by Tom Philbin
Of course, he did not stop. He followed every lead, however thin, and continued his pursuit of the kidnapper.
Besides the overall frustration of not solving the case, he encountered promising leads that didn’t pan out. To King, each was a new hope, a new road that could lead him to the promised land, but each ended in nothingness.
Then, on November 11, 1934, Will King got a telephone call from Delia Budd, the mother of the abducted girl. She had received a letter from someone, and it looked like it was about Grace. Did he want to see it?
He sure did. Edward Budd, Grace’s father, brought the letter over unopened, and King carefully opened and read it. The contents of the letter were later read into the court record and would stun and repulse people because the kidnapper described how he had murdered and eaten the little girl. But what excited King was the handwriting. He did not have to be a graphologist to know that the spidery-inked handwriting was written by the same man who had written the earlier telegram to the Budds—Mr. Howard.
All King had to determine was where the letter writer was.
What followed was a masterpiece of detective work on the part of Will King.
He noticed that the legal-sized envelope had an emblem and some initials on it and that they had been scratched over. But holding the envelope up to the light, he could read them clearly enough: NYPCBA. A check of the phone book revealed that they stood for the New York Private Chauffeurs Benevolent Association at 627 Lexington Avenue.
King went to the headquarters and explained his business to the president of the association. The president was concerned that King suspected one of his members, but King was noncommittal.
What he wanted to do, he said, was check handwriting samples of members.
Working over seven hours, until past midnight, King checked the handwriting samples on applications for the NYPCBA. None was close to the handwriting of Frank Howard.
King took another tack. Within a few days, he spoke in front of the seventy-five-member group, asking if anyone had used any of the NYPCBA envelopes or had taken any for personal use. He made it clear that no one would get in trouble by admitting that, but he was vague about why he wanted to know.
He waited in the president’s office. Then a small, red-haired man named Leo Sicoski came in. After King reassured him that nothing dire would happen to him, Sicoski admitted that he had taken some of the envelopes and used them while he lived at 622 Lexington Avenue. He might have left some around.
Frustrated Again
King went over to the address—and was disappointed yet again. The room had not been rented since Sicoski had left it and was boarded tight. A canvass of the neighborhood proved fruitless: No one knew of anyone who looked like Mr. Frank Howard.
Stymied, King went back to Sicoski. Could he remember anything else?
Sicoski did remember something. Before 622 Lexington Avenue, he had lived at 200 East 52nd Street. He had left some NYPCBA envelopes there on a shelf behind the bed.
King hastened over there.
It was a flophouse, and this time he found something. He asked the landlady if she knew anyone who looked like Mr. Howard.
She did. It sounded like Albert Fish, she said, who had room number 7.
King looked at Fish’s signature on the register.
Albert Fish and Frank Howard were the same man! And where was Fish now?
The woman didn’t know, but he periodically returned to pick up a check from the Civilian Conservation Corps sent by his son, John.
King checked it all out, and then he set up a stakeout, taking a room at the top of the stairs that gave him a view of the intersection at 52nd Street and Third Avenue.
He smoked; he exercised; he ate canned food. He stayed awake more than twenty hours a day.
Fish did not show.
Then on December 12, King decided to take a break from his routine and went to join Christmas shoppers. He was away for two hours, and as soon as he returned to his room, he heard rapid-fire knocking on the door.
It was the landlady.
Excitedly, she told him that Fish was back. That he had come by a half hour earlier and that she had told him his check wasn’t in (although it was). She didn’t know how long he would be around.
King strapped on his .38 and went to Fish’s room. He knocked. The person inside invited him to come in.
Inside, sitting on the bed, was a man who perfectly fit the description of Frank Howard: a little, white-haired, baggy-eyed man with watery blue eyes.
King told Fish that he wanted to see him about some letters he had written, that he wanted Fish to accompany him to headquarters. Fish agreed mildly.
King brought him downstairs, and then, just as they were about to exit the building, Fish whirled, straight razors in both hands. But King quickly subdued and shackled him. He had gotten a glimpse of the real Albert Fish.
And within two years Fish was where he belonged—in the electric chair.
Q & A
Q. How many children are criminally abducted and murdered each year in the United States, and how much do authorities know about these killers and incidents?
A. The abduction and murder of a child is a very rare event in the United States, with only 100 incidents a year in the entire country. But each of these situations is a desperately dangerous one because of the small window of time to track the perpetrator down: Most kids (74 percent) are murdered within three hours of their abduction. As the report “Case Management for Missing-Children Homicide Investigation,” developed by Washington State investigators in combination with the Department of Justice says, “Family involvement in this type of case is infrequent (9 percent). The youngest females, one to five years old, tend to be killed by friends or acquaintances (64 percent), while the oldest females, sixteen to seventeen years old, tend to be killed by strangers (also 64 percent). The youngest male victims (one to five years old) are most likely to be killed by strangers (also 64 percent), as are the teenage males (thirteen to fifteen years old, 60 percent, and sixteen to seventeen years old, 58 percent).”
