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Like the emergence of Jack the Ripper onto the stage of crime history, Albert Fish burst into a world completely unready for a criminal such as himself. In and out of psychiatric wards for decades, Fish was analyzed by countless experts without anyone detecting the true extent of his murderous crimes. And when he was finally arrested, nobody knew that this seemingly innocent, elderly man, was easily the most fiendish and deranged individual in the annals of American justice.

Howard Hamilton Fish was born in the nation's capitol in 1870, to an Irish mother, and a father who had been born in 1795. His family ancestors had fought in the American Revolution, but his lineage seemed to gift Fish with only a familial strain of severe mental illness. His father, an elderly, infirm man at the time of Fish's birth, died just five years later, leaving his mother to raise several children alone. The task was impossible, and Fish was moved into the place that, over half a century later in police custody, Fish would blame for the complete loss of his sanity and reason.

Saint John'sOrphanage was akin to Emperor Gaius' (Caligula) stay with Tiberius, the man who systematically killed his family. The old Emperor claimed he was "nursing a viper for the Roman people". Though it is tempting in this modern age to blame Saint John's for using a misplaced religious fervor-via harsh discipline of its wards-for Fish's mania, it is unlikely this orphanage produced any other individual who could have possibly come close to his state of dementedness. Nevertheless, it was not a happy home for a small boy. Fish was adamant on being called Albert, to escape the incessant taunts derived from his birth name, as the others called him "Ham and Eggs". He was a constant bed-wetter and a runaway, several times taken back into the orphanage's care.

This was the place where Fish said he "got started wrong", and that he saw boys doing "many things they should not have done." Punishments for even the smallest infractions were dealt with immediately. The most common form of correction was paddling or flogging. If it is true that one is born a Sadomasochist, then Albert Fish is the perfect example. He loved his punishments. He loved it when he was paddled, and also to watch the others being paddled. He was taunted by the others for consistently getting an erection when they were administered. Here he was also introduced to masturbation, and talk of sex, along with sexual games. By the time his mother had obtained steady employment at a government job and collected her children from various orphanages, Fish had all the makings of at least, a soon to be violent and impulsive young man, at worst, a killer.

A sickly child, his already fragile and damaged mental state was made worse when a fall from a cherry tree caused a concussion. He was racked by migraine headaches, a terrible stutter, and dizziness. His feeble mind was fed the worst possible viand; a brother returning from the Navy showed him pictures of nude tribal men and women, and regaled the boy with grisly stories of cannibalism and other such rites. The sick perversity that was to mark his character for the remainder of his life began in earnest.

Aged 12, Fish became the lover of a telegraph boy, who introduced him to the practice of eating human feces and drinking urine. He also told Fish of his exploits in brothels, and soon the youth had an unquenchable sexual appetite, and the advent of puberty turned the obsessions into a fury like fascination with all things foul and sexual. At 20, he moved toNew Yorkand promptly began prostituting himself, spending his spare time in public baths watching boys undress. Soon he began raping small boys.

His employment as an itinerant housepainter took him to basements and alleyways around the country, where his pedophilic urges brought him to rape and molest children he found in his customer's homes. He claimed to have raped hundreds of children, in every state, mostly those under 6 years.

One failed marriage (producing 6 children) and various arrests for vagrancy and grand larceny later, he began to suffer from hallucinations and heard voices. He once folded himself in a carpet, as he told others, under orders fromSaint John. After a lover took him to a wax museum, Fish fantasized over a bisection of a penis he had seen there. He became obsessed with the urge to sexually mutilate youths. Now in his 40's, Fish began to show true blood lust. On assignment inSt. Louis, he attempted to mutilate a mentally retarded man named Kedden. Fish timed the attack so that Kedden would get an erection, and Fish cut part of it off. The victim's agonized face terrified Fish, who left a 10 dollar bill on the bed with the hogtied Kedden, and fled. After stabbing a homosexual man to death in 1910, he tortured another mentally retarded boy to death in 1919.

Even Fish himself did not escape his own cruelty. While raising his children, he encouraged them or the neighborhood kids to paddle his naked buttocks with a homemade wooden board pierced with inch and a half nails until they bled. Fish would douse bunches of wool with lighter fluid, before inserting them into his anus and lighting them. Over years, he inserted 29 needles into his perineum and left them there.

Throughout all this, Fish was several times placed in psychiatric wards and examined. Almost always he was judged disturbed, but sane. Notaries and assistants commented repeatedly that Fish look so innocent, so harmless. Likely, they thought, his sexual aberrations were simply leftovers from failed marriages and a poor childhood, inflated by his advancing age.