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Is there anyone here with in-depth knowledge of the life of Albert Fish, the "Grey Man", or does anyone know someone with such knowledge? I'm trying to learn what I may of Fish's whereabouts between Christmas 1928 and New Year's Eve.
I'm asking because I'd like to know whether Fish can be ruled out in the disappearance of four year old Melvin Horst, of Orrville, Ohio, on Dec 27th, 1928. Melvin was about a block from his house, playing with some neighborhood children in an empty lot. Melvin's front yard was visible from the lot. Some sources say his mother called him to dinner, and some that he decided to go home on his own, but everyone's agreed that at about 4:30, he started for home. The children with whom he was playing saw him heading directly for his home, carrying a favourite toy he'd gotten for Christmas (a red truck or a red wagon - again, sources vary). He almost made it. His toy was found either on his front lawn, or on the doorstep itself. He vanished, never to be seen again, in that brief moment when no-one was looking.
A young child abducted in broad daylight with potential witnesses nearby is pretty much a classic Albert Fish technique. The abduction of four year old Billy Gaffney in February of 1927 is strikingly similar. The child was left unattended just outside the front door of his apartment for only a moment. Fish very boldly grabbed him, and was gone. It's doubtful that the crime ever would have been solved had Fish not confessed. In the Gaffney case he made his getaway by tram. In the Horst case, young Melvin lived only a few blocks from the train station. In both cases, thorough searches of the neighborhood yielded no result. It's worth noting as well that in the Gaffney case, despite a large number of witnesses who saw Fish ride the tram with the crying child, no-one thought anything was wrong until they heard about the kidnapping. In the 1920s, a criminal could routinely outpace the news of his crime.
Fish boasted of having committed murders in every state. While he was probably exaggerating, it's pretty much certain that he committed more murders than were ever documented, and had been at it a long time. I can't get over the idea that Horst may have been one of his.
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