FISH, Albert Howard
By that time, Fischer was well on his way to full-
blown alcoholism, serving 30 days in the brig for
drunkenness before he nished boot camp. He later saw
combat on Guadalcanal, Kwajalein, and Iwo Jima,
before he was posted to mainland China, guarding mili-
tary trains. His wartime record remains controversial,
Fischer variously claiming a Bronze Star, a Silver Star,
and two Purple Hearts for various battles, though he
could never produce the medals or certicates to verify
his alleged heroism. Regardless of the details, it is clear
that he saw action and loved every minute of it, remark-
ing years later that killing felt too good to stop at
wars end. He apparently murdered a number of Chi-
nese civilians under the guise of protecting military
freight, and while he was never court-martialed, he was
diagnosed as a dangerous paranoid schizophrenic prior
to his discharge from service in 1945.
A series of arrests and committals to mental institu-
tions followed his return to civilian life, climaxed in
1948 by Fischers conviction for robbery and assault.
Paroled in December 1953, he was free for a matter of
days before he attacked a 16-year-old boy in New Jer-
sey, beating him to death with a rock on the day after
Christmas. That crime sent him away for the next quar-
ter-century. He was paroled in June 1978 to marry a
pen pal, 78-year-old Claudine Eggers. The attraction
was apparently nancial, Claudine picking up the tab
for an aimless 13-month jaunt across country that
turned into a nonstop murder spree. One of the last to
die was Claudine herself, found stabbed to death in the
home she sometimes shared with Joe in Wassaic, New
York. Fischer surrendered to New York police on July
2, 1979, and freely confessed to the slaying, landing in
the Dutchess County jail on a charge of second-degree
murder.
That might have been the end for Fischer, but he felt
like talkingmore specically, confessing to another 18
homicides. He had set out to kill 25 victims, Joe told
detectives, but was still six short of the mark when he
grew weary and surrendered. By July 28, authorities in
Arizona and Oklahoma had issued warrants for his
arrest in the spring 1979 murders of a man in Flagstaff
and a female victim, Betty Jo Gibson, in Moore, Okla-
homa. Other victims claimed by Fischer in his confes-
sions included a couple of deaths in the Bowery, with
others in Los Angeles; San Francisco; New Mexico;
Cooperstown, New York; Hartford, Connecticut; and
Portland, Maine.
Authorities in different jurisdictions often seemed to
work at cross-purposes in tracking Fischers claims. The
New Jersey Department of Corrections refused to
release his prison psychiatric files, although it was
admitted that parole had been granted in 1978 on twin
conditions that Fischer join Alcoholics Anonymous and
76
remain subject to close supervision. A photo found in
his possession, meanwhile, was identied as a likeness
of 26-year-old Pamela Nolen, missing from Ruidos,
New Mexico, since October 30, 1978. (Fischer admit-
ted stabbing a woman to death in New Mexico; he sim-
ply didnt catch her name.) Flagstaff police cited
evidence confirming Fischers presence in the motel
room where a male victim died on March 31, 1979, but
they now called the death accidental; Fischer, for his
part, insisted that he beat the man to death. By mid-
February 1980, Joe was claiming a total of 32 victims,
and police in Norwalk, Connecticut, declared that they
had sufcient evidence to charge him in the additional
stabbing deaths of two 17-year-old girls, Alaine Hape-
man and Veronica Tassielo.
In fact, Joe went to trial in April 1980 only for the
murder of his wife. By that time, press reports of his
confessions cited dozens of victims, one article claim-
ing up to forty, but Fischer had changed his tune for
the moment, denying Claudines murder when he took
the witness stand on April 11. Jurors dismissed his testi-
mony as a self-serving lie, convicting him of second-
degree murder on April 23. Three weeks later, on May
16, Fischer received a prison sentence of 25 years to life.
