The Devil's Dozen (10 page)

Grace’s bones were brought into the courtroom, over defense attorney James Dempsey’s vigorous objections, and Fish’s confession was read. Dempsey was hoping to use the fact that Fish had been a painter all his life to introduce the notion that lead poisoning had affected him mentally, but thanks largely to Detective King’s testimony, he would not get very far with this idea.

King testified that Fish had admitted that he knew what he did was wrong, and had a letter Fish had written to back it up. Still, Fish had also said that “God still has work for me to do.” He’d told Dr. Wertham that if the murder was not justified, an angel would have stopped him, as one had done in the Bible before Abraham nearly slew Isaac. Wertham said that Fish had practiced “every known sexual abnormality,” pointing to a history of abnormal personalities in his family line. Fish’s mental problems had developed over the past decade, when he became obsessed with religion. He believed he could use murder to atone for his sins, and with Grace he’d had a premonition that if she lived, some future outrage would be perpetrated on her, so he had murdered her to save her. Mixed up with all this was his insistence that God had commanded him to sacrifice a virgin. Fish, Wertham said, had no rational control over his impulses. He was dangerous but insane and should be institutionalized in a psychiatric facility. In support of this, Fish’s children testified about having witnessed his self-torture and exhibitionism, and Wertham added that to be aware of right and wrong, one had to feel it—a criterion that, if followed, would surely empty the prisons.

Among the more bizarre witnesses at the trial was a woman with whom Fish had maintained a perverse correspondence in which he expressed the hope that she would whip him. She had collected his letters and admitted that for the fee he offered, she would have done what he wanted. She turned her letters over to the police, who’d contrived to set a trap, but Fish never showed up. Still, the jurors got an unpleasant taste through this witness of Fish’s sexual proclivities.

For the prosecution, Dr. Charles Lambert and Dr. James Vavasour, who had seen Fish for about three hours, refuted the testimony of Wertham and another psychiatrist for the defense, finding that Fish was legally sane. Despite delusions he might experience, he knew at the time of the crime that what he had done was wrong. However, his attorney, James Dempsey, insisted that Fish was a psychiatric phenomenon, stating that “no single case history report, either in legal or medical annals, contains a record of one individual who possessed all of these sexual abnormalities.”

After deliberations, the jury agreed with the prosecution, convicting Fish of murder. (Some later said they agreed that he was insane but thought he should be executed nonetheless.) As Fish awaited his sentencing, he confessed to the murder of the Gaffney boy. He said he had cut the boy into pieces and roasted his buttocks with onions and carrots, consuming the tender meat over the course of four days. The police immediately went to question him in the presence of D.A. Walter Ferris, and he confessed, confirming that what he had written was true. He also admitted to the murder of the McDonnell boy on Staten Island. If he had not been interrupted, he would have dismembered him.

On June 17, 1935, Fish went to the electric chair at Sing Sing prison. “Fish entered the death chamber with his hands clasped in prayer.” In just three minutes, he was dead. He offered no last words, although supposedly he had changed his attitude, seeing the experience as a supreme thrill—“the only one I haven’t tried.” Some people had feared that the needles in his body might short-circuit the machine, but that did not occur. At age sixty-five, Fish was the oldest man to be executed in the electric chair. Had not an observant detective paid attention to the subtle clues and persisted despite others losing hope, Fish might have gotten away to commit yet more unspeakable crimes.

America wasn’t the only country producing intrepid investigators. One of the most intriguing true-crime tales that involved outstanding detection of a serial killer was in Poland, in the case of the spider.

 

 

Albert Fish,
a documentary by John Borowski. Waterfront Productions. 2007.

Extensive coverage in the
New York Times,
June 5, 1928-January 17, 1936.

Ramsland, Katherine.
The Human Predator: A Historical Chronicle of Serial Murder and Forensic Investigation.
New York: Berkley, 2005.

Schechter, Harold.
Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America’s Most Fiendish Killer.
New York: Pocket, 1990.

Wertham, Frederic.
The Show of Violence.
New York: Doubleday, 1949.

It was Christmas Eve in 1966, the day before a national holiday in Poland. Three sailors boarded a train in Krakow bound for Warsaw. They had looked into cheap third-class tickets for seats among the general population of riders, but decided instead to reserve seats in a semiprivate compartment. They hoped for a little peace and quiet, although they knew that others might be in the compartment as well. Nevertheless, anyone paying the extra fee was probably going to be respectful. Happy to be free for the holiday and ready to relax, they were in high spirits when they opened the door of the compartment. But the first man inside stopped short in surprise.

The odor of blood was strong, and it didn’t take long to determine its source. The other men crowded in to get a better look and at first were too shocked to react. On the floor in front of them was a bleeding young woman, slumped over and seemingly unconscious. They could see that she had just been attacked, as fresh blood oozed from her bare legs and dripped to the floor, and her leather skirt had been ripped into pieces.

The young men called to her, hoping for a response, but she did not move. They thought she was probably dead. This was no way to start a holiday, especially since this woman’s killer was probably still close by.

The sailors moved fast to summon a conductor. Once he ascertained that the woman was indeed dead, he went to inform the engineer, who radioed ahead to the Warsaw police. They instructed him to proceed without a single stop, straight to Warsaw. If the killer was still on the train, they wanted to prevent him from getting off. They told the engineer they would be waiting at the station to search everyone as they disembarked.

