Morbid - Episode 303: Albert Fish Part 2
Episode Date: March 3, 2022Congratulations, you’ve made it to part two which means your psyche is STRONG. Albert fish continues to be a wretched individual throughout part two. The gray man continues abducting and mu...rdering two more children, earning him a new name, The Boogyman. Luckily toward the end we’ll inch our way closer to an arrest but boy does it get more and more disturbing along the way. Deranged by Harold Shechter Confessions of a Cannibal by Robert Keller As always, thank you to our sponsors: HelloFresh: Get 16 free meals, plus three free gifts with code Morbid16 at hellofresh.com/morbid16 Everlane: Go to everlane.com/morbid and sign up for 10% off your first order ShipStation: Use our offer code, Morbid to get a 60 day free trial. American Home Shield: Go to AHS.com/Morbid now to save $50 Thirdlove: Right now you can get 20% off your first order at thirdlove.com/morbid See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Hey weirdos, I'm Alina, I'm Ash and this it morbid in here? Yeah, here we are with part two of Albert Fish,
and I hate to break it to everybody,
but this is going to be three parts.
There's a couple of reasons for that.
One, there's a lot of information,
and I don't want to just skimp over anything,
because those old, I'm telling you guys,
those old newspaper articles are like,
they can't stop, can like, I can't stop.
I can't stop, won't stop.
Like, I will sit there for hours and just,
I keep reading them to John and he's like, please stop.
Oh, right.
Like, I need you to stop reading these.
He's like, I'm all set with that thing too.
But then there's another part to this whole, like,
I need to spread it out a little bit.
As much as I don't want to live in Albert's fish's world
for more than two parts. Yeah.
I need to take breaks between finishing these parts.
I just need to mentally escape him for a day between.
That's very heavy, because you need to sleep at night
without thinking about Albert fish.
And I get, like, John has said it.
He's always like, you, with anything, and you know,
with anything that I do, I get
like consumed by it if I really am into it. So I just won't stop. And I'll sit there
and just keep reading articles and keep reading articles and keep reading articles and
John's like, will you just like do a crossword puzzle? So like just take your brain away
for this for a minute because I keep being like, you don't understand.
And then this happened and you know that he did this?
And did you know that like no one talks about this?
And he said, I didn't know that and I don't need to.
He's like, there's a reason no one talks about this.
Like, please stop talking to me about this.
And he's like, actually, it's really rude of you
to continue to bring this to my information.
There really is.
So it's coming, you're going to get the third part this week as well.
But I just need a quick little day break between two.
Just stop talking about it.
But this is a wild one.
And it's funny because a lot of people were like,
yeah, I never thought you guys would cover this one.
Same.
So I think this is swell.
I knew that I was never gonna cover this.
I knew he was there and he was one of the first ones there that I read about in my foray
into true crime.
I feel like he's always one of the first, which is crazy, because it's so rough, because
it's a real dive into.
And you stay with true crime, too.
Like, that's like one of the first things you hear about
and you stay, you stick around.
Yeah, that says a lot about all of us.
But I figure this, honestly,
I also just think these poor kids,
their stories need to be told for sure.
Absolutely.
This is the last child one I will do for a while.
I do have another, unfortunately, another child one that like is on the schedule somewhere,
but I'm gonna go ahead and bump that one a little bit. Just so I can stay.
The kid ones are hard and we try to avoid the mental cost.
Yeah, honestly, I have said before I would love to not do any of them, but sometimes it's just
compelled me to. So when I feel compelled to, I do it, but it's not great.
But yeah, here we are.
Especially having kids.
Yeah, it's hard.
That must be different.
It's really hard.
But yeah, here we are with part two.
In today, we're going to be talking about two more kid
nappings that he did.
Probably the most famous one, the Grace Bud one.
Mm-hmm.
But we're not even getting to his arrest yet in this song.
Awesome.
Because there's so much.
A whole part of him just being horrible.
I'm going to try to break this up a bit by reading some old newspaper articles.
Okay.
Just little snippets because man, some of them were flowery and I was like,
guys, can you maybe save the slam poetry for like an article that's not about a four-year-old
V&Naps?
Probably like a good practice to go by.
Like, it sounds great, but like not a great subject matter should be super super flowery
was.
What it's like wasn't everybody getting the newspapers back then, like I don't think
these parents need to get that newspaper
had my-
Exactly.
And here, some of the stuff I was like, I take it down a notch.
Yeah.
They get paid by the word.
So it gets very flowery.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds great, but bad subject matter.
So I think we're just going to get right into it because again,
we just got to try to do this.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
That's like jumping into a cold pool.
We just got to do it together, all right?
You never joined me.
I don't.
You don't jump into a pool ever.
I do not, but now I'm going to.
This is not a pool.
This is the Albert Fish Pool.
Oh, fish pool.
See what I did there, water.
Oh, yeah.
So, what we left to left you guys,
we had talked about the kidnap and torture and murder
of Francis McDonnell.
He was only eight years old.
And what we knew was that a man who they referred to
as the Gray Man had gotten away with this.
Which is so understandable looking at Albert Fish.
You're like, yeah, he's the Gray Man.
That's a Gray Man right there.
What's even wilder about Albert Fish, you're like, yeah. Yeah, he is the great man. That's a great man right there. What's even wilder about Albert Fish is that he's like,
like, think about ready everybody,
I'm sorry to do this to you,
but think about Albert Fish for a second.
Picture him in your head.
No, he's a thousand, right?
Yeah, at all times.
At all times since birth, he's been a thousand years old.
Truly.
He was only like in his fifties.
What?
When this was happening.
So when everybody was sitting here,
being like, it was an old man,
and he was like super grizzled and super frail,
and he had gray hair and like, he was fifty.
He was like in his fifties.
But he was just such an old fiftie
because like when you're a demon,
you age so quickly.
I was literally just gonna say like,
think about what the inside of that man looked like,
psyche and all.
His inside was just on the outside, but it was wild to me.
I was like, I thought he was literally 120.
Yeah, you've been told me that he was like 92 and all of this happened and I'd be like,
yeah, so crazy, huh?
Yeah, absolutely.
Now, the gray man got away with this for years.
They did not catch him for the murder of Francis McDonald until long time later. That's so sad for the family.
Oh yeah.
And his mom, like I can't imagine.
Exactly.
So, actually, he ended up striking again in 1927 in Brooklyn.
And remember, Francis MacDonald was in Staten Island.
Okay.
Now, the next time the Grameon Struck was February 11, 1927, to be exact.
Now, let me preface this particular one.
There is a letter involved with this one,
not in this part, in the third part.
I am not going to read that letter.
Yeah.
I'm just gonna put that out there.
I physically cannot read that letter out loud.
I frankly wish I had never read it in any capacity
and I don't recommend you read it either.
Okay.
To me, it is worse than the Grace Bud letter.
Oh wow.
To me, or at least on the same playing field.
I don't know why it isn't talked about more.
Like I feel like the Grace Bud letter gets a lot,
which, it's a horrific letter.
Yeah.
But this one, and maybe,
I don't even know if I should call it a letter,
but like a confession, I should say.
I'm not going to read it.
It's just, it's horrific, it's disgusting,
and it's written by a man who wanted to fuck with people
by writing it.
Of course.
I will tell you in less graphic terms
what supposedly happened to this next victim.
Okay.
I will tell you that in part three.
But I literally hope with everything I have happened to this next victim. Okay. I will tell you that in part three.
But I literally hope with everything I have,
and on every fallen star that he just lied and exaggerated.
I know.
What he said happened to Billy Gaffney.
I hope he wrote the letter for his own sick enjoyment.
I honestly do.
It's entirely possible that he did,
because he did like writing shit, like shocking shit,
and he like to send vulgar letters
just to get reaction.
Well, that's how he started.
Exactly.
And the details seem very like a big escalation to me.
I mean, he really, he brutalized Francis MacDonald, for sure.
He sexually assaulted him.
I mean, it seems like he like raped him.
Yeah. He beat him and he killed him. I mean, it seems like he raped him. He beat him and he killed him.
But when you read what he says he did to Billy Gaffney,
I don't know how he makes the jump to that.
But I don't, Albert Fish is an absolute monster.
And it's also just like, I don't answer,
but how does it get worse than what happened
to little Francis?
Unfortunately, it does
but Albert Fish is just an evil fuck and nothing is really off the table here
So I fully believe he is capable of what he said he did to Billy Gaffney. Yeah, but again
I'm just really hoping for my own psyche and for that poor child that it didn't have that he exaggerated
Yeah, that's really all I can say. And trust me, I will explain
in as little detail as I possible can in part three,
but here we go.
With that said, let's begrudgingly go to February 11th, 1927
in Brooklyn.
Okay.
Four year olds, four year olds, Billy Gaffney,
who was born on Christmas day.
Oh, and I've seen pictures of him already. He's adorable. He's adorable.
He was playing with his friend who was three-year-old Billy beaten. So it was two
billies just playing together. Well, billies. They were in the hallways of their
tenement house apartment building, which they often just played in the hallways.
Parents were in their apartments doing various things and you know, they had other kids and they
were just like doing stuff. Remember shit was different back then. Billy had received a bike for Christmas and he was writing
it around the hallways and he had done that often since he received it. Like how cute is that?
A little boy named Johnny McKniff who was actually 12 years old. He was kind of just watching them play.
Yeah. He was actually at home alone with his infant sister
and he was watching his infant sister.
He was babysitting.
Okay.
But she was napping in her crib at the time.
So he was just being a good kid
and kind of like playing with the little boys a little while.
And like just listening for his sister,
you know, just doing double duty here.
And at one point, the baby did wake up.
So Johnny said he had gone back into the apartment
and he was just rocking her to sleep.
What a cute little toy.
I know.
What a little toy.
Johnny.
Now he did.
He got her back to sleep.
And when he came back out, both little billies were gone.
And he was immediately worried.
