Albert Fish
Mugshot from 1903
Background information
Birth name	Hamilton Howard Fish[1]
Also known as	The Gray Man, The Werewolf of Wysteria, The Brooklyn Vampire, The Moon Maniac, The Boogey Man[2][3]
Born	(1870-05-19)May 19, 1870 Washington, D.C.
Died	January 16, 1936(1936-01-16) (aged 65)
Cause of death	Electrocuted, Sing Sing Correctional Facility
Conviction	Grand larceny, Murder, Theft
Sentence	Death
Killings
Number of victims	4 (known)
Country	USA
State(s)	New York
Date apprehended	1934

Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish^[1] (May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1936) was an American serial killer. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac and The Boogey Man.^[4] A child rapist and cannibal, he boasted that he "had children in every state,"^[4] and at one time put the figure at around 100. However, it is not clear whether he was talking about rapes or cannibalization, less still whether he was telling the truth. He was a suspect in at least five murders in his lifetime. Fish confessed to three murders that police were able to trace to a known homicide, and he confessed to stabbing at least two other people. He was put on trial for the kidnapping and murder of Grace Budd, and was convicted and executed by electric chair.^[5][6]

Early life[link]

He was born Hamilton Howard Fish in Washington, D.C. on May 19, 1870, to Ellen and Randall Fish (1795–1875). His mother was born in Ireland.^[7] He said he had been named after Hamilton Fish, a distant relative. His father was 43 years older than his mother^[8] and 75 years old at the time of his birth. Fish was the youngest child and had three living siblings: Walter, Annie, and Edwin Fish. He wished to be called "Albert" after a dead sibling and to escape the nickname "Ham & Eggs" that he was given at an orphanage in which he spent much of his childhood.

His family had a history of mental illness. His uncle suffered from religious mania. A brother was placed in the state mental hospital. His sister was diagnosed with a "mental affliction". Three other relatives were diagnosed with mental illnesses and his mother had "aural and/or visual hallucinations".^[9][10] His father had been a river boat captain, but by 1870 he was a fertilizer manufacturer.^[8] The elder Fish died in 1875 at the Sixth Street Station of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Washington, D.C. of a myocardial infarction. Fish's mother then put him into Saint John's Orphanage in Washington, where he was frequently treated sadistically. He began to enjoy the physical pain that the beatings brought.^[11] Of his time at the orphanage, Fish remarked, "I was there till I was nearly nine, and that's where I got started wrong. We were unmercifully whipped. I saw boys doing many things they should not have done."

By 1880, his mother had a government job and was able to remove Fish from the orphanage. In 1882, at age 12, he began a relationship with a telegraph boy. The youth introduced Fish to such practices as drinking urine and eating feces. Fish began visiting public baths where he could watch other boys undress, and spent a great portion of his weekends on these visits.^[11]

Throughout his life he would write obscene letters to women whose names he acquired from classified advertising and matrimonial agencies.^[9]

By 1890, Fish had arrived in New York City, and he said he became a male prostitute. He also said he began raping young boys, a crime he kept committing even after his mother arranged a marriage.^[10] In 1898, Fish was married to a woman nine years younger than him. They had six children: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John, and Henry Fish.^[10]

First incarceration[link]

Throughout 1898 he worked as a house painter. He said he continued molesting children, mostly young boys under the age of six. He later recounted an incident in which a male lover took him to a waxworks museum, where Fish was fascinated by a bisection of a penis. After that he became obsessed with castration. At the age of forty-one, during his stay in St. Louis, Albert Fish began a relationship with a mentally retarded man named Kedden. Fish attempted to castrate the nineteen-year-old with a pair of scissors after tying him up, but the agonized look on the man's face frightened Fish and he fled the city after binding the wound and leaving him a $10 bill. Fish then increased the frequency of his visits to brothels, where he engaged in sadomasochism.^[11] In 1903, he was arrested for grand larceny and was sentenced to incarceration in Sing Sing.

Over two dozen needles Fish self-embedded into his pelvis and perineum

In January of 1917, Fish's wife left him for John Straube, a handyman who boarded with the Fish family. Fish then had to raise his children as a single parent.^[12]

After that he began to have auditory hallucinations. He once wrapped himself up in an area rug, saying that he was following the instructions of John the Apostle.^[11]

It was around this time that Fish began to indulge in self-harm. He would self-embed needles into his groin and abdomen.^[10] After his arrest, X-rays revealed that Fish had at least 29 needles lodged in his pelvic region.^[10] He also hit himself repeatedly with a nail-studded paddle and inserted wool doused with lighter fluid into his anus and set it on fire.^[13]

Early attacks and attempted abductions[link]

In 1910, Fish attacked Thomas Bedden in Wilmington, Delaware.^[14] Later, around 1919, he stabbed a mentally retarded boy in Georgetown, Washington, D.C..^[15]

Most of his victims would be either mentally handicapped or African-American, since Fish assumed these people would not be missed when killed.^[16] Fish tortured, mutilated and murdered young children with his "implements of Hell": a meat cleaver, butcher knife, and a bone saw.^[17]

On July 11, 1924, Fish found eight-year-old Beatrice Kiel playing alone on her parents' Staten Island farm. He offered her money to come and help him look for rhubarb. She was about to leave the farm when her mother chased Fish away. Fish left, but returned later to the Kiels' barn, where he tried to sleep but was discovered by Hans Kiel and forced to leave.

