Sources & Bibliography

Primary Sources — Court & Official Records

• NYS Archives
  People of the State of New York v. Albert Fish. Westchester County, Indictment No. 15-1935. Trial exhibits 1–24, including the Budd letter (Exhibit 4), the pelvic X-ray (Exhibit 7), and the confession statement (Exhibit 12).
• Brooklyn DA
  Investigative Record: Gaffney, 1927 (re-opened March 1935); includes the Gaffney letter.
• Richmond Co. DA
  Investigative Record: McDonnell, 1924 (closed April 1935).
• NYS Corrections
  Sing Sing Prisoner Register, 1935–1936. Prisoner number 83909 (Fish); death-house cell assignment register; autopsy record 17 Jan 1936.
• NYPD
  Missing Persons Bureau case files: Budd 1928–1934; Gaffney 1927–1935; McDonnell 1924–1935.

Primary Sources — Psychiatric

• NYSPI
  Frederic Wertham, Case notes on Albert Fish, 1935–36. Held at the New York State Psychiatric Institute archive. The most extensive first-person clinical record on the case; condensed in The Show of Violence (1949).
• Bellevue
  Menas Gregory, Admission file: Fish, Albert. Bellevue Hospital, May 1930.
• WC Trial
  Competing expert reports: Smith Ely Jelliffe (pros.), Charles Lambert (pros.), March 1935. Exhibits 15 & 16.

Secondary — Books about Albert Fish

• 1940
  Robert G. Elliott, Agent of Death: The Memoirs of an Executioner. New York: E. P. Dutton.
• 1949
  Frederic Wertham, The Show of Violence. New York: Doubleday.
• 1971
  Mel Heimer, The Cannibal. New York: Pyramid Books.
• 1990
  Harold Schechter, Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America's Most Fiendish Killer. New York: Pocket Books.
• 2007
  John Borowski (dir./prod.), Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation. Documentary film. See documentary page.

Secondary — Press

Contemporaneous newspaper coverage is accessible through the following archives:

• NYPL
  New York Daily News, New York Times, New York American, New York Evening Journal, New York Mirror, New York World — microfilm, Schwarzman Building.
• BPL
  Brooklyn Daily Eagle — microfilm, Central Library.
• SIIAS
  Staten Island Advance — microfilm, Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences.

Editorial Note

This bibliography is under continuous review. Scholars wishing to contribute an additional primary source, correct a citation, or propose a clarification are invited to write to the archive via the contact address on the editorial note page. Donations of physical material are not solicited; all material on this site is sourced from public or licenced holdings.

Further Reading

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

• The Show of Violence — Open Library record — Catalogue entry for Wertham's 1949 monograph.
• NYPL Digital Collections — Albert Fish search — Search across the New York Public Library's digitised holdings.