Albert Fish Letter

1. The Budd Letter (November 1934)

The anonymous six-page letter sent to Delia Budd at 406 West 15th Street, Manhattan, on or about 9 November 1934 and received on 11 November. The document that resolved the Grace Budd investigation. The envelope's New York Private Chauffeurs' Benevolent Association letterhead — left on the pad by a janitor and inherited by Fish when he took a room in the same rooming-house — led Detective King to the arrest. Read the full account of the letter, its recovery and its investigative significance on the Budd letter page.

2. The Gaffney Letter (February/March 1935)

A shorter two-page confession sent from the Westchester County jail to Elizabeth Gaffney of Brooklyn. Unlike the Budd letter this was signed. Its details matched two confidential points of the 1927 Billy Gaffney investigation — the trolley motorman's name and a gas-lamp fixture at 99 15th Street — and were regarded by the Brooklyn DA as confirmation. The letter was delivered unopened to detectives and its text is preserved in the Brooklyn DA's exhibit file. Read more on the Gaffney letter page.

3. The Confession Statement (March 1935)

The formal written confession prepared for the Grand Jury. Running to approximately eleven manuscript pages, the statement covers the Budd killing in evidentiary detail, and separately — though not under formal indictment — the McDonnell and Gaffney homicides. The statement is held in the Westchester County trial exhibit file as Exhibit 12 and is the principal evidentiary document on which the March 1935 conviction rests. See the confession statement page.

4. The Obscene Correspondence (1929–1934)

Between approximately 1929 and his arrest in 1934 Fish wrote a large number of obscene letters — the number is variously estimated at "dozens" (Wertham) and "several hundred" (Schechter) — to widows and unmarried women whose names he obtained from newspaper classifieds. The letters were typed; several were accompanied by cash lures. Some produced complaints to the police, and in May 1930 one of the recipients successfully traced a letter to Fish through the typewriter's distinctive imprint. The resulting prosecution was declined — the investigator, detective William O'Neill, concluded Fish was mentally unfit — but Fish was involuntarily committed to Bellevue for a brief observation period under the supervision of Menas Gregory. The Bellevue file is the earliest formal psychiatric record on Fish and is preserved in the New York State Psychiatric Institute archive.

No transcription of the obscene letters has ever been published in full. Wertham described their general content in clinical summary only. Schechter reproduces two brief excerpts in Deranged, both in the context of establishing the pattern they prefigured.

Editorial Note

This archive's general practice — described in the editorial note — is to cite the primary source for explicit material rather than to reproduce it in full. All four of the letter files above are open to researchers through standard archive protocols; requests should be directed to the Westchester County Clerk, the Brooklyn DA records office, and the New York State Psychiatric Institute as appropriate.