The Confession Statement

How the Statement Was Produced

Between Fish's arrest on 13 December 1934 and the opening of the Westchester County trial on 11 March 1935, three separate statements were taken from him. The first was an oral confession given to Detective William F. King in the hours after the arrest, at the 17th Precinct and then at the Tombs. The second was an extended verbal account given over several weeks to Dr. Frederic Wertham, conducted at the Westchester County jail in White Plains. The third — the subject of this page — was the formal written confession prepared by the Westchester County District Attorney's office for presentation to the Grand Jury.

The written statement was drafted on 3–5 March 1935 in the presence of an Assistant District Attorney, a court stenographer, and Fish's defence counsel, James Dempsey. Fish wrote in pencil on foolscap. He occasionally paused and asked Dempsey for guidance on phrasing; Dempsey declined to intervene in the content. The completed statement was read back to Fish and initialled by him on each page. It was sworn on 6 March.

What It Contained

The statement runs to eleven pages. Approximately seven pages concern the Grace Budd killing: the 1928 classified advertisement, the 3 June approach at the West 15th Street apartment, the journey to Wisteria Cottage, and the killing itself. The remaining four pages contain Fish's separate admissions to the Francis McDonnell and Billy Gaffney homicides — given at the request of Detective King, who wanted the other cases resolved — and brief references to the pattern of earlier obscene correspondence.

As a document, the confession statement is more restrained than the Budd letter. It is drafted in something closer to formal legal prose, with less of the digressive "Captain John Davis" framing that characterises the Budd correspondence. Fish's own explanation for the difference — given to Wertham — was that he understood the difference between writing to a bereaved mother and writing for a grand jury. Both Wertham and the District Attorney found the remark revealing.

Its Role at Trial

The statement was entered into evidence on the second day of trial, 12 March 1935, as Exhibit 12. It was the single most important document of the Budd prosecution. The defence did not contest its authenticity or the voluntariness of its making; the defence strategy was exclusively the insanity defence, to which the content of the confession was at best neutral and at worst positively damaging. The jury, deliberating for approximately three hours on 22 March, returned a unanimous first-degree verdict.

For the McDonnell and Gaffney homicides the statement served a different purpose: it supplied the Brooklyn and Staten Island DAs with the evidentiary basis to formally close both cases without separate indictments, given that Fish was already under sentence of death.

Where the Statement Is Now

The original is held in the New York State Archives as part of People v. Fish, Westchester County, Indictment No. 15-1935, Exhibit 12. Certified copies are held in the Brooklyn and Staten Island DA archives. The full text is reproduced in Wertham's case notes (unpublished, NY State Psychiatric Institute) and, in part, in Schechter's Deranged (1990). This archive has chosen not to reproduce the Grace Budd section of the statement verbatim; the editorial reasoning is set out in the editorial note.

Further Reading

Independent, non-Wikipedia sources vetted at the time of publication. External links open in a new window.

• Wertham, The Show of Violence (1949) — Internet Archive — Free full-text reader for the clinical monograph containing the case.