Editing Albert Fish (section)

===The murders===
Fish committed what may have been his first attack on a child named Thomas Bedden in Wilmington, Delaware in 1910. Afterward, he stabbed a mentally disabled boy around 1919 in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.. Consistently, many of his intended victims would be either mentally disabled or African-American, because, he believed, these would not be missed.

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 in the neighboring fields. 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 for the night before being discovered by Hans Kiel and told to leave.

A child named Billy Gaffney was playing in the hallway outside of his family's apartment in Brooklyn with his friend, Billy Beaton on February 11, 1927. Both of the boys disappeared, but the friend was found on the roof of the apartment house. When asked what happened to Gaffney, Beaton said "the boogey man took him."<ref>[https://stmuscholars.org/the-boogey-man-took-him-the-cannibalistic-serial-killer-albert-fish/comment-page-14/ “The Boogey Man Took Him”: The Cannibalistic Serial Killer Albert Fish], ''StMU Research Scholars''</ref>

Initially Peter Kudzinowski was a suspect in the murder of Billy Gaffney. 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 wasn't wearing a jacket and was crying for his mother and was dragged by the man on and off the trolley. Police matched the description of the child to Billy Gaffney. Gaffney's body was never recovered.<ref>[https://www.nytimes.com/1935/03/25/archives/fish-says-he-slew-the-gaffney-boy-penitentiary-aides-skeptical-of.html FISH SAYS HE SLEW THE GAFFNEY BOY; Penitentiary Aides Skeptical of Story, After Alleged Written Confession.], ''The New York Times''</ref>

On May 25, 1928 Edward Budd put 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, New York City under the pretense of hiring Edward. He introduced himself as Frank Howard, a farmer from Farmingdale, New York. When he arrived, Fish met Budd's younger sister, 10-year-old Grace. Fish promised to hire Budd and said he would send for him in a few days. On his second visit he agreed to hire Budd, then convinced the parents, Delia Flanagan and Albert Budd I, to let Grace accompany him to a birthday party that evening at his sister's home. Albert senior was a porter for the Equitable Life Assurance Society. Grace had a sister, Beatrice; and two other brothers, Albert Budd II; and George Budd. Fish left with Grace that day, but never came back.

The police arrested Charles Edward Pope on September 5, 1930 as a suspect of the kidnapping. He was a 66-year-old apartment house superintendent, and he was accused by his estranged wife. He spent 108 days in jail between his arrest and trial on December 22, 1930.