December 13, 1934: Albert Fish is arrested in New York. I'll try to make this post as PG-rated as possible. It won't be easy.
Hamilton Howard Fish was born on May 19, 1870 in Washington, D.C. In spite of his name and birthplace, he appears not to be related to the political family that produced Hamilton Fish, a Governor of New York and U.S. Senator who served as President Ulysses S. Grant's Secretary of State; his sons, Hamilton Fish II, a Congressman, and Nicholas Fish, an Ambassador; a grandson, Hamilton Fish III, an All-American football player at Harvard and a longtime Congressman, where he was a Hudson Valley neighbor and nemesis of President Franklin D. Roosevelt; his son, Hamilton Fish IV, also a longtime Congressman; and his son, Hamilton Fish V, a failed Congressional candidate who runs the magazine The Washington Spectator.
This Hamilton Fish was 5 years old when his father died, and his mother put him in an orphanage. He was physically abused, but began to enjoy the physical pain. There, he was nicknamed "Ham and Eggs," and he eventually asked to be called Albert, after a dead sibling.
There had already been mental illness in the family, but Albert took it to an extreme. By the time he was 20, he was living in New York, prostituting himself and molesting boys. His mother arranged a marriage for him, hoping it would guide him to a normal life. The marriage produced 6 children, and there is no evidence that he ever abused any of them.
But marriage did nothing to stop him. In 1903, he was imprisoned -- for grand larceny, not for what would then have been quaintly called a "morals charge." By 1910, he took to kidnapping and torturing boys. He chose victims he believed wouldn't be searched for: The intellectually disabled, and African-Americans. His wife left him in 1917, but they hadn't divorced when he illegally married another woman in 1930.
On May 28, 1928, he kidnapped, murdered and ate 10-year-old Grace Budd of Manhattan. In 1930, another man was arrested for the murder, tried, and acquitted. In the meantime, Fish was committed to the famed psychiatric ward at Bellevue Hospital in New York. Finally, in November 1934, a letter arrived at the Budd family home. The police put the evidence together, and arrested Fish on December 13.
Fish was insane, so his claims of over 100 murders can't possibly be verified. He ended up being tried for 3. The sensational headlines led to nicknames: The Boogey Man, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Werewolf of Wysteria and the Moon Maniac. He was convicted, and was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York on January 16, 1936.
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December 13, 1934 was a Thursday. Baseball was out of season. Football was in midweek. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. There were 3 games in the NHL:
* The New York Americans beat the Boston Bruins, 4-3 at the old Madison Square Garden. David "Sweeney" Schriner scored the winning goal, 2:12 into overtime.
* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Montreal Maroons, 4-2 at the Montreal Forum. This game also went to overtime. However, at the time, the NHL did not play until there was a winning goal: If a goal was scored in an overtime period, they kept playing to the end of the period. As a result, the Leafs got overtime goals from Charlie Conacher at 5:09, and Frank "Buzz" Boll at 7:53.
* And the Detroit Red Wings beat the St. Louis Eagles, 11-2 at the St. Louis Arena. The shell of the Ottawa Senators moved to St. Louis for the season, and didn't make it to the next one. The Wings got 3 goals from Cooney Weiland (better known as a Bruins player), and 2 each from Ebbie Goodfellow and Lorne Duquid.
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