The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (27 page)

Friend (1977) and The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), DEFENSE. In the rare cases where flesh-and-blood killers with Matt Damon in the title role.

truly identify with fictional stalkers, they are invariably More typically, series of novels examining serial deranged, with histories of mental illness and weird murder chart the careers of dynamic (and sometimes behavior predating their exposure to any specific enter-deeply flawed) investigators. John Sandford’s “Prey”

tainment medium.

series— Rules of Prey, Silent Prey, and 13 more—tracks See also ARTWORK AND MEMORABILIA

Lucas Davenport, a Minneapolis police detective who suffers from clinical depression. David Wiltse’s FBI Agent John Becker ( Prayer for the Dead, Blown Away,
FISCHER, Joseph J.

etc.) is himself a borderline psychopath, unleashed by A native of New Jersey, born in 1923, Joe Fischer was cynical superiors on the Bureau’s dirtiest cases, con-raised in Newark and Belleville, later describing his stantly at war with his own urge to kill. James Patter-childhood as one of continual conflict and violence. His son’s Detective Alex Cross (
Kiss the Girls, Jack and Jill,
mother was a prostitute who brought “tricks” home etc.) is both a psychologist and a black single father, try-while her husband worked on various construction ing desperately to raise gentle children on the mean sites. “I guess what really helped me hate the woman,”

streets of Washington, D.C., while stalking monsters in Fischer later said, “was that she didn’t care if me or my human form. Robert Walker’s “Instinct” series (
Killer
brothers were home when she brought her customers
Instinct, Fatal Instinct,
etc.) has an FBI pathologist, Dr.

in.” The strangers sometimes passed out pocket change, Jessica Coran, bedeviled both by lethal stalkers and by urging the children to “get lost,” but Joe stayed behind, sexist hassles in the old-boy’s club of law enforcement.

watching his mother perform with a seemingly endless The action moves to Canada and other foreign parts in series of men. His disrespect for her grew over time, a series of novels by Michael Slade (
Headhunter, Rip-provoking frequent arguments that led to beatings, per, etc.), charting the exploits of the “Special X”

sometimes interrupted when his father waded in to squad, assigned to track serial killers for the Royal whip them both. “I would have killed her 10 times Canadian Mounted Police. Author Alex Kava follows over,” Fischer said, “but I really believed that it would the trials and triumphs of FBI agent Maggie O’Dell in a have broken my father’s heart.”

series of novels including Perfect Evil, Split Second, The Enrolled in Catholic school, Fischer was a rebellious Soul Catcher, and At the Stroke of Madness.

student who clashed frequently with police in his ado-Debate persists (and doubtless always will) concern-lescent years and was finally sentenced to reform ing the role—if any—of “psycho” films and novels in school for robbing St. Peter’s Church. Released in promoting real-life violence. As far back as 1927, the 1938, at 15, he lied about his age to join the merchant sadistic crimes of William Hickman in Los Angeles pro-marine but soon jumped ship, returning to New Jersey.

duced a call for censorship of motion pictures, and the Desertion charges were dismissed when the authorities debate has only grown more heated with time, as critics found out that he was under age, and Fischer had a claim “proof” of cause-and-effect between graphic clean record, more or less, when he joined the Marine

“splatter” films and soaring juvenile crime rates. Specif-Corps, following the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor in ically, they say, exposure to such violent fare desensi-December 1941.

