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Essay on Albert Fish (Serial Killer)
Albert Fish born on May 19, 1870 was an American serial killer and cannibal. He was also known as the Moon Maniac, the Gray Man, and the Brooklyn Vampire. Over the course of his criminal career, he murdered at least fifteen children (many of whom he ate) and molested and tortured countless others across the United States. He sometimes castrated his male victims before killing them. Born Hamilton Fish in Washington, D.C., to a family with a history of mental illness, Fish grew up in an orphanage where he was ruthlessly whipped and beaten. In 1898, he was married to a woman nine years his junior, with whom he had five children. However, his wife subsequently ran off with another man.
Fish was a painter who drifted across the United States molesting and torturing children in nearly every state. Most of his victims came from poor black families who were not likely to be able to do much about his actions, owing to the racism prevalent in the country during that time. Reputed to be a sadomasochist, Fish reportedly indulged in self-mutilation, driving needles into his body, mostly around his genitals; stuffing cotton balls soaked with lighter fluid into his rectum and setting fire to them; and consuming not only the flesh of his victims but also their urine, blood, and excrement. He attributed these tendencies to the abuse he suffered in childhood. He also claimed God sent him on missions to kill. (Brian Lane, Wilfred Gregg, May 1995, p.85)
One of the crimes, which he confessed, was what he did to Billy Gaffney: "I brought him to the Riker Ave. dumps. There is a house that stands alone, not far from where I took the boy there. Stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I picked out of the dump....
