Joe Metheny, The Serial Killer Who Made His Victims Into Hamburgers

Joe Metheny, The Serial Killer Who Made His Victims Into Hamburgers

During the early 1990s, serial killer Joseph Metheny owned a burger stand located in Baltimore, Maryland. After his arrest in 1996, he claimed to have fed his customers the flesh of at least 3 of his victims. 

Joseph Roy "Joe" Metheny (March 2, 1955 – August 5, 2017) was an American spree killer and rapist from the Baltimore, Maryland area. While he claimed to have killed 13 people, sufficient evidence was only found to convict him of two murders. Research[vague] later confirmed 3 more victims, though he had not been charged with them.

Metheny was ironically known as "Tiny" in the 1990s, as he was 6 ft 1 in (185 cm), large-framed, and overweigh

He had been spending time in bars, living with bands of homeless men in makeshift camps in South Baltimore, and spending nearly all of his money on crack cocaine, heroin, and liquor.

 However, he held a steady job as a forklift driver and was universally described as intelligent, well-spoken, and very well-mannered.

Metheny murdered Cathy Ann Magaziner in 1994, a 39-year-old woman, and buried her body in a shallow grave on the site of the factory where he worked.

The body remained there for more than two years. He later said that he had strangled her and that he dug up her skeleton six months later, put her head in a box, and threw it in the trash.

Metheny was tried for murder in a different case in 1995 for allegedly killing Randall Brewer and Randy Piker with an axe at a homeless "tent city" campsite under Baltimore's Hanover Street Bridge.

There had been disputes involving rival groups of homeless men, and Larry Amos was convicted of stealing the murder weapon and using it to kill Everett Dowell, another homeless man. The bodies were discovered on August 2, 1995, the same day that Dowell was killed. Amos was arrested and accused of first-degree murder and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter; he was released after serving one year and nine months of an eight-year sentence. A jury concluded in July 1996 that there was insufficient evidence to convict Metheny of murdering Brewer and Piker,[5] but he later said that he was guilty of those murders.

Metheny killed Kimberly Lynn Spicer in mid-November 1996 by stabbing her with a knife.

He kidnapped Rita Kemper on December 8, 1996, and attempted to rape her.[3][7][8] According to prosecutors, he shared drugs with Kemper in the trailer where he was living at the pallet factory site. She refused to have sex with him and ran out of the trailer, so he chased her, beat her, dragged her back into the trailer, and then pulled down her pants and attempted to rape her. Kemper said he had attempted to murder her, saying: "I'm going to kill you and bury you in the woods with the other girls."[8] She escaped through a window of the trailer and fled to police officers in the area.

Metheny then asked a friend to help him bury the body of Spicer which he had been hiding at the factory site since killing her a month earlier. The friend reported it to the police on December 15, 1996, and Metheny was arrested and charged with his murder the same day.

The owner of the business was arrested with Metheny as they left a Christmas party and was charged as an accessory after the fact for allegedly disposing of evidence. Metheny began confessing to other murders, as well as that of Spicer. He led police to the shallow grave where he had reburied Magaziner's decapitated remains. Much of the skull was missing, but the police were able to identify Magaziner from dental records.

Police said that he had chosen young white sex workers who were addicted to heroin and cocaine. The killings also involved brutal sexual assaults. He was indicted for killing Toni Lynn Ingrassia, of age 28, but those charges were later dropped for lack of evidence. He claimed to have also killed three other prostitutes along Washington Boulevard in Baltimore, although there was no evidence of most of those crimes other than his confession.

He said that he had thrown bodies in the Patapsco River and they had never been found. The Baltimore Sun newspaper reported in 1997 that it was not clear how truthful his claims were about how many people he had killed, although he said that he had killed up to 10 people. His attorney said that he was remorseful and that drugs and alcohol had changed his personality and made him violent.

During the early 1990s, serial killer Joseph Metheny owned a burger stand located in Baltimore, Maryland. After his arrest in 1996, he claimed to have fed his customers the flesh of at least 3 of his victims.