Victim Register / 1924–1928

Albert Fish Victims Names

Three confirmed names. Three ages. Three boroughs. The documented record of the Albert Fish victims, with the suspected cases listed separately.

Margaret Hollis
By Margaret Hollis Editor-in-Chief · Bureau of Historical Research Historian of early 20th-century American criminal cases

The three confirmed Albert Fish victims names are Francis McDonnell (1924), Billy Gaffney (1927), and Grace Budd (1928). All three were children under eleven years of age at the time of their abduction. All three were taken from the New York metropolitan area — Staten Island, Brooklyn, and Manhattan respectively. These are the only three murders for which physical evidence, witness testimony, or a confessional statement was accepted at the 1935 Westchester County trial. The record on this page is drawn from the surviving trial exhibits and the contemporary police files.

1. Francis McDonnell (1924)

  • Full name: Francis Xavier McDonnell
  • Age at death: 8 years
  • Date of abduction: 15 July 1924
  • Place: Port Richmond, Staten Island, New York
  • Parents: Anna and Arthur McDonnell
  • Circumstances: Taken from the front porch of the family home after being seen speaking with an elderly grey-haired man. Body recovered in a wooded lot near the home.

Francis McDonnell is believed to be the first of the Albert Fish crimes. His mother Anna's contemporaneous description of the abductor as an "old gray man" became the earliest of Fish's press aliases. The case remained officially unsolved at the local level until Fish's 1935 confession in Westchester, although Staten Island detectives had maintained a suspect file throughout the intervening decade. For the full case file, see Francis McDonnell.

2. Billy Gaffney (1927)

  • Full name: William Gaffney
  • Age at death: 4 years
  • Date of abduction: 11 February 1927
  • Place: 99 15th Street, Brooklyn, New York
  • Parents: Elizabeth and William Gaffney (Sr)
  • Circumstances: Disappeared from an apartment-building hallway while playing with a three-year-old neighbour, Billy Beaton. Beaton's older brother Peter Kudzinowski described a "boogey man" taking Billy.

No physical remains were ever recovered. Fish's identification as the perpetrator rests on the 1935 confession letter he wrote to Billy's mother Elizabeth from his Sing Sing death cell. The letter described the circumstances of the abduction and death in forensic detail consistent with the 1927 NYPD Brooklyn files. For the full case record, see Billy Gaffney.

3. Grace Budd (1928)

  • Full name: Grace Budd
  • Age at death: 10 years
  • Date of abduction: 3 June 1928
  • Place: 406 West 15th Street, Manhattan, New York
  • Parents: Delia and Albert Budd (Sr)
  • Circumstances: Lured from the family apartment by Fish posing as "Frank Howard," a Long Island farmer, in response to a newspaper advertisement her brother had placed seeking summer work. Taken to Wisteria Cottage in Worthington, New York.

Grace Budd is the victim named in the 1935 Westchester County indictment and the only victim for whom Fish was formally tried and convicted. The case was unsolved for six years, five months and eight days until Fish reopened it himself by posting the 1934 confession letter to Delia Budd. For the full case file and the family record, see Grace Budd.

How many victims did Albert Fish have in total?

Three murders are documented with evidence accepted at trial. Fish himself claimed at various points during his 1935 trial and in his jailhouse conversations with Frederic Wertham to have "assaulted or killed about one hundred" children. Contemporary prosecutors considered this figure self-aggrandising — an attempt to shift the verdict from guilty to not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity.

Investigators in New York City, Washington D.C., and New Jersey privately linked Fish to five or six additional unsolved disappearances between approximately 1910 and 1932. None were ever formally charged either because the physical evidence was insufficient, the statute of limitations had expired, or the jurisdictions declined to pursue them once the Budd conviction and death sentence had been secured.

The suspected cases

The following disappearances appear in NYPD and Westchester files as "persons-of-interest" cases linked to Fish by investigators but never formally charged. They are recorded here for the historical record, not as confirmed Albert Fish crimes:

  • Emma Richardson — disappeared Washington D.C., approximately 1910. Fish was questioned in 1934 but no physical evidence was recovered.
  • Robin Page — New Jersey, approximately 1922. Appears in Fish's own confession as a named case but investigators could not confirm the identity.
  • Mary Ellen O'Connor — Brooklyn, 1930. Fish was briefly considered a suspect in 1935.
  • Two further unnamed cases referenced in the Wertham papers but not corroborated by any surviving police file.

Because none of these cases were formally charged and the surviving records are incomplete, they are not counted in the official victim total. The Albert Fish Archive maintains them in a separate register from the three confirmed names above.

Further reading on the Albert Fish victims

For the full consolidated record, see the Albert Fish victims page. For the pattern of the abductions and the investigation, see Albert Fish crimes. For the letters Fish wrote to the bereaved parents, see the Albert Fish letters archive. For the arrest that finally closed the cases, see how Albert Fish was caught.

Last reviewed: · Editorial team: Bureau of Historical Research · Sources: Westchester County Court trial transcript (March 1935), NYPD Missing Persons Bureau case files (1924, 1927, 1928), Wertham psychiatric papers (Cornell University Library), Deranged (Schechter, 1990).