Albert Fish was born in Washington, DC in 1870. His family was afflicted with mental illness. His uncle suffered from mania, his brother was forced into a mental state hospital and his sister was diagnosed with some sort of mental illness that went undisclosed. His mother even had visual hallucinations.
After this father died, his mother had to put Fish and his siblings into an orphanage. He was frequently abused there and was beaten mercilessly. Even after his mother was able to retrieve him from the orphanage and take care of him, Fish continued down his crime-ridden path.
By the time he was arrested for a copious amount of crimes, ranging from petty theft to sex crimes, he had been found guilty of murdering at least three children, ages 4 to 10. There are five other suspected victims ranging from age 5 to age 17.
During his trial, Fish tried to plead insanity. He claimed that he heard voices from God telling him to kill and sexually assault children. Psychiatrists were able to testify about his horrific sexual fetishes including sadism, masochism, flagellation, exhibitionism, voyeurism, piquerism, pedophilia... The list goes on.
Many character witnesses to Fish claimed that he was a weird guy but absolutely sane.
After an extensive trial, Fish was found to be insane but guilty. The judge ordered him to death anyway.
Everyone could agree that he was getting what he deserved. He murdered, abducted, and abused children for most of his life... He even admitted to eating most of his victims.
The worst part was that Fish himself had six children. While he never hurt them, he did say that he fed his victims to his children for dinner without them knowing. During his trial, he said that he probably had over 100 victims under his belt. It's unclear if that's true or not, as many serial killers like to exaggerate their crimes. The police only found solid evidence for three and possible evidence for 5 others.
Fish went to prison in March of 1935 and was executed on January 16th, 1936. Fish even tried to "help" his executioner place the electrodes on his body before his execution. According to his death report, his last words were, "I don't even know why I'm here."
After his death, his lawyer met with reporters for a press conference. He had his final statement but refused to release it to the public. "I will never show it to anyone. It was the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read."
Fish is famously one of the worst, most heinous serial killers out there because of his crimes against children and humanity.