The Kidnap Years: by David Stout (popular books of all time TXT) 📗

about the joys of cannibalism in general. As if to prove he was not making up his story, he mentioned bringing a gift of strawberries and pot cheese on his 1928 visit to the Budd apartment.

The writer did not sign the letter. Instead, he closed by emphasizing that he had not violated the girl sexually, “tho I could have had I wished.”137

Hardened as he was by years of police work, Detective King realized he could still be shocked. Reading the letter was like bathing in sewage.

The strawberries and pot cheese? All right, those details had been in the newspapers, King recalled. But the letter writer had added a detail, declaring that around the time he took Grace away, he was living at 409 East One Hundredth Street in Manhattan. Why had he offered that clue? Or was it a clue? It could be that “Frank Howard” was playing games, that he had never lived at 409 East One Hundredth Street, just as he had never intended to take Grace to a birthday party at 137th Street and Columbus Avenue, a place that didn’t exist.

But 409 East One Hundredth Street was a real address. And the handwriting in the letter to the Budd apartment looked like the writing in the message “Frank Howard” had sent on June 2, 1928, telling the Budds he’d been delayed in New Jersey and would come the next day.

The envelope the letter had come in had a preprinted return address on the back flap. The address had been crossed out with ink, but there remained an odd hexagonal emblem with a capital letter in each of the six sides, spelling out “NYPCBA.”

What the hell is this? King wondered. Some kind of weird religious organization?

King looked more closely. Using a magnifying glass, he could see the return address the sender had crossed out but had not quite obliterated: 627 Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. Rushing to that address, he saw that it was not the home of a religious group; it was the headquarters of the New York Private Chauffeurs Benevolent Association.

King showed the organization’s president, Arthur Ennis, the envelope with the logo and asked if a Frank Howard had ever been a member of the NYPCBA. No, Ennis said after checking his files.

Then King asked to see the personnel forms filled out by all of the association’s active and retired members.

Ennis gave him a carton containing some four hundred forms. The detective took them back to his office to compare the handwriting on the forms to that on the revolting letter to the Budds. It wasn’t far-fetched to imagine that the little gray man who had taken Grace was or had been a chauffeur. Driving all over the city, gleaning personal details from his customers while remaining anonymous…

But King was unable to find a match in the handwriting. So the next day, Tuesday, November 13, he went back to the office of the NYPCBA and asked Ennis to convene an emergency meeting of the association.

When the session was held the next day, King reminded the members about the disappearance of Grace Budd. He told them about the letter to Grace’s mother in the envelope with the NYPCBA logo. He implored the chauffeurs: if anyone here knows who took some NYPCBA stationery from this office, come forward.

Just moments after the meeting adjourned, an embarrassed young man who was a part-time janitor and errand boy for the association came up to King and confessed to taking home some office stationery about six months before. The young man lived in a rooming house on Lexington Avenue, practically across the street from the office.

More optimistic than he had been in years, Detective King went at once to the rooming house—only to have his hopes dashed. There was no one living there who looked like “Frank Howard,” nor did any handwriting on the sign-in register resemble that of the letter writer.

Quickly, King again contacted the young man who had pilfered the office stationery. Better try harder with your memory, King said.

Sheepishly, the young man recalled that when he took the stationery home, he was living in another rooming house, at 200 East Fifty-Second Street. Apartment 7. His memory refreshed, the young man recalled something else: he had only used one, maybe two, of the envelopes. The rest he had put on a shelf above his bed. He’d left them there when he moved out.

The detective hurried to the Fifty-Second Street rooming house and showed the landlady an old circular about Grace Budd’s disappearance. The circular included a detailed description of “Frank Howard,” and it drew an instant reaction. “My goodness, this sounds like the quiet little old man with a gray mustache who used to live in Apartment 7,” she said. “He was here for only a couple of months. Left three days ago.”*

King’s heart sank.

She showed King the man’s signature from when he’d moved in. King looked at the name: Albert H. Fish. A glance told him the signature and the handwriting on the letter to Delia Budd were a match. Had the snake managed to slither away?

“Tell me all you can about Mr. Fish,” King pressed.

“Not much to tell,” the landlady said. Then she uttered a matter-of-fact remark that stunned King. Mr. Fish had promised to return soon to get a check from his son in North Carolina, where he was working for the Civil Conservation Corps. Each month, the son sent his $25 check to his father to help support him. In fact, the landlady had cashed some of the checks for Mr. Fish. She knew the old man was expecting another one, which she had promised to hold for him.

By the end of that day, November 14, King had set his traps. He arranged for twenty-four-hour surveillance of the Fifty-Second Street rooming house. He called the headquarters of the North Carolina CCC camp and arranged for the finance officer to notify him when the next checks were sent out. He asked postal inspectors in New York City to