So he began to look around thinking
maybe they just wandered away a little bit.
And remember, he was not babysitting them. He was not tasked with babysitting them. He was babysitting his own little
sister, but he was just being a good kid, just paying attention to them. So he's like,
you know, this four and three year olds were here, and now they're not. So he went to
Billy Beaton's father, and who was just coming out of his apartment door at the time. And Billy Beaton's father saw Johnny and he said he looked like very stressed out and like anxious. So he's like
is something wrong. Right. Right. Going on. And he was like, yeah, I I saw Billy and Billy here,
but like they're not here anymore. So immediately they went running around the apartment looking for them.
They checked the Gaffney's apartment as well. They were not there.
They went outside around the building.
They were screaming their names, getting no response.
I can't even imagine the panic.
Like we've like a quote unquote lost them before
and they're like somewhere over there.
It literally.
But it's like, I can't imagine actually running outside
and looking for them.
Oh, I can't.
To that point, I can't even imagine.
It's even just like in the house, if I'm like, if they don't answer me right away, I'm like,
right.
Exactly.
I freak out.
I can't imagine the panic, you know, in that moment.
Or like, they'll like run to their room and not tell us and then not answer and you're
like, oh, they're gone forever.
Yes.
And it's like, meanwhile, where the hell would they have gone?
Right.
Exactly.
But they ran up to the top floor as a last resort.
And Billy and Mr. Beaton saw a little boy standing
by the ladder that leads to the roof.
It was his Billy.
Okay, so he ran to him.
Obviously he's like, oh my God.
It's like so relieved.
And he said, where the hell have you been?
And he said, you know, we went up on the roof
and we saw some really cool stuff from up there.
We saw like the whole city.
We really don't do that again.
He's like four year olds.
Oh my god, you are three. Like his child is three.
Oh god.
And he's so he's like so relieved to see him.
And then all of a sudden he's like,
where's Billy Gathering?
Billy.
And Mr. Beaton was like, where is he?
And without even a second thought,
Billy, Billy, Billy Beaton, the three year old said,
the bogeyman took him.
Oh, that's what he said.
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Oh, I have goosebumps running up and down my entire fucking body right now. Now let that sink in for a second because this response was written off for a while by authorities
because they said this is a three-year-old, that's something a three-year-old would say.
But he was telling the fucking truth,
abs of fucking whoo.
That was not what something a three-year-old,
that was just him saying exactly what happened.
The Boogie Man did take Billy.
Do you think that Albert Fish
like called himself the Boogie Man, too?
He could have. He could have.
Yeah, but he looks like a Boogie Man.
If I saw that man taking a little boy away when I was a little
I'd be like that was the fucking boogie man. Yep like that is for sure and he was giving an honest answer
He was telling his father exactly what it happened to his friend and it is so chilling. I can barely handle it
Yeah, that's terrifying so immediately police were called and a massive search was underway
Lead detective on the case was Sergeant Elmer Joseph and they were mainly focused on the idea of him wandering
away and not him being kidnapped. Kidnapping was huge back then because it was
so under here. But even though Little Billy Beaton said over and over that the
boogeyman took his friend, they were thinking this is an extraordinarily poor
apartment building.
None of these people have money. Right.
So why the hell would somebody steal a kid without any hope of getting ransom money?
Oh, because back then, that's what it was all about.
Why the fuck would you steal a kid? That doesn't make an extent twisted.
They even went as far to say that someone who would just steal a child
without that money motive would have to be deranged.
Correct.
And it was something that they were like,
what, like you don't have to be?
There are no deranged people.
Inspector John J Sullivan of the Missing Persons Bureau
said, quote, there is no reason why anyone
would want to take this child.
The kidnapper would have to be deranged.
And this was the thing back then.
It didn't make sense to any of them
that you would want a kidnap a kid without getting paid for it.
Right.
Because kidnap it was the depression time.
Kidnapping was huge.
It was a big problem because people were doing it
out of desperation.
Well, that's so hard.
They were doing it to mostly people
they could get money from them.
But they were like, this doesn't make sense.
And even then the detective said,
this guy had to be a sick fuck.
And they were right.
It's like, why not just explore that avenue then?
I think his back then it was so,
this wasn't something they think of.
Like this wasn't,
this wasn't like let's explore that avenue.
It was like no human beings don't do that.
You don't steal someone's kid just to torture them.
That's not something you do.
So it was not just brains were not connecting that. And they
were right on the money and they didn't even know it. Even worse, Billy Beaton said the
boogeyman was a thin older man with a gray mustache. They never connected this to the thin
old man with a gray mustache who had last been seen with Francis McDonald only three years
prior, in nearby Staten Island. I was gonna say that's not too far.
They just didn't connect the two.
All they found upon searching the building
was Billy's little bike.
Oh, thinking he had probably come into some dangerous situations
if he was wandering off, they searched.
There were warehouses around, factories around,
like a abandoned apartment buildings.
They looked all over there.
They even dredged the local Guawannis canal and they found nothing.
A lot of people really clung to the idea that they were like, he definitely fell in that canal.
They were like, he wandered away, he fell in the canal.
It was really nearby.
It was like pretty deep in parts, it was muddy, it was gross.
It was just like, if you fell in there, you weren't going to find them.
But even one year after his disappearance, there were still people that were like, he's
definitely in that canal. Wow. But according to deranged the book that I'll link again in this part,
over 350 policemen, hundreds of volunteer citizens, and boy scouts again. Stop. I'm done. We're
searching over the next few weeks and they came up with
nothing. Oh, man. Now Billy's mother was understandably devastated. This is her
four year old boy. Yeah. Her health was starting to fade. This was starting to fade.
Now she stopped eating. She stopped sleeping. Yeah. I can imagine. They said she just
wept. Just that's her four year old baby. That's, I don't know they said she just wept. Just all day. That's her four year old baby.
That's, I don't know how you do anything else.
And in fact, two years later,
she ended up being admitted briefly
to Bellevue Hospital with severe chest pains
and a tear duct infection
because she had stopped sleeping
and was crying so much
that her tear ducts became infected.
Oh my God.
That's how much, that's how like incredibly,
I've never even heard of that before.
She was released and she was okay after,
but she never lost hope.
That her boy was going back so heartbreaking.
Now over the weeks, the humanity of all the volunteers
who were spending countless hours searching for the boy,
they did, that they didn't even know.
Most of them.
Yeah.
Was definitely this humanity was countered
with the worst of humanity
that comes out in these situations.
Of course.
The Gaffney's immediately began getting letters
from future internet trolls
because that's what these people are.
I've realized that that's how it evolved.
Yeah.
The people who now write emails
are anonymously tweet at you some shitty thing
Those were the ones that were sending letters through the mail to like yeah to like vulnerable people or just like to piss people off
Yeah, it's a vibe like back then you had to do it through the like postal service
So it had to be post-marked and like you could get caught right as they mostly did
But now you can do it anonymously, so it's like and it's what a fun evolution
We've gone through.
Everybody is still got an IP address,
not their fuckers.
So these future and internet trolls,
they would say horrible things,
like they knew where Billy was or that they had Billy.
Oh my God.
On February 16th, only a few days after he went missing,
they got one that according to Duranj said this,
wait, do not appear too anxious.
Your son is in safe hands.
Oh, God.
We fought for him, but I got him now.
We will get the beaten boy for Billy to play with.
So now they're threatening to kidnap.
Oh, my God.
For Billy is lonesome.
Do not show this letter to anyone if you know what is good for you.
Again, I say that Billy is safe
and that we are experimenting on him.
What the fuck? Yep. Another one said, if you don't stop searching for your boy, we will kill him.
One said that they had killed Billy and stuffed him in a cardboard box and put that box
into an abandoned apartment in Brooklyn. They gave an exact address. All of it was bullshit.
What is wrong with people? There was another one that had a hand drawn picture of a place in the Bronx River that
they said they buried a Billy.
It said, I didn't mean to kill him, God forgive me.
People are so, it says so much about these people and they're like, how sick they are.
Can you, I, it's really sad that there's always been trolls.
These kinds of people.
Yeah.
Yeah, that trolls have always existed
in some way, shape or form.
Courage trolls, internet trolls,
internet trolls.
Into blood or trolls.
Into pet trolls.
And to put it down, leaving parents is like, wow.
I don't know how you get worse than that.
That's, I was gonna say that's lower than that.
Yeah, that really is the lowest form.
And what is worse is that the people had to,
the pollute with the people.
The police had to follow up on all these leads.
Yeah, of course.
They kept having to waste time on these assholes and what they were saying.
So they were running around to different places, mentioned in these letters,
wasting time, wasting resources. And there was a special place and
fucking hell for those kind of people. I'm telling it, like it was so infuriating to read all this.
Of course. And again, now they just do it behind a keyboard.
But people were
reporting sightings of Billy thinking they saw him with this person, with that person, hearing
rumors that he was with this person, with that person, that a mother who lost her children
had to kidnap him and was just like wanted her own baby. Like all this hope was being given to
the family that like he's being cared for by somebody who just like, you know, some bereaved mother or something.
Right.
But all of them turned up nothing.
Then a train conductor by the name of Anthony Barone came forward and he said he had seen
something strange the day Billy went missing, but he didn't know if it was really something
to report until now when he heard that he had gone missing.
Okay.
Two blocks from the Gaffney apartment.
He had picked up an older man with a gray mustache who had a young boy with him
matching Billy's description. The boy cried the entire ride.
Oh! And the man was trying to calm him down, but he wouldn't calm down.
Oh, that's so sad. When he got off, the older man asked Anthony Barone for some directions
about a ferry to Staten Island. Oh God.
Now, Francis McDonald was Staten Island.
Yeah.
He told him how he gave him the directions, and he said the boy was still crying and upset,
and the man was very stressed and very fidgety.
He was moving his skeletal hands in weird ways.
Just like before.
Just like before.
Mrs. McDonald said it stuck with her how he moved his hands.
