I've said many times that sometimes monsters are created. And more times than not, the psychological break in our children starts with the parents.

Adults traumatize their children...and sometimes...sometimes they create humanity's worst and most heinous. And those with the predisposition of mental illness have that much more likely and, especially when there's trauma involved at young ages, have a much higher chance of becoming...well...the boogey man. This is the case with Albert Fish.

Born as Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish, he would later be dubbed with many names: The Gray Man. The Werewolf of Wysteria. The Brooklyn Vampire. The Moon Maniac. And The Boogey Man.

Albert Fish is a prime example of don't judge a book by its cover. Upon first seeing him, he looks like an unimposing, genteel old man. A grandfather-type that is easily approachable. Trusting. Especially in a time when people were generally more trusting of a stranger.

But before we get into his crimes, let us take a look at the timeline creation of what would become one of America's most prolific of child killers.

Albert Fish was born in Washington D.C. on the 19th of May in 1870. His parents were Randall and Ellen Fish. His family had an extended history of mental illness, including his mother, who experienced visual hallucinations. His uncle suffered episodes of mania, and his brother was sent to a mental institution. His sister also had mental illnesses, as well as other members of his family.

His mother was 43 years younger than his father, being 75 years old when Fish was born and died when he was five years old.

Of his surviving siblings, he was the youngest. He had two brothers, Walter and Albert Fish, and a sister named Annie. He began going by Albert, the name of his older brother, after he died.

Due to his mother being in poor mental health, Albert was sent to Saint John's Orphanage in Washington. He it was common practice to beat the children in a brutal mannerism, and even torture.

Because this started, the abuse, at such a young age, as time and the abuse progressed, he began associating the pain he experienced with pleasure, becoming sexually aroused while being whipped and/or flogged. He began looking forward to it.

Around the year 1880, his mother had managed to stabilize her mental state and procure a governmental position, enabling her to bring Albert home from the orphanage. While at the St. John's, he was never given any kind of formal education, and by age 12, became involved with a telegraph boy. This boy introduced him to paraphilic practices.

(Paraphilias are persistent and recurrent sexual interests, urges, fantasies, or behaviors of marked intensity involving objects, activities, or even situations that are atypical in nature. This activity outlines the evaluation and management of paraphilia and paraphilic disorders. It explains the role of the interprofessional healthcare team in managing and improving care for patients with this condition.)

Among these practices were urolagnia (a tendency to derive sexual pleasure from the sight or thought of urination) and coprophagia (a rare and distressing disorder characterized by symptoms of compulsive consumption of feces).

As a young boy, he began going to public baths to see the other boys undress. Around this time, he also began writing lewd and indecent letter to women who had posted in classified advertisements and matrimonial agencies.

As it goes, people progress in their crimes. They start with petty crimes and graduate to bigger crimes. Albert Fish was no different in this aspect. There's a psychological effect that emboldens them to do more. They get braver as they get away with their crimes.

In his 20's, Fish moved to New York City where he began working as a male prostitute. He also began raping young boys while working on the street.

He would lure the boys somewhere and would first torture them with paddles, like they did to him at the orphanage. He embedded the paddle with nails to ensure that much more inflicted pain before he sexually assaulted them.

This marked the beginning of his obsession with young children, which would lead him to his eventual infamy.

His mother arranged his marriage to Anna Mary Hoffman in the year 1898, with whom he had six children: Albert, Anna, Gertrude, Eugene, John, and Henry.

In 1903 he was arrested and sent to Sing Sing Prison for grand larceny, regularly having sex with the inmates.

His marriage and subsequent fatherhood did not dissuade him from the pursuit of the molestation of young children. He would later admit to having an obsession with the mutilation of male genitalia after he and a lover visited a wax museum, where he saw a bisection of a penis. He also became interested in self-mutilation at this point, where he would stick needles in his scrotum and penis. He would also flog himself with his nail-studded paddle.

By the time 1910 rolled around, he was working in Wilmington, Delaware. Here he met a young man by the name of Thomas Kedden and the two of them started a sexual relationship. Fish confessed that Thomas was intellectually disabled, so it is unclear if the relationship was consensual or not, as it it unknown the extent of his disability.

He would eventually lure Thomas to an abandoned farmhouse under the pretension of sex. For two weeks he tortured him, keeping him tied up, cutting half his penis. In his confession he told the detective(s), "I shall never forget his scream and the look he gave me."

He had intended to kill Thomas initially, but decided against it, thinking that it would draw too much attention his way. As opposed to killing the man, he put peroxide on the wound, covered it with a handkerchief and left him $10; never seeing him again.

In 1917 his wife left him, and left the children with him, for a man named John Straube, after Fish became severely mentally unstable. After she booked, Fish began having auditory hallucinations. He even told authorities that he remembered John the Apostle instructing him to wrap himself in carpet.

It is at this point in his life that things take an even darker turn and his crimes escalate once again. In 1919 he stabbed a mentally disabled boy in Georgetown Washington. Now he specifically targeted (at this time) mentally challenged boys or African-American boys, assuming that these types of persons would not be missed as much.

