Albert Fish and the Son of Sam: The Lives and Crimes of New York City’s Most Notorious Serial Killers

Albert Fish did not look like a monster. That was what people remembered after the newspapers had printed every sensationalized story, his trial had ended, and Americans were left with trying to understand who Albert Fish was. Pictures showed him with a slight frame, white hair, and mild blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses. Those who actually knew him recalled the way he spoke to children, mixing patience, kindness, and gentleness in ways that children recognize and trust without being taught. Neighbors described him as pleasant, and landladies said he was no trouble at all. He paid his rent on time, never raised his voice, and smiled easily and often. His smile reached his eyes like genuine ones do, in a way that cannot be easily faked.

It turned out that for more than 40 years, Albert Fish had been moving through the country, leaving behind him a trail of victims that the authorities had not yet connected and would not connect for years to come. That trail, when it was finally mapped, would test the limits of what the American criminal justice system had ever been asked to confront. He was, according to the psychiatrists who examined him, the most complex case of sexual psychopathy in American history, and he engaged in behaviors so far outside normal human boundaries that many professionals found themselves lacking adequate clinical language to describe him. 

The details and the actions of the Son of Sam remain shocking even decades later. Over the course of a seemingly random series of shootings that took place across New York City in 1976 and 1977, Berkowitz taunted law enforcement in highly publicized letters as he continued to elude justice, and when he referred to himself as the “son of Sam” in one of his rambling letters, his notorious nickname came to life. The senseless nature of the crimes and the erratic statements of the man claiming responsibility for them shook the Big Apple to its core as long as the killer remained at large.