Warrants remained outstanding in Connecticut and
Oklahoma, but neither jurisdiction was disposed to
extradite Fischer for trial. Conned at Sing Sing, he
soon reverted to his early boastful mode, granting inter-
views to such tabloid TV programs as Geraldo and A
Current Affair in 1989, claiming a body count of over
100 victims. By February 1991, when Fischer was pro-
filed on Americas Most Wanted, the number had
jumped to about 150, including allegations of a pri-
vate graveyard undiscovered by police, with 16 corpses
buried in one place, but no one had the interest or the
energy to check his stories out. By the time he died in
prison seven months later, at age 68, Joe Fischer was
largely forgotten, his passing barely noted in the home-
town newspaper. Ofcially, he was responsible for two
homicides, suspected of at least three more. His true
body countlike that of DONALD GASKINS, HENRY
LUCAS, and other boastful killerswill probably never
be known.
FISH, Albert Howard
Born Hamilton Fish in 1870, Americas most notorious
20th-century cannibal before JEFFREY DAHMER was the
product of a respected family living in Washington,
D.C. A closer examination, however, reveals at least
seven relatives with severe mental disorders in the two
generations preceding Fishs birth, including two mem-
bers of the family who died in asylums. Fish was ve
years old when his father died, and his mother placed
 FISH, Albert Howard

him in an orphanage while she worked to support her- time for grand larceny, passing bad checks, and violating
self. Records describe young Fish as a problem child parole or probation. Obscene letters were another of his
who ran away every Saturday, persistently wetting passions, and Fish mailed off countless examples to
the bed until his 11th year. Graduating from public strangers, their addresses obtained from matrimonial
school at age 15, he began to call himself Albert, dis- agencies of newspaper lonely-hearts columns.
carding the hated rst name which led classmates to In 1928, posing as Mr. Howard, Fish befriended
tease him, calling him Ham and Eggs. the Budd family in White Plains, New York. On June 3,
As an adult, Fish worked odd jobs, making his way while escorting 12-year-old Grace Budd to a fabricated
across country as an itinerant house painter and decora- childrens party, he took the child to an isolated cottage
tor. In 1898 he married a woman nine years his junior, and there dismembered her body, saving several pieces
fathering six children before his wife ran away with a for a stew which he consumed.
boarder named John Straube in January 1917. She Two years later, with the Budd case still unsolved,
came back once, with Straube in tow, and Fish took her Fish was conned to a psychiatric hospital for the rst
back on condition that she send her lover away. Later, time. After two months of observation, he was dis-
he discovered that his wife was keeping Straube in the charged with a note reading: Not insane; psychopathic
attic, and she departed after a stormy argument, never personality; sexual type. In 1931, arresting Fish once
to return. more on charges of mailing obscene letters, police
By his own account, Fish committed his rst murder found a well-used cat-o-nine-tails in his room. He was
in 1910, killing a man in Wilmington, Delaware, but released after two more weeks of observation in a psy-
his children marked the rst obvious change in Fishs chiatric ward.
behavior from the date of his wifes initial departure. Compelled to gloat about his crimes, Fish sent a let-
Apparently subject to hallucinations, he would shake ter to the Budd family in 1934, breaking the news that
his st at the sky and repeatedly scream, I am Christ! Grace was dead, oddly emphasizing the fact that she
Obsessed with sin, sacrice, and atonement through died a virgin. Traced by police through the letters dis-
pain, Fish encouraged his children and their friends to tinctive stationery, Fish readily confessed to other
paddle him until his buttocks bled. On his own, he
inserted numerous needles into his groin, losing track of
some as they sank out of sight. (A prison X ray revealed
at least 29 separate needles in his pelvic region, some
eroded with time to mere fragments.) On other occa-
sions, Fish would soak cotton balls in alcohol, insert
them in his anus, and set them on re. Frustrated by
agony when he began slipping needles under his own
ngernails, Fish lamented, If only pain were not so
painful!
Though never divorced from his rst wife, Fish mar-
ried three times, enjoying a sex life which court psychia-
trists would describe as one of unparalleled perversity.
(In jail, authorities compiled a list of 18 PARAPHILIAS
practiced by Fish, including coprophagiathe consump-
tion of human excrement.) Tracing his sadomasochism
back to the age of ve or six when he began to relish
bare-bottom spankings in the orphanage, Fishs obses-
sion with pain was focused primarily on children.
Ordered by God to castrate young boys, he impar-
tially molested children of both sexes as he traveled
around the country. Prosecutors condently linked him
with at least 100 sexual assaults in 23 states from
New York to Wyoming, but Fish felt slighted by their
estimate. I have had children in every state, he
declared, placing his own tally of victims closer to 400.
