Episode 209: Joe the Cannibal: Murder and Barbeque
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On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we do a little true crime detective work and bring you the horrible facts of Joe The Cannibal Metheny. Joe was perhaps worse than other serial killers, not due to body count or the torture that came before the murders. Instead, he was possibly the worst because he fed the meat of the dead bodies to various people living in Baltimore without their knowledge!
Joe the Cannibal was born in 1955 in Baltimore, Maryland to a poor family with six siblings. His father died in a car accident, and his loss made things even worse for the family. His mother suddenly had to work several jobs at all hours to provide for her six children, and while her mom says their family was stable and normal, Joe claims the opposite. Joe says this was a period of trauma and neglect and that he was shuffled from home to home with no real love.
Joe joined the army when he turned eighteen, and he allegedly served as an artillery crew during the Vietnam War. Here, he claims to have picked up a habit of doing heroin, and when he returned to the states, his girlfriend was also an addict. Eventually, they had a son together, and Joe worked as a truck driver, leaving for months at a time. In July of 1994, he came home from a long haul, and he found his “old lady” and his son both missing from his home. It turns out, she was turning tricks for someone across town to pay for her drug habit, and she moved in with him.
The court found out, took their son away from both Joe and the mother, and Joe became enraged. Eventually, he went under a bridge where his ex and her pimp were known to do drugs, and they weren’t there. So, he started to interrogate what he called “crack whores” under the bridge, and in one night, he raped and murdered and killed. He killed five victims total that night, according to his own confession, and his days as a serial killer began.
Within a year, he got a job at a pallet factory and lived on the premises. He started to lure more drug-addicted women to his trailer and kill them as well, but this time, he saved their flesh in Tupperware containers and kept them in a freezer. Eventually, he opened a road-side deep pit sandwich stand, and he served their flesh to unwitting customers.
How many did Joe the Cannibal kill and serve to Baltimore? How quickly did he run out of is “special” meat? How did his plan to get more meat in stock backfire? What was the deal with the fisherman who got his head bashed in with a pipe? What did Joe say in his confessions? How many people did he ultimately kill, and why was his sentence changed from death down to life without parole in 2000? Listen, laugh, learn.
Court Records Link: http://murderpedia.org/male.M/images/metheny_joe_roy/149a98.pdf
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