Old Sparky

by Anthony Galvin

  He had one last ploy. He offered to turn informant but on one condition. He had to be allowed a one-on-one interview with Abe Reles. The authorities declined this kind offer. They were right; he admitted shortly before his execution that he planned on attacking Reles and biting through his jugular.

  “I didn’t worry about the chair, if I could just tear his throat out first,” he said.

  He never got the chance, going to the chair moments after his accomplice Martin Goldstein.

  As for the second most prolific killer of Murder, Inc., Abe Reles, he escaped the law, but he could not escape justice.

  After his testimony had put away seven contract killers and broken Murder, Inc. forever, Reles was getting ready to give evidence against yet another mobster, Albert Anastasia. He was a big fish—like Buchalter, one of the bosses, rather than a foot soldier. Reles was prepared to testify that the gangster had been involved in the killing of union longshoreman Pete Panto. This had serious implications, because Anastasia was not just a leading figure in Murder, Inc. He was also a major player in the National Crime Syndicate. He would be by far the most senior figure brought down by Reles. He was also the figure with the most powerful influence.

  The trial was set for November 12, 1941, with Reles as the only prosecution witness. The prosecution knew that their star witness had to be guarded diligently. So they had six police detectives constantly protecting him as he was holed up in the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island. Three other mob informants were also in the hotel with their guards. So the place was crawling with police. Crime boss Frank Costello—an even more senior figure in the organization than Anastasia—raised up to $100,000, which he used to bribe three of Reles’s guards to kill the informant. One of the men he bribed had allegedly been involved in the disappearance of Judge Joseph Force Carter in 1930, so he had chosen well.

  From here on the story becomes speculative. On the evening of November 11, Reles’s wife, Rose, visited the sixth floor room where her husband was being kept. The couple argued, and then she left for the night. The following morning the assistant manager of the hotel reported hearing a loud thud. He ran and discovered the body of the gangster on the concrete roof of an extension to the hotel, which lay four stories below Reles’s window. The body lay twenty feet from the wall of the hotel.

  The New York Times carried the official account of the “accident:”

  Sometime after daylight yesterday, Abe Reles … climbed out on a window edge of the sixth floor of the Half Moon Hotel, fully dressed but hatless. Strong wind from the gray sea tugged at his long, crisp black hair and tore at his gray suit.

  Behind him, in his room, lights still burned. The little radio that had played all night, still blared and babbled … Reles let the two bed sheets down the hotel’s east wall, two windows north of the hotel’s Boardwalk front. Around one end of the upper bed sheet he had twisted a four-foot length of radio lead-in wire. He had wound the free end of the wire on a radio valve under the window.

  He let himself down on the sheets to the fifth floor. One hand desperately clung to the sheet. With the other, Reles tugged at the screen and at the window of the vacant fifth-floor room. He worked them up six inches. He tugged again with his full 160 pound weight.

  The strain was too much for the amateur wire knot on the valve. Little by little, it came undone. Reles tried to save himself. He kicked towards the fifth-floor window ledge with his left foot, but merely brushed the shoe leather from toe to heel. He plunged to the hotel’s concrete kitchen roof forty-two feet below. He landed on his back, breaking his spine.

  It is a nice story, but the problem is that Reles landed on the roof well away from the wall of the hotel. Had he tried to escape—unlikely, given that he was the star witness, and avoiding prosecution for his efforts—he would have plunged straight down. Far more likely is that two or more of his guards picked up the violent killer and swung him vigorously through the open window, setting up the sheets afterward as a cover story.

  His killers were never caught. The trial collapsed, and Anastasia went on to serve with distinction in World War II before returning to a life of crime. He was assassinated in 1957.

  Although Abe Reles escaped the electric chair, no one can deny that justice of a sort was served that cold, misty morning on Coney Island.

  ALBERT FISH THE BOOGEY MAN

  “It will be the supreme thrill of my life,” sadistic sexual predator, child killer, and cannibal Albert Fish said, when hearing that he was going to die in the electric chair. He went to his death with a smile, unrepentant about the trail of death and misery he had left in his wake.

  Hamilton Howard—known as Albert—Fish was born in 1870 and was one of the first known serial killers in the United States. He was known as The Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac, and simply as The Boogey Man. He boasted of killing children in every state, claiming a total of around one hundred. More likely his number was far smaller. He was an unreliable witness who loved to boast and shock. But whatever the final figure, Fish was a true monster.

  A native of Washington, DC, his father was seventy-five when he was born, and the family had a history of mental illness. An uncle suffered dementia, a brother was confined to a state mental hospital, and his sister had a “mental affliction.” His mother heard voices and suffered hallucinations, and three other relatives had undisclosed problems. On his father’s death, his mother put Fish in an orphanage and the child discovered he enjoyed the physical punishment that was the norm in those institutions. “I was there till I was nearly nine, and that’s where I got started wrong. We were unmercifully whipped. I saw boys doing many things they should not have done,” he told investigators later.