Yeah.
They also said there was also a second witness to this.
A man named Joseph Mean who also worked on the train, he confirmed this entire account
in the description of the boogeyman.
Now as in the case of Francis McDonald the press was really good at
enraging the citizens of the community about this.
Oh god. on all the press was really good at enraging the citizens of the community about this. Oh, God.
They were now attacking just older men who were anywhere near children.
Grandfathers were being assaulted, like it was me.
Oh, oh.
But among all of that, they were actually able to do a couple of, like, pretty good deeds
with the misplaced rage.
Two pedophiles and two separate areas on two separate days, Louis Sandman and Samuel Bimberg were actually literally
luring potential victims into alleyways,
and mobs ascended upon them.
Amazing.
They beat the shit out of them,
and they were both arrested by police.
Good.
So positive things came out of it, I guess.
Now, apparently the police department had 15 officers
working like consistently on this case.
And they were not just officers, but the absolute best officers the department had.
They were really focusing on this.
They worked tirelessly to find Billy Gaffney.
The Times Union newspaper ran an article about Billy's disappearance two months after he
had gone missing.
It is the most overdone article I have ever read.
And I have to share an excerpt with you
because this writer was just too much.
Just going for it.
Going for goals.
Like they would just go,
I don't know what they were going in a good way.
To share it.
To share it.
This is what it says.
One moment, the child was romping happily
with his small companion in the quarters
of the apartment at 9915 street where his parents live.
In a trice he was gone, vanished as completely as the flame of an extinguished candle.
And apparently the void which swallowed Billy Gaffney is as dark and impenetrable as that which swallows the leaping tongue of flame from the wax paper.
That really is like poetry, but like the weirdest poetry and like the most
unnecessary poetry on planet Earth.
What?
I was like gone like the extinguished flame.
It's like, well, he's not a birthday candle.
He's a child.
Like what?
Like vanished as completely as the flame
of an extinguished candle.
KK.
All right.
He's a whole last person.
Oh, and it gets worse because obviously when these things
happened, I mean, it happens now.
But even back then, especially, they
would turn to like spiritualism and psychics and hypnotists.
And they do it now still.
Oh, yeah.
Anything.
When it gets desperate, it gets desperate, especially
for a child.
And they started doing things, you know,
unorthodox methods like hypnotism. And they started doing things, you know, unorthodox method methods
like hypnotism. And this article speaks about that. And it says, quote, burly detectives have been
thrown into trances. Their muscles jerked rigid, eyes staring, and their minds supposedly projected
into a realm of shades and shadows, where truths and half truths are jumbled, in a strange chaos of unreality.
Here in this nether-vahala behind the somber sticks, this borderland where the quick and
the dead comingle in a strange fraternity of distorted grotescaries, the question has been
asked, where is Billy Gaffney?
And only the silence of shades have answered.
You're no.
No, you have to go.
You have to go.
You have to go.
They hypnotize the couple of the detectives
and shake out weird.
Just shake away.
Just shake away.
Just shake away.
Good get out of here.
We don't need you right now.
I can fix it.
They hypnotize some of these big,
burly detectives and shake out weird.
But they have not answered the question
of where is Billy Gafty, period.
The end post.
Like damn, you earned that by line, I guess.
Too much.
Way, way too much.
Like, so extra.
It's wild.
Now, years passed, and there was no real tips.
Oh, years.
Psychics got involved, like I said,
and they sent police on more wild goose chases,
but nothing substantial.
I mean, and there was several times where another,
because reading this, you're like,
okay, is everyone all right?
I guess it's like today,
where they kept finding dead kids around
and thinking it was Billy, and it's like,
oh no, this is just another kid that was murdered by his mom.
She's murder, murdered by someone else horrible.
But it was like, every time they would find one,
that matched his description, they would be like, that's Billy, and then they go and look, and they was like every time they would find one that matched his description
they would be like, that's Billy.
And then they go and look and they were like, that's not Billy.
Oh my God.
So they kept getting this like, of just like, how do you stress?
Like, stress relief, stress relief.
And his poor parents were understandably devastated and luckily Mrs. Gaffney, she did get released from Bellevue, like I said,
but she kept his room set up and she put out place settings for him. She said she had to continue
to hope. Yeah, and actually I found an article that I'm just going to read you really quick. This
article is from the Times Union, and it's entitled Lads X-Mat, Weighted Him in Vane.
And it says Little Billy Gaffney's mother still hopes.
At 9915th Street yesterday, five places were set
at the Christmas dinner table, but only four were occupied.
The vacant chair was for Little Billy Gaffney,
whose six birthday anniversary was yesterday,
but who has been missing from his homes since February 1927.
Billy's place was set because his mother, Mrs. Edmund Gaffney, feels assured he will
be restored to them when she cannot say.
At the table where Mr. Mrs. Gaffney and their two children, Irene Nine and Andrew Four.
Billy was born on Christmas Day, Mrs. Gaffney said.
It will be two years next February since he went away.
And it has been a long two years to me.
It seems as though the police and newspapers have given up hope, but I have not.
I keep thinking Billy is alive and will come back to me someday.
That's gut wrenching. And she maintained that.
That reminds me of the Daniel Morcombe case.
His mom put a place setting out every single like birthday,
Christmas, holiday.
Oh, that hurts my, but I, and I get it.
Absolutely.
I would do the same thing.
It's, you can't forget about them.
Yeah, because then you feel like you're just shutting the door on.
And you're just accepting it.
And you do.
Right.
Yeah, you need hope.
Right.
Now, I found an article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle that was very interesting too, and I
like started yelling about this the other night and John was like, can you stop?
And he tried to like devil's advocate a little bit for me and I was like, stop it now.
Because like this is crazy and he was like, I'm sorry.
So this article said that Anthony Barone, the train conductor, that saw the old man with a little boy crying.
He actually quit his job and joined the detectives
in the case, which I did find in the book to range
in a couple of other places too, so confirmed.
But what was crazy to me is in this article,
it says they were able to find that man that he saw in the train.
And he had been living near the Gaffnis, but when questioned, he had a pretty okay alibi.
Who the fuck was that?
Was that Albert Fish?
Well, right.
I have never heard this that they talked to this man.
Cause Albert Fish later said that was me on that train.
What?
He admits later that that was him.
So do you think that somebody else just confessed
or do you think it was him?
I think it was him.
Like I'm like that.
I think because this guy didn't confess,
they just found him and the conductor was like,
that's the guy.
And he happened to be living in New York,
near the Gapneys, which Albert Fish was.
Oh, dude.
And then how many times that happens all the time?
Like, think about Edmund Kemper,
had a literal body in the trunk
while talking to police on multiple occasions.
It's just so crazy to me, though, that I've never read this,
that they talked to him, and this guy identified him
as the guy on the train, and that he had some kind of alibi.
No, because I've never heard that,
with this case being told either, that's crazy.
It's amazing.
It's in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.
It blew my mind.
That was crazy. What? There's a few Eagle. It blew my mind. That's crazy.
What?
There's a few things that you've mentioned though that I did not know about this case.
Old newspapers, man.
Like, it's crazy.
I will scream it from the rooftops, but there was even a time where a boy who resembled
and was the age of Billy was seen with an older couple on a ranch in Montana.
What?
And, like, I guess a pharmacist had seen them come in and she was like, they didn't have a ranch in Montana. What? And I guess a pharmacist had seen them come in,
and she was like, they didn't have a kid before this.
So all of a sudden, they show up with this four-year-old
who looks exactly like Billy Gaffney.
So weird.
And she said that the kid, they're in Montana,
and she said the kid sounded like he was from Boston
or somewhere east, right?
And she was like, so she's like, I thought it was.
So she called the police.
And they did a big thing where they, you know,
they couldn't get up there
because of the snow at the time.
They ended up finally getting the gaffneys up there
or at least Mr. Gaffney ended up going there.
And met this couple and this child.
And he looked at him and said, no, he's not my Billy.
Oh, you know, like hearing that,
just like he must have been going there being like,
this is my baby.
The whole way there.
I'm gonna get my Billy back.
Like these people have been taking care of him,
maybe they didn't know.
No, that makes me want to cry.
And no.
And it ended up being that these, this couple
had actually adopted this child
from some woman in New York.
Oh, wow.
And they said that it wasn't even an official adoption.
She just had like handed this kid over to them and was like, I don't want him. Oh wow. And they said that it wasn't even an official adoption. She just had like
handed this kid over to them and was like, I don't want them. Oh. And these older couple was like,
well, we'll take him. Yeah, like, and they just love that. They were just raising him because they,
and they said like, they've taken quite a liking to the boy. You're like, oh, that's good. So it
was just bad timing. And they said, and Mr. Gaffney said he did look like Billy, but he's not Billy. Oh, so years and years passed with several leads that were just dead ends.
No trace of Billy was found.
Albert Fish, meanwhile, had struck again.
One year after Billy went missing, while his family toiled for years over their little boy,
he was already taking someone else's child from them.
So at this point, he was still
using the classified ads to find potential victims and also just to be gross. In 1927, is when he
came across an ad placed by Edward Bud. It said, quote, young man, 18, wishes position in country,
Edward Bud, 406 West 15th Street.
This was common, like people would put ads in the paper,
like especially young men being like,
I can work on your farm.
Yeah.
The 18 year old boy had placed the ad looking to work
in the country somewhere.
Because again, these are like city kids.
And back then, especially like city kids,
just did not, they didn't see sun,
they didn't see anything, they were just like in a concrete,
you know, block all the time.
So that's why they wanted.
So they all wanted to get out to the country.
And he was also doing this to provide extra help
for his family.
Oh, he's just like a good kid.
His parents were Albert and Delia Bud.
We heard so many Albert's.
Yeah, because Francis' little brother
was named Albert, it's strange. And his dad. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
We are very weird. And there's a lot of Charles' that come up too. That makes sense. I mean it all makes sense. Yeah.
