Documentary & Film

Documentary Films

Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation (2007). Written, produced and directed by John Borowski. Running time 86 minutes. The best-known documentary treatment of the case. Structured chronologically, uses period newspaper, trial-exhibit and photographic material, and includes narration by Tony Jay. Incorporates interviews with historians of the period and extensive quotation from Wertham's case notes. The title draws directly from one of Fish's own self-descriptions in the Westchester County confession file.

Cropsey & related New York child-abduction documentaries. Several documentary treatments of unsolved child cases in the New York metropolitan area from 1924–1935 include segments on the Fish investigation. None is dedicated exclusively to the case.

Dramatic Films

The Gray Man (2007). Directed by Scott L. Flynn; Patrick Bauchau in the role of Fish. A dramatic reconstruction rather than a documentary, focussed on the Budd case and the pre-arrest investigation. The film takes substantial dramatic liberty with sequence and dialogue; it is best treated as a narrative impression of the case rather than a historical source. Reception among historians of the case has been mixed.

There is no Hollywood studio production of the Fish case in the sense familiar from other American serial-killer narratives of the period. The combination of the victims' ages and the cannibalistic content of the 1934 letter has historically kept the case outside mainstream dramatic treatment.

Non-Fiction Books

Frederic Wertham, The Show of Violence (Doubleday, 1949). The foundational clinical account. Chapter 4 is devoted to the Fish case and draws on Wertham's 1935 pre-trial examinations and subsequent correspondence with Fish. Still the primary psychiatric source.

Harold Schechter, Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer (Pocket Books, 1990). The first full biographical treatment and the principal modern secondary source. Includes facsimiles of the Budd and Gaffney letters and a partial reproduction of the confession statement.

Mel Heimer, The Cannibal (Pyramid Books, 1971). An earlier journalistic account; less rigorously sourced than Schechter but useful for its contemporary interview material with parties connected to the 1935 trial.

Robert G. Elliott, Agent of Death: The Memoirs of an Executioner (E. P. Dutton, 1940). The memoir of the state executioner. Contains a short direct account of the 16 January 1936 electrocution — one of the few first-hand sources on the execution itself.

Press Coverage

The 1924, 1927 and 1928 disappearances were covered, respectively, by the Staten Island Advance, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and the New York Daily News. The December 1934 arrest and the March 1935 trial received national coverage; the principal New York sources were the Daily News, the Evening Journal, the New York American, and the New York Times. The full microfilm is accessible through the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences.

Further Reading

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

• Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation (2007) — IMDb — Credits, cast and production information for the Borowski documentary.
• Albert Fish (2007) — AllMovie — Secondary film database entry and reception summary.