What could be worst then driving up to a BBQ stand to order a burger and eating human flesh? Nothing I can think of, but how would you know? This story makes me ponder if maybe we all have unknowingly.
The 6’1″, 450 pound lumber worker apparently had a tendency to fly off the handle. So police were surprised he didn’t resist arrest in December 1996 for assault. Instead, he offered a detailed upfront confession. He described to police how he viciously raped, murdered, and dismembered sex workers and people who were homeless.
He was upset after coming home one day to find his live in girlfriend and 6-year-old son gone. Believing her to have run off with another man and took to living on the streets with him. He went into rage. He spent days looking for them, checking halfway houses and places where she used to buy drugs.
One day he looked under a bridge, but instead of his wife, he found two homeless men whom he believed knew her. When they gave no indication that they knew where his family was, he killed them both with an ax he’d brought along.
Right after the killings, Metheny noticed a fisherman nearby. In case he saw what he had done he killed him too. He panicked and tossed the bodies into the river to hide the evidence.
Police arrested Metheny for the murders of the two men under the bridge, and he spent a year and a half in the county jail awaiting trial. However, he was acquitted of any charges, as the bodies were never found.
Once free he resumed looking for his missing wife and child.
Shortly after being released, Metheny murdered two sex workers when they failed to provide him with information on his missing wife. This time, however, he had a better idea for disposing of their bodies.
Instead of tossing them in the river, Metheny brought the bodies home. There, he dismembered them and stored the meatiest parts of them in Tupperware containers. The rest he buried in a truck lot that he worked for.
Over the next several weeks, he mixed the sex workers’ flesh with beef and pork, forming it into neat little burger patties. He would sell these meat patties out of a small barbecue stand he opened on the side of the road.
During this time, his customers would all consume bits of human flesh. They became unknowing hiding spots for the bodies of Metheny’s victims.
Whenever he needed more “special meat,” Metheny would simply venture out and find another sex worker or a wanderer. He later told police that he received no complaints on the meat tasting funny. In fact, no one seemed to notice that his burgers had a little something extra in them.
“The human body tastes very similar to pork,” he said, “if you mix it together no one can tell the difference.”
Joe Metheny was finally caught in 1996 when a would-be victim named Rita Kemper managed to escape his clutches and ran straight to the police.
During his interrogation, Metheny willingly offered up a confession. He gave details about each of his murders, even mentioning the murder of the fisherman from several years before. According to his confession, he killed 13 people and authorities say there’s no reason to believe he would’ve stopped there had they not captured him.
Eventually, a jury found him guilty and sentenced Metheny to death. However, a judge overturned this verdict in 2000 and changed it to two consecutive life sentences.
“The only thing I feel bad about in any of this, is I didn’t get to murder the two mother fuckers I was really after,” he said. “And that’s my ex ole lady and the bastard she got hooked up with.”
In 2017, guards found Metheny unresponsive in his cell at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland at about 3 p.m. They pronounced him dead shortly afterward.