EP. 101 MARYLAND - The Cannibal Serial Killer of Baltimore: Joe Metheny
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He's the most terrifying serial killer you've never heard of. Haddon Clark has confessed to several murders, but investigators say he could have over 100 victims. At the center of the mayhem, a cellmate of Haddon's that was able to get key evidence into Haddon's murder spree across America,

Because Haddon thought he was Jesus Christ. Born Evil, The Serial Killer and the Savior, an ID true crime event. Premieres Monday, September 2nd at 9. Watch on ID or stream on Max. Set your DVR.

On a cold night in December of 1996...

A man named Joe Matheny invites his friend Rita over to a small isolated trailer on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland. The plan that night was to hang out and do some cocaine. The two had known each other for a few months, and as far as Rita knew, Joe was a good guy. His friends called him tiny, but standing at 6'1" and weighing over 350 pounds, Joe was anything but small.

Rita trusted Joe, and that night she needed a fix. So she headed over to meet her friend at his house. But as Rita entered Joe's trailer, located on a desolate lot in South Baltimore, his demeanor completely changed. He suddenly became loud and aggressive, and quickly ordered Rita to take off her clothes.

In a state of panic and shock, Rita refused. And she turned around to walk out of the door. But before she could get away, Joe grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back into the trailer. After pulling her back inside, Joe began to repeatedly hit Rita. Then he started to remove her clothes. Rita knew deep down that she wasn't going to make it out of here alive.

So she fought and screamed as loud as she could, but this didn't deter Joe at all. He actually found it funny and began to laugh hysterically. No one was going to hear Rita's cries for help, and he knew that. They were all alone out there, far away from anyone that could help her. But soon enough, Joe's laughter turned into rage.

And the only way Rita could describe the look in his eyes was that he was overcome by pure evil. Little did she know, multiple other women had looked into those very eyes, but their fate would be a lot different than hers because Rita would make it out alive. As for the others, they had been murdered, dismembered, and scattered all throughout Joe's yard, just feet away from where she was being assaulted.

And as Rita fought for her life, Joe continued to laugh at her, saying, I'm going to kill you and bury you in the woods with the other girls. Rita knew this man was a monster, but she had no idea what he was capable of. No one did. But soon enough, the world was about to learn of Baltimore's cannibal serial killer, Joe Matheny.

I'm Courtney Brown. And I'm Colin Brown. And you're listening to Murder in America. Murder in America

Joseph Roy Matheny was born in Baltimore, Maryland on March 2, 1955. Both of Joe's parents were hard workers, but despite their efforts, they still struggled to make ends meet. His father worked a back-breaking job as a manual laborer, while his mother stayed home to raise the couple's six children.

Joe's father struggled with alcoholism, and it isn't known if his addiction affected Joe's childhood, but many sources state that Joe's father was neglectful to his wife and children, and often chose alcohol over his family. In 1957, just two years after Joe was born, the Metheny family packed up and moved to Terra Alta, West Virginia, where they would remain for the next few years.

Joe's mother, Jean Metheny, relied on her husband's paycheck to put food on the table. But that stability would soon come to an end in 1961, when Joe's father was suddenly killed in a tragic car accident. Jean was devastated by the news of her husband's death.

but was determined to take care of the children on her own. So, after they failed to start a new life in West Virginia, the Metheny family packed up again and moved back to Baltimore, where Jean would work odd jobs to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. Over the years, she worked as a waitress and a food truck driver, and despite having to raise a handful of children alone and work full-time, Jean's children always had what they needed.

She also prided herself on never having to go on welfare. But because she worked so hard to make ends meet, that meant that Jean was barely ever home with her kids. And after the death of his father and having to adjust to his mother's absence, it's possible that young Joe felt abandoned by his parents.

You see, during the 1960s, when Joe was a kid, there was a term that described children who were left home alone for long periods of time when a parent was out of the house working. Children in this situation were known as a latchkey kid, and they're described as being a child who routinely returns home on their own and uses a key to lock or unlock the door of their residence. Once this child is inside the home, they are alone and without adult supervision.

But while this was the norm for a lot of children at the time, it's definitely possible that it affected Joe's childhood and his sense of security that he needed. Joe's mother would later say that the death of her husband was extremely hard on the family. Joe's childhood was completely turned upside down at just 6 years old. He had to navigate the grief he felt after his father's death, and his mother just wasn't around to help him through that. It's unknown how Joe's siblings felt during this transition period, but it ultimately affected Joe's mental and emotional health as a young child.