Q. What is the average age of homicidal child abductors, and what are some facts about them?
A. The average age is around 27. They are usually unmarried (85 percent), and half of them (51 percent) either live alone (17 percent) or with their parents (34 percent). Half are unemployed, and if they work, it is at unskilled or semi-skilled labor occupations. Therefore, the killers can generally be characterized as “social marginals.”
Almost two-thirds of the killers (61 percent) have prior arrests for violent crimes, with slightly more than half of the killers’ prior crimes (53 percent) committed against children. The most frequent prior crimes against children were rape (31 percent of killers) and other forms of sexual assault (45 percent of killers). About 67 percent of prior crimes were similar in M.O. to the murder committed most recently by the killer. Commonly, the killers were at the initial victim-killer contact site for a legitimate reason (66 percent). They either lived in the area (29 percent) or were engaging in some normal activity.
Most of the victims of child abduction-murder are victims of opportunity (57 percent). Only in 14 percent of cases did the killer choose his victim because of some physical characteristic of the victim. The primary motivation for the child abduction-murder is sexual assault.—Department of Justice
Q. What percentage of the world’s population are pedophiles?
A. About 4 percent, says Dr. John Bradford, head of the Division of Forensic Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa. Also, if a person becomes a pedophile, he—or, in rarer cases, she—most likely had been assaulted by a pedophile.
Q. What percentage of pedophiles can be treated in a way that cures their addiction?
A. None, or 0 percent. The author learned this from a conversation he had with Ed Balyk, PhD, then chief psychologist at the Adult Diagnostic and Treatment Center in Avenal, New Jersey, a euphemistic name for a prison that housed about 1,000 sex offenders. Dr. Balyk treated bo
th rapists and pedophiles. When I protested that 0 percent seemed an inaccurate answer because of the many psychological treatments available, he said:
“Let me ask you a question.”
“Sure.”
“Do you like women?”
“Sure.”
“Do you think you’ll ever stop liking them?”
“No.”
“That’s the same answer pedophiles would give. Except they like kids.”
Q. Are pedophiles repeat offenders?
A. Statistics back Dr. Balyk’s statement. About 4,300 pedophiles were discharged in 1994 from prisons in fifteen states. Approximately 3.3 percent became repeat offenders soon after release, but over time the incidence becomes much higher because pedophilia is a condition that cannot be curtailed by treatment nor cured. The degree of compulsion was confirmed by an ex-inmate and lawyer who Dr. Balyk met by chance on a street in a New Jersey town. The dialogue went like this:
Dr. Balyk: “So how are you doing?”
Lawyer: “Okay. Getting ready to go back inside.”
Dr. Balyk: “But you just got out.”
Lawyer: “I know but I can’t stop myself. And eventually I’ll get caught.”
A few months later, Balyk said, “that is exactly what happened.”
On September 6 and October 6, 2001, one of the scariest assaults on the United States occurred. Five envelopes—some with false return addresses and some containing semiliterate notes praising Allah—were completely or partially filled with Bacillus anthracis and mailed to various individuals and places. Two envelopes went to Senators Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle in Washington, D.C. One went to the New York Post, one to newsman Tom Brokaw of NBC, and the fifth to the Boca Raton, Florida, office of American Media, Inc., or AMI, publisher of the National Enquirer, TV Guide, and other magazines.
Some people contracted anthrax through the skin by handling the envelopes, and others contracted it through the most deadly transmission method by inhaling it. Five people were killed as a result. Seventeen more were made ill, and thirtyone others tested positive for the anthrax spores. Since the envelopes had passed through postal facilities, the FBI was on the case from the start. Agents calculated that 10,000 additional people were at risk of getting sick or dying.
The FBI immediately formed a task force with the Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to handle the investigation, code-named Amerithrax.
The first step was identifying the type of anthrax used in the attack, which was found to be the Ames strain. Only experts can work with anthrax without it making them sick (or worse), and different experts work with different strains. The task force also discovered that anthrax from the Ames strain had been housed and maintained by scientists at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, which works on biological warfare defense. These facts helped investigators narrow down the number of suspects.
Not a Slam Dunk
Despite that quick winnowing, the investigation would hardly be a slam dunk. Overall, the task force took seven years and expended more than 600,000 investigative hours before identifying someone to bring to justice.
Meanwhile, the investigation had a Damocles sword hanging over it. The sender of the anthrax was technically a mass murderer (defined as someone who murders a lot of people all at once) and exposing as many people as he did within the postal system showed him to be a psychopath. Investigators knew that if he (or she) sent more anthrax, thousands of additional people would be at risk.
One of the main tasks in the early days of the investigation was to determine where the anthrax came from. Had it all been sent by one individual? Stolen by a terrorist group or state government? Or perhaps been sent by a business that would somehow profit?
