Serial Killer Autopsy

Serial Killer Autopsy: Albert Fish, The Brooklyn Vampire

The most disturbing criminal case in American history dissected with unflinching detail.

In 1928, ten-year-old Grace Budd put on her best white dress, excited to attend a birthday party with a kind elderly man her family had come to trust. She was never seen alive again.

Albert Fish, known as the Brooklyn Vampire, the Gray Man, and the Werewolf of Wisteria was a monster hiding in plain sight. For more than four decades, this seemingly harmless house painter with gray hair and a grandfatherly demeanor stalked the streets of New York, targeting the most vulnerable: children from poor and immigrant families who society was least equipped to protect.

Dr. Fredric Wertham, who examined Fish extensively, called him "a psychiatric phenomenon" unlike any he had encountered. Fish embedded at least 29 needles in his own pelvis, engaged in extreme self-torture, and heard voices he believed were God commanding him to kill children. Yet he was intelligent enough to maintain employment, create elaborate false identities, and carefully plan crimes that went undetected for years.

Perfect for readers of true crime, criminal psychology, and American criminal history.

Albert Fish died in 1936, but the questions his case raises remain disturbingly relevant: How do we identify and stop predators before they claim victims? What do we owe to society's most vulnerable? Where is the line between mental illness and evil? And what happens when a perfect storm of psychological pathology, social vulnerability, and systemic failure converges?

Warning: This book contains detailed descriptions of violence against children, sexual content, and disturbing psychological material. Recommended for mature readers only.