Gene described Joe as a happy and polite child. He did well in school and he really enjoyed being outside and riding his bike. A harmless kid. And although he showed an early interest in physics and excelled in school, Joe would drop out after the 8th grade. After this, during his adolescence, he worked odd jobs, but it wasn't enough to satisfy him or provide a steady source of income.

So he eventually went back and earned his high school equivalency diploma. Then, in the year 1973 when he was 18 years old, he decided to join the United States Army. According to his mother, Joe spent the majority of his military career in Germany as a field artillery soldier. But Joe would dispute that claim. He told people he served a tour in Vietnam.

but there are no records indicating that he had ever been there. When Joe entered the army in 1973, Americans were already pulling out of Vietnam, so it wouldn't have really made sense for him to be sent over there. But nonetheless, Joe did not do very well in the army.

In fact, it was there where he started using heroin and developed a severe addiction. He also distanced himself from his family and wouldn't speak to his mother or siblings for another 10 years. Joe would often tell people that his mother was dead. In a later interview, his own mother, Jean, commented, Maybe he just wishes I was. He pushed his family away a long time ago.

Joe was known to be a habitual liar, a trait that forensic psychologist Paula Orange said is found in many serial killers. In Joe's case, he loved to lie about his military career and constantly committed stolen valor crimes. He was always trying to convince people he did a tour in Vietnam, when his entire documented time in the US Army was spent in Germany.

Joe worked hard to craft an image of himself that he believed would impress other people, a common trait of narcissistic personality disorder. According to the Mayo Clinic, narcissistic personality disorder is "a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others." But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism.

Although Joe was never officially diagnosed with any disorder, it's likely that he could have suffered from this with his grandiose ego and the lack of empathy he would eventually hold for his victims. Joe also told people that his mother had been neglectful when he was a child. He would say that he was placed into foster care at a young age and would jump from home to home. Jean, Joe's mother, has disputed this claim, but did say that while she was so busy working to support her family, she hired babysitters to take care of the children.

So basically, you have to take this guy's words and comments with a grain of salt. Eventually, Joe returned to the States after his stint in the army, and he brought home with him a crippling heroin addiction. And this addiction would eventually grow into a crack cocaine and alcohol addiction as well. Joe's drink of choice was a whiskey called Southern Comfort, and he was known to polish off an entire bottle of the liquor every night.

To me, personally, that's insane because that is just so much liquor night after night, but anyways Joe frequented bars when he wasn't getting high and he was known to start bar fights And eventually he got in trouble with the police for assault and disorderly conduct His mother, Jean, would say that his drug addiction led to his downward spiral, stating "I think the worst thing that ever happened to him was drugs. He kept drifting further and further away. It's a sad, sad story"

As Joe continued to struggle with his alcohol and drug abuse, he drifted in and out of homelessness, and it wasn't uncommon for him to live in tents and homeless camps. At one point, he started a relationship with a woman who was also a drug addict, and the two went on to have a son together. But even though he struggled heavily with addiction, Joe managed to hold down a steady job. In the summer of 1994,

He was living with his wife and 6-year-old son and somehow managed to hold down a full-time job as a truck driver. Things at that point were starting to look up for Joe, and for the first time since moving back from Germany, he began to feel hopeful about his life. That is, until one night, when after he returned home from work, he walked through the front door of his home and saw that all of his stuff was gone.

His wife had left him and taken everything with her, including their son. In a later confession, he would say, It all started back in July of 1994. I was at work. I was a truck driver. I was working overtime this one night. Then I got off and went home as I always did. But when I opened the door and turned on the light, I noticed there was nothing there. My old lady had taken everything, including my son, and left me. Her leaving was not my problem.

But she took my six-year-old son with her. She was a crack addict and a worthless piece of shit. I would have paid her to get out of my life. All she had to do was take my son over to my mother's house and she could have had everything else and be gone." Joe was very upset that his wife left him. But more than anything, he was upset that she took his son. And eventually, this would lead to his downward spiral. Her leaving triggered a rage inside of Joe that would fester for years.

