Deranged (16 page)

Scissoring the photo from the paper, she drew an arrow pointing to the girl in the big-brimmed hat and in the margin above it wrote, “This is the girl, Grace Budd.” Then she stuck the photo in an envelope and sent it off to the Budd family.

Though the Budds had been inundated with crank letters six years earlier, it had been a long time since they had received mail from a stranger, and they examined the clipping with keen interest. Grace’s mother found a magnifying glass and studied the dark-haired girl’s face. She showed the picture to her family and friends. No one could make a positive identification. But they all agreed that the girl in the picture did, in fact, look like an older version of Gracie.

The following day, Mrs. Budd, accompanied by her husband, took the subway to the Missing Persons Bureau and showed the photograph to Detective King. Within twenty-four hours, the city’s papers were reporting that a girl, tentatively identified as the grown-up Grace Budd, had been spotted in a news photo in the company of two sailors from the fleet. The photo itself was reprinted along with the stories. For the first time in years, the Budds allowed themselves to feel a spark of hope.

It didn’t take long for that spark to be extinguished. On Thursday, June 14, a sixteen-year-old named Florence Swinney of 541 East 150th Street appeared at the Morrisania police station in the Bronx and identified herself as the girl in the news photo. The other girl, she said, was her friend, Lillian Hagberg, and the two sailors were young men they had met in the city and spent the day with.

That evening at around six o’clock, Deputy Chief Inspector Francis J. Kear climbed the stairs to the Budds’ apartment at 135 West 24th Street to break the bad news to the family. He found Delia Budd clearing the dinner dishes from the kitchen table. “That’s another hope gone,” Mrs. Budd said, sighing. Her husband simply stared into space and said nothing.

At first, the Florence Swinney episode seemed to be just another dead-end lead in a six-year string of disappointments. But as it turned out, the stories about the mistaken identification of the dark-haired girl in the news photo would have dramatic consequences. For it was from one of these stories that Albert Fish learned the Budds’ new address. And armed with that information, the diseased old man would find himself impelled, six months later, to commit one last outrage against the Budds—an outrage that would finally solve the mystery of the missing girl’s fate.

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“His Gossip of Today is the Headline of Tomorrow!” slogan for the Walter Winchell column “On Broadway”

In the years since Albert Corthell had been captured and released, the police had been unable to come up with a single plausible suspect in the Budd kidnapping. Officially, the case was still open. But no one in the Bureau of Missing Persons had much faith that it would ever be solved. No one, that is, except William F. King.

For over six years, King had continued to pursue the case. During that period, he had been involved in other investigations, including the search for Joseph Force Crater, the New York Supreme Court Justice whose disappearance in August, 1930, was one of the major mysteries of the Depression (and remains unexplained to this day).

But King had never abandoned his hunt for the missing Budd girl and her elderly abductor. By the fall of 1934, he had traveled over fifty thousand miles on that quest, running down rumors, following dead-end leads, chasing phantoms. He had done everything possible to flush his quarry out of hiding.

One of his ploys was to plant phony news items about the Budd case in the New York City papers. He didn’t want the public to forget about the case. Each time one of these stories appeared, the police would receive dozens of phone calls and letters from people who claimed to know something about the missing girl. None of these tips had ever panned out. But there was always the chance that someone might yet come forth with a key piece of information. The newspaper gambit was a long shot, King knew. But he was willing to give anything a try.

The main outlet for King’s plants was Walter Winchell’s enormously popular gossip column, “On Broadway,” the pride of William Randolph Hearst’s brassy tabloid, the New York Daily Mirror. Winchell was unquestionably the most influential newspaper columnist of his time and on close terms with everyone from J. Edgar Hoover to the mobster Owney Madden. He was always happy to do the police a good turn.

On November 2, 1934, the following newsflash appeared in Winchell’s column:

I checked on the Grace Budd mystery. She was eight when she was kidnapped about six years ago. And it is safe to tell you that the Dep’t of Missing Persons will break the case, or they expect to, in four weeks. They are holding a “cokie” now at Randall’s Island, who is said to know most about the crime. Grace is supposed to have been done away with in lime, but another legend is that her skeleton is buried in a local spot. More anon.

