Mary: [00:58:17] The known victims of Albert fish are Francis McDonnell aged eight, Billy Gaffney aged four Grace Budd, age 10. And there are also some suspected victims of Albert Fish that were not able to be confirmed. Their names are Emma Richardson, age five Yetta Abramowitz age 12, Robin Jane Liu, age six, Mary Ellen O'Connor age 16, Benjamin Collings, age 17.
Kristen: [00:58:45] Man. That's a lot of young lives.
Mary: [00:58:48] The children who survived, there were probably so many children that he victimized that were never found out about. It's awful. It's terrible. [00:59:00] Thank you for coming on to be somewhat traumatized with me, we're both pretty thick skinned, but this was still tough.
Kristen: [00:59:06] Wow. That was quite quite a tale. I'd known like a lot of it, but. You really dug the gory details out of his story. Can you imagine being those children playing in that room and whoops, we roughhouse too much and here are, Oh my God, what are these tools?
Mary: [00:59:25] You're like, Oh shit, I broke the bed. And then a bloody so-called implements of hell fallout.
Kristen: [00:59:32] And the recipe was particularly ghoulish. I didn't need that knowledge. Yeah. The world didn't need that.
Mary: [00:59:42] Just awful. There could not be enough content warnings for this case, truly.
Kristen: [00:59:48] Then the whole piece in the courtroom. Well, the pieces leading up to it wherein Fish is like, Oh, this is God talking to me. This is God talking to me, der der der.
And then, [01:00:00] well, obviously I kind of wanted to.
Mary: [01:00:02] He had to yadda yadda over his own desires and fetishes that conveniently overlapped with what God wanted.
Kristen: [01:00:10] That kind of hubris doesn't sit very well with me. Make your own choices, do what you have to do in your life and harm none, but like just deciding, but God is telling you to harm true innocents. None of these children are over the age of 18. None of them are able to give qualifiable consent. And then of course he's also mutilation happy. He's the epitome of a monster, the worst human monster. I think in recorded history.
Mary: [01:00:39] It's pretty bad. Yeah. So as you know, because you, listen, I have been trying to go out on a high note for the last couple of episodes.
What's something that made you happy this past week?
Don't laugh, but Singapore noodles. I'm actually, this is probably a really weird note after Albert Fish, but I really love Singapore [01:01:00] noodles and because I didn't order Chinese food for two weeks, I got, I got Singapore noodles tonight.
Yay!
It's an Americanized Asian dish. It does not exist in any country of origin. It's an awful lot of rice noodles, pork, eggs, shrimp, and chicken, and whatever veggies and an awful lot of Curry powder good time.
Sounds delicious!
My good news is that we hit 2000 streams, which was awesome. And I am putting together a little Valentine's day package for a friend's kids and that's exciting. We're going to go drop that off. I'm really excited. People are listening. I'm excited to keep doing it. I hope it's bringing people joy and. Get in touch with us. If you have suggestions or emails, thanks so much for sharing with friends. Let's keep that going. And , we'll see you next week.
Hi friends. If you like the [01:02:00] podcast, I would love if you would go ahead and leave me a five star rating and a review on Apple podcasts. It's the only place that I can actually get readings and get reviews and get ranked. Please check us out on it. Monsters walk with us all one word and I'd love. If you could send us an email and tell me where you're listening from, maybe suggested please email addresses, period, monsters period, actually mail.com.
Thanks so much. We'll see you next week.