A rage that he had been successfully able to hide from everyone that knew him. Connie Snow, a woman who worked at a bar Joe frequented, would later say that no one had ever seen his violent side. She said he was a well-mannered, polite, and even intelligent man. Joe always maintained a good reputation with his coworkers and friends. But all of these relationships would end up being short-lived.

A few months after his wife had moved out with their son, Joe found out she had been shacking up with another man, a man that Joe knew through his connections in the streets. This new man had a reputation for being a pimp and a hustler, and he was allegedly using Joe's ex-wife as a way to make money by prostituting her out to other men. Joe also found out that his son had been taken by social services because his wife and her new lover had been neglectful and abusive. It was at this point when Joe Matheny was presented with two options in his mind—

fight legally to get his son back, or find a way to take revenge. After some deep thinking, he figured he wouldn't be able to get his son out of state custody because he had a criminal record, so the next best thing was to somehow get back at his ex and her new man. So Joe started asking around town where the two were living, and it wasn't long before he learned that they had been camping at a homeless camp under the Hanover Street Bridge, nicknamed Tent City by locals.

Armed with this information, on that August evening in 1995, Joe drove out to the area of the camp, parked his vehicle, and climbed down below the bridge. It was a sweltering hot Maryland summer night, and as he approached the darkness of the camp, Joe found two homeless men, Randy Piker and Randall Brewer, who he knew often got high with his wife.

In his confession, Joe stated that the two men were passed out on a dirty mattress when he arrived. And it was right then, in the heat of the moment, when he decided to unleash all of his anger and frustration on these strangers. Nearby was an axe. Joe saw it and grabbed it.

Then, in a fit of rage, he began to hack away at the men, deliberately, delivering blow after blow with extreme force. Joe said,

except they were dead from being chopped up. After murdering the two men, he tossed the axe aside and set his sights on another woman in the camp. Being the confident smooth talker that he was, Joe lured the woman under the bridge to get high and asked her where he could find his wife. When she told him that she didn't know, he began beating her violently. He would later say that after he beat her, he raped her, killed her, and tossed her body in some bushes. But Joe was still not satisfied.

He still felt that burning rage within, so he decided to continue his rampage and lured another woman under the bridge. He would later say,

Joe then took the two bodies of the women he had tossed in the bushes and the fishermen he killed with the pipe,

and he weighed their bodies down with rocks before throwing them into the river. He figured he probably wasn't going to get the information he wanted, so he cleaned himself up in the river and tried to clean up the crime scene as best he could. During this same time, ironically, another homeless man named Larry Amos had found the axe that Joe used to kill Randy and Randall and he decided to use it for his own murder.

There was a homeless gang war going on at the time and Amos wanted to confront a rival of his own, a man named Everett Dowell. The details of this crime are not well documented but it's known that Amos grabbed that same axe and he used it to murder Everett. So that's allegedly six murders and one night under this bridge. And sadly,

The bodies of the victims wouldn't be discovered for another two weeks. When police heard about Joe's connection to the murderer, they immediately went to his home and arrested him, and he was later charged with the murders of Randy and Randall.

Joe would spend 18 months in jail waiting for that murder trial to start. In 1996, a week after the trial began, a jury of 12 people went in for deliberations. And this trial ended up being a quick one, because the jury just wasn't convinced that Joe was the murderer. There just wasn't enough evidence collected to conclusively prove that he was the killer. In fact, the jurors sent a note to Judge Clifton Gordy, who was presiding over the trial, suggesting that another homeless man committed the murders because of the gang war going on at the time. The

The axe that was used as the murder weapon had been tainted, and there just wasn't enough evidence to convict him. Eventually, Joe was acquitted of all charges and released. He was once again a free man, free to carry on with his life and do as he pleased. After the time in jail, Joe was ready to get back on his feet. So after the release, he approached his old employer, Joe Steen & Sons Pallet Factory, and convinced his old boss to let him have his job back.

And at this point, not only did he get a job, but his boss actually allowed him to live on the trailer that was on property. He worked at the factory for $7 an hour driving a forklift, but most of his hard-earned money went to heroin, cocaine, and alcohol. Joe was given the keys to the main gate and building in exchange for watching the property during the off hours. In his confession to police, he said, The company was on a dead-end road and was very isolated. It was perfect for what I wanted to do.