An artist’s rendering of Lucian Staniak, the “Red Spider” killer who terrorized Poland in the late 1960s.
Nathan MacDicken

They did not know then that this murder was just one of many publicity stunts performed by a killer who sought both revenge and attention.

It was a strained trip for everyone who knew the situation. First, they had a murder victim to deal with who was bleeding in a compartment. Second, without revealing the details, they would have to explain to those people expecting to disembark in towns prior to Warsaw that they could not do so. That would be difficult on Christmas Eve. And third, every passenger older than a child was a suspect, and the conductors would have to check each and every one before that person left the train, hoping to control the process and ensure that the killer did not have some elusive escape plan. Surely, he realized that in a semiprivate compartment the body would be quickly discovered and just as surely he would have to get away. When the train failed to stop at its first destination, he’d realize they were hoping to trap him, although it was also true that he could have slipped away before the train had even left the last station. They had to take every precaution.

As the train came to a stop at the busy station in Warsaw, with many families waiting to see the faces of loved ones traveling that night to spend the holiday with them, detectives immediately boarded and told everyone to remain seated until his or her papers were checked. As they questioned each passenger, they recorded all names and looked for evidence of blood on hands or clothing, as well as a concealed weapon. The passengers talked among themselves with annoyance, anger, or curiosity as rumors flew as to what this annoying delay was all about. They wanted to get off the train and get on with their holiday. But the police were careful to check every person thoroughly, aware that any of them could be the killer. In addition, if they came upon him, he might pull a gun, take a hostage, or do any number of things that would put others in danger. They were not looking forward to dealing with a cornered killer.

As the investigators methodically went through their task, another team handled an analysis of the crime scene and the body. They talked with the sailors who had found the woman and soon cleared them of any wrongdoing. There was plenty of blood in the compartment but no weapon and no clear indication of who had committed the murder. In such a public place, hair, fibers, and fingerprints could have come from any number of passengers over the past weeks. It seemed a hopeless task. They did not even know who the victim was.

They finally removed the body to a morgue for identification and a determination of how this unfortunate young woman had died. She appeared to be only a girl, not yet out of her teens, and she’d clearly been stabbed multiple times. Her leather miniskirt had been cut many times, as had her legs and lower abdomen. However, above the waist, there was no sign of assault. The killer appeared to have been some sort of deranged sex fiend, and the energy involved in such a frenzy suggested that he was filled with a great deal of anger. It could have been a crime of passion committed by someone who knew the young woman, but there was no way to know. Investigators could only hope it was a contained situation and not the work of some maniac who might be targeting others. What they did not yet know was that this victim was not the perpetrator’s first.

As the police watched the last people leave the train and move on, their worst fears were realized: the killer had gotten away. Everyone had checked out and no one had seemed suspicious. The officers surmised from the public nature of this crime that the brutal murder had been planned for effect and the killer had committed it quickly and left. It seemed he had never meant to ride the train.

Then searchers found an item on the floor of the mail car. Dropped through the slot was a note addressed to
Zycie Warsawy,
a newspaper in Warsaw. The police carefully opened it and saw thin, elegant handwriting in red ink that conveyed a simple message: “I have done it again.” While they did not know if the note and murder were connected, they rushed it to a crime lab—for fingerprints, ink analysis, paper evaluation, and handwriting identification. In the event that they caught someone, whatever they learned from this process could assist them with evidence. They were also hopeful that a lead could be developed.

Further investigation revealed that the victim was a seventeen-year-old girl from Krakow named Janina Kozielska. At first, the police believed she was married, because the compartment had been reserved by a man, Stanislav Kosielski (his last name having a slightly different spelling than hers). He had called to reserve the tickets, saying his wife would pick them up. She did so, paying cash. The conductor recalled showing this young woman to the train compartment, but no one was with her. She had told him her husband would arrive soon and seemed excited. In fact, the man did come and the same conductor had shown him to the compartment, but nothing about either of them stood out, so the conductor, who processed a lot of people every day, had a difficult time recalling much about him. In addition, he’d heard nothing inside the compartment to suggest an attack of such brutal intensity. Surely the girl had screamed at some point, but no one reported having heard anything.

Still, it was apparent that the unfortunate victim had been familiar with her killer, possibly was even his lover, although from reports soon offered by her shocked family, it was clear she was not his wife. Janina was not married at all. She had merely pretended to be, which signaled familiarity with this man, as well as a willingness to travel with him in relative privacy and keep the liaison secret. Thus her parents could offer no name or description of anyone Janina knew who might be responsible for her death. They had not even known that she was involved with anyone. However, they did reveal one key piece of information that moved the investigation closer to resolution.

As detectives questioned Janina’s parents, they learned that her sister, fourteen-year-old Aniela, had also been murdered. Two years earlier in Warsaw, Aniela was attacked in a similar manner. These grieving parents had lost both daughters to murder, and it seemed impossible that the killings were unrelated. The police knew they would have to check out all family acquaintances, because the circumstances pointed to someone who had known both girls. They also indicated that this person had not been as careful as initially surmised. Victimizing sisters would have left a trail and possible witnesses that could narrow the pool of suspects.