CANNIBAL SERIAL KILLER, GARY HEIDNIK

Article BY Rhiannon Edwards - Art by JACK MALEBRANCHE

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Edward Budd Sr used the term ‘gray,’ in describing the elderly man who abducted his ten-year-old daughter Grace in May 1928. A man called Frank Howard had contacted the Budd family in response to an advertisement placed in the paper by Grace’s eighteen-year-old brother Edward, who was looking for work.

Howard went to the property in Manhattan, New York and explained that he owned a farm in Long Island and required a strong farm hand. His interest in Edward was however more sinister. Howard was the name chosen by Albert Fish, cannibal and rapist. Fifty-eight year old Fish planned to torture, murder and eat Edward before he saw Grace. He was immediately taken with the young girl and then persuaded Grace’s parents, Edward Sr and Delia to allow him to escort Grace to a fictitious party. Hand in hand, Fish and Grace headed uptown, stopping at a newsstand to retrieve a parcel before boarding a train traveling to the town of Greenburgh.

Fish took Grace to Whisteria Cottage, an abandoned, secluded house and told her to pick some flowers while he went inside. Fish went upstairs, carrying the parcel he had collected from the newsstand. He opened the parcel and laid a butcher’s knife, a small saw and a cleaver on the table. Fish took his clothes off and called for Grace. He waited until the young girl had come to the second level before he revealed himself.

“I’ll tell Mama!” Grace yelled, turning to run.

Fish dragged Grace into the room. He knelled on Grace and strangled her. Once dead, he sawed off Grace’s head, draining her blood into an old, rusted can and then cut her into pieces, keeping his favorite slices. Fish buried the other pieces of her body around the house and yard.

Fish’s depravities however, did not stop with Grace. He soaked cloth in lighter fluid and stuffed it up his rectum and set it alight. The smell of his burning flesh gave him incredible pleasure. Afterwards, Fish cleaned himself of blood and carefully wrapped up the pieces of Grace he kept. He then skipped town and over the next nine days, he slowly ate the young girl, preparing her flesh in a variety of traditions. At night, he recollected Grace’s murder and became aroused.

Fish was never suspected in Grace Budd’s murder until he sent a letter to her parents six years later. The letter explained in graphic detail what Fish had done to the girl and another victim. Fish ended the letter stating that he did not have intercourse with Grace and ‘she died a virgin.’

Fish made the mistake of sending the letter in an envelope that had a small hexagonal emblem with the letter N.Y.P.C.B.A on it. This stood for New York Chauffeur’s Benevolent Association. Lead investigator William F King traced the letter back to a rooming house on 200 East 52nd Street where a janitor for the association had accidentally left the stationary in a room there. The landlady of the rooming house said that Fish had checked out of the same room only a few days before but would be returning to collect mail sent to the address. King waited at the address until Fish returned and confronted him. Fish produced a razor blade and attempted to slit his wrists but King disarmed him and took him into custody. Fish was not the monster King envisioned, but a frail, weathered old man.

When questioned, Fish did not deny the killing of Grace Budd and in fact confessed he was responsible for several other killings, including that of four-year-old Billy Gaffney and eight-year-old Francis McDonnell.

Fish readily revealed what he did to Billy Gaffney, speaking in a calm, methodical tone. He said he took Billy to Riker Ave dumps, stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and kept him prisoner in an abandoned house. Fish burned his clothes and left, returning the following afternoon. Fish fastened a cat-of-nine tails whip out of a leather belt. He used it on Billy Gaffney before mutilating his facial features and drinking his blood. Fish then cut Billy Gaffney’s body up and disposed of the pieces he did not want to eat in potato sacks. He dumped the sacks in along the road going to North Beach and returned home to eat Billy Gaffney.

Fish had taken Billy’s sex, his ears, nose and several sections of his face and stomach. He made a stew out of the ears, nose and pieces of flesh, adding onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt and pepper and told investigators how much he enjoyed the feast. Over the next fours days, he ate Billy’s sex with bacon but discarded part of the boy because he had trouble chewing them.