In 1924, at the age of 55, Fish, suffering from religious psychosis, felt that God was commanding him to torture and castrate children.^[10]

Shortly before his abduction of Grace Budd, Albert Fish attempted to test his "implements of Hell" on a child acquaintance named Cyril Quinn. Cyril and his friend were playing boxball on the sidewalk when Fish asked them if they had eaten lunch. When they said that they had not, he invited them into his apartment for sandwiches. However, while the two boys were wrestling in Fish's bedroom, they discovered Fish's "implements of Hell" hidden under his bed. They became frightened and ran out of the apartment.

Second incarceration[link]

Fish remarried on February 6, 1930, in Waterloo, New York, to Estella Wilcox, but divorced after only one week.^[18] Fish was later arrested in May 1930 for "sending an obscene letter to a woman who answered an advertisement for a maid."^[19] Following that arrest and one in 1931, he was sent to the Bellevue psychiatric hospital for observation.^[20]

Grace Budd murder[link]

On May 25, 1928, Fish saw a classified ad in the Sunday edition of the New York World that read: "Young man, 18, wishes position in country. Edward Budd, 406 West 15th Street." On May 28, 1928, Fish, then 58 years old, visited the Budd family in Manhattan under the pretense of hiring Edward; he later confessed that he had planned to tie Edward up, castrate him, and leave him to bleed to death. He introduced himself as Frank Howard, a farmer from Farmingdale, New York. Fish promised to hire Budd and his friend Willie, and said he would send for them in a few days. However, he failed to show up but sent a telegraph to the Budd family apologizing and set a later date. When Fish returned, he met Grace Budd. He apparently changed his intended victim from Edward Budd to Grace Budd, and quickly made up a story about having to attend his niece's birthday party. He convinced the parents, Delia Flanagan and Albert Budd I, to let Grace accompany him to the party that evening. The elder Albert Budd was a porter for the United States Equitable Life Assurance Society. Grace had a younger sister, Beatrice, two older brothers, Edward and George Budd, and a younger brother, Albert Budd II. Grace left with Fish that day, but never returned home.^[21]

The police arrested Charles Edward Pope on September 5, 1930, as a suspect in the kidnapping. He was a 66-year-old apartment house superintendent, and was accused by his estranged wife.^[6] He spent 108 days in jail between his arrest and trial on December 22, 1930.^[22] He was found not guilty.

The letter[link]

Six years later, in November 1934, an anonymous letter was sent to the girl's parents that led the police to Albert Fish. Mrs. Budd was illiterate and could not read the letter herself, so she had her son read it to her.^[23] The unaltered letter is presented below verbatim, complete with Fish's misspellings and grammatical errors:^[10]

Dear Mrs. Budd. In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong, China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1–3 per pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak—chops—or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl's behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys, one 7 and one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them – tortured them – to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 year old boy, because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except the head—bones and guts. He was roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried and stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 St. near—right side. He told me so often how good human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3, 1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick – bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.

Capture and final incarceration[link]

The letter was delivered in an envelope that had a small hexagonal emblem with the letters "N.Y.P.C.B.A." standing for "New York Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association". A janitor at the company told the police he had taken some of the stationery home but left it at his rooming house at 200 East 52nd Street when he moved out. The landlady of the rooming house said that Fish had checked out of that room a few days earlier. She said that Fish's son sent him money and he had asked her to hold his next check for him. William F. King was the lead investigator for the case. He waited outside the room until Fish returned. Fish agreed to go to headquarters for questioning, then brandished a razor blade.^[9] King disarmed Fish and took him to police headquarters. Fish made no attempt to deny the Grace Budd murder, saying that he had meant to go to the house to kill Edward Budd, Grace's brother.^[24] Fish said it "never even entered [his] head" to rape the girl,^[25] but he later admitted to his attorney that, while kneeling on Grace's chest and strangling her, he did have two involuntary ejaculations. This information was used at trial to make the claim the kidnapping was sexually motivated, thus avoiding any mention of cannibalism.^[26]

Postcapture discoveries[link]

Billy Gaffney[link]