Joe stayed in a small one-bedroom trailer on the Joe Steen & Sons lot, located on James Street in Baltimore. Like Joe stated, the company was located on a dead-end road and was surrounded by a chain-link fence that was eight feet high and wrapped in barbed wire, and the closest homes were over two blocks away from the pallet company. The business wasn't active during the evening hours, and Joe knew this location would be best for carrying out his sadistic plan.

But before we get into that, we need to go back in time to the year 1994, before the homeless camp massacre. You see, throughout the trial, they did indeed have a killer in the courtroom, but his first victim just hadn't been discovered yet. It was the year 1994 while he was employed by the same pallet factory when Joe took the life of his first victim.

She was 39-year-old Kathy Ann Magaziner, a local prostitute and drug addict who frequented the area near the pallet factory. Kathy was tall and thin with long brunette hair, and one night when she was cruising the streets, Joe saw her walking down the road, and he knew right then that he had to have her.

After approaching Kathy, Joe used his charm to lure her back to his trailer in exchange for drugs, and the two did end up having sex. After about an hour of fooling around, Kathy was ready to collect her things and leave, but Joe had other plans.

When Kathy wasn't looking, he ambushed her, pushing her to the ground. He then put his hands over her throat and began strangling Kathy until she passed out. Then, as she laid on his living room floor unconscious, he finished the job with an extension cord.

When the detectives later asked him why he killed her, he responded, "Sense of power. I don't know. Vulnerable. I got a rush out of it. Got a high out of it. Call it what you want. I had no real excuse why other than I like to do it. I don't know how to describe it." After Kathy was dead, Joe cut off the meaty portions of her body and decided to store them in Tupperware containers in his freezer.

These pieces of flesh would be reused by Joe later on for a very shocking purpose. He then dismembered the remainder of her corpse and buried her body parts in shallow graves in the woods behind his trailer. He also took her clothing and purse and buried them in another location on the property. After this murder, Joe continued on with his life and nobody suspected a thing.

Months later, Joe returned to the area where he buried Kathy and he dug up her skeletal remains. From here, he removed her skull and attempted to have sex with it before he placed it in a cardboard box and threw it in the trash.

Necrophilia is a rare disorder which is defined as a sexual attraction to dead bodies, and the disorder has been around for hundreds of years. It isn't certain why Joe decided to dig up Kathy's skull for sexual satisfaction, but there are a few reasons why necrophiliacs are attracted to corpses.

According to Jonathan Rosman, M.D., and Philip Resnick, M.D., for an article titled Sexual Attraction to Corpses, a Psychiatric Review of Necrophilia, they state that there are four distinct reasons why people, mostly men, are necrophiliacs. The most common motive of the true necrophiles was to possess an unresisting and unrejecting partner.

Other commonly reported motives were a reunion with a romantic partner, a conscious sexual attraction to corpses, attempt to gain comfort, and an attempt to gain self-esteem by the expression of power over a homicide victim.

But you see, Joe wasn't the only serial murderer who indulged in necrophilia. We all know the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer story. And as you know, he was arrested in 1991, and after his arrest, he was very open about being a necrophiliac. During an interview, he said, "...the only motive that there ever was was to completely control a person, a person I found physically attractive."

Another man and convicted killer, Ed Kemper, better known as the co-ed killer, said that his act of necrophilia was more of a transfer of love from the victim to himself He also confessed to burying a woman's head in his backyard, saying he, quote, "...turned her face toward my bedroom window and, sometimes at night, I talked to her saying love things, the way you do a girlfriend or wife," end quote

Joe never mentioned necrophilia, but the term would later show up during one of his appeals in 2000. After this first murder, Joe claimed that he was out for revenge, targeting women who were in similar situations as his wife. And since he wasn't having any luck locating her, the prostitute served as an intermediary to his rage. He would later tell police he wasn't sorry for killing innocent people, but rather sorry that he never got the chance to murder the people he wanted to.

After the murder of Kathy, the thrill of killing just overtook him, and he realized that he thrived on that rush he got from taking a human life. And Joe's personality perfectly fits the description of a thrill killer because of the rush he stated he got from taking the life of another human being.

In fact, a thrill killer is defined as a person who commits murder not because of mental instability, the need for sexual satisfaction, or because they have any animosity for or sometimes even know the victim, but rather because they want to feel the sheer excitement of killing people, usually by instilling fear in their victims. And so, just like an addict craving that next hit of their drug of choice, Joe realized that he wanted to, or rather needed to, kill again.