There was no factual basis at all for this story—no cocaine addict on Randall’s Island with inside knowledge of Grace Budd’s death. But by a strange turn of events, this fabrication would prove to be uncannily prophetic and come to be chalked up as another major coup for Winchell.

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“I write as a habit—just can’t seem to stop.” ALBERT FISH

Ten days after Walter Winchell reported an imminent break in the Grace Budd case a letter arrived at the home of the missing girl’s family. It had been mailed the previous night, November 11, from the Grand Central Annex post office in Manhattan and was addressed to Delia Budd.

Though Mrs. Budd was functionally illiterate, she could make out her name—written in a neat, bold script—on the front of the envelope. Seating herself at the kitchen table, she carefully tore open the top of the envelope and removed the folded sheet inside. But she had trouble reading what the letter said.

It was the one time in her life that her illiteracy proved to be a blessing.

Her son Edward was at home, relaxing in his bedroom. Mrs. Budd called him into the kitchen and handed him the letter. The young man began to read it silently. Almost immediately, the color drained from his face.

Mrs. Budd stared at him, alarmed. “What’s wrong?” she demanded “What does it say?” Edward Budd didn’t answer; he was already on his way out the front door.

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The wicked is snared by the transgression of his lips. PROVERBS 12:13

By 10:30 that morning, the letter was in Detective King’s possession.

Over the years, King had read countless pieces of crank mail—inhumanly cruel letters full of vile taunts. But for sheer viciousness and depravity, nothing he had ever seen could begin to match the letter that Edward Budd had just delivered into his hands:

My dear Mrs. Budd, In 1894 a friend of mine shipped as a deck hand on the Steamer Tacoma, Capt. John Davis. They sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong China. On arriving there he and two others went ashore and got drunk. When they returned the boat was gone. At that time there was a famine in China. Meat of any kind was from $1—to 3 Dollars a pound. So great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold to the Butchers to be cut up and sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street. You could go in any shop and ask for steak—chops—or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and just what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl’s behind which is the sweetest part of the body and sold as veal cutlet brought the highest price. John staid there so long he acquired a taste for human flesh. On his return to N.Y. he stole two boys one 7 one 11. Took them to his home stripped them naked tied them in a closet. Then burned everything they had on. Several times every day and night he spanked them—tortured them—to make their meat good and tender. First he killed the 11 yr old boy., because he had the fattest ass and of course the most meat on it. Every part of his body was Cooked and eaten except head—bones and guts. He was Roasted in the oven (all of his ass), boiled, broiled, fried, stewed. The little boy was next, went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409 E 100 st., near—right side. He told me so often how good Human flesh was I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday June the 3—1928 I called on you at 406 W 15 St. Brought you pot cheese—strawberries. We had lunch. Grace sat in my lap and kissed me. I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party. You said Yes she could go. I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers. I went upstairs and stripped all my clothes off. I knew if I did not I would get her blood on them. When all was ready I went to the window and Called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked she began to cry and tried to run down stairs. I grabbed her and she said she would tell her mamma. First I stripped her naked. How she did kick—bite and scratch. I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body. I did not fuck her tho I could of had I wished. She died a virgin.

So monstrous was this letter that it was hard to conceive of the mind that could have produced it. Still, it had a strangely authentic quality. Though clearly de ranged, it was far more coherent than the foul ravings of most hate letters. And the details it described—the strawberries and pot cheese, for example—were completely accurate.

True, those details had been reported in the papers. But there was a piece of information that hadn’t. The writer had supplied a specific address—409 East 100th Street, located in the very neighborhood where the police had concentrated their search in the weeks immediately following the abduction.

Was it possible that Grace’s kidnapper had decided, for whatever insane reason, to communicate with her family after all this time?

There was one way to find out.

Fetching his file on the Budd case, King dug through it until he found what he was looking for—the photostat copy of the handwritten message that “Frank Howard” had sent to the Budds on June 2, 1928, informing them that he would be delayed by a day.

Placing it beside the letter, King compared the two. He was no graphologist. But it didn’t take an expert to see that the writing was exactly the same in both.

At that moment, William King could hardly have helped feeling that, after six and a half years of bitter frustration, the solution to the Budd mystery was finally—and quite literally—within his grasp.

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