A 4-year-old child named Billy Gaffney was playing in the hallway outside his family's apartment in Brooklyn with his 3-year-old friend, Billy Beaton, and Billy's 12-year-old brother on February 11, 1927. When the 12-year-old withdrew into the Beatons' apartment, both of the younger boys disappeared; Billy Beaton was soon found on the roof of the apartment house. When asked what happened to Gaffney, Beaton said "the boogey man took him." Gaffney's body was never recovered.^[27] Initially, serial killer Peter Kudzinowski was a suspect in the boy's murder. Then, Joseph Meehan, a motorman on a Brooklyn trolley, saw a picture of Fish in the newspaper and identified him as the old man that he saw February 11, 1927, who was trying to quiet a little boy sitting with him on the trolley. The boy was not wearing a jacket and was crying for his mother and was dragged by the man on and off the trolley. The younger Beaton had described the "boogey man" as an elderly man with a slim build, gray hair and a gray moustache, which matched Fish's description.^[28] Police matched the description of the child to Billy Gaffney. Detectives of the Manhattan Missing Persons Bureau were able to establish that Fish had been employed as a housepainter by a Brooklyn real estate firm during February 1927 and that on the day of Billy Gaffney's disappearance he had been working at a location only a few miles away from where the boy had been abducted. ^[29] Fish confessed the following in a letter to his attorney:^[10]

I brought him to the Riker Ave. dumps. There is a house that stands alone, not far from where I took him ... I took the G boy there. Stripped him naked and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I picked out of the dump. Then I burned his clothes. Threw his shoes in the dump. Then I walked back and took trolley to 59 St. at 2 A.M. and walked from there home. Next day about 2 P.M., I took tools, a good heavy cat-of-nine tails. Home made. Short handle. Cut one of my belts in half, slit these half in six strips about 8 in. long. I whipped his bare behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears – nose – slit his mouth from ear to ear. Gouged out his eyes. He was dead then. I stuck the knife in his belly and held my mouth to his body and drank his blood. I picked up four old potato sacks and gathered a pile of stones. Then I cut him up. I had a grip with me. I put his nose, ears and a few slices of his belly in the grip. Then I cut him thru the middle of his body. Just below his belly button. Then thru his legs about 2 in. below his behind. I put this in my grip with a lot of paper. I cut off the head – feet – arms – hands and the legs below the knee. This I put in sacks weighed with stones, tied the ends and threw them into the pools of slimy water you will see all along the road going to North Beach. Water is 3 to 4 ft. deep. They sank at once. I came home with my meat. I had the front of his body I liked best. His monkey and pee wees and a nice little fat behind to roast in the oven and eat. I made a stew out of his ears – nose – pieces of his face and belly. I put onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt and pepper. It was good. Then I split the cheeks of his behind open, cut off his monkey and pee wees and washed them first. I put strips of bacon on each cheek of his behind and put in the oven. Then I picked 4 onions and when meat had roasted about 1/4 hr., I poured about a pint of water over it for gravy and put in the onions. At frequent intervals I basted his behind with a wooden spoon. So the meat would be nice and juicy. In about 2 hr., it was nice and brown, cooked thru. I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did. I ate every bit of the meat in about four days. His little monkey was as sweet as a nut, but his pee-wees I could not chew. Threw them in the toilet.

Elizabeth Gaffney, along with Detective King and two other men, visited Fish in Sing Sing to speak to him personally about her son's death, but Fish refused to speak to her. He then began to weep, and asked to be left alone. After two hours of asking him questions through his lawyer, James Dempsey, Mrs. Gaffney gave up, still unconvinced that Albert Fish was her son's killer.

Francis McDonnell[link]

During the night of July 14, 1924 8-year-old Francis McDonnell was reported missing by his parents. He had failed to return home after playing catch with friends in the Port Richmond neighborhood of Staten Island. A search was organized and his body was found in a wooded area near his home. He had been sexually assaulted then strangled with his suspenders.^[9] Fish later stated that he had intended to dismember the boy, but heard someone approaching and fled.

His friends told the police that he had been taken by an elderly man with a gray mustache. A neighbor told the police they saw the boy walking along a grassy path into the nearby woods.^[9] Francis’s mother, Anna McDonnell, said she had seen the same man. She told the reporters:^[9]

He came shuffling down the street mumbling to himself and making queer motions with his hands ... I saw his thick gray hair and his drooping gray mustache. Everything about him seemed faded and gray.

This led to him being known as "The Gray Man". The murder would be unsolved until the murder of Grace Budd.^[9] When several eyewitnesses, among them the Staten Island farmer Hans Kiel, positively identified Albert Fish as the odd stranger seen around Port Richmond on the day of Francis McDonnell’s disappearance, Richmond County District Attorney Thomas J. Walsh announced his intention to seek an indictment against Fish for the boy’s murder. At first Fish denied the charges. It was only in March of 1935, after the conclusion of his trial for the Budd murder and his confession to the killing of Billy Gaffney, that Fish confirmed to investigators that he had also murdered Francis McDonnell. When news of this disclosure broke the New York Daily Mirror would state that it solidified Fish as "the most vicious child-slayer in criminal history".^[9]

Trial and execution[link]

The trial of Albert Fish for the murder of Grace Budd began on March 11, 1935, in White Plains, New York with Frederick P. Close presiding as judge, and Westchester County Chief Assistant District Attorney, Elbert F. Gallagher, as prosecuting attorney. Fish's defense counsel would be James Dempsey, a former prosecutor and the one-time Mayor of Peekskill, New York (1932–1933). The trial lasted for 10 days. Fish pleaded insanity, and claimed to have heard voices from God telling him to kill children. Several psychiatrists testified about Fish's sexual fetishes, which included sadism, masochism, cunnilingus, anilingus, fellatio, flagellation, exhibitionism, voyeurism, piquerism, cannibalism, coprophagia, urophilia, pedophilia and infibulation. Dempsey in his summation noted that Fish was a "psychiatric phenomenon" and that nowhere in legal or medical records was there another individual who possessed so many sexual abnormalities.^[9]

