10 Barbaric Details Surrounding Joe Metheny, Who Turned His Victims Into Hamburgers

6 /10 The Police Found Him

It was past revenge. Joe Metheny now had a taste for blood. A craving that could only be sated by taking the life of another human. It was only a matter of time before he struck again. But the law struck first.

Almost three weeks after his multiple murder under the bridge, Metheny was arrested and charged with the murder of the two homeless men he had hacked to death.

They had found the axe, but there wasn’t enough evidence for the charges to stick. He was free within one week of the trial.

5 /10 Joe Struck Again

Free at last and still lusting for blood, Metheny went back to his pallet company job. His boss let him live in the compound, and in exchange, Joe acted as some security.

The pallet company was on a dead-end road in a very isolated area—the perfect place to slaughter his victims. And Metheny wasted no time utilizing it. 

You see, Joe had a hunger for ending the lives of young women. Women who lived on the streets and were addicted to drugs. Who reminded him of his wife. “Crackwhores” he called them.

Confessing to the police, Joe said he lured two of these women (at different times) to his trailer at the pallet company. It is believed that these women might have been Kimberly Lynn Spicer and Cathy Ann Magaziner. 

Joe had convinced them that he’d give them drugs. Instead, he sexually abused them, murdered them, and cut their bodies into bits, which he stored in Tupperware bowls in a freezer. If you’re eating, you should probably stop.

4 /10 He Turned His Victims Into Human Burgers

Joe Metheny started an open-pit hamburger stand, where he grilled bits of pork and… longpig. That’s right.

After Joe had cut up his victims like pigs at the slaughter, he barbequed bits of flesh from his murder victims too. Sometimes he ground them up and mixed them with pork. 

Metheny sold the meat as hamburger patties to unsuspecting buyers. A very sick way to get rid of the evidence.

He said that human flesh was similar to pork, and no one knew the difference when the two were mixed. He called it his “special meat.”

When Metheny’s “special meat” ran out, he went hunting again. And that’s when he found another woman, Rita Kemper.

Metheny used his former tactics, luring her to his trailer in the guise of giving her drugs. Once inside the trailer, he beat her and tried to rape her, telling her that he’d kill and bury her body alongside “the other girls.” 

But, as luck would have it, Joe got distracted. Kemper fled. She scaled the 18foot chain link fence and called the cops.  That was the end of the road for Joe Metheny.

You might be thinking that Metheny is the run-of-the-mill serial killer. Evil, mad, and devoid of emotions or anything human. But there are other things you should know about Joe.

3 /10 He Was In The Army

Surprised? We are too. Joe Metheny joined the army at the age of 18, in 1973. He claimed that he was posted to Vietnam.

But weirdly enough, his mother says he was never posted to ‘Nam. Instead, she claims that he served in Germany. Nevertheless, Metheny’s addiction to hard drugs started while he was in the army.

2 /10 Metheny Had A Regular Job

Joe held down a regular job working as a forklift operator in a pallet company. He was even described as intelligent, well-spoken, and well-mannered at work.

Metheny lived in a trailer on the company grounds. And according to him, the owner trusted him enough to give him the keys to the compound. Of course, he probably regretted that.

1 /10 Conviction And Death

Despite his detailed confession of his previous murders, the police could not find the victims’ bodies or any evidence that shows he killed them.

However, they found Cathy Ann Magaziner and Kimberly Ann Spicer’s remains and charged him for their murders.

He was initially sentenced to death for one of the murders, but it was changed to life without parole in 2000. He posted an online confession detailing all his crimes in prison and how he had finished off his victim.

He gloried in his ‘power’, and revealed that killing gave him a high. A rush like no drug could ever give him.

Finally, in 2017, at the age of 62, Metheny died in the Warren Correctional Institution, Cumberland, Maryland. We shall conclude with a little quote from Metheny. A quote you should always remember.

“So the next time you’re riding down the road, and you happen to see an open-pit beef stand, that you’ve never seen before, make sure you think about this story before you take a bite of that sandwich. Sometimes you never know who you may be eating…”