Albert Howard Fish

Luckily this sort of behaviour is by no means common but when a case does occur is strikes fear into the hearts of normal people. One such case is that of Albert Howard Fish who was a sadist with cannibalistic tendencies. He was a truly evil man who in his life time murdered several but was convicted only for the murder of 12 year old Grace Budd. He had befriended her parents and they looked on him almost as an honourary grandfather.

He offered to take Grace to a friends birthday party but instead took her by train to an empty cottage in Westchester County. Once there he strangled the girl and then cut her body into peices. During the next nine days he would cut strips of meat from her body and cook them with vegetables in a stew.

Another murderer who practised cannibalism was Edward Gein who was guilty of several murders of women for which he had a morbid fascination for the dead body. His motives were sexual in the worst possible way. His mother was a domineering woman who out of fear made them work hard and stay away from the fairer sex. This had the effect of making him morbidly interested in womens bodies.

Edward Gein was born in 1906 and was raised on the family's farm near Plainfield, Wisconsin. A shy, lonely boy, Gein grew to be a reclusive man. His alcoholic father died in 1940 and his domineering, religious mother sternly warned Gein and his brother Henry against premarital sex. When Gein was 38, Henry was found dead on a brush pile. The next year his mother died, and he tried to raise her from the dead by " will power". Failing this, he became depressed. Gein took to reading texts on female
anatomy and in 1947 he began opening he graves of local women and taking portions of the corpses home, where he preserved them. This activity went undetected for years. With one body he carefully skinned it keeping it as whole as possible and then put it on, wearing it as you would wear clothes.

It was a small step from grave robber to murderer and in 1954 he shot dead a 51 year old woman and took her back to his farm for examination. In 1957 he made a mistake, killing another woman but this time the son suspected and told the authorities. They went to his farm and must have felt they had found hell on earth. Approximately 15 separate bodies were found although they had been cut up. A number of things had been made from human remains such as a tom-tom which had been covered with human skin, a soup bowl made from half a skull, and bracelets which were also made from human skin.
The body of Gein's last victim hung in a shed, dressed out as a deer would have been. Gein confessed to killing the two women, who, he said, resembled his mother He noted that, being unmarried, he had never had sexual relations and that as a youth he had contemplated castrating himself. Despite the evidence, he insisted he had not committed necrophilia or cannibalism, but merely decorated himself and his house with female body parts. Suspected of having killed five other people, including his brother, he was found insane, and committed to a mental hospital ,where he remained until his death In 1985.
The farm was completely destroyed by fire when the neighbours tried to rid their land of the evil that had once lived there.
 

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Gregg Manning