The defense's chief expert witness was Fredric Wertham, a psychiatrist with a focus on child development who conducted psychiatric examinations for the New York criminal courts. Over two days of testimony, Wertham explained Fish's obsession with religion and specifically his preoccupation with the story of Abraham and Isaac (Genesis 22:1-24). Wertham said that Fish believed that similarly "sacrificing" a boy would be penance for his own sins and that even if the act itself was wrong, angels would prevent it if God did not approve. Fish had already attempted the sacrifice once before but had been thwarted when a car drove past. Edward Budd had been the next intended victim, but he turned out to be larger than expected so he settled on Grace. Although he knew Grace was female, it is known that Fish perceived her as a boy.^[9] Wertham then detailed Fish's cannibalism, which in his mind he associated with communion. The last question Dempsey asked Wertham was 15,000 words long, detailed Fish's life and ended with asking how the doctor considered his mental condition based on this life. Wertham simply answered "He is insane".^[9] Gallagher cross-examined Wertham on whether Fish knew the difference between right and wrong. He responded that he did know but that it was a perverted knowledge based on his views of sin, atonement and religion and thus was an "insane knowledge".^[9] The defense then called two more psychiatrists, who supported Wertham's findings.^[30]

The first of four rebuttal witnesses was Menas Gregory, the former head of the Bellevue psychiatric hospital, where Fish had been treated in 1930. He testified that Fish was abnormal but sane. Under cross examination, Dempsey asked if coprophilia, urophilia and pedophilia indicated a sane or insane person. Gregory replied that such a person was not "mentally sick" and that these were common perversions that were "socially perfectly alright" and that Fish was "no different from millions of other people", some very prominent and successful, who suffered from the "very same" perversions. The next witness was the resident physician at The Tombs, Perry Lichtenstein. Dempsey objected to a doctor with no training in psychiatry testifying on the issue of sanity, but Justice Close overruled on the grounds that the jury could decide what weight to give a prison doctor. When asked whether Fish's causing himself pain indicated a mental condition, Lichtenstein replied, "That is not masochism", as he was only "punishing himself to get sexual gratification". The next witness, Charles Lambert, testified that coprophilia was a common practice and that religious cannibalism may be psychopathic but "was a matter of taste" and not evidence of a psychosis. The last witness, James Vavasour, repeated Lambert's opinion.^[9]

Another defense witness was Mary Nicholas, Fish's 17-year-old stepdaughter. She described how Fish taught her and her brothers and sisters several games involving overtones of masochism and child molestation.^[10]

None of the jurors doubted that Fish was insane. But ultimately, as one later explained, they felt he should be executed anyway.^[9] They found him to be sane and guilty, and the judge ordered the death sentence. Fish arrived at prison in March 1935, and was executed on January 16, 1936, in the electric chair at Sing Sing. He entered the chamber at 11:06 p.m. and was pronounced dead three minutes later.^[5] He was buried in the Sing Sing Prison Cemetery. Fish is said to have helped the executioner position the electrodes on his body. His last words were reportedly:^[17]

I don't even know why I'm here.

According to one witness present, it took two jolts before Fish died, creating the rumor that the apparatus was short-circuited by the needles that Fish had inserted into his body.^[25] These rumors were later regarded as untrue, as Fish reportedly had died in the same fashion and time frame others do in the electric chair.^[17]

At a meeting with reporters following the execution, Fish's lawyer, James Dempsey, revealed that he was in possession of his now deceased client's "final statement". This amounted to several pages of hand-written notes that Fish had apparently penned in the hours just prior to his death. When pressed by the assembled journalists to reveal the document's contents, Dempsey refused, stating:^[17]

I will never show it to anyone, it was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read.

Victims[link]

Known[link]

• Francis X. McDonnell, age 8, July 15, 1924
• Emma Richardson, age 5, October 3, 1926
• Billy Gaffney, age 4, February 11, 1927^[19]
• Grace Budd, age 10, June 3, 1928^[6]

Suspected[link]

• Yetta Abramowitz, age 12, 1927^[31]
• Mary Ellen O'Connor, age 16, February 15, 1932^[19]
• Benjamin Collings, age 17, December 15, 1932^[19]

See also[link]

Biography portal

• Ed Gein
• H. H. Holmes
• Peter Kudzinowski, a serial killer who committed his crimes against children in the same timeframe and location
• List of individuals executed in New York
• Lonely hearts killer

References and notes[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Albert Fish

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Albert Fish

• Albert Fish bibliography
• Detailed Albert Fish Bio
• Crime Library: Albert Fish
• Prairie Ghosts: Albert Fish
• Twisted Minds: Albert Fish
• Fish family history
• The Gray Man (2007) at the Internet Movie Database
• Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation (2007) at the Internet Movie Database

Hannibal Lecter M.D. is a fictional character in a series of horror novels by Thomas Harris and in the films adapted from them.

