Serial Killers: Confessions of a Cannibal

by Robert Keller

  A picture of Corthell was duly dispatched to the NYPD and they wasted no time in showing it to the Budd family. The results were conflicting. Both Albert and Edward thought the man looked like Howard but couldn’t be sure that it was him. Delia Budd, however, was adamant. The man in the picture was definitely the monster who had showed up at her house and spirited her daughter away. She was prepared to stake her life on it.

  But Delia Budd’s identification (as we shall see later) was highly questionable. Driven half crazy by grief and concern, Mrs. Budd was prepared to point the finger at just about any elderly, mustachioed stranger. In this case, however, she had corroboration from an independent source.

  At around the time that Warden Blitch forwarded Albert Corthell’s mugshot to the Missing Persons Bureau, a man named William L. Vetter contacted the police with an interesting piece of information. Vetter was the assistant superintendant at the Brooklyn chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The incident he wanted to report was of a man matching Frank Howard’s description, who had called in at the S.P.C.C. offices in early June, wanting to adopt a ten-year-old girl. A date had been scheduled for a follow up interview but the man had never returned. Vetter had been mulling the strange incident ever since, but had only recently made the possible connection between it and the Budd case.

  On the face of it, this seemed like a very promising lead and the police decided to immediately put Vetter’s tipoff to the test. Having just received Corthell’s mugshot, they put it into a photo array, with pictures of several other elderly cons. Vetter picked out Corthell without a moments hesitation.

  It was exactly the break that the police needed. And it was good news for the Budd family too. For all his criminal ways, Albert Corthell was known as a gentle and somewhat refined man. He had no history of violence and was certainly no killer. If Grace was in his hands, she was almost certainly still alive.

  On August 3, a grand jury was convened and returned an indictment against Albert E. Corthell for kidnapping. A warrant was then issued for his arrest. It appeared that the hunt for Grace Budd had taken a massive leap forward. Assistance District Attorney Harold W. Hastings boldly predicted that the case would be resolved “within days.”

  That forecast, however, was wildly wide of the mark. Two years went by and despite the best efforts of detectives the wily conman Corthell remained at large. During that time several other suspects had dethroned him briefly at the top of the wanted list before being cleared. A man named Herbert J. Sherry was briefly investigated. Then there was Charles Howard, a 50-year-old from Florida who was on the run after defrauding his new bride of $2,800. The woman contacted the police to report the crime, adding that she thought Charles might actually be Frank Howard, kidnapper of the Budd girl.

  Charles Howard was duly tracked down and arrested. Placed into a line up, he was unsurprisingly picked out by Delia Budd (on another occasion, Mrs. Budd identified a NYPD detective, drafted in to fill up the line-up, as her daughter’s kidnapper). Charles Howard, however, was able to provide a watertight alibi, and was off the hook for kidnapping, although he still had a charge of theft to answer.

  On September 3, 1930, a woman named Jessie Pope marched into the stationhouse at West 20th Street and announced that her estranged husband, Charles Edward Pope, was the man who had kidnapped Grace Budd. According to Mrs. Pope’s story she had received a telegram from her husband on the day of the Budd kidnapping, asking her to meet him on the corner of High and Smith Streets, a few blocks from her residence. When she arrived at the rendezvous point, she found her husband waiting with a pretty, brown-haired girl of about ten. He asked her to look after the girl for a few days but she refused. Pope had then left in a huff, taking the girl with him.

  Asked why she hadn’t reported this sooner, Mrs. Pope said that she had become seriously ill almost immediately after the incident. She had remained bedridden for several months. By the time she recovered the hubbub over the Budd kidnapping had died down, and the strange incident had faded from her memory. It was only after reading about the arrest of Charles Howard that it had all come back to her.

  Mrs. Pope came across as a forthright woman and after the fiasco surrounding the arrest of Charles Howard the police were glad to have another solid lead so quickly. The following day, detectives called at the East 87th Street apartment Pope shared with his widowed sister and placed him under arrest. The 67-year-old janitor appeared bewildered as he was hustled into a hastily arranged line-up. Yet again, Delia Budd made a positive identification, while her husband and son were less certain.

  By the following morning, the newspapers had wind of the arrest. “Budd Kidnap Suspect Captured After Two Years!” trumpeted the Daily News, sparking a near riot as an angry mob gathered outside the police station. Inside, Charles Pope endured hours of interrogation but stuck steadfastly to his denials. “My wife has had it in for me,” he told detectives, “ever since I was made executor of my father’s $30,000 estate.” He went on to add that Mrs. Pope had even had him committed to an asylum in an attempt to get her hands on the money. This, he speculated, was just her latest gambit.

