The man who sold human burgers

Inside the messed up head of Joe Metheny

 Joe Metheny was born on March 2nd, 1955 in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S. According to Joe, his early life was full of hardships as his father was abusive and mother was neglectful. They didn't have a stable home and Joe, along with his 5 other siblings constantly moved from different foster homes to another. When he was 6, his father passed away. So, his mother had to raise the 6 kids all by herself.

But Metheny's mother claimed that the whole tough upbringing thing was a complete lie. They were poor, yes, but the kids weren't really abused or neglected. 

Regardless, at 18 Joe joined the army and during that time he started doing drugs (Heroin and Cocaine to be precise). After serving in the military, Joe became homeless and started abusing more drugs. 

People said Joe had a short temper. But professionally he was well mannered and reliable. So he was able to get a job as a truck and forklift driver. 

At that time Joe met this woman, and they ended up getting married and having a child together. Joe was also able to afford a trailer for them to live in. But apparently, both of them were addicts so the marriage wasn't the most stable one. When their son was 6, Joe went home from work one night and everything was gone. The trailer was empty. Joe knew that his wife had left and she had taken their child with her. And rightfully so, he was devastated. 

After 6 months, Joe found out from a local drug dealer that his wife had moved to the other side of the town where she worked as a sex worker and was doing drugs all the time. And their child had been taken away from her for child abuse. 

One night Joe went up to the bridge where he heard his wife was living. He asked two men there if they knew where she was. They replied in the negative and that filled Joe with anger.  He genuinely believed that these two men were lying to him and they had something to do with her. Rage overtook Metheny's body as he took an ax and murdered the two men. 

Then he found a sex worker and lured her under the same bridge with some drugs. He also asked her about his wife and when she said she didn't know, he assaulted and beat her to death. Then he heard another sex worker nearby and killed her as well. But he wasn't done here. He saw a fisherman nearby who may or may not have witnessed something, so he hit him in the head with a steel pipe which killed him instantly. As Joe was 6 '1 and weighed about 450lbs, all of the murders were very easy for him.  

He tried to clear up the crime scene. He drowned two of the bodies in the lake, cut the head off of one of the homeless men and buried it, He threw another body into the bushes. But apparently more people were coming, so he left shortly after. 

After a couple weeks Joe was arrested for the murders. After a year he went through a trial but was proven not guilty for the lack of evidence. The time in jail taught him nothing but made him even more desperate to kill.

After getting out of jail Joe wanted to strike again. He had created a very good pattern for himself. He decided to target sex workers as he knew that people didn't care for them as much as they did for housewives or other women in the upper class society.

So he would lure the victims into his trailer and then strangle or beat them. After that he would dismember them and store the human flesh in his freezer. And bury the unwanted body parts. But as time progressed, his fridge was getting filled with human flesh. So Joe decided to utilize all of it and open up a small roadside business. Joe Metheny decided to sell human burgers.

He opened up his business on a main road where a lot of locals and truck drivers would get these burgers from him, thinking they were made out of pork or beef. Joe would mix real beef or pork with the meat of his victims. For weeks he sold these human burgers and no one had any complaints or suspected anything. Rather, people loved it. 

Fortunately, it all came to an end one night in 1996 when Joe lured in yet another victim. When the young woman entered his trailer he tried to knock her out. She fell to the ground but wasn't unconscious. But believing she was unconscious, Joe turned around for a split second and the girl was able to make an escape. 

She ran to the main road and spotted a truck driver. She told the man the whole story and they went to a nearby gas station and called the police. 

When the police went to his place to arrest him, Joe was already standing outside, waiting to be arrested. Joe gave a pretty long confession and he confessed to 13 murders. But no one really knew the actual count for lack of evidence. 

Joe was found guilty for the murders of Kimberly Spicer, Cathy Magaziner and Tony Ingrassia. He was sentenced to death but later on it was changed to two life sentences. 

 The police also went door to door to ask people about the said human burgers. But they said it tasted like normal beef or pork. Regardless there was no actual evidence of it. Joe only claimed to have done it. So he was never charged for that. 

At the age of 62, in 2017 Joe Metheny passed away in his prison cell.