Persons of Interest
The FBI isolated a number of people that they characterized as “persons of interest,” one step below being suspects. In August 2002, they regarded their prime person of interest as Steven J. Hatfill, a scientist who had worked at USAMRIID from 1997 to 1999. While he was there, he had easy access to the Ames strain of anthrax, and he had told coworkers that he knew how to “weaponize” anthrax.
When the FBI searched Hatfill’s apartment in Frederick, Maryland, in June 2002, agents discovered what the FBI characterized as detailed “anthrax production protocols,” some of which matched techniques used by the U.S. Army. Investigators also discovered that Hatfill was quite familiar with how to conduct an anthrax letter attack on the United States. He had, in fact, commissioned a “risk assessment study.”
Suspicious Use of Cipro
The circumstantial evidence continued to pile up against Hatfill, including his use of the drug ciprofloxacin, or Cipro, the only antibiotic approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of inhalational anthrax. The doses he received had been prescribed by a doctor friend in January, July, September, October, and November 2001 and included refills that he filled two days before each of the letter assaults.
The Feds seemed to have not one but two smoking guns to use against Hatfill, but that turned out not to be the case. As the investigation continued, the task force reluctantly concluded that Hatfill’s use of Cipro was not to fight inhalational anthrax but for chronic sinus and bronchial infections.
The most important facts that helped completely clear Hatfill, were later scientific breakthroughs. Originally, the task force had assumed that any scientist who worked in the USAMRIID Building and had access to the biocontainment side of Building 1412 also had access to the anthrax powder used in the attacks. But that was not correct. Investigators discovered that a powder called RMR-1029 had actually been used in the attacks. Hatfill had left USAMRIID two years before RMR-1029 was available. In other words, he wasn’t around when the anthrax was weaponized.
After that, investigators simply had to figure out who had access to RMR-1029. They quickly eliminated everyone who was a suspect except one person, Bruce Ivins, PhD.
Ivins was a microbiologist, a renowned expert in all aspects of anthrax who had worked at USAMRIID for twenty-seven years. The task force also learned that Ivins had been able to transfer small quantities of the main ingredient of the anthrax (RMR-1029) used in the letters to two other domestic labs before the attacks in 2001.
Bruce Ivins
Investigators closely examined Ivins’ emails and online searches, and the deeper they dug, the more concerned they became. They received authorization to wiretap his phones, “tossed his trash,” (as cops say, so they could examine what was in it), and put a GPS on his car so they could follow him. Of course, investigators also wanted to know what made Ivins tick and took a close look at his personal and professional life.
Bizarre Behavior
Ivins exhibited truly bizarre behavior in his personal life. For example, he had a history of disguising his identity and mailing things under fictitious names, even when there was no logical reason to do so. Investigators discovered a dozen pseudonyms that he had used. They also learned that he exhibited a variety of obsessive behaviors. For example, he had a penchant for going on long drives to mail letters. And he didn’t hesitate to name friends and colleagues as being behind the anthrax attacks.
At first, investigators kept their focus on Ivins secret, but when they felt they had exhausted all investigative avenues, they confronted him and his lawyers. Ivins was given every reasonable opportunity to answer questions related to the anthrax attack, but he was not able to answer anything adequately.
Ivins’ main reaction was rage, and his behavior in the following days and weeks clearly indicated that he had a homicidal side and was capable of sending envelopes full of deadly anthrax.
For example, he threatened another scientist, and in a group therapy session, investigators say he revealed his anger at those who were investigating him, as well as his plans to kill his coworkers and others who had wronged him. As the investigation heated up, Ivins seemed to fall apart emotionally, although he likely ha
d been very depressed for a long time. Indeed, on July 29, 2008, he took his own life.
Mini Mystery: Out of the Blue
On October 2, 2002, one of the most baffling terrorism cases in American history started when ten people in the Washington, D.C. area were randomly murdered by a sniper in less than a month and three more people were critically injured, all having been shot with a single bullet. When they were shot, these people were going about their everyday lives—mowing the lawn, pumping gas, shopping, reading a book, and so on.
The first shooting occurred on October 2, when a man was killed while crossing a parking lot in Wheaton, Maryland. The next day, October 3, four people were shot within two hours in Aspen Hill and another in nearby in Montgomery County. That evening, a fifth person was killed in the District of Columbia.
Following this, investigators determined that all of the shootings were linked. They knew that each had been done from some distance away by a sniper and that the same rifle had been used. Fear in the Washington area became pervasive, and parents began taking their children to school early and not allowing them to ride a school bus. From the variety of people shot (and killed), anyone seemed to be fair game.
Fear spread after a 13-year-old boy was shot in Bowie, Maryland, on October 7 and then a man was murdered on the same day near Manassas, Virginia, while pumping gas. On October 11, another man was shot dead near Fredericksburg, Virginia, also while pumping gas, and on October 14, Linda Franklin, an FBI intelligence analyst, was shot dead near Falls Church, Virginia, while coming out of a Home Depot with her husband.
The shootings continued. Someone gave a tip on the shooting of the FBI agent, but this was ultimately determined to be fake; indeed, the tipster was arrested for interfering with the investigation.