  Pope’s story was verified by his elderly sister, and the more police looked into Pope’s past, the more likely it appeared that he was telling the truth. But then matters took an unexpected turn. While searching Pope’s premises the police found a number of compromising items, including a stack of postcards featuring women in “alluring poses” and, more tellingly, a swatch a dark brown hair, tied up with a length of ribbon.

  News of the discoveries sent the New York papers into a frenzy. “New Clues Tighten Budd Kidnap Net,” the Daily News reported. “Ribbons, Curls, Found In Trunk At Budd Suspect’s Home,” the World announced. It was looking very dark indeed for Charles Edward Pope.

  The matter came before a grand jury on September 11, 1930. By then, doubts had resurfaced about Pope’s guilt (at least amongst the investigators working the case, the tabloid press had all but convicted Pope already). Yet despite these doubts, the unreliability of prosecution witnesses, and evidence that the lock of hair found at Pope’s home was not from Grace Budd, the grand jury found enough cause for an indictment. Pope’s trial was set for December.

  Before that could happen, the police finally tracked down and arrested Albert Corthell, their original suspect. Extradited from Illinois, Corthell was placed into a police lineup and identified by both Delia and Alfred Budd. Suddenly, the police found themselves in the unusual position of having two identified suspects for the same crime.

  That number would soon be reduced to one. At Charles Pope’s trial on December 22, the judge listened to testimony from only two witnesses, Delia Budd and Jessie Pope. Mrs. Budd surprised the court by stating that her earlier identification of Pope had been mistaken. Mrs. Pope squirmed and wheedled under cross-examination and eventually admitted that she bore a grudge against her husband. The judge then reprimanded her and instructed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty. After more than three months in police custody, Charles Pope was a free man.

  That reinstated Albert Corthell as the main suspect. But after months of trying to find enough evidence to make a charge stick, the D.A. was forced to admit that he had nothing to connect Corthell to the abduction of Grace Budd. On February 6, 1931, charges against Corthell were withdrawn. The police were back to square one.

  Chapter Seven:

  Cold Case

  The hunt for Grace Budd and the elusive Frank Howard had involved hundreds of New York City police officers, and perhaps thousands of lawmakers from around the country. One man, though, stands out. He was Detective William F. King, of the Bureau of Missing Persons. A resolute investigator, King was as tough as they come. He’d been a locomotive fireman and had served in the Great War before applying his unique skill set to police work.

  Early in the Budd case, King had been assigned to track down Albert Corthell, so no one was more disappointed than he when the charges were dismissed so soon after
he eventually landed the fugitive. Nonetheless, King remained determined to catch Grace Budd’s abductor. It would be safe to say that he had developed a near obsession with bringing the case to resolution. By the spring of 1931, that resolution seemed further off than ever.

  In March 1932, New York Times reporter R. L. Duffus published an article under the banner, “Kidnapping: A Rising Menace To The Nation.” In it, Duffus bemoaned the surge of kidnappings that was sweeping the nation. Most famous of these was the tragic abduction and murder of the Lindbergh baby, for which German immigrant Bruno Hauptmann would eventually go to the chair. But there were plenty of others. It seemed that anyone with the means to pay a ransom was at risk from criminals desperate for a payday during the bleak depression years.

  The New York Times illustrated Duffus’ article with a collage of four young kidnapping victims. Three of these were the offspring of wealthy parents. In each of these cases a ransom had been demanded and paid and the children had been safely returned to their homes. No ransom had ever been demanded for Grace Budd. At the time the article appeared, Grace had already been missing for four years.

  Two more years passed before the Budd case was again in the headlines. It happened in June 1934, as New York City played host to the U.S. Navy. On May 30, the entire U.S. fleet, comprising 185 warships, had sailed in to New York harbor in an impressive show of American naval might. Over the next two-and-a-half weeks, the city rolled out the red carpet. Officers attended galas and banquets hosted by Mayor LaGuardia and the Big Apple’s social elite. Meanwhile, 22,000 enlisted men swarmed across the city, taking in the delights of Times Square, Chinatown, Coney Island and New York’s many other attractions.

  The New York press, of course, covered the whole event in detail, with picture spreads dominating their pages. Mostly, these were of battle cruisers, aircraft carriers, and the teeming crowds who had come out to see them. But there were human interest pictures too, shots of beaming sailors interacting and posing with the locals and enjoying the hospitality of the city. It was one of these that would inadvertently provide the telling break in the Budd case.