Lecter was introduced in the 1981 thriller novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer. The novel and its sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, feature Lecter as the secondary antagonist after the two serial killers in both novels. In the third novel, Hannibal, Lecter becomes the main character. His role as the antihero occurs in the fourth novel, Hannibal Rising, which explores his childhood and development into a serial killer.

The first film adapted from the Harris novels was Manhunter (based on Red Dragon) features Brian Cox as Lecter, spelled "Lecktor". In 2002, a second adaptation of Red Dragon was made under the original title, featuring Anthony Hopkins, who had played Lecter in the motion pictures The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Hopkins won an Academy Award for The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. In 2003, Hannibal Lecter (as portrayed by Hopkins) was chosen by the American Film Institute as the #1 movie villain.^[1] Empire magazine lists Lecter as the 5th Greatest Movie Character of All Time. ^[2]

Appearances[link]

Novels[link]

Hannibal Lecter is introduced in the 1981 novel Red Dragon as a brilliant psychiatrist and a cannibalistic serial killer. In the backstory, FBI special agent Will Graham initially consulted Lecter about a series of murders before realizing Lecter was the culprit; Lecter realizes that Graham is on to him, sneaks up behind him and stabs him, nearly disemboweling him. Lecter is found guilty and incarcerated in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, under the care of Dr. Frederick Chilton, who Lecter despises. Some years later, Graham comes out of retirement and consults Lecter in order to catch another serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde, known by the nickname "The Tooth Fairy". Through the classifieds of a tabloid, The National Tattler, Lecter provides Dolarhyde with Graham's home address, enabling him to disfigure Graham and attempt to kill his family. At the end of the novel, he sends Graham a note saying that he hopes Graham isn't "too ugly".

In the 1988 sequel The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter assists an FBI agent-in-training named Clarice Starling in catching a serial killer known as "Buffalo Bill". Lecter and Starling form an unusual relationship in which he provides her with a profile of the killer and his modus operandi in exchange for details about her unhappy childhood. Lecter had previously met Buffalo Bill, the former lover of his patient (and eventual victim) Benjamin Raspail; he keeps this information to himself, however, preferring to give Starling information in the form of clues and riddles designed to help her figure it out for herself. Lecter eventually stages a dramatic, bloody escape from captivity and disappears. While in hiding, he writes one letter to Starling wishing her well, and another to Chilton swearing gruesome revenge. (Chilton disappears soon afterward.)

In the third novel, 1999's Hannibal, Lecter lives in Florence, Italy, under an assumed name. The book reveals that one of Lecter's victims survived: Mason Verger, a wealthy, sadistic pedophile whom Lecter mutilated during a therapy session. Verger offers a huge reward for anyone who apprehends Lecter, whom he intends to feed to wild boars. Verger enlists the help of Rinaldo Pazzi, a disgraced Italian police inspector, and Paul Krendler, a corrupt Justice Department official and Starling's boss. Lecter kills Pazzi and returns to the United States to escape Verger's Sardinian henchmen, only to be captured. Starling follows them, intent on apprehending Lecter personally, but is instead also taken captive. After escaping the trap, Lecter convinces Verger's sister Margot to kill her brother as revenge for raping her when they were children, and leaves a voice mail message taking responsibility for the crime. He then rescues the wounded Starling and takes her to his rented lake house to treat her. During her time there he keeps her sedated, attempting to transform her into his dead sister Mischa through a regimen of classical conditioning and mind-altering drugs. One day, he invites her to a formal dinner where the guest and first course is Paul Krendler, whose brain they consume together. On this night, Starling tells Lecter that Mischa's memory can live within him instead of taking her place. She then offers him her breast, and they become lovers. The novel ends three years later with the couple living in Argentina.

Harris wrote a 2006 prequel, Hannibal Rising, after film producer Dino De Laurentiis (who owned the cinematic rights to the Lecter character), announced that he was going to make a film depicting Lecter's childhood and development into a serial killer with or without Harris' help. (Harris would also write the film's screenplay.) The novel chronicles Lecter's early life, from birth into an aristocratic family in Lithuania in 1933, to being orphaned, along with his beloved sister Mischa, in 1944 when a German Stuka bomber attacks a Soviet tank in front of their forest hideaway. Shortly thereafter, Lecter and Mischa are captured by a band of Nazi collaborators, who murder and cannibalize Mischa before her brother's eyes. Irreparably traumatized, Lecter escapes from the deserters and takes up residence in an orphanage, where he is bullied by the other children and abused by the dean. When he turns 16, he is adopted by his uncle Robert and his Japanese wife, Lady Murasaki. After his uncle dies, Lecter forms a close, pseudo-romantic relationship with his step-aunt; during this time he also shows great intellectual aptitude, entering medical school at a young age. Despite his seemingly comfortable life, however, Lecter is consumed by a savage obsession with avenging Mischa's death. He kills for the first time as a teenager, beheading a racist fishmonger who insulted Murasaki. He then methodically tracks down, tortures and murders each of the men who killed his sister, in the process forsaking his relationship with Murasaki and seemingly losing all traces of his humanity. The novel ends with Lecter being accepted into the Johns Hopkins Medical Center.