Francis McDonnell was playing ball with his friends outside his home when he went missing. His body was found later, horribly disfigured. Witness stated that they had seen the boy with grey-haired, mustached tramp.

Anna McDonnell, Francis’s mother had a more detailed description, “He came shuffling down the street, mumbling to himself. I'll never forget those hands.  I shuddered when I looked at them...how they opened and shut and opened and shut. I saw him look toward Francis and the others.  I saw his thick grey hair, his drooping grey moustache. 

Everything about him seemed faded and grey."

On the night of Fish’s capture, Edward Budd Sr was taken to the police station to identify Fish. Budd threw himself at Fish, abusing him.

“Do you know me?” Budd Sr asked.

“You’re Mr Budd.” Fish replied politely.

Completely surprised by Fish’s lack of emotion, Budd Sr said, “You’re the man who took my little girl away.”

Fish said nothing. His confessions chronicled unspeakable perversion and depravity against children and himself. Those who saw Fish were amazed at how the stooping old man of 130 pounds could become such a monstrosity.

Fish’s childhood was harsh. His father died of a heart attack in 1875 when he was five and this forced his mother to look for work. She struggled to raise Fish and placed him in Saint John’s orphanage in Washington D.C. Here, Fish and the other children were frequently stripped naked and whipped in front of each by the teachers. Fish, eventually came to enjoy the beatings and his arousal caused the other orphans to tease him.

By 1880, his mother had a government job and was able to send for Fish. As a teenager, he developed a relationship with another boy who introduced Fish to drinking urine and eating faeces. Fish also developed a tendency to write obscene letters to women whose names and addresses he obtained from classified advertisements. In his late twenties, Fish married a woman and they eventually had six children. His wife left Fish and their six children in 1917 and the collapse of the marriage caused a change in Fish. He encouraged his children and the neighbourhood children to paddle his buttocks with a paddle he made with nails studding the surface. The beatings would cause him to bleed profusely. In private, Fish would push needles into his genital region so deeply he could not remove them. A medical was performed on Fish leading up to his trail and they revealed twenty-nine needles in his flesh. Some had been inside Fish for so long, they showed signs of deterioration.

The trial of Fish for the murder of Grace Budd began on March 11, 1935 in White Plains, New York. Fish and his lawyer James Dempsey pleaded insanity, summarising that Fish was a psychiatric phenomenon and his morbid fascination with sadism, coprophilia, urophilia, pedophilia, infibulation, and masochism were unique and there was no other case of this sort on record.

The defence’s chief witness was renowned psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who would gain notoriety by being instrumental in the repression of comics in 1950’s. Wertham explained Fish believed that by sacrificing a boy it would be penance for his own sins and if God did not approve, angels would intervene. In conclusion, Dempsey asked if Wertham if Fish’s life had any affect on his mental condition.

“He is insane,” Wertham answered. Two more psychiatrists supported Wertham's findings.

Menas Gregory, the former Head of Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, testified the Fish was abnormal but not insane. She stated that his perversions towards himself were socially perfectly allright and that he was no different from millions of other people, some prominent.

The next witness was "The Tombs" Prison physician, Perry Lichtenstein. He was asked if Fish causing himself pain indicated a mental condition. Lichtenstein replied Fish was only punishing himself to get sexual gratification. Another witness testified that coprophilia was a common practice and that religious cannibalism was not evidence of psychosis.
The jury found him to be sane and guilty and Fish was to be excuted on January 16 1936 at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York.

Fish looked forward to his death, staing the electrocution would be, ‘the supreme thrill of his life.” Fish entered the chamber at 11:06 PM and walked briskly to the electric chair. He climbed into the seat and helped the guards attach the electrodes to his legs, barely able to contain his joy.

Fish stated that he did not know why he was even there and at 11:09PM, he was pronounced dead.

Several days later, lawyer Dempsey received a letter from Fish and one line in particular chilled him. Fish had written, ‘I do not wish to die, God has more work for me to do.”