But Alberts are like everywhere. I'm like Jesus. I know. I don't know what's whenever I'm at an Albert. And what's weird is like, that's not even his name. His name is Hamilton.
So if that's was Hamilton is so wild to me, I never knew that. I know, I almost feel like I should just start calling him
Hamilton.
No, because he hated that.
Oh, well then.
He hated me called him an ex.
So he was like, I don't want to call him an ex.
But then I also think of like Lin Manuel Miranda,
like a really good music.
Well, that's what I need.
That thumbs me up.
That's why I don't want to do it.
Yeah.
So his parents, Edwards parents, were Albert and Delia Bud,
and they had five children.
Edward, Albert, Jr. Beatrice, George, and Grace.
They were all living in an apartment in New York,
and they had fallen on some pretty tough times.
Oh.
The father Albert Bud was like a hard worker.
He was like an insurance guy.
Honestly, like wasn't,
there was a lot of people who didn't have any work
at that point, so like at least he he was able to like provide for his family,
but trying to do something.
Definitely tough.
And they were all living in a very small area together.
So this ad ran in the New York World Paper on May 27, 1928.
On May 28th, the day after it ran, a man showed up at the Budapartment.
Oh, I bet he did.
When Deelia Bud answered
the door to Albert Fish, he introduced himself as Frank Howard. Okay. Frank Howard had
read the ad put in the paper by Edward, and he was ready to inquire about his services
on his farm. Yeah. He told Edward that he had a huge farm in Long Island, like a tons
of animals, it was beautiful. He had a bunch of people working for him,
but he had just lost a couple of farm hands.
And he played the pity card
by telling this family that his wife
had left him alone with his six kids,
which like, is true.
I was just curious.
But like, also, like, no one gives a shit about you, man.
Yeah, you're terrible.
Now, he offered Edward a great paying job on this farm.
I'm sure he fucking did.
And he even agreed to take on his friend Will,
or his friend Willie as a farm hymn too,
because his friend Willie was there,
and I guess his friend was like, I don't want that too.
So he was like, sure, you know what, I can take you too.
And in his head, he's like, cool, I'll kill the most.
Oh, God.
That was his plan, like, this whole thing.
Mm-hmm.
He left saying he would come back Saturday to get them
and bring them out to the farm,
and the family was ecstatic.
Thinking this was Edward's big thing,
he was gonna get money, he was gonna get to be outdoors.
It was happy for everybody.
And Frank Howard had charmed the fuck out of them.
Like he came dressed to the nine,
he looked like he had money,
he was chatting away with them, just being real sweet.
Isn't it so scary how like deranged mother fuckers
can just put on, just turn it off, like put their face on,
and they're like, oh, I'm just a regular old guy.
Oh, and you can see he does it to doctors too.
He's one of those.
It's so scary.
Like an Edmund Kemper kind of guy.
He ended up pushing the day that he was going to pick them up
from Saturday
to Sunday. Nobody's really sure why, but something came up. I'm assuming it had something
to do with the fact that he was only planning for one, and he ended up agreeing to two,
so maybe he had to change his plans a little bit. Now, he sent a handwritten note via a
messenger, via like Western Union messenger, to say that he had
to change the day from Saturday to Sunday. That's important. Remember that handwritten
note. But Sunday, June 3rd, 1928, he bought a pailful of like, like, pretty cheeses and
strawberries to the bud residents when he showed up. On his way to pick up their son and you know, bring him somewhere to torture and murder
him, he had also left a package with a store owner on the way to their house because he couldn't
carry everything in the store and it was like you can leave it behind the counter.
It's cool.
Wow, a nice person.
Imagine that.
Yeah, and the package contained his implements of hell.
Raptinny.
Raptin a package.
My goodness.
And this guy had no idea.
He just put it behind the counter and was like,
you can pick it up after.
Imagine looking back on that leader.
Yeah.
Now the buds were entranced again.
By this kind, seemingly well-off older gentleman,
he brought them strawberries and cheeses,
so sweet, so nice.
They invited him to stay for lunch.
He sat in eight lunch with them. These parents eight lunch with them. Oh, yeah, eight with them while he's sitting there waiting to take their child away so he can torture and eat him.
Oh, my God.
And he's telling them about his fictional farm and what he would do, you know, what he would be having their child do for him there. And at one point, he mentioned how sorry
he was for having to push the day to Sunday.
Because he was like, I'm sorry that I told you Saturday.
Like you must have been psyched
and then I kind of like fucked with you.
Yeah.
And then he was like, hey, that note that I sent,
does Edward still have it or did he throw it away?
Uh-huh.
And I guess Albert Bud was like,
I don't know. I think it was like right up on the mantle there.
I think he just like stuck it there.
Right.
Albert got up, Albert Fish.
Yeah.
God up, grabbed the note and put it in his pocket.
Dude.
And Albert Bud said, he thought it was weird, but in like a very like innocuous way, he was just like, why would you, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, why would you, what, what, like, you're not really going to say much about it. But he said afterwards after everything, he said that one move keeps
ringing in his ear is like, holy shit. Like you showing me who he was.
Yeah. I couldn't even see it. And he was making sure to a race,
any part of him in that apartment. Now, during lunch, 10 year old
grace bud came home. No, she was playing what she had been playing with friends
after church.
And she was dressed in what she had worn to church
that morning, a white silk dress, white shoes and white tites
and pearls around her neck.
Oh, a little cutie.
As soon as Albert Fish saw her,
she was his victim and not her brother.
No.
He immediately changed his mind.
Nope, that's it.
That's so interesting that he went from killing young boys
and mostly targeting boys to molest and like, you delete, sorry, I couldn't think of
the word. And then all of a sudden just changed. Yeah, he just switched. It's a very odd,
very odd switch. Yeah. And the fact that it happened in spontaneously.
Inley. Like, no planning involved is really wild. And the fact that he, like, gave up the idea of killing and torturing two people for
just one person.
And that, as we'll see, he really thinks on his feet here with how to get her out of
the house.
Because obviously he wasn't going to be able to, this changes everything.
Of course.
He had just promised to take their son in his friend away.
Well, that was like, never mind. Yes, so what? Okay. So what? This changes everything. Of course. He had just promised to take their son in his friend away.
Well, that was like, never mind.
Yes, so what, okay.
So what?
So he is, he immediately started talking to Grace.
He was asking her questions about school and her interests
and her friends acting like an old grandpa
and saying, you remind me of my grandchild.
Oh, I wanna discuss that.
At one point, she sat on his lap
and he gave her some coins to buy candy for her and her sister
Beatrice so she ran off to buy candy. He then just just pivoted. He said he told that word,
you know what? I'll be bringing you guys to the farm later because I have to run really quick
to my sisters. My sister's having a birthday party for my niece, and she sent me
word of this last night. And he's like, and since I was going to be in the area anyways,
I was going to be stopping there. That's why I'm so dressed up because I wanted to show
up in nice clothes. And he said, wow, you know what? This is going to be a kids party.
With lots of fun things to do, would Grace want to join me? My niece is her age.
It's her 10th birthday party. Oh my god. And they were like, um, okay, like what? And I guess the
I think Deelia Bud was a little like, uh, but was like, do I say no? Like this is my son's
employer now? Yeah. He talked about having six kids.
Like, I don't wanna offend him,
but like, I don't know.
And this is weird and it's 1920 something
and shit's weird now.
And like, I don't know, but I guess Mr. Bud was like,
you know what, like let the kid have fun.
Oh, she never gets out.
Yeah.
Just let her have fun.
Like what?
He's literally the great fucking depression.
Let her go to this Rich man's nieces birthday.
Exactly.
Yelp.
And when they didn't know with that,
so he said, one of the masks, where is it?
Obviously.
And he said, oh, it's 137th Street in Columbus Avenue.
That's where it's going to be.
So they were like, cool.
That works.
Like, that's a thing.
What they didn't realize because like,
they never really ventured out much.
Is that Columbus Avenue ended at a hundred and tenth street.
He just gave them a complete bullshit address.
That didn't exist.
And imagine if they had actually known that too.
They would have been like, get the fuck out of my house.
Like that would have been the first thing,
but they didn't know.
Oh, I wouldn't know either.
I don't even know what street is like next to mine.
Exactly, and it's like, I'm so bad at that shit.
All they were used to doing was like the dad went to work.
The mom was taking care of him.
They went to church.
They didn't go places outside of their little bubble.
Right.
Now, she left with Frank Howard,
wearing her Sunday best,
a coat with fur collar and trim,
like folk collar and trim,
with a rose on it, and a gray hat with blue ribbon.
Oh, stop.
They left together, and on the way, he picked up that package,
his implements of hell, and they walked down the street together.
And Delia Bud went outside the door and waved and watched her child walk away with this man.
No, no, no.
Grace did not return home that night.
Her parents immediately
panicked. They reported her missing right away and the search was on immediately. Neighbors were
interviewed. Police went to where the farm was supposedly located. It didn't exist. They went
and talked to everybody in that area. They immediately tried to trace that telegram that he sent,
the one that he had put in his pocket upon his return to their home.
Albert Bud made sure he told the police about it.
Or excuse me, yeah, Albert Bud made sure he told the police about it.
And he was right to because he was like something,
can you trace that?
That was weird.
Like he took the original, but there's got to be a copy when it was sent.
Right.
And they were able to trace it as coming from the Western Union office at Third Avenue in
130, 103rd Street in Manhattan.
Okay.
They were also able to track down where he bought the cheese and strawberries from on his
way there.
It was really impressive.
It really was.
They did a good job.
Yeah.
And they also, because what he had said to them was that that cheese and strawberry was from
his farm.
Right.
They told them that they tracked them down to on the way to their house.
So they said that it seemed to them that he was pretty local because he kind of knew
where to buy these things.
And it wasn't like, right, they were weird things to buy.
