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

be alert for any letters addressed to Albert Fish. And he asked Arthur Ennis of the chauffeurs association to notify him of any letters in association envelopes that were returned to his office as undeliverable.

In the third week of November, Ennis notified King that a letter mailed in a chauffeurs association envelope had been returned to the office because the addressee, a man in a Manhattan hotel, could not be located. The letter was in the same handwriting as the missive to Delia Budd. The writer said he was interested in joining a nudist club. He signed his name “James W. Pell.”

King noted that the letter was dated November 11, as the note to Delia Budd had been. So, King reflected, the creep was in a writing mood that day.

More days passed. Thanksgiving went by. Still, King and his men kept the vigil.

A light rain was falling on New York City on Tuesday, December 4. The newspapers were full of Christmas shopping ads, at least for New Yorkers with money. On that day, King got a call from a postal inspector. A letter addressed to Albert Fish had just been intercepted at the Grand Central Annex post office.

King’s hopes soared, then plummeted as more days ticked off and the weird old man failed to appear at the Fifty-Second Street rooming house.

On Wednesday, December 12, a cold spell hit its nadir with a low of eleven degrees in New York, a record for the date. Thursday dawned cloudy and much warmer. That afternoon, Detective King was at his desk when his phone rang.

“He’s here,” the landlady at the Fifty-Second Street rooming house said. “Albert Fish just came in and asked about his check.”**

“Stall him,” King said. “Anything to stall him. Offer him tea. Anything. I’m on my way.”

The detective hopped into a squad car and raced uptown, praying that Albert Fish would still be there. He was, sipping tea at a wooden table in a furnished room. King entered and closed the door. “Albert Fish?” he said.138

The man looked up from his tea and nodded.

“I’ve got you now,” King said.

“I’ll tell you all about it,” Fish said at police headquarters after some initial stalling. “I’m the man you want.” The shabby-but-harmless-looking old man was ready to tell about killing Grace Budd.139

Early on, Fish was shown the chauffeurs association envelope that had contained the vile letter to the Budds. He acknowledged sending the letter (and the one expressing interest in a nudist camp) and explained that he had run out of regular envelopes.

But what had prompted him to use envelopes with the NYPCBA label?

A cockroach, Fish said. “I was sitting in a chair…and there was a roach on the wall, and I got up on the chair to kill the roach and saw the envelopes.” He recalled seeing “a dozen or more” on a shelf where the mildly larcenous office assistant had left them.140

No doubt, King had acquired a sense of the bizarre in his years as a detective. Here was a moment to savor. For more than six years, he had spent endless hours investigating the disappearance of Grace Budd. He had drawn not only on his own bottomless patience but on all the investigative tools and techniques available to the police at the time.

Yet in the end, King had gotten his big break after planting a fictitious item in Walter Winchell’s column. And he’d been given the priceless clue of the NYPCBA envelope thanks to a simple creature whose ancestors had dwelled among dinosaurs, eons before the birth of mankind. A cockroach.

It is difficult to describe Albert Fish without using superlatives. Hardened police officers, psychiatrists, and even Fish’s own lawyer said the actions and words of the frail-looking little man were the most vile they had ever come across.***

Fish said he had taken Grace Budd on a train ride to Westchester County on June 3, 1928, after leaving the Budd family’s apartment. Alighting from the train, the old man and young girl had walked to a deserted cottage. Seeing no one else in the vicinity, let alone the throng of happy children she had expected at a birthday party, Grace no doubt became frightened. Her fear did not last long, for Fish quickly strangled the girl—because of “my lust for blood,” he explained.141 Then he desecrated her body, carving it up and saving some pieces to indulge his cannibalistic obsessions. He scattered what was left around the grounds of the cottage.

Thus, even before her parents became alarmed enough to contact the police and certainly well before the police began canvassing the neighborhood around the Budds’ apartment, Grace was dead.

At first, Fish said, he had intended to make Eddie Budd his victim. But he changed his mind when he saw the sweet-featured Grace, the flower of the family.

Eddie was brought to the New York City missing persons bureau by Detective William King. “Go in there, Eddie,” the detective said. “See if you can find the man who took your sister away—if he’s in there.”

A score or more of police officials and detectives were in the room, along with Albert Fish. At once, Eddie recognized Fish. “That’s the man that took my sister away!” he screamed. The strapping young man in his midtwenties lunged at the little old man before he was restrained by detectives.

“That’s Eddie,” Fish said mildly.

Grace’s father was brought in. “Don’t you know me?” Albert Budd said, shaking with emotion.

“Yes, you’re Mr. Budd,” Fish said.

“And you’re the man who came to my home as a guest and took my girl away,” the father said before detectives gently led him away.

Willie Korman, the friend of Eddie Budd who had looked forward to joining Eddie in healthy work on a Long Island farm, also identified Fish.

The police took Fish to the abandoned cottage in Westchester. He pointed out the spots where he had disposed of some of Grace’s remains. Officers dug, turning up bones and the young girl’s skull.

“It makes my conscience feel better now that you