  At twelve, now home with his mother, Fish had his first homosexual experiences with a local telegraph boy. He was also introduced to deviant practices such as eating feces and drinking urine. In his late teens Fish became a rent boy and also began raping young boys. He was a deviant who enjoyed an unorthodox and destructive lifestyle. But at the age of twenty-eight his mother arranged a marriage for him and he settled down, having six children with his young wife. He was working as a house painter, often traveling extensively for jobs, but did not put his old ways completely behind him. He continued to molest young boys, generally under the age of six. In his thirties he began to fantasize about sexual mutilation, but it took a long time before fantasy merged into reality. He waited until he was aged forty-one before his assaults escalated. He was staying in St. Louis at the time and he began sexually molesting an intellectually disabled young man. He tied the nineteen-year-old up and tried to slice his penis with scissors. But he panicked when he saw the look of fear on his victim’s face. Leaving the youth ten dollars to cover his medical bills, Fish fled the city and returned to his home in New York. But the incident had turned a switch in Fish’s mind, and now he began going to brothels frequently, often engaging in sadomasochistic practices with others of similar inclinations. But this period of his life was cut short when he was convicted of larceny and sent to Sing Sing. This also brought on the end of his marriage. When he got out of prison his wife had abandoned him, leaving him the children to raise on his own. Around this time he began to hear voices in his head, as his mind began its degeneration. He began experimenting with self-harm, often embedding needles into his groin, pelvis, and abdomen for sexual gratification. He tried flagellation and also put wads of burning cotton up his anus. He stopped cooking his meat, as his obsession with cannibalism grew.

  Fish chose victims who were powerless—handicapped, poor African-Americans, and children. He claimed to have attacked a man in Delaware in 1910 but no record exists of the assault. A few years later he stabbed a mentally handicapped boy in Washington. He was beginning to get a taste for torturing, mutilating, and murdering young children with his meat cleaver, butcher’s knife, and handsaw. He was prevented a number of times from attempting to abduct children but may well have succeeded as well. Records are s
canty, and he claimed himself to have been killing regularly.

  In May 1928 Fish saw a classified ad in the New York World from a young man looking for work in the country. Fish thought it would be fun to offer the guy a job, tie him up, mutilate him, and leave him to bleed to death. But when he made contact with Edward Budd, eighteen, he spotted Budd’s ten-year-old sister Grace and decided on a new victim. Telling the family that he was on the way to his niece’s birthday party, he asked whether the young girl would like to accompany him. He said he would have her back by nine. The girl’s mother, Delia, was reluctant, but her father said, “Let the poor kid go. She don’t see much good times.” It was a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  That evening there was no sign of the young girl and no word from the kindly man who had taken her away. After a sleepless night, they contacted the police, who quickly established that the name given by the man was false, and the address where he said his niece’s birthday was being held was bogus. Beyond that, they had nothing to add.

  Several years passed for the confused and grieving family. A sixty-six-year-old suspect was arrested but found not guilty of the abduction. No one had any idea what had happened to the smiling girl. Then, in 1934, the family was horrified to receive an anonymous letter with graphic descriptions of cannibalism. The letter had come from Fish and recounted the experiences of a friend of his who had been stranded in China.

  “At that time there was famine in China. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under twelve were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under fourteen was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and … part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl’s behind, which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet, brought the highest price.”

  The letter went on to recount how his “friend” developed a taste for human meat, and when he returned to America, he kidnapped, fattened, and ate children:

  He told me so often how good human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3, 1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said, yes, she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked, she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick—bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body.

  Whether it was to soften the impact on the family or increase their sense of horror, he concluded: “I did not fuck her, though I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.”

  Writing a letter to the family of a victim might seem like an unnecessary risk, but serial killers often have a need to insert themselves into an investigation. They get a vicarious thrill from closeness to the case. And sometimes they just like to torture the family. This was almost certainly an element of what Fish was doing.

  He made one mistake, however. Although he did not sign the letter, he put it in an envelope with a small hexagonal emblem emblazoned with the letters NYPCBA—the New York Private Chauffeur’s Benevolent Association. A janitor at the company admitted stealing some stationery, but he left it at a boarding house at 200 East Street when he moved out. The next tenant in the boarding house was Fish. The cops finally had a suspect.

  Fish initially agreed to be interviewed and then brandished a razor blade. He was swiftly disarmed, and the arresting officer, Detective William King, knew he had his breakthrough. Fish didn’t even attempt to deny the murder of the little girl. He admitted that her older brother was his initial target, and then he had switched. He said that it had not occurred to him to rape the girl, but he disturbingly admitted that he had ejaculated while strangling her.