They got the same treatment, unfortunately, as the Gaffney's, the Buds did, the horrific
fake letters immediately saying all manner of horrible things
about their missing child.
One said, my dear Mr. and Mrs. Bud,
your child is going to a funeral.
I still got her, Howard.
Oh my God.
Interestingly, and this is where I hadn't heard this either.
Grace had walked by some friends with Albert Fish
as he led her away from her home and family.
These kids were Loretta, Jimmy, George, and Philip.
They all said that when they saw,
when she walked by them with this man, they saw her.
I think they interacted with her for a second.
Yeah.
And when they got to the corner,
all four of them said they saw another waiting person.
And they said that they saw this on the corner.
Grace had gotten into a car there with him.
It was a blue car with yellow Pennsylvania license plates.
Huh.
A teenage girl Margaret Day, who was working in the area,
at the same time said she also saw this.
I've never heard this before.
I haven't either. And to this day, I don't know what that was.
And that's like huge if he was working
with another person.
Yeah.
There's a lot of things about Albert Fish
that I question.
A lot of it is, he's a demon.
Of course.
He's an absolute fucking monster.
But in what ways?
I don't know exactly what ways he technically physically,
what he did. I don't know what he didn't, what he didn't do. Right. I think what he did do ways he technically physically did, what he did.
I don't know what he did and what he didn't do.
I think what he did do is he was a rapist.
I think he was a pedophile.
I think he was into pain, mainly on himself.
But it seems like he liked to talk about pain in kids.
But then he treated his own kids differently.
It's weird.
And then like all we have is his confessions mainly
to say what happened here.
And he loved to bullshit.
And he loved to exaggerate.
And he loved to shock people.
So I don't know how much he exaggerated here.
If this is, these letters are his,
what he wished he could do.
Right. And that he did do vile things., what he wished he could do. Right.
And that he did do vile things.
He did rape and he did murder.
And he killed kids and he scared kids and he tortured kids for sure.
I just don't know what to, to what extent the reality is in what are the...
Still.
Looking to the other side of that then, do you think he was trying to like get these kids
for somebody else too?
That's the other thing.
I don't know if there's someone else here.
I mean, based off of this, like,
I would miss.
I would miss.
Kind of event.
Yeah.
And the other thing is, he's a frail motherfucker.
Right.
I mean, I'm not saying he can't, because he looks frail,
but sometimes people look frail can fuck you up.
Yeah, of course.
And if he's in that mode, which it seems like he gets
into like demon-like animal,
it could totally change into like superhuman strength kind
of thing, but it's like, it's weird to me
that he was planning to take on Edward and his friend,
who were 18 years old.
And from what I have read about them, especially Edward, he was stalky, like short,
but he was built like a fucking like...
Well, I mean, if you're strong enough to be a farmhand,
like that's manual labor.
You must be ready for that in some capacity.
So, like, is there someone else here?
Is there a younger person here that is...
And just got involved?
And got out of here, Scott, free.
And there was no deathbed confession.
There wasn't, because he was, he was executed. So, out of here, Scott free. And there was no deathbed confession.
There wasn't, because he was executed.
So it's like, I don't believe,
I don't know if I believe he's alone in this.
I think he's a big part, I mean, I think he's Albert.
The biggest part, of course.
And I think he is, like I said, a rapist, a murderer,
a torturer, a pedophile.
The worst of the worst.
I don't know if there's someone else involved here.
That's so, so interesting,
because I've never heard that point be raised before.
Yeah, it's weird to me.
I'm like, I don't, maybe I'm like crazy,
and maybe I'm just like reaching for strength.
No, I don't think so.
I don't think so.
No, it feels like it's a possibility.
It is, yeah.
I mean, obviously like he could have just like,
had a friend in the area that, you know,
that picked me up here.
Yeah, but it's like, where's that friend?
Why didn't they come forward and be like,
what the fuck?
Yeah, I got to tell that kid.
It's weird.
It is.
It's a very weird thing.
I think it's just one of those things too
that we might never know.
We might not ever find out.
I hope we find out.
I would love to dig deeper into this.
Yeah, I'm fine to the fuck that is.
I mean, whoever it is, you can assume
like they never gave a deathbed convention either, because you would think they'd be dead for no reason.
Someone's got to know something. Yeah. Come on. Who knows? Who knows something?
I mean, people are like 104, so actually they got to have 10 members.
Family members. That's true. Younger family members. Yeah.
When your dad doing something, did he say something sometime?
About this. Your brother weird. Was your brother weird?
Was it a crepe?
Was your grandpa weirdo?
Was he talking about this?
I know.
Come on, tell me.
Someone said something.
I know there's another person involved here.
Be sure with the shield.
Well, another woman misses DeMille,
and this is going to add fuel to this fire. She came forward and said that her son the day before, I think it was the day before the buds,
the grace bud abduction. She said her four-year-old son, Desmond, was almost abducted by an older couple
who was joined by a younger man while he was riding his bike outside of their apartment,
she was inside cooking dinner, she happened to see it.
She caught them as they were leading him away down the street.
And one of them was carrying his bike.
Like they were taking him away.
Oh, God.
She caught them and they claimed
we were just gonna go buy him a bell for his bike.
Like, calm down, bitch.
No, you were.
And it's like, that's not, no.
That's my whole ass child right there.
And also it was a Sunday night.
And she was like, where the fuck are you gonna buy a bell?
Yeah, everything's closed.
And I guess she asked in the match.
She was like, where are you gonna buy a bell?
It's Sunday night.
Right.
And I guess they were just looked at her and rushed away.
That's creepy.
Who the fuck were they?
But also you were just saying, you know,
like kids were turning up dead all over the place.
It's true, people were horrible.
This was on the same kind of street
where it's like tenement housing and stuff.
Yeah.
What were they gonna get out of that, right?
And it's like, and then they did,
and the description she gave of the older man
in this scenario, was it like Alper?
It matches the Bud's description of Frank Howard.
Okay, I mean, that's fucking weird.
And there's a young guy,
an older couple, a young guy.
And a younger guy.
So by couple, we can assume they met man and woman.
Yeah, they said, I think it was an older woman
and this older man.
And I'm like, who's that?
Yeah.
Cause they never found those people.
Weird.
Who's that?
Like, what's going on here?
And it's in the same area like the day before
this. And who's the young man? What the fuck? Who's the young man? I gotta know. But either way,
nothing came out of that. And Grace's photo was placed everywhere and she was, oh what a fucking
cutie. I can't even like look at pictures of her because they're all there. It's like Leslie and Downey. I mean, really is.
It reminds me of that.
And she's 10 years old.
It's the same kind of thing.
But even like, you see, there's only one photo of Billy Gaffney.
And even that picture.
Oh my God, what a little more.
He's literally the definition of a chair.
Oh, the little big.
Fucking chair robe with the cheek.
And Frances McDonald, again, there's not a lot of pictures
of them, but holy shit
They're all such cutie petudies like a pencil drawing. I think of yeah, Francis McDonald
And I was like I literally almost started crying. Yeah, they're just like such sweet little kids with their whole lives ahead of them
Yeah, and just taken from their pan monster
But her photo was placed everywhere right and it was all over newspapers
It was on the subway, grocery stores, restaurants,
like anywhere you went in her page. They were putting these pages everywhere. Good. And it was also
sent to several law enforcement agencies around the country because they were like making this net
wider because they were like, who knows where you could have taken her. And this is how the warden
had a prison in Florida received it. Huh. And he called the police with a possible tip.
He said there was a former inmate of his by the name of Albert E. Cortell, so another
Albert who he thought could possibly be their guy or they should at least look into it.
This guy was a con artist and not a murderer.
But he would hire young girls to pretend
to be his daughters for his scams.
Hi.
And he thought maybe that was the motive.
He was like, maybe this could point her even being alive,
because he's not a murderer as a cop fully.
So this was told to the police in Brooklyn,
and then they immediately got another call
from a guy named William Vetter.
And he was the assistant superintendent of the Brooklyn Society
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
And he said a few days before Grace was kidnapped,
he had an older guy with a gray mustache come in
and inquire about adopting a six-year-old girl.
Oh, he said the guy was weird,
and he wasn't getting a good vibe from him.
So he was like, why don't you come back and we'll do another interview. Yeah, but like,
get the fuck out of here. Get the fuck out of here. Right. And the guy never came back. Go on get.
And he never came back. So he was like, so they showed him a picture of Albert
Corteil this in this format in Mayton, Florida. Uh-huh. And he said, yeah, that's him.
Oh, stop. So now they show the buds this picture of Albert Cordell.
And Delia said, without a doubt, that is Frank Howard.
Okay, so is Albert Cordell the same person?
No.
What?
But Albert Bud and Edward, so the buds, you know,
the father and son.
I saw so many Albert, so there's a lot.
Albert Bud and Edward, the brother and father of Grace.
They were not so sure that that was Frank Howard.
They did not have as positive of identification.
And it's hard because the mom churly-
She wants to find them.
Desperate.
She's just desperate to find them.
Right.
And unfortunately, it makes her a very unreliable witness later.
Of course.
But an arrest warrant for Albert Cortell was put out,
but he was nowhere to be found.
Interesting.
Now, Detective, a detective with the missing person's bureau
that went by the name of Detective William F. King,
he becomes like a big part of this case.
He was assigned to the case at this point,
and he became like obsessed.
He's definitely gonna find this kid.
Good.
Now while trying to locate Albert Courthell, police got wind of another potential suspect.
Huh.
So a Florida woman called the police and said she had recently married a man named Charles
Howard and he had scammed her.
He had stolen her money and she was pretty sure he was also the kidnapper of Grace Bud.
Why, though?
And they were like, holy shit.
So they figured this was actually pretty decent
because Conman Albert Cortell had a ton of aliases
and one of them happened to be Charles Howard.
Whoa!
What are the fucking-
Thank you.
And so investigators were like, okay,
this might be Albert Cortell.
Yeah.