In film[link]

Red Dragon was first adapted to film in 1986 as the Michael Mann film Manhunter. Due to copyright issues, the filmmakers changed the spelling of Lecter's name to "Lecktor". He was played by Scottish actor Brian Cox.^[3]

In 1991, Orion Pictures produced a Jonathan Demme-directed adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs, in which Lecter was played by Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins' Academy Award–winning performance made Lecter into a cultural icon. In 2001, Hannibal was adapted to film, with Hopkins reprising his role. The ending for the film was changed from the novel due to the controversy that the novel's ending generated upon its release in 1999. In the 2001 film adaptation, Starling attempts to apprehend Lecter, who escapes after cutting off his own hand to free himself from her handcuffs. In 2002, Red Dragon was adapted again, this time under its original title, with Hopkins again as Lecter and Edward Norton as Will Graham.

In late 2006, the script for the film Hannibal Rising was adapted to novel format. The novel was written to explain Lecter's development into a serial killer. In the film, eight-year-old Lecter is portrayed by Aaron Thomas, while Gaspard Ulliel portrays him as a young man. Both the novel and the film received generally negative critical reception.^[4]

In television[link]

In February 2012, NBC gave a series order to Hannibal, a television adaptation of Red Dragon to be written and executive-produced by Bryan Fuller.^[5] In March 2012, NBC announced that Hugh Dancy had been cast as Will Graham in the series. ^[6]

Concept and creation[link]

Thomas Harris has given few interviews, and has never explained where he got inspiration for Hannibal Lecter. However, in a making-of documentary for the film version of Hannibal Rising, Lecter's early murders were said to be based on murders that Harris had covered when he was a crime reporter in the 1960s. In 1992, Harris also attended the ongoing trials of Pietro Pacciani, who was suspected of being the serial killer nicknamed the "Monster of Florence". Parts of the killer's modus operandi were used as reference for the novel Hannibal, which was released in 1999. In an interview on Inside the Actors Studio, Hopkins said that he used the characteristics of Katharine Hepburn and HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey as inspiration for his performance.

According to David Sexton, author of The Strange World of Thomas Harris: Inside the Mind of the Creator of Hannibal Lecter, Harris once told a librarian in Cleveland, Mississippi, that Lecter was inspired by William Coyne, a local murderer who had escaped from prison in 1934 and gone on a rampage that included acts of murder and cannibalism.

In her book Evil Serial Killers, Charlotte Greig asserts that the serial killer Albert Fish was the inspiration, at least in part, for Lecter.^[7] Greig also states that to explain Lecter's pathology, Harris borrowed the story of serial killer and cannibal Andrei Chikatilo's brother Stepan being kidnapped and eaten by starving neighbours (though she states that it is unclear whether the story was true or whether Stepan Chikatilo even existed).^[8]

Red Dragon firmly states that Lecter does not fit any known psychological profile. However, Lecter's keeper, Dr. Frederick Chilton, claims that Lecter is a "pure psychopath." Lecter's pathology is explored in greater detail in Hannibal and Hannibal Rising, which explain that he was irreparably traumatized as a child in Lithuania in 1944 when he witnessed the murder and cannibalism of his beloved younger sister, Mischa, by Lithuanian Hilfswillige. One of the Hilfswillige members also claimed that Lecter unwittingly ate his sister as well.

In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter is described through Clarice Starling's eyes as "small, sleek, and in his hands and arms she saw wiry strength like her own". The novel also reveals that Lecter's left hand has a condition called mid ray duplication polydactyly, i.e. a duplicated middle finger.^[9] In Hannibal, he performs plastic surgery on his own face on several occasions, and removes his extra digit. Lecter's eyes are a shade of maroon, and reflect the light in "pinpoints of red".^[10] He is also said to have small white teeth^[11] and dark, slicked-back hair with a widow's peak.

See also[link]

Novels portal

• Dorangel Vargas, a serial killer known as the "Hannibal Lecter of the Andes"

References[link]

External links[link]

• Hannibal Lecter at the Internet Movie Database
• Information about Hannibal Lecter, with a focus on Manhunter (1986)
• Crime Library profile of Lecter
• NPR broadcast on Lecter

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death by an inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, where he had been incarcerated.

