7. Albert Fish, responsible for potentially more than 100 murders, raped, tortured, killed, and ate young children throughout the 1920s
Hamilton Howard “Albert” Fish”, also known as the “Gray Man” and the “Brooklyn Vampire”, was an American serial killer active in the early 20th century. Developing an interest in sexual mutilation, in 1910 Fish began acting out these fantasies. Initiating a sadomasochistic relationship with 19-year-old mentally disabled Thomas Kedden, over the course of two weeks Fish tortured Kedden in an old farmhouse. This torture culminated in the severing of half of his victim’s genitalia, regarding which Fish later stated “I shall never forget his scream, or the look he gave me”. Abandoning his victim with $10, Fish later admitted that he “never heard what become of him, or tried to find out”. Descending further into madness and self-mutilation, including the insertion of at least 29 needles into his pelvic region and of flaming wool into his anus, Fish began subsisting on a diet of raw meat.
By the mid-1920s Fish fervently believed that the voice of God was commanding him to torture and mutilate children, beginning with the murder of an intellectually disabled boy in Washington D.C. in 1919. He started his killing spree. It is not precisely known just how many were killed, with only eight victims confirmed, but Fish later boasted to have “had children in every state”. Six years after the murder of ten-year-old Grace Budd in 1928, Fish sent an anonymous letter to her mother confessing both his historic cannibalism and the murder and consumption of her daughter. Among the gruesome details Fish provided the bereft mother, was “how sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven” and that it had taken him “9 days to eat her entire body”. Identified and arrested, Fish confessed with proud detail his brutal actions. His trial lasted only 10 days; Fish pleaded insanity. A claim supported by several psychiatrists noted that Fish was a “psychiatric phenomenon” who possessed a never-before-seen range of sexual abnormalities. The jury nonetheless found him guilty and sentenced him to death. One juror later explained that they were completely aware that Fish was, in fact, insane, but felt that he deserved to die anyway.