Because he's a scammer.
Hi.
And that's his fucking aliased.
So King and a bunch of other detectives went down to Florida
and they were able to apprehend Charles Howard very quickly.
Good.
They brought him back to New York on Grand Larsony charges
from stealing from his wife,
but they were really looking at the kidnapping thing.
Yeah.
Unfortunately, this guy was a legit Charles Howard.
That was his name.
Oh, no.
He was not arrested this brand-a-mass man. He was apparently was a legit Charles Howard, that was his name. Oh, no. He was not arrested as a brand-of-mass man.
He was apparently was a scammer,
and they were able to charge him with Grand Lars snake.
Well, that's good.
He did steal from his wife,
but he was not Albert Cordell.
He was just a guy named Charles Howard,
and it just happened to all connect.
I mean, the way that, like, in the investigation
and just, like, search for Albert Fish
turned up so many other delinquents,
you're like, at least so.
Good stuff came out of it.
I guess.
Right.
But also bad stuff.
They're like, damn, there's a lot of bad people out here.
You're like, this is so bleak.
Well, and unfortunately, Deelia Bud identified him as Frank Howard as well.
Oh no.
She was just wanting to find the person.
And I think by now, this was like the third person she
and positively identified us in.
Yeah.
But this child's Howard Guy ended up having an airtight alibi
for the kidnapping thing.
He was nowhere in the, he wasn't even in the state.
He's like, I'm a scammer.
Yeah, he was like, oh, weirdo.
I steal money.
I don't kidnap kids.
Thank you.
But unfortunately, Delia Bud wasn't a great witness anymore
because again, she just
is eager to find her child and the person who stole her, I totally get.
No, Edward Bud, the son, the brother of Grace Bud, actually identified Charles Howard as
the kidnapper as well, which is interesting.
That is.
According to the Ironwood Daily Globe from Michigan of all places, like there was so many where articles came from about this.
I'm from Michigan.
I'm from Michigan.
We did that, I came back.
It said that quote, or Edward said quote,
he looked very much like the man.
He's my sister.
So, okay.
Now September 3rd, 1930,
another woman contacted Detective King, damn.
And said her estranged husband
was the guy they were looking for.
So he was 68-year-old janitor named Charles Pope.
Even crazier, she had an entire tale about how one day so they were living apart.
They did not have a great marriage.
Living apart, he had sent her a telegram asking her to meet him on a corner
somewhere. The day that Grace was kidnapped. And she met him and she said with him was a girl.
She looked to be about 10 to 12 years old. She had short, bobbed dark hair like Grace. She was
wearing a white dress. Wow. And he said, can you look after this little girl for a couple of days while I do something
out of town?
Oh.
And like, don't ask me any questions.
And she was like, what the fuck?
No.
She was like, I hate you.
And I don't know what this is all about.
Get involved.
So he just said, like, fine.
Like, I'll just take her back with me and left with her.
This lady said, when they left, she said that the said the girl gave her a look, she will never forget.
Oh, now this was two years after the fact, mind you. She's contacting police two years after she said this happened.
Ma'am, she's letting police know this now, two years.
Yes, come on. Her excuse? The news wasn't mentioning grace a lot anymore and she forgot the whole thing happened you forget
I clearly just said you'll never forget the look on her face and then moments later said well, I forgot
No, what I meant by that was like I'll forget for a while but then like whoo once it's
Cross right once he pisses me off. I remember now. Come on. Yeah, she said she literally forgot
The entire thing about her husband calling her to the corner with a with a strange child
Do you think this was even real?
No, of course it wasn't right
She only remembered this wild tale about her elderly estranged husband having a random little girl in his possession
Because she read about Charles Howard and his wife accusing him of being the kidnapper. Oh, okay
She even visited the bud family
and told them to their faces
and confirmed that the girl she had seen
with her estranged husband was their child.
No, fuck this lady.
This woman's a bitch.
She's a cunt.
And they arrested Charles Pope the next day
because this is a wild tale.
Yeah.
And to them, this match is Grace Bud.
She's saying it's the day Grace Bud went missing
Who and his description matches Frank Howard? She went to the buds. Showed a picture. She confirmed that was the girl she saw
Stop what an oh she's a beast this woman and not the good kind
So they put Charles Pope in a lineup and Delia Bud positively identified him. This is the fourth one
Now this one makes more sense. Okay to me and a line up, and Delia Bud positively identified him. This is the fourth one.
Now, this one makes more sense.
Okay.
To me, I mean, they all make sense
because she's a grieving mother
who just wants to find her fucking kid.
But this one, she was really set up for.
Now, he was questioned, Charles Pope, for four hours,
and he denied everything.
He was like, I've never met Grace Bud.
Right.
I've never known she existed until she was kidnapped.
I had certainly not been in her presence that day.
No one else will tell you I was, like, absolutely not.
He was seemingly the detective said genuinely shocked
that this entire tale had been told about him.
I'm sure.
Like, it wasn't one of those that he's like, oh, she's lying.
He was like, are you fucking kidding me?
These are very big stakes here.
Which to me always says something,
whenever you see an interview with a suspect,
and they're like, well, this person says
that they saw you do this, and they're like,
ah, they're lying.
You're like, you're lying.
Yeah.
Because if that didn't happen,
you'd be shitting your pants.
I didn't fucking do that.
Oh my god.
Somebody says something that I didn't do.
I get so angry.
I'm like, fuck you, I didn't do that.
I never said that. And this is such a wild tale to tell that if didn't do, I get so angry. I'm like, fuck you, I didn't do that. I never said that.
And this is such a wild tale to tell
that if you heard that, you'd be like,
are you kidding me?
No, I didn't have a child in my possession at any point.
Right.
So he was shocked and he said it was truly unbelievable.
And detective said he seemed to be telling the truth.
Okay.
But his wife, Jessie, Pope, was also really convincing and had some details.
And he matched the description of Frank Howard and now Deelia Bud is saying that he is Frank Howard.
Oh God.
So it turned out, police found out that he's a strange wife, Jessie.
Yeah.
Had actually had him committed at one point in the last few years.
Are you kidding me?
In order to try to steal his inheritance, he was getting from his father.
This lady sucks.
According to everyone who knew him,
including doctors who released him
and said he was completely fine.
He was sweet, he was gentle,
and not even slightly violent.
Oh, I feel so bad for this guy.
He had zero police records, not even petty crimes.
He didn't even have a traffic ticket.
He had nothing.
So things immediately, everyone's like,
well, this lady just wanted to fuck over her strange shows,
but the thing, that sucks about that,
is that there probably were people that believed
that he actually did it.
Now, his reputation is part of it forever.
Oh, that is a piece forever.
I mean, when the mother of the child identifies you,
that's it. Yeah, like go back. good luck that on you. He could have been killed
Well, then as everybody's like Jesus this woman is a demon. What the hell?
Things got a little weird for a minute. Okay, so they searched they had to throw out this thing because they're having to do their due diligence here
This guy seemed like a good suspect at one point
So they had to search this old farmhouse yielding to one point.
And there was a garage off this farmhouse.
And in the summer of 1927, Grace had actually participated,
so that same summer.
She had actually participated in this thing.
It was the New York Tribune's fresh air fund.
And it was a program for underprivileged kids.
And it would get them into the country to spend time outside. And it was fresh air. Andprivileged kids. And it would get them into the country
to spend time outside.
And it was for city kids.
Okay.
Just to get them in the fresh air
and like get them in the country,
getting them like picking wild flowers.
And just like, they hang out with like,
I guess this family will sponsor them
and they can stay in their farmhouse.
And it's like a summer camp thing.
And it was like this cute thing.
It's like, it all went out well. Nothing ever came of this particular program.
Like no one was kidnapped or good, good, anything.
But the place where she had stayed for that program
was very near this abandoned farmhouse.
Oh wow.
That was owned by Charles Pope.
Now, they found weird shit in that garage.
It is garage.
Yeah.
They found a container that had brown locks of hair in it.
Mm-hmm.
And it was tied with white ribbon.
And it was child's hair.
And Grace had brown hair.
How could they tell that it was child's hair?
They could just tell, I don't know how, but they were like, this is clearly child's hair.
I think it was like had like a little curl to it and it just seemed like a lock of child's hair.
They also found children's white stockings,
which Grace was wearing white stockings
when she left that day.
There were also toys and other kids' trinkets
in this container.
Uh-huh.
Doesn't sound great for Charles.
Do you think his, did his wife put all this there?
Well, this whole thing fell apart really quickly
because at first she was like,
oh, oh, yeah.
And even Daly Abud who saw those stockings
was like Grace was wearing stockings like that.
Uh-huh.
Well, those items, they were items from his own child
and his grandchildren.
Oh.
The locks of hair were from his child's first haircut.
Oh.
And he was like, I literally kept them.
He's like, I just fucking sentimental things.
He was like, don't you just, like, don't you keep your kids first haircut?
Like, yeah, everybody does.
Like, my kid has brown hair.
You can love it.
There are women out there with jugs of teeth.
Well, not jugs, hopefully.
But like, jugs of teeth.
Well, jugs of teeth.
Exactly.
Well, jugs of jugs.
Just jugs of gallon jugs of teeth.
I think it's totally normal.
And it's adorable.
I'm gone.
It's so sentimental.
It is.
No, you know what I mean?
Whomst among us doesn't have a jug of tea.
So I don't find anything wrong with this.
What a mispeak.
If you are out there saying you don't have a jug of fucking tea.
You're a liar.
You're a liar and you don't belong here.
Get the fuck out of my face.
No, but you know what I mean?
Little trick-it's a teeth.
Yeah, little trick-it's a little teeth trick-it's.
And I get it.
In our little baby box, we have for the babes.
Like, remember, we kept their little pieces of their hair
from their first hair cut.
Yeah, I guess what I'm sure you'll fucking save their teeth, too.
Exactly.
I did their first hair cut, by the way.