  Two more grisly murders were laid at the feet of Fish. On July 14, 1924, eight-year-old Francis McDonnell disappeared from Staten Island. After a search he was found hanging from a tree in a nearby wooded area. He had been strangled and sexually assaulted, and he had suffered extensive cuts. His left hamstring had been stripped of all the flesh. Fish claimed he had been trying to castrate the boy, but more likely he had taken the flesh to eat. Descriptions of an elderly man with a gray mustache seen in the area at the time matched Fish. There was no doubt of his guilt. After being convicted of Grace Budd’s killing, Fish admitted the McDonnell one.

  The third monstrous killing he was definitely responsible for was that of Billy Gaffney. The four-year-old had been playing with friends in February 1927 when he and another child disappeared. When the other, three-year-old Billy Beaton, was found he told searchers that the Boogey Man had taken his friend. Gaffney’s body was never recovered. A man seen lurking nearby matched Fish’s description.

  Fish was glad to admit his guilt, saying, “I took the boy. Stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I picked from the dump. Then I burned his clothes. Next day, about 2:00 p.m., I took tools, a good heavy cat-of-nine-tails. Home made, short handle … I whipped his bare behind until the blood ran down his legs. 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.”

  He then took some choice cuts to eat and disposed of the rest of the body. He gave shocked investigators a detailed account of the recipe he used to cook the boy, gravy, onions and all.

  On March 11, Fish went on trial for the murder of Grace Budd. He pleaded insanity, saying that he heard God in his head telling him to kill children. Several experts testified to his weird sexual fetishes, which included sadism, masochism, and more. His lawyer said that Fish was a “psychiatric phenomenon,” unique in the range of his sexual abnormalities.

  Unbelievably, the former manager of the Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital, where Fish had been treated during his second incarceration (for sending obscene letters), said that Fish was abnormal but sane. Menas Gregory said that urophilia (love of urine), coprophilia (a fetish for feces), and pedophilia were “socially perfectly alright,” and Fish was “no different from millions of other people.”

  The twelve jurors looked at one another and shook their heads.

  They had no doubt that Fish was insane—but as one explained to the press, they felt he should be executed anyway. Such evil could not walk the world.

  After his conviction, Fish admitted to two more killings (McDonnell and Gaffney). Six other children, aged between four and seventeen, were almost certainly killed by the Gray Man. As to all the others he claimed, there is considerable doubt. For one thing, his confessions were imprecise and it was often not clear whether he was talking about molesting a child, killing a child, or eating a child. And the murder descriptions were not linked to actual missing children. It is probable that he killed less than ten, but raped and molested hundreds. That would be common with very active pedophiles.

  A few days before his death, Fish requested pen and paper and wrote several pages, his final statement. This he handed over to his lawyer, James Dempsey, to distribute after his death. But on reading it, the lawyer immediately decided to suppress it. He told reporters, “I will never show it to anyone. It was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read.”

  Fish went to the death chamber in Sing Sing on January 16, 1936. He was eager for the experience and looked forward to the sensations that would follow once the current began to flow. It was
the ultimate buzz for a masochist.

  He entered the chamber at 11:06 p.m. and helped the guard position the electrode on his leg—unusual behavior for a condemned man. Then he sat back and allowed them to fit the skullcap with the other electrode. As the death mask was lowered over his head, he muttered, “I don’t even know why I am here.”

  One concern the prison authorities had was that Fish had a large number of metal pins in his leg, which he had inserted over the years as part of his spectrum of sexual fetishes. Would these affect how the electrocution went? It was an unfounded fear. Within three minutes of entering the death chamber, Fish was pronounced dead. The electrocution had gone perfectly. Fish had found the perfect climax to his life of depravity.

  BRUNO RICHARD HAUPTMANN THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY

  In the days before fame became debased by fifteen-minute wannabes, reality television stars, and pop-idol winners, Charles Lindbergh was the real deal. A dashing airman in the early days of flight, he achieved worldwide fame overnight—but he earned it.

  At the age of twenty-five the US Air Mail pilot and Air Corps reservist won the Orteig Prize for flying solo nonstop from America to Europe. He took off from the Roosevelt Field in Garden City, Long Island, on May 20, 1927, and landed in Paris, France, the following day. This was the first solo crossing of the Atlantic, a breakthrough in the new and glamorous field of aviation. Lindbergh was front page news on both sides of the Atlantic.

  He had been interested in machines for as long as he could remember and had dropped out of college to learn to fly. For two years he had supported himself as a barnstormer, performing in flying circuses all over the country. He did it all—stunts, wing walking—every crazy thing you could do in the air. Then he had done a year of training with the fledgling Army Air Service. On completion he was a second Lieutenant in the Air Service Reserve Corps. By then he was one of the most experienced fliers in the country and picked up a job as one of the first Air Mail pilots.