For all that, Fish was careless with his crimes, fre-
quently losing jobs because things about these children
came out. Arrested eight times over the years, he served Albert Fish on trial (Wide World API)

77
FRANKFORD Slasher
Pelvic X-ray of Albert Fish reveals needles he inserted in
his groin. (Wide World API)
homicides, including children killed in 1919, 1927, and
1934.
Authorities disagreed on his ultimate body count,
detectives listing at least three more victims in New
York City. Arrested for questioning in one case, Fish
had been released because he looked so innocent. On
another occasion, a trolley conductor identied Fish as
the man he saw with a small, sobbing boy on the day of
the childs disappearance. A court psychiatrist suspected
Albert of at least ve murders, with New York detec-
tives adding three more, and a justice of the New York
Supreme Court was reliably informed of the killers
involvement in 15 homicides.
At trial, the state was desperate to win a death
penalty, overriding Fishs INSANITY DEFENSE with laugh-
able psychiatric testimony. Speaking for the state, a bat-
tery of doctors declared, straight-faced, that
coprophagia is a common sort of thing. We dont call
people who do that mentally sick. A man who does that
is socially perfectly all right. As far as his social status is
concerned, he is supposed to be normal, because the
State of New York Mental Hygiene Department also
approves of that.
With Fishs rambling, obscene confessions in hand,
the jury found him sane and guilty of premeditated
murder in Grace Budds case. Sentenced to die, Fish was
electrocuted at Sing Sing Prison on January 16, 1936.
According to one witness present, it took two jolts
before the chair completed its work, thus spawning a
legend that the apparatus was short-circuited by all the
needles Fish had planted in his body.
78
FRANKFORD Slasher
Philadelphias Frankford district is the hard-scrabble
neighborhood chosen by Sylvester Stallone as the set-
ting for his rst Rocky lm. Rocky Balboa had gone on
to bigger, better things by the late 1980s, however,
when Frankford earned a new and unwelcome celebrity,
this time for the presence of a vicious serial killer who
slaughtered at least seven women.
The mystery began on August 28, 1985, when two
transit workers reported to their job at a Frankford
Avenue maintenance yard, around 8:30 A.M Within
moments, they found a womans lifeless body sprawled
between two heaps of railroad ties. She was nude from
the waist down, legs splayed, her blouse pushed up to
show her breasts. An autopsy report enumerated 19
stab wounds, with a gaping slash along her abdomen
nearly disemboweling her. She was identied as Helen
Patent, 52, well known in many of the bars on Frank-
ford Avenue.
Just over four months later, on January 3, 1986, a
second mutilated corpse was found on Ritner Street in
South Philadelphia, 10 miles from the rst murder scene.
Neighbors were surprised to see the door of 68-year-old
Anna Carrolls apartment standing open, and they
found her dead inside, on the oor of her bedroom. Like
Helen Patent, this victim was also nude below the waist,
her blouse pulled up. She had been stabbed six times,
her abdomen sliced open from breastbone to pubis.
No more was heard from the slasher for nearly a
yearuntil Christmas night, in factwhen victim num-
ber three was found on Richmond Street in the Brides-
burg neighborhood, three miles from where Helen
Patent was killed. Once again, it was worried neighbors
who found the corpse, investigating an open apartment
door to nd 74-year-old Susan Olzef dead in her at,
stabbed six times in the back. Like Helen Patent, Olzef
was a familiar gure on Frankford Avenue, police spec-
ulating that her killer may have known her from the
neighborhood.
Thus far, Philadelphias nest had little to go on, and
they resisted the notion of a serial killer at large in their
town. As Lieutenant Joe Washlick later told reporters in
an effort to explain the oversight, The rst three slay-
ings happened in different parts of the city. We could
almost give you a different suspect for each job.
Almost . . . but not quite. In fact, there were no leads
and had been no arrests by January 8, 1987, when two
Frankford Avenue fruit vendors found a womans
corpse stuffed underneath their stand, around 7:30 A.M.
The latest victim, 28-year-old Jeanne Durkin, lay face-
down and she was nude below the waist, legs spread.
She had been stabbed no less than 74 times.
With four corpses and no end in sight, authorities
ofcially linked the Patent and Durkin murders, later