Like, shit is weird.
Like, when you cut that first curl off,
like, that curl is mine now.
I'm keeping it forever.
Thank you.
But that's what he was like, I kept my kids hair.
Like I'm sorry, that's weird.
Get the fuck out of my face.
Whatever.
And then he said all those little trinkets
were like for my grandkids or from my grandkids.
And he said, and I also run tenement housing buildings.
And sometimes the people who live there
will give me like hammy downs for my grandkids. So he's like a lot of times I just put them in
this bucket if they're not useful, but I think maybe later. Yeah. If they have
more grandkids, which I guess he had a lot, he was like, I can give them those.
He's like, this whole operation is actually wholesome as fuck. He's like, this is
literally the pure shit that's ever existed. But that shows you how quickly.
I mean, I immediately when I read that,
I was like, that is sinister as fuck.
There's no way you're gonna convince me that's not.
It's so funny.
It's very, it's giving girl in the house across the street
from the window with the face and the eyes.
It's like that.
Like it really is.
It's amazing.
I literally picture Kristen Bell in my head right now
just going bingo.
And that's, you could look at it one way.
Yeah, sinister.
You could look at it and literally go.
And then you take the other way.
And you go, oh my god,
that's the most wholesome shit I've ever seen.
Exactly.
And then Dealia Bud even came forward and said,
you know, those stockings weren't hers.
Oh, no.
They looked like hers, but they weren't hers.
Right.
Like I can tell you.
And she, she said, I only identified him as the guy,
as Frank Howard, Delia Bud said this on the stand later.
She said, I only identified him as,
him as the guy because his ex wife,
his estranged wife, Jessie there, had come to me, had told me,
like I had seen your child woman.
Like she goes to woman.
And then we talked about the description of her ex-husband
and Frank Howard, she was like, she convinced me
that that was him.
So when I saw him, I recognized him.
I said, yes, that is him, because I had heard her talk
about him so much.
Can you imagine for just one second being this woman
and having to go identify these people every time?
I'm sure every time she was sitting there working herself
up thinking this is gonna be the day.
I'm gonna say.
This is gonna be the day and your brain can play
crazy fucking tricks on you.
Think about falling asleep at night
and you fucking think that the boogeyman is in the corner
and obviously he's not.
You're gonna look at this man and go, yeah, he absolutely.
That's the guy.
And that's the thing and it's like she just wants to find him.
And of course her mind's going to go, yep, that's him.
Uh huh.
He's got your kid.
Let's find Grace now.
Right.
And it's like, and then when this crazy, this asshole,
yeah, just he poops there, goes to this grieving family and convinces them just to
fuck over her estranged husband who she wants to steal money from. It's like that's wild.
Man, you should be the one committed. She should be in prison. I mean, that's insane.
But and she admitted it. The wife finally admitted it that she had done this whole thing
just to get his money. That's so fucked.
So still, he was going to trial though,
because they couldn't, I mean,
they had a little bit of circumstantial here.
Yeah.
And at this point, she hadn't completely admitted
that she had fucked everybody around.
Wow.
So he was still going to trial for the kidnapping
of Grace Bud and the-
Also, what is she getting out of this?
Other than being a- I think she just hated him.
And she was like, I just want to see him suffer.
Meanwhile, he seems like a very sweet gentleman.
Well, and even his sister who he lived with
when he was estranged from his wife,
she said she was like, I don't know why she hates Charles so much.
I can't figure it out.
She was like, this woman just has like hate.
Like vengeance.
And she was like, she just wants his money
and she's mad that he doesn't make enough money.
Like, it's literally the great depression man.
She just seems terrible.
But yeah, it went to trial in the press.
If you look at old newspaper articles,
they were convinced he was the guy.
He was railroaded in the press.
And two weeks before the trial began,
they finally found Old Albert Corte Hill.
They finally found him.
Oh my God.
And they extradited him to New York.
So now they have two suspects.
Oh, shit.
One they are putting on trial.
The other one, they're like,
oh shit, we forgot about that.
Could be this guy.
More bad.
So Delia and Albert Bud picked him out of a lineup
and said he kind of looks like the
guy, but we're not positive.
So this wasn't like, boom, that's him.
And they were like, we're done with that.
He kind of looks like him, I don't know.
They're like, why are you just showing us every guy that looks like this guy?
Well, and after trying really hard to gather anything, they couldn't come up with even one
thing to connect actual Albert court hell with this case.
Okay. He was a scammer, sure, he was fucked, he would hire young girls to pretend to be his
daughter so he could scam people. Real weird. He hadn't murdered anyone as of yet. He wasn't
accused of raping anyone else of yet. And even he was like, no, like didn't do this. And there was
nothing to connect it. Right. Nothing. But Charles Pope was actually finally released.
His trial only lasted like a minute and a half.
It was like the most ridiculous.
It wasn't even a real trial.
That's so crazy.
Everyone said it wasn't him.
Everyone who knew him was like, that is not him.
Like, his wife is just a terrible person.
And yeah, and that he had come to, in the fact that she had come to the Budhouse and
basically used them. Yeah. came out, she admitted it,
she's a demon.
And he was finally freed on February 6, 1931.
But now, they're back to square one.
Oh my God.
They've got nothing.
They had their cup runneth over with suspects at one point
and now they've got nothing.
There was a hole in my bucket, dear Eliza.
But...
while this was happening in the courts,
the real Albert fish, the real Frank Howard,
was being admitted to Bellevue Hospital for the second time in a couple of years.
Huh, this was on December 15th of that same year,
and he was arrested for his habit of sending disgusting letters to people through the mail.
Dude won't quit, which makes me wonder again,
was this, did he just like doing this shit?
And like he didn't really go that far?
I believe, like I said, I definitely think he murders,
he rapes, he's a fucking terrible person,
but I just really need to know the extent.
I need to know if that's true.
The letter he was arrested for this time was said in the arrest papers to be, quote,
a letter of such a vile obscene and filthy nature that to set forth the contents thereof
would defile the records of the court.
Wow.
They wouldn't even put the letter in the records.
Wow. Does that tell you
something? Because he's just sending this letter, not doing anything to somebody, right?
But just sending filthy, horrible shit in the mail. Like, I think he's just like doing
this. And he's a murderer and a rapist. Uh huh. I just, there's so much unknown about
it that it makes a crazy. Now, a doctor asked him how he began doing this.
They were like, why do you do this?
And he said, he basically, he's like,
I started a long time ago, but I really got into it
when I started working as a painter in Harlem in 1929.
And he said, while he was painting,
he was like on a crew painting a sanitarium in Harlem.
And he said, the workers found a huge pile of dirty letters
and they read them aloud for fun.
And he said, this made him want to do it,
but to non-consenting victims,
instead of somebody that actually wanted to write
dirty letters with you.
Yeah.
Which is like, just find somebody who wants
to write dirty letters with you.
Like get a dirty penpal.
The OG sexting.
Yeah.
Get it a dirty penpal. The OG sexting. Yeah, get it a dirty pen pal.
Get yourself a filthy ass pen pal
and you guys can have a blast.
A filthy ass pen pal.
I need somebody to text their romantic partner,
like do you want to be my filthy ass pen pal?
Excuse me, filthy ass.
Like just, if you both are consenting a ghost
and you wanna talk to the filth with each other
by all means, to do it.
Christina said, let's get dirty.
There you go, hello, listen to Aguilera.
So, but he liked to do it
with people who are non consenting,
which is victims.
Not okay.
Now, according to Daryng,
he was diagnosed as suffering from,
this is gonna be crazy to everybody,
sexual psychopathy.
What?
But his notes for this stay in Bellevue
were that he was quiet and cooperative.
And most interestingly, it said he had, quote,
conducted himself in an orderly and normal manner.
I don't know about that.
This is very different from those frantic
and worrisome movements, like hand movements
that everyone described from him.
Yeah.
Mrs. McDonald in particular said she was like very troubled
by his anxious movements with his hands, like it freaked her out.
She said she would never forget them.
So that's strange to me that he can just turn that off.
Right.
And not be anxious.
Well, maybe it was like when he was not about to murder somebody.
Yeah, it's like, is that just his like tick?
Yeah.
But they also wrote in this report that there was, quote,
no evidence of delusional notions or hallucinatory experiences.
It is true that he shows some evidence of early senile changes.
This condition, however, is quite slight at the present time
and has not impaired his mentality.
His memory, particularly for a man of his years, is excellent.
Huh.
They literally said that the letter writing was just what men do
when they get old in senile.
Yeah, I know.
So many old men that just write unconcenting,
disgusting letters to people.
Like, old men, am I right?
Yeah, grumpy old men.
Like, you know, need I remind you real quick.
Let me just quickly remind you that what the doctor,
and let me run that doctor too,
from the grave, that you're telling me this is just what old dirty men do. Yeah, there's old
and they're dirty. Yeah, I don't know what to tell you. You're not really lucky when you're old.
Let me just remind you that the affidavit for that arrest said, a letter of such a vile obscene
and filthy nature that to set forth the contents thereof would defile the records of the court.
He's just an old man.
Just dirty old man.
He was like, what?
Nope.
No what sir?
They then contradicted this and said that he didn't actually seem to be suffering from
any mental disorder, but they were like, he's super old and he's senile kind of, but
like not, no.
Mentally he's all right.
And it's like, but you just said he's seen Isle,
which would indicate that he, that mentally he is,
there's some kind of decay there,
even if it's slow.
Uh-huh.
Nope.
He was, they actually said he was quite sane.
After 30 days, he was looking
for the ring.
He was released after 30 days to his daughter Anna,
actually, for Anna. For Anna. Actually, poor Anna.
Now, only six months later, he was back at it again
with the letters.
He was picked up for this again.
And when he was arrested at his home,
they found a bunch of letters just waiting to be sent
under the mattress.
He had just written a shit ton of them.
Love's to put stuff under the mattress.
Love's that mattress shit.