Early life[link]

Dahmer was born in West Allis, Wisconsin, the son of Joyce Annette (née Flint) and Lionel Herbert Dahmer, an analytical chemist.^[1] Seven years later, his brother David was born.^[2] Joyce Dahmer reportedly had a difficult pregnancy with her elder son. When Jeffrey was eight years old, he moved with his family to Bath, Ohio. Dahmer grew increasingly withdrawn and uncommunicative between the ages of 10 and 15, showing little interest in any hobbies or social interactions.^[3] He biked around his neighborhood looking for dead animals, which he dissected at home (or in the woods near his home). In one instance, he went so far as to put a dog's head on a stake.^[4] Dahmer began drinking in his teens and was an alcoholic by the time of his high school graduation.^[5]

In 1977, Lionel and Joyce Dahmer divorced.^[6] Dahmer attended The Ohio State University, but dropped out after one quarter, having failed to attend most of his classes.^[7] He was drunk for the majority of the term.^[8] Dahmer's father then forced him to enlist in the Army.^[9] Dahmer did well at first,^[10] but he was discharged after two years because of his alcoholism.^[11] When the Army discharged Dahmer in 1981, he was provided with a plane ticket to anywhere in the country. Dahmer later told police he could not go home to face his father, so he headed to Miami Beach, Florida, because he was "tired of the cold".^[12] He spent most of his time there at a hospital, but was soon kicked out for drinking.^[12] After coming home, he continued to drink heavily, and he was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct later in 1981.^[13]

In 1982, Dahmer moved in with his grandmother in West Allis,^[14] where he lived for six years.^[15] During this time, his behavior grew increasingly strange. His grandmother once found a fully dressed male mannequin in his closet; Dahmer had stolen it from a store.^[16] On another occasion, she found a .357 Magnum under his bed.^[17] Terrible smells came from the basement; Dahmer told his father that he had brought home a dead squirrel and dissolved it with chemicals.^[18] He was arrested twice for indecent exposure, in 1982 and 1986;^[19] in his second offense, he masturbated in front of two boys.^[20]

In summer 1988, Dahmer's grandmother asked him to move out because of his late nights, his strange behavior, and the foul smells from the basement. He then found an apartment on Milwaukee's West side, closer to his job at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory.^[21] On September 26, 1988, one day after moving into his apartment, he was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy in Milwaukee named Somsack Sinthasomphone.^[22] He was sentenced to five years probation and one year in a work release camp. He was required to register as a sex offender.^[23] Dahmer was paroled from the work release camp two months early, and he soon moved into a new apartment.^[24] Shortly thereafter, he began a string of murders that ended with his arrest in 1991.

Murders[link]

Jeffrey Dahmer committed his first murder in the summer of 1978, at the age of 18. His father was away on business and his mother had moved out, taking his brother with her; Dahmer was left behind, alone. That June, Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker named Stephen Hicks and offered to drink beer with him back at his father's house, planning to eventually have sex with him. When Hicks tried to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned Hicks to death with a 10 lb. dumbbell, striking the back of his head, later saying he had committed the crime because "the guy wanted to leave and [he] didn't want him to".^[25] Dahmer buried the body in the backyard.^[26] Nine years passed before he killed again; in September 1987, Dahmer picked up 26-year-old Steven Tuomi at a bar and killed him on impulse; he later said he had no memory of committing the crime.^[20] After the Tuomi murder, Dahmer continued to kill sporadically: two more murders in 1988, and another in early 1989, usually picking up his victims in gay bars and having sex with them before killing them.^[27] He kept the skull of one of his victims, Anthony Sears, until he was caught.^[28]

In May 1990, he moved out of his grandmother's house for the last time and into the apartment that later became infamous: Apartment 213, 924 North 25th Street, Milwaukee. Dahmer picked up the pace of his killing: four more murders before the end of 1990, two more in February and April 1991, and another in May 1991.^[29]

In the early morning hours of May 27, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested in 1988) was discovered on the street, wandering naked, heavily under the influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Two young women from the neighborhood found the dazed boy and called 911. Dahmer chased his victim down and tried to take him away, but the women stopped him.^[30] Dahmer told John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, police officers dispatched to the scene, that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the protests of the two women who had called 911, who recognized him from the neighborhood and insisted that he was a child and couldn't speak English, the officers turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent while inside Dahmer's apartment, but did not investigate it. The smell was the body of Tony Hughes, Dahmer's previous victim, decomposing in the bedroom. The officers did not make any attempt to verify Sinthasomphone's age, identity or locate someone who could communicate with him and failed to run a background check that would have revealed Dahmer was a convicted child molester still under probation.^[31] Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.

By summer 1991, Dahmer was murdering approximately one person each week. He killed Matt Turner on June 30, Jeremiah Weinberger on July 5, Oliver Lacy on July 12, and finally Joseph Brandehoft on July 19. Dahmer got the idea that he could turn his victims into "zombies" — completely submissive, eternally youthful sexual partners – and attempted to do so by drilling holes into their skulls and injecting hydrochloric acid or boiling water into the frontal lobe area of their brains with a large syringe, usually while the victim was still alive.^[32] Other residents of the Oxford Apartments complex noticed terrible smells coming from Apartment 213, as well as the thumps of falling objects and the occasional buzzing of a power saw.^[33] Unlike many serial killers, Dahmer killed victims from a variety of racial backgrounds.