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FISH, Albert Howard

By that time, Fischer was well on his way to full-remain subject to “close supervision.” A photo found in blown alcoholism, serving 30 days in the brig for his possession, meanwhile, was identified as a likeness drunkenness before he finished boot camp. He later saw of 26-year-old Pamela Nolen, missing from Ruidos, combat on Guadalcanal, Kwajalein, and Iwo Jima, New Mexico, since October 30, 1978. (Fischer admit-before he was posted to mainland China, guarding milited stabbing a woman to death in New Mexico; he sim-tary trains. His wartime record remains controversial, ply didn’t catch her name.) Flagstaff police cited Fischer variously claiming a Bronze Star, a Silver Star, evidence confirming Fischer’s presence in the motel and two Purple Hearts for various battles, though he room where a male victim died on March 31, 1979, but could never produce the medals or certificates to verify they now called the death accidental; Fischer, for his his alleged heroism. Regardless of the details, it is clear part, insisted that he beat the man to death. By mid-that he saw action and loved every minute of it, remark-February 1980, Joe was claiming a total of 32 victims, ing years later that “killing felt too good to stop” at and police in Norwalk, Connecticut, declared that they war’s end. He apparently murdered a number of Chi-had sufficient evidence to charge him in the additional nese civilians under the guise of “protecting” military stabbing deaths of two 17-year-old girls, Alaine Hape-freight, and while he was never court-martialed, he was man and Veronica Tassielo.

diagnosed as a dangerous paranoid schizophrenic prior In fact, Joe went to trial in April 1980 only for the to his discharge from service in 1945.

murder of his wife. By that time, press reports of his A series of arrests and committals to mental institu-confessions cited “dozens” of victims, one article claim-tions followed his return to civilian life, climaxed in ing “up to forty,” but Fischer had changed his tune for 1948 by Fischer’s conviction for robbery and assault.

the moment, denying Claudine’s murder when he took Paroled in December 1953, he was free for a matter of the witness stand on April 11. Jurors dismissed his testi-days before he attacked a 16-year-old boy in New Jer-mony as a self-serving lie, convicting him of second-sey, beating him to death with a rock on the day after degree murder on April 23. Three weeks later, on May Christmas. That crime sent him away for the next quar-16, Fischer received a prison sentence of 25 years to life.

ter-century. He was paroled in June 1978 to marry a Warrants remained outstanding in Connecticut and pen pal, 78-year-old Claudine Eggers. The attraction Oklahoma, but neither jurisdiction was disposed to was apparently financial, Claudine picking up the tab extradite Fischer for trial. Confined at Sing Sing, he for an aimless 13-month jaunt across country that soon reverted to his early boastful mode, granting inter-turned into a nonstop murder spree. One of the last to views to such tabloid TV programs as Geraldo and A die was Claudine herself, found stabbed to death in the Current Affair in 1989, claiming a body count of “over home she sometimes shared with Joe in Wassaic, New 100” victims. By February 1991, when Fischer was pro-York. Fischer surrendered to New York police on July filed on America’s Most Wanted, the number had 2, 1979, and freely confessed to the slaying, landing in jumped to “about 150,” including allegations of a pri-the Dutchess County jail on a charge of second-degree vate graveyard undiscovered by police, with 16 corpses murder.

buried in one place, but no one had the interest or the That might have been the end for Fischer, but he felt energy to check his stories out. By the time he died in like talking—more specifically, confessing to another 18

prison seven months later, at age 68, Joe Fischer was homicides. He had set out to kill 25 victims, Joe told largely forgotten, his passing barely noted in the home-detectives, but was still six short of the mark when he town newspaper. Officially, he was responsible for two grew weary and surrendered. By July 28, authorities in homicides, suspected of at least three more. His true Arizona and Oklahoma had issued warrants for his body count—like that of DONALD GASKINS, HENRY

arrest in the spring 1979 murders of a man in Flagstaff LUCAS, and other boastful killers—will probably never and a female victim, Betty Jo Gibson, in Moore, Okla-be known.

homa. Other victims claimed by Fischer in his confessions included “a couple” of deaths in the Bowery, with others in Los Angeles; San Francisco; New Mexico;
FISH, Albert Howard

Cooperstown, New York; Hartford, Connecticut; and Born Hamilton Fish in 1870, America’s most notorious Portland, Maine.