However, on July 11th, 1924, this changed. He noticed an 8 year old girl playing on the farm her parents owned, by the name of Beatrice Kiel, in Staten Island. Offering her money for her assistance in looking for rhubarb, he lured the girl away. Fortunately for her, her mother saw this and came running, chasing him down and getting her daughter back unmolested.

On the 25th of May, 1928, Fish's most infamous crime occurred. The kidnapping and murder of Grace Budd.

Fish came across an advertisement in the 'New York World' by a young man named Edward Budd, who wanted work in the country. He answered. He met the family as a proposed employer of Edward and his friend Willie.

Introducing himself under the alias Frank Howard, he said that he was a farmer from Farmingdale, New York. He boasted about his farm, telling tall tales of hundreds of chickens, several dairy cows and that, while he and his children had made the farm a successful one, they needed the extra help. He offered Edward $15 a week (which was a good bit back then).

He had initially intended for Edward to be his victim, but these plans quickly changed upon the meeting of his 10 year old little sister, Grace. Over the period of several days, he gained the trust of the family, convincing them to allow him to take Grace to his sister's kid's birthday party, claiming that there would be many children that Grace could play with, telling them that he would have her home that evening, while picking Edward up for his new job.

There was some hesitation, but they said that she could go after Fish gave them a(n fictitious) address to the party.

This was the last time they saw their daughter alive. The Budd's reported Grace's disappearance to the police the next morning. Soon after they were informed that "Frank Howard" was not a man that existed and all the information in regard to the party they had gotten was false.

There was a massive search that was undergone to find her. There were descriptions mailed out of "Mr. Howard" to police stations across the country. The parents also did their part, looking through hundreds of mugshots of known sex offenders and other criminals. However, there was no trace of the man that took their daughter.

However, with all the searching that authorities conducted, Grace Budd soon fell from the public eye, disappearing from their memories as well. It would be six years before the family would find out what happened to her when they received a letter in the mail detailing all the horrible things he did to her. It was this letter that later led to his arrest in November of 1934.

What disturbed the New York City police was that Grace Budd was not the first child to vanish with an elderly man. On the 11th of February 1927, two boys, 4 year old Billy Gaffney and a 3 year old neighbor disappeared while playing within their apartment building.

The younger boy was later found on the roof of the building after a search had been conducted for the boys. The boy explained that "the boogey man took him", however in a tried and true fashion of adult unto children, he was dismissed in his claims.

Detective William F. King, however, was working diligently to find Grace Budd. In 1934, he convinced a local newspaper to write a story about her disappearance with an assertion that the police were about to hit a major breakthrough in the case.

The subterfuge worked. It was ten days later that the letter came.

Mrs. Budd was unable to read, so her son, Edward read it aloud to her, immediately taking the letter to Detective King. Understandably, the police wanted to believe that this letter was the raving of a mad man looking for some kind of attention. Though, this was proven not the case, as there were things, confirmed by the Budd's, that were accurate in the happening of what took place at their house.

Before Grace's abduction, Fish had sent the Budd's a telegram, and they matched the handwriting from the telegram to the letter, proving it was the same person who wrote each.

The envelope that he mailed the letter in also held a vital clue that led to Fish's arrest. On it were the letters NYPCBA: the New York Private Chauffeur's Benevolent Association.

Calling an emergency meeting, the NYPCBA obtained and handed over handwriting samples for all of their members. There was much disappointment where none were a match. Though a light came in the form of a janitor who came forward, telling the authorities that he had taken some of the envelopes and left them behind at the boarding house that he had moved out of, providing them an address.

With this new lead, they went to the boarding house. The woman who owned the house told authorities that the description they gave her fit a man, Albert Fish, who had moved out only days ago.

She told them that he had requested her to hold on to a letter from his son when it arrived, as he often sent him money and that he would come to get it when it arrived.

This was their opening. The police waited for the day Fish came back. And he did on December 13th, 1934. The landlady was able to make a call to Detective King while he was there drinking tea with her.

It was here that Detective King was finally able to capture the man that had evaded him for so long.

Fish did not hold back in any of his confessions, and the police were not at all prepared for everything that he had to tell them.

Along with Grace Budd, Fish confessed to the murders of Billy Gaffney and the attempted rape and murder of Francis McDonnell. Francis McDonnell was reported missing on the 14th of July, 1924. His body was later found hanging from a tree near his home. The autopsy results came back with evidence of severe physical and sexual abuse, with his COD being strangulation via his own suspenders.

On March 11th, 1935, Albert Fish began his trial for the murder of Grace Budd in White Plains New York. The trial concluded after 10 days. While he tried to go for the insanity defense, the jury ultimately declared him not only sane but guilty. He was given a death sentence and executed on the 16th of January, 1936 by way of the electric chair in Sing Sing Prison.

Albert Fish's final words were: "I don't even know why I'm here".