  The picture appeared as one of a spread in the Daily Mirror on Monday, June 4, 1934. It showed a couple of soldiers posing with their dates, two attractive young ladies dressed in their finery. The girl standing on the right of the picture was wearing a full-length white dress and a wide-brimmed hat that cast part of her face into shadow. She was dark-haired and pretty, her allure accentuated by the charming half-smile that played on her lips.

  Millions of New Yorkers saw the picture, but one of them, a Brooklyn housewife named Adele Miller, drew a different conclusion to the rest. She became convinced that the girl in the photograph was Grace Budd. So convinced in fact that she took a pair of scissors and snipped the picture from the newspaper. Then she drew an arrow pointing to the girl, with the caption, “This is the girl, Grace Budd.” Finally, she slipped the cutting into an envelope and mailed it to the Budd family.

  Delia Budd was intrigued by the picture. After studying it for hours under a magnifying glass she became convinced that it was indeed Grace. Family and friends were less certain, although even they had to admit that there was a resemblance and that the girl could certainly pass for a slightly older Gracie.

  The following morning, Delia and Albert Budd took the subway across town to the Missing Person’s Bureau and showed the picture to Detective King. Within hours, the newspapers had wind of the story and had reprinted it, along with copy that suggested that the Budd girl had finally been found. She was urged to report to her local police precinct and identify herself.

  But any fleeting hope that the Budds may have harbored was soon dashed. On Thursday, June 14, a 16-year-old girl by the name of Florence Swinney walked into the Morrisania police station in the Bronx and identified herself as the girl in the photograph. That evening the Budds heard the bad news from Deputy Chief Inspector Francis Kerr. After years of false dawns, they took this latest letdown stoically.

  Unbeknownst to the Budds, the Florence Swinney affair was not a total loss after all. In fact, it would have a dramatic impact on the hunt for their missing daughter. Among the millions of people who had followed the story to its rather disappointing conclusion was an avid reader of newspapers, a man who had more reason than most to maintain an interest in the case. His name was Albert Hamilton Fish, although he sometimes used the alias Frank Howard. Six months after Florence Swinney identified herself to the police, six years after he’d stolen away their daughter, Fish would contact the Budds again, heaping upon them even more sorrow.

  Chapter Eight:

  The Letter

  Detective William King, as we have already noted, maintained a near obsessive interest in the Budd case. Despite the lack of suspects, despite the dearth of viable leads, King continued to work the angles, chasing down any clue that emerged, no matter how meager. One of the tactics he employed was to occasionally plant false stories in the New York press about the case. King’s motive for doing this was two-fold. On the one hand he wanted to keep the story in the public arena. You never knew when a story might trigger someone’s memory and provide a potentially valuable lead. So far however, the returns had been paltry, mostly crank calls and well-meaning but useless tips. King’s second reason for running the stories was the possibility that he might flush his quarry from hiding, a scant hope to be sure, but one that cost nothing to pursue.

  On November 2, 1934, Walter Winchell, the undisputed king of New York’s gossip columnists, ran the following piece in his regular feature in the New York Daily News:

  I checked on the Grace Budd mystery. She was eight when she was kidnapped six years ago. And it is safe to tell you that the Dep’t of Missing Persons will break the case, or they expect to, in four weeks. They are holding a “cokie” now at Randall’s Island, who is said to know most about the crime. Grace is supposed to have been done away with in lime, but another legend is that her skeleton is buried in a local spot. More anon.

  The story, of course, was pure fabrication. The “cokie,” or cocaine addict, did not exist and there was no direct evidence to suggest the manner in which Grace’s body had been disposed of, or indeed that she was definitely dead. However, the one person who knew the answer to these questions read the article and this time he decided to act. He decided to write a letter.

  The missive arrived at the Budd’s apartment on the morning of November 12, having been mailed the previous day from a post office at Grand Central Station. Delia Budd opened it, but she was functionally illiterate and could decipher no more than her own name. Instead, she handed it over to her son, Edward who began reading silently, his features quickly morphing into a frown and the color rapidly blanching from his face.

  “What’s it say, Eddie?” Delia Budd asked. Edward didn’t answer. He turned on his heel and headed out of the door. An hour later he was handing the vile letter over to Detective King. Nothing the veteran cop had read to that point could match the sheer depravity of the thing. In this case, Delia Budd’s lack of education had been a blessing. The letter read as follows:

  “My dear Mrs. Budd,

  In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone.

  At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1 to $3 a pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak — chops — or stew meat. 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 girls behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price.

  John staid there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys one seven, one 11. Took
them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them — tortured them — to make their meat good and tender.

  First he killed the 11-year-old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was Cooked and eaten except the head — bones and guts. He was roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 St., near — right side. He told me so often how good Human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it.

  On Sunday June the 3rd 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.