Arrest[link]

On July 22, 1991, Dahmer lured another man, Tracy Edwards, into his home. According to the would-be victim, Dahmer struggled with Edwards in order to handcuff him, but ultimately failed to cuff his wrists together.^[34] Wielding a large butcher knife, Dahmer forced Edwards into the bedroom, where Edwards saw pictures of mangled bodies on the wall and noticed the terrible smell coming from a large blue barrel.^[35] Edwards punched Dahmer in the face, kicked him in the stomach, ran for the door and escaped.^[36] Running through the streets with handcuffs still hanging from one hand, Edwards waved for help to a police car driven by Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller of the Milwaukee police department.^[37] Edwards led police back to Dahmer's apartment, where Dahmer at first acted friendly to the officers. However, Edwards remembered that the knife Dahmer had threatened him with was in the bedroom. When one of the officers checked the bedroom, he saw the photographs of mangled bodies and called for his partner to arrest Dahmer.^[38] As one officer subdued Dahmer, the other opened the refrigerator and found a human head. Further searching of the apartment revealed three more severed heads, multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains, severed hands and penises, and photographs of dismembered victims and human remains in his refrigerator.^[39]

The story of Dahmer's arrest and the inventory in his apartment quickly gained notoriety: several corpses were stored in acid-filled vats, and implements for the construction of an altar of candles and human skulls were found in his closet. Accusations soon surfaced that Dahmer had practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. Seven skulls were found in the apartment.^[40] A human heart was found in the freezer.^[41]

Trial[link]

Jeffrey Dahmer was indicted on 17 murder charges, later reduced to 15. Dahmer was not charged in the attempted murder of Edwards.^{[citation needed]} His trial began on January 30, 1992.^[42] With evidence overwhelmingly against him, Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.^[43] The trial lasted two weeks.^[32] The court found Dahmer sane and guilty on 15 counts of murder and sentenced him to 15 life terms,^[44] totaling 957 years in prison, which was the maximum penalty available as Wisconsin does not have capital punishment.^[45] At his sentencing hearing, Dahmer expressed remorse for his actions, and said that he wished for his own death. In May of that year, Dahmer was extradited to Ohio, where he entered a plea of guilty for the murder of his first victim, Stephen Hicks.^[46]

Imprisonment and death[link]

Dahmer served his time at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, where he ultimately declared himself a born-again Christian. This conversion occurred after viewing evangelical material sent to him by his father.^[47] Roy Ratcliff, a local preacher from the Churches of Christ, met with Dahmer and agreed to baptize him.^[48]

Dahmer was attacked twice in prison, the first time in July 1994. An inmate attempted to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor blade while Dahmer was returning to his cell from a church service in the prison chapel. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial wounds.^[49] While doing janitorial work in the prison gym, Dahmer and another inmate, Jesse Anderson, were severely beaten by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver with a broomstick handle on November 28, 1994.^[50] Dahmer died of severe head trauma while on his way to the hospital in an ambulance. Anderson died two days later from his wounds.^[51]

Aftermath[link]

Upon learning of his death, Dahmer's mother, Joyce Flint, responded angrily to the media, "Now is everybody happy? Now that he's bludgeoned to death, is that good enough for everyone?" The response of the families of Dahmer's victims was mixed, although it appears most were pleased with his death. The district attorney who prosecuted Dahmer cautioned against turning Scarver into a folk hero, noting that Dahmer's death was still murder.^[52]

After the murders, the Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street were demolished; the site is now a vacant lot. Plans to convert the site into a memorial garden failed to materialize.

In 1994, Lionel Dahmer published a book, A Father's Story, and donated a portion of the proceeds from his book to the victims' families. Most of the families showed support for Lionel Dahmer and his wife, Shari. He has retired from his career as an analytical chemist and resides with his wife in Medina County, Ohio. Lionel Dahmer is an advocate for creationism, and his wife was a member of the board of the Medina County Ohio Horseman's Council.^[53] Both continue to carry the name Dahmer and say they love Jeffrey despite his crimes. Lionel Dahmer's first wife, Joyce (Flint), died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 64. She was later buried in Atlanta, Georgia. Jeffrey's younger brother David changed his last name and lives in anonymity.

Dahmer's estate was awarded to the families of 11 of his victims who had sued for damages. In 1996, Thomas Jacobson, a lawyer representing eight of the families, announced a planned auction of Dahmer's estate to raise up to $1 million, sparking controversy.^[54][55] A civic group, Milwaukee Civic Pride, was quickly established in an effort to raise the funds to purchase and destroy Dahmer's possessions. The group pledged $407,225, including a $100,000 gift by Milwaukee real estate developer Joseph Zilber, for purchase of Dahmer's estate; five of the eight families represented by Jacobson agreed to the terms, and Dahmer's possessions were destroyed and buried in an undisclosed Illinois landfill.^[56][57][58]

In January 2007, evidence surfaced potentially linking Dahmer to Adam Walsh's 1981 abduction and murder in Florida.^[12] However, Adam's father, John Walsh, believed that another serial killer, Ottis Toole, committed the crime.^[59] When interviewed about Adam Walsh in the early 1990s, Dahmer repeatedly denied involvement in the crime.^[12] In 2008, Florida police declared the Walsh case closed, naming Toole, who died in prison in 1996, as the killer.^[60]

Known murder victims[link]