Meet morbidly obese Joe “The Cannibal” Metheny whose sick murder spree horrified America. Metheny has admitted to at least eight murders dating back to 1976, but it is what he did with his victims after death that truly turns stomachs.
According to his own statements, his bloodlust had hit him in the summer of 1994. He was a truck driver at the time living in South Baltimore, Maryland with his girlfriend, who was a crack addict, and their six-year old boy. One night he arrived home late after doing some overtime and found the house empty. His partner had gone, and she had taken their son with her.
Six months later, a still-furious Metheny had learned his ex had moved to the other side of the city with another man and their son had been taken away by authorities due to neglect. Hearing they might be living rough under a bridge, Metheny went hunting for them with an axe.
Quoting his statements: “They were not there. But the two homeless motherf*****s they got high with were down there. They were passed out on some old stinking mattress and that’s where they were when I left, except there were dead from being chopped up.”
He went on to state that straight after that murder, he doped up two prostitutes and lured them under the bridge to pump any information out of them. When Metheny didn’t get what he wanted he beat, raped and killed them. As he was hiding the corpses he noticed an old man who had been fishing watching him. “I grabbed a steel pipe and ran down on him and laid his head wide open,” said Metheny.
Covered in blood, he then tied all the bodies to rocks and dumped them in the Patapsco River. He had killed five people in seven hours, what he later called “a very busy night”.
However, a lack of evidence meant Joe was not found guilty of any of these deaths in court.
In 1995, he lured prostitutes Cathy Ann Magaziner, 45, and Kimberly Spicer, 26, to his trailer before stabbing and strangling them. He then dismembered their corpses and stored the flesh to eat later. He told the court at his trial: “I cut the meat up and put it in some Tupperware bowls then put it in a freezer.“
He then claimed he mixed the women’s flesh with other animal meat and sold it to paying customers. “I opened up a little open-pit beef stand. I had real roast beef and pork sandwiches. They were very good. The human body taste was very similar to pork. If you mix it together no one can tell the difference.”
When supplies of his “special meat” dried up he invited another prostitute, Rita Kemper, to his Baltimore trailer within the compound of a pallet company in December 1996.
The 6ft, 16st monster then attacked her. He said: “I got her in there and started to rip her clothes off and knock the hell out of her. She was screaming. I just kept on laughing at her. I turned around for a split second and she ran out the door. There was an eight-foot chain link fence with barbwire on top of it around the front and a stack of wooden pallets next to the fence about 10 feet high. That b**** scaled those pallets like a monkey and jumped the fence, and ran down to the main road.”
Fleeing for her life, Kemper made it to a petrol station and called the police. Metheny didn’t run and was arrested immediately, ending his reign of terror.
Chillingly, Metheny has shown more pride than remorse when speaking of his crimes. He said: “My murder rampage started out as revenge but ended up as a passion for the taste of blood and the overwhelming sense of power one gets for taking the life of another.”
When he was sentenced, he told the jury that after six months he had dug up the skull of Cathy Magaziner then “washed out the maggots and made love to it”.
Seeing their look of horror, the depraved fiend then added: “The words ‘I’m sorry’ will never come out, for they would be a lie.”
We think someone needs to lay off the burgers.
