The Press-Given Names

The Six Press Names

Each name below is tied to a specific paper, a specific case, and a specific year. They are arranged chronologically by the date of first documented use in the New York press.

The Gray Man

The earliest and most enduring of the Fish nicknames. The phrase predates his identification: it originated in the Staten Island Advance's July 1924 coverage of the Francis McDonnell case, in which the paper described the unknown killer as a "tall, grey-haired stranger" — contracted in sub-headlines to "the gray man." The label was picked up by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for its 1927 coverage of the Billy Gaffney disappearance, and thereafter used by most New York papers as the generic term for the unidentified child-abductor operating in and around the city.

After Fish's 1934 arrest, the New York Daily News retained "the Gray Man" as its preferred title in the Budd trial coverage. It is the most widely recognised of the Fish aliases and the one under which he remains most often indexed in modern true-crime writing.

The Boogeyman

Derived directly from three-year-old Billy Beaton's February 1927 account of his playmate Billy Gaffney's disappearance. Beaton told his mother and, later, detectives, that "the boogey man" had taken Billy away. The phrase appeared in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's 13 February 1927 edition, and from there passed into the common vocabulary of the 1927 Brooklyn investigation. It was used less after 1928, as the Gray Man replaced it in the press. It remains in biographical accounts of the case chiefly as a reference to the Gaffney file.

The Brooklyn Vampire

A New York Evening Journal coinage, first used in early January 1935, roughly three weeks after Fish's arrest. The name referred specifically to the Brooklyn cases (Gaffney and two other alleged disappearances which were never charged) and was intended to distinguish the Brooklyn press's claim on the story from the Manhattan papers' coverage of the Budd case. It is not strictly accurate — Fish lived in Manhattan, not Brooklyn — but entered the record. The label appeared in the headline "Brooklyn Vampire Confesses."

The Werewolf of Wysteria

A New York Mirror headline coinage, March 1935, coined during the Westchester trial. The name combined two features of the Budd case: the rural setting of Wisteria Cottage (frequently misspelled in the press as Wysteria), and the animal motif — "werewolf" — the paper judged suitable for the case's cannibalistic disclosures. It has the narrowest currency of the Fish aliases and is rarely encountered outside period press sources.

The Moon Maniac

A late coinage, also from March 1935, attributable to the New York American. The name derived from Wertham's trial testimony that Fish's self-flagellation and, he claimed, some of his attacks were timed to the phases of the moon. The American took the detail and ran it as "Moon Maniac Confesses" during the sentencing phase. Like the Werewolf name, it did not survive the trial in general currency.

Frank Howard

Not a press alias but the false name Fish himself used when he approached the Budd family in May 1928. It is included here because it is occasionally encountered in secondary accounts as a "nickname." "Frank Howard, farmer, Farmingdale, L.I." is the only one of Fish's aliases that survives in the physical record of the case: the original classified-advertisement letter, signed in that name, is preserved in the Westchester County trial exhibit file.

Further Reading

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

• Albert Fish press coverage — Newspapers.com search — Contemporary newspaper scans from 1924 through 1936.