20th-century cannibal before JEFFREY DAHMER was the Authorities in different jurisdictions often seemed to product of a respected family living in Washington, work at cross-purposes in tracking Fischer’s claims. The D.C. A closer examination, however, reveals at least New Jersey Department of Corrections refused to seven relatives with severe mental disorders in the two release his prison psychiatric files, although it was generations preceding Fish’s birth, including two mem-admitted that parole had been granted in 1978 on twin bers of the family who died in asylums. Fish was five conditions that Fischer join Alcoholics Anonymous and years old when his father died, and his mother placed
76

FISH, Albert Howard

him in an orphanage while she worked to support her-time for grand larceny, passing bad checks, and violating self. Records describe young Fish as a problem child parole or probation. Obscene letters were another of his who “ran away every Saturday,” persistently wetting passions, and Fish mailed off countless examples to the bed until his 11th year. Graduating from public strangers, their addresses obtained from matrimonial school at age 15, he began to call himself Albert, dis-agencies of newspaper “lonely-hearts” columns.

carding the hated first name which led classmates to In 1928, posing as “Mr. Howard,” Fish befriended tease him, calling him “Ham and Eggs.”

the Budd family in White Plains, New York. On June 3, As an adult, Fish worked odd jobs, making his way while escorting 12-year-old Grace Budd to a fabricated across country as an itinerant house painter and decora-children’s party, he took the child to an isolated cottage tor. In 1898 he married a woman nine years his junior, and there dismembered her body, saving several pieces fathering six children before his wife ran away with a for a stew which he consumed.

boarder named John Straube in January 1917. She Two years later, with the Budd case still unsolved, came back once, with Straube in tow, and Fish took her Fish was confined to a psychiatric hospital for the first back on condition that she send her lover away. Later, time. After two months of observation, he was dishe discovered that his wife was keeping Straube in the charged with a note reading: “Not insane; psychopathic attic, and she departed after a stormy argument, never personality; sexual type.” In 1931, arresting Fish once to return.

more on charges of mailing obscene letters, police By his own account, Fish committed his first murder found a well-used cat-o’-nine-tails in his room. He was in 1910, killing a man in Wilmington, Delaware, but released after two more weeks of observation in a psy-his children marked the first obvious change in Fish’s chiatric ward.

behavior from the date of his wife’s initial departure.

Compelled to gloat about his crimes, Fish sent a let-Apparently subject to hallucinations, he would shake ter to the Budd family in 1934, breaking the news that his fist at the sky and repeatedly scream, “I am Christ!”

Grace was dead, oddly emphasizing the fact that “she Obsessed with sin, sacrifice, and atonement through died a virgin.” Traced by police through the letter’s dis-pain, Fish encouraged his children and their friends to tinctive stationery, Fish readily confessed to other paddle him until his buttocks bled. On his own, he inserted numerous needles into his groin, losing track of some as they sank out of sight. (A prison X ray revealed at least 29 separate needles in his pelvic region, some eroded with time to mere fragments.) On other occasions, Fish would soak cotton balls in alcohol, insert them in his anus, and set them on fire. Frustrated by agony when he began slipping needles under his own fingernails, Fish lamented, “If only pain were not so painful!”

Though never divorced from his first wife, Fish married three times, enjoying a sex life which court psychiatrists would describe as one of “unparalleled perversity.”

(In jail, authorities compiled a list of 18 PARAPHILIAS

practiced by Fish, including coprophagia—the consumption of human excrement.) Tracing his sadomasochism back to the age of five or six when he began to relish bare-bottom spankings in the orphanage, Fish’s obsession with pain was focused primarily on children.

Ordered “by God” to castrate young boys, he impartially molested children of both sexes as he traveled around the country. Prosecutors confidently linked him with “at least 100” sexual assaults in 23 states from New York to Wyoming, but Fish felt slighted by their estimate. “I have had children in every state,” he declared, placing his own tally of victims closer to 400.