"LITTLE GIRLS HAVE MORE FLAVOR"

Violent crimes in and of themselves are horrible enough, but violent -- and depraved -- crimes against children are unimaginable to the rational person. In 1938, just such a crime occurred, but it wouldn't be until years later that the case was solved.

When the elderly man named Albert Fish was finally apprehended, the gruesome murder and dismemberment of 12 year-old Grace Budd was only the beginning; along with committing other acts of cannibalism, he confessed to over 100 more abductions, mostly of poor, young black boys who he forced into a myriad of perverse sexual acts, then beat them.

Fish came from a family where many members were psychotic, insane or otherwise mentally imbalanced. He became intrigued with cannibalism after hearing from a seaman that in China, children were killed and eaten during times of famine. The young Grace Budd had been killed at an abandoned house and Fish began to dismember her a little at a time, consuming her remains piece by piece. This act had been repeated with other victims, as he developed a taste for human meat, which he described as like veal or chicken, "only better".

Ironically, Dr. Frederic Wertham, the child psychiatrist who would later write Seduction of the Innocent, the infamous book that would lead to the Comics Code Authority, acted in Fish's defense at the trial. He declared Fish insane saying that "he was suffering from paranoid psychosis", and that "he plays with humans as a child plays with flies." He added that Fish was a sadomasochist and addicted to no less than 19 other sexual perversions, including the discovery of 29 needles inserted in the flesh around his testicles.

The heinousness of his crimes overshadowed any consideration for a medical incarceration and he was handed the death penalty. Fish was strapped into "Old Sparky" on January 16, 1936, and, in a bit of poetic justice, his own flesh was fried.