That mattress life is for him.
That's your shit.
He's like, it reminds me of like a terrible version
of like the total antithesis of Lane Kim
from Gilmore Girls,
like hiding everything under the floorboards.
Oh, love that.
But like Lane Kim's the best.
Oh, for real.
But he also had that,
they found that DIY cat and Inaugtales.
They found that paddle with the nails in it.
And they also found, and ready guys,
this is going to be gross, so I'm just
trigger warning, trigger warning.
Really gross.
This is gonna be gross.
I'm not gonna go into graphic detail,
but it's gross regardless.
There I gave you a warning.
You can skip like 15 seconds and you'll be fine.
They also found food items like carrots,
which when the police were like,
why are these in your drawer?
They're like decaying.
And he goes, oh, I stick those up my ass.
He had poopy carrots in his drawer.
Sure did.
Pupu carrots.
Normally, I don't like to,
these kind of things.
I'm like, I don't wanna share that.
But honestly, Albert Fish,
I feel like to get the full picture,
I gotta give you a little bit of it.
And that was just something that I was like,
can you imagine being a police officer
and being like, and it said in deranged,
it said that he, like the police officers very much knew
what those like, of course.
What else there was like for it.
But they were just like, bro,
and I guess, and he just like snarled it at them.
Like, this is what I do with them.
And they were like, oh, he's like,
those are my dildo carers. Like imagine being that detective. And you're just like, what is what I do with them and they're like, oh, he's like, those are my dildo carrots.
Like, imagine being that detective
and you're just like, what do we do here?
What do we do?
Yeah.
So two Kings County Hospital this time, he went.
Oh, man.
And he looked.
He was quiet and cooperative there again.
Yeah, I bet they didn't serve carrots with lunch.
He was released before even two weeks.
And they said he was sane, totally fine. Now, when he returned home to be cared for by his poor children again,
he started having crazy night terrors.
I bet.
And his son, I think his son Albert Jr., I believe it was,
said that he would literally wake up like screaming like a wild animal.
And he said his father had never had night terrors.
He had never known him to do this.
So he said when he would go in there, he was just like thrashing. He would wake up like sweating
and like wide-eyed. He got laid under conscious. Exactly. Later, he would say that every single night
after he kidnapped Grace Bud, she came to him at night. Good. And I'm so glad to hear that. Good.
Because to me too, this shows you
something's different here.
Because he...
None of those other ones bothered him like that.
Yeah.
So was someone else involved?
Right.
With some of these?
And this was one maybe he did by himself.
And this was the one that stuck?
Or was it because she was a little girl?
Yeah. I don't know.
What stuck with him about all these children should be haunting you?
Yeah, I would think so.
But why is it just Grace? I mean, I'm glad.
I'm glad she came back with this trick.
It is interesting.
I'm gonna fuck with you forever.
Like, good for Grace.
Yeah.
But like, it's strange.
And it adds more, like, lore to his, like, hmm.
Is someone else involved, what happened here?
It almost makes me think that somebody else was involved with
graces murder.
Yeah. Because then she's kind of like, he feels guilty for not
stopping it, I feel. Maybe.
Like, potentially.
Or he's so. I don't know. I don't know.
I don't know. I don't know. I feel like he doesn't have that
capacity to feel guilty about not stopping it.
Yeah. To me, it points more to he may be participated in the other ones, but this one was maybe
one.
He, because it was spontaneous.
Huh.
So I don't know if maybe like, because that's the other thing about this is like, who
was that person that showed up in the car if this was like spontaneous, were they thinking
that Edward was going to be coming?
Because he did, I mean, he was saying when he was coming back to pick up Edward,
he was going to get a car.
Okay.
So it's like, maybe that was just a car.
Maybe this person know, or was this a town car?
Well, like what kind of, but it wasn't it, wasn't a town car.
It was like a blue car or something like that.
I don't know.
And it was from like Pennsylvania.
Right.
But it's like, did this person not know that grace,
did something go wrong here?
Was I, who knows?
It's, it's just strange that this one,
something bothered him at all.
Right.
Because it's like something weighed on your conscience
or just, what was it?
Very weird.
Now, he's going through this,
and it had been six years at this point.
Wow.
Since Grace Bud was kidnapped and nothing had come of it. After all that craziness and how they had way more suspects
than they even needed, now they got nothing. And it's been six years in Albert Fish,
a.k.a. Frank Howard, was going through the newspaper and he saw an article about Grace
Bud's kidnapping, and it had the parents' new address in the
article.
Oh, no.
But they had moved.
But why would they say they're a dread?
Like, why would they print that in the paper?
Back then, man, they were just like, willy-nilly.
But he decided to write them a letter.
Six years later is the time.
So November 12th, that letter arrived at the Bud Home.
No interestingly, Detective King did this thing,
and he really stuck with it for the six years.
He put fake details about the Bud case in the paper a lot.
Oh, okay.
He would have them run an article,
and he give them a bunch of fake shit.
Okay.
And he would see if he could get the real kidnapper
to come out of hiding.
And this was like a relatively new tactic,
like they didn't do this all
the time, but it was a great way to also discount fake confessions and tips, because if somebody
called in with that article and mine being like, Oh, yeah. And then I did this. He was wearing
a clown nose when he showed up. It's like, Yeah, okay. I know you're a bullshitter. Now,
it worked all the time with this case. They were able to get rid of a bunch of tips.
But Delia Bud, and just like keep that in mind,
yeah, Delia Bud could not read.
Okay. So her son Edward read this letter when it came.
She was sitting in front of him as he read it,
and she said his face was unlike anything she's ever seen.
And he was like, she was like, what does it say?
And he just ran from the room and took it directly to the police.
Oh, wow.
So did she never have to hear what was in the letter?
Honestly, I don't know if she heard the entire contents of the letter,
but he, again, I'm not reading that letter.
You can find that letter.
Yeah, go Google letter. That letter is in deranged. Again, I'm gonna reading that letter. You can find that letter. Yeah, go Google.
That letter is in deranged. Again, I'm gonna like direct you over there.
Link it because you should read that book if you want to know a lot more details about this case,
like things that I wasn't gonna say out loud. And he did like an amazing job with like telling
the history of this time period and these locations and these families and everything.
So it goes really far into all these like wild goose chases
and stuff, so I really recommend it.
But it's a hard read, it's very graphic.
But the entire, the letter in its entirety is in there.
So he began the letter with my dear Mrs. Bud,
which I'm immediately like,
wanna kick you in the teeth.
Get fucked.
And started to explain to her that he had a friend
when he was younger, who was on a steamer ship
that went to China.
And he said there was a famine there at the time
and he told this horrific tale of these underground meat
markets that used young children as meat.
Uh-huh.
This man told Albert Fish apparently how delicious children were, and
that when he came back, he had taken to kidnapping children in America, and he would torture
and eat them himself. Albert was so fascinated and entranced by this bullshit story that
probably was not told to him, that he made up his mind to try it himself. So he decided
to start the letter out by explaining that.
Okay.
In graphic detail, by the way.
The next bit is an exact verbatim part of this letter
that I will read.
On Sunday, June the 3rd, 1928,
I called on you at 406 West 15th Street,
brought you pot cheese, strawberries, we had lunch,
grace sat in my lap and kissed 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.
I'm gonna stop there.
Cause after that, I literally can't read it out loud.
Nope.
What he did is he then explain that he waited in a room naked for her while she was outside picking wildflowers.
He called her in, he attacked her when she tried to run while she was saying she was going to tell her mama.
No. And he wrote that in the letter. No. He strangled her. He, according to him, cut her into pieces, cooked those pieces and ate her for days.
He also made sure to tell her mother that he never raped her, and he stated, quote, she
died of urgent.
Most horrific letter, like I'm telling you this letter is like, I will change you in
the whole time.
It's unable to be explained, and that was me railroading over it.
It's so much worse.
Now, this was a real letter.
And the detectives knew this.
As soon as Edward brought this to the police station,
they were like, this is it.
This is the real friend.
Well, even like referencing the strawberries
on the cheese.
Exactly.
You nailed it.
Because we know that he had put the fake shit
into the articles.
There was none of that, but that's strawberry. she's thing he had never put into an article.
So boom. And it was the shit only he would know. This guy had also written down an address that he had taken
or two. He wrote down the actual address of the place. And they immediately went and got a
handwritten, that handwritten telegram that was at Western Union, they got that photocopy of that.
And they put it next to each other.
The handwriting was identical.
I'm sure.
Everybody, they were like, this is identical, it's Frank Howard.
This is him.
And that is where we are going to leave you today.
They now know this is Frank Howard,
and now they just have to find Frank Howard.
And don't worry, they find Frank Howard.
Oh my gosh, the fact that we have a whole nother installed.
But I, this is all I can do today.
That was, I mean, that was just, I can't talk about it.
I gotta tell you, that was like more than enough.
So good job.
Oh, thank you.
No problem.
Yeah.
This is a really, this is a tough one.
Yeah, I think you should do something haunted after this
because I do, I think I already warned you guys,
but just like another quick warning.
My next case is like not as terrible as this
because I don't even know what's as terrible as this,
but it's horrific.
Yeah, and we still got, we still got part three.
So part three, we will talk about him being arrested finally, his confessions in the trial
and his eventual execution because the boogeyman is gone, my friends, but who knows.
It's a lot.
Well, and the confessions are something.
And again, I'm not going to read them like verbatim because some of them are just like
way beyond my capacity to say aloud.
So, but I will, I'll give you all the information
I can as best as I can.
But I got to stop there because two missing kids
and two horrific murderers, I just don't, I'm out.
I got to go look at a sunset or something.
I got to go look at the sun by.. I gotta go look at the sun by.
I just gotta stare directly into the sun,
I have to go through the carrots out of the fridge.
Say, talk to you later.
And with that, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it.
We're literally don't have to talk to you
to keep it this weird.
That's like so, just so you already know.
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