Albert Fish Argumentative Essay

Nearly 2,743 serial killers have been produced by the United States alone; a whopping 67.4% of the globe’s serial killers on record. Homicide is unfortunately not something that is terribly unfamiliar to humans. For thousands of years people have taken the lives of others. More often than not the people committing these acts believe that they are justified in doing so. Whether it be because of war or some realization of justice, they believe that they are vindicated. Some individuals, however, do not believe or even care if they are justified in their killings or not. They simply do it because they want to. These individuals, while all detestable, are not all equal. A strikingly cold-blooded character by the name of Albert Fish stands out from the rest for his especially loathsome motivations.

Serial killers have been around for

an extensive period of time, dating back many decades. Though few can quite compare to Albert, who is a particularly monstrous instance. Albert had a disturbingly abusive childhood which heavily affected his later life. Many members of his family suffered from mental illness and one from religious mania. When his father passed away in 1875 he was placed into an orphanage where he would be regularly beaten and whipped. It is here that he ultimately discovered that he enjoyed physical pain. Eventually Albert’s mother secured a stable job and was able to take him back in to her care. At the age of 12 Fish started a homosexual relationship with a telegraph boy who introduced him into the act of drinking urine and eating feces. Fish would go on to become a male prostitute later in life and began molesting young boys. He was later imprisoned on charges of embezzlement. Following his release he continued to molest children, even during his marriage. After his wife left him for John Straube, he began to hear voices; for example, he once wrapped himself up in a carpet, explaining that he was following the instructions of John the Apostle.

What truly sets Albert apart from the rest is the sheer brutality of his killings. Even though he only killed the bare minimum of people to be considered a technical serial killer, he made the most of those few. The last murder he committed was the slaughter of Billy Gaffney. He encountered the young boy on a trolley as he was coming home and promptly abducted him. He proceeded to take the boy to an abandoned house near the local dump where he gagged and bound him. He returned the next day and began to beat the boy with a homemade cat o’ nine tails until blood ran from his legs. Albert describes precisely what he did to the boy in his confession to authorities after being caught. “I cut off his ears, nose, slit his mouth from ear to ear. Gouged out his eyes. He was dead then. I stuck the knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drank his blood.” (Murderpedia). Fish continues his process by preparing the body and cannibalizing the boy. “ I ate every bit of the meat in about four days.” (Murderpedia). It is globally agreed by the public that cannibalism is considered incredibly taboo and utterly abominable.

The predominant trait that makes Albert’s case so atypical is his unadulterated apathy for what he had done.

He held little to no empathy towards the families and victims that he had devastated. So little, in fact, that he wasn’t quite sure why he had done it in the first place. He was entirely indifferent about whether or not he even wanted to live. During his execution via electric chair the following occurred: “Just before the switch was flipped, he stated "I don't even know why I am here."’ (PrairieGhosts). The murder of Grace Budd is the best example of this. After abducting the girl, Albert then strangled her to death and decapitated her. He proceeded to undress the girl and carve her body. Fish prepared and ate Grace’s body over the course of nine days. He subsequently wrote a letter to the parents of Grace and mailed it to them, describing what he had done to their daughter in full detail. When questioned about why he had written the letter he simply responded, “I just had a mania for writing.” (PrairieGhosts). When confronted by Grace’s father Albert remained emotionless and indifferent, even when Mr. Budd proceeded to strike

him.

Perhaps the most disturbing feature of Albert’s crimes has to be the motivations behind them. Fish was undeniably a sexual deviant whose fetishes include coprophilia, urophilia, pedophilia, masochism, and sadism. These fetishes and his inability to control them are what motivated him to commit these egregious acts. During interrogation, Albert stated the following: “I always had a desire to inflict pain on others and to have others inflict pain on me. I always seemed to enjoy everything that hurt."’ (Walton 143). He also confessed to the psychiatrist that he had been sticking needles into his body for years in the area between the rectum and the scrotum. X-rays revealed that there were in fact 29 pin-needles lodged in his pelvis. He would frequently beat himself and even ask his children to paddle him. Religious mania also has a part to play in his motivations. “About the age of fifty-five, Fish started to experience hallucinations and delusions. "He had visions of Christ and His angels… Fish believed that God had ordered him to torment and castrate little boys. He had actually done so a number of times.” (Walton 141). This led to Dr. Wertham, the defense alienist, to believe that Fish was legally insane. “Fish's children had seen him "hitting himself on his nude body with a nail-studded paddle until he was covered with blood. They also saw him stand alone on a hill with his hands raised, shouting: 'I am Christ.'” (Schechter 163).