This is when he would allegedly commit the massacre underneath the bridge at Tent City in 1995. Remember, he served time in jail for those murders but wasn't convicted. So when he was finally released back into the free world in 1996, the urge to kill was stronger than ever. Now at this point in our story, it's November 11th, 1996, and Joe was on the hunt for another victim.

After work that day, he decided to go to a local bar for a few drinks. And while he was there, he met a young prostitute named Kimberly Lynn Spicer. Kimberly was a 23-year-old single mother when she met Joe, and she was really struggling to make ends meet. So after a conversation and a few drinks, she agreed to go back with him to his trailer. At the time, with almost no money to her name,

So when Joe promised her drugs, she took up his offer. But as we all know, Joe had more sinister plans in mind. That evening, before Kimberly had met Joe out at the bar, she had gotten into a verbal argument with her mom. The argument was about her brother's death that occurred just a few weeks earlier.

Sadly, her brother had recently overdosed on heroin in an abandoned house on Wilkins Avenue in Baltimore. After fighting with her mom, Kimberly stormed out of the house to blow off some steam and she decided to head towards the bar where she eventually bumped into Joe Metheny. Her mother, Kathy, would always say that Kimberly always came back even after they had really bad arguments.

but on the night of November 11th, she didn't. Once they arrived at Joe's trailer, he immediately tried to rape her and he actually attempted to put a beer bottle in her vagina. Kimberly managed to fight him off, but with how large of a man he was, she couldn't fight forever. She continued to deny his sexual advances and the longer she was there, Joe became more and more enraged.

He eventually grabbed a knife and charged at Kimberly. Once he was over her, he stabbed her over and over again in the chest, face, stomach, and back. At the end of it all, Kimberly Spicer had 26 stab wounds, and after he was finished, blood covered the walls of his trailer.

And just like he did with Kathy's body, Joe started the dismemberment. He repeated the process of cutting the meaty portions off and storing them in his freezer. Then, after that, he cut up her body and buried it around his property. At the end of the dismemberment, there was blood everywhere and he started to get nervous about how he was going to clean it up.

But eventually he got to work doing the best he could to clean up any trace of Kimberly Spicer. Joe would later tell investigators the following. I lured two crack whores up there to my trailer. I killed and butchered their bodies up. I cut the meat up and put it in some Tupperware bowls and put it in the freezer. I buried the remains in several shallow graves in a little woods behind the company. After cleaning up the crime scene and burying Kimberly's body around his property...

Joe once again continued on with his normal schedule of driving a forklift during the day and drinking alcohol and doing drugs by night. But for whatever reason, the thought of Kimberly's body being discovered weighed heavily on him. He wanted to find a new location for her body, but he would need the help of a friend to get it done.

A few weeks after Kimberly's murder, Joe invited his friend and coworker William Clinton Ashbrook Jr., who went by the name Clint, over to his trailer for a night of whiskey and cocaine. A few hours into their drug-fueled party, Joe asked Clint if he would help him move a body. Joe explained to Clint that a few weeks earlier, he had murdered a woman who owed him $300. Clint then followed his friend into the woods, where he proceeded to show him the decaying body of Kimberly Spicer.

Clint told Joe that he didn't want any part of it and watched as Joe took what was left of Kimberly and wrapped it in a red tarp.

Clint would later say that he then took off on his bike to go pick up some more drugs, and eventually, and shockingly, headed back to Joe's trailer with a fresh load of cocaine. When Clint arrived back at the trailer on property, he noticed that Joe had moved Kimberly's body to near the front of the trailer, and was covered in sweat. At the time, Joe told Clint that he was upset he had left, and thought that at the time he had run off to tell the police, but Clint swore he didn't.

and the two continued to drink alcohol and snort cocaine until the early hours of the morning when they woke up the next day clint said joe acted like nothing ever happened but the image of kimberly weighed heavily on clint and he eventually told his bosses the owners of the property joe steen senior and joe steen jr about what he had seen at joe's house and now we're going to take an ad break microdosing is a concept that has really intrigued me for a very long time

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Armed with this information, the owners of the company went to the police and told them that they believed a murderer was living on their property. Hearing this, the police agreed to begin an investigation and they got Clint to agree to wear a wire and go back in to talk with Joe.

That next day, Clint got all wired up and returned to work. He tried to walk up to Joe and casually bring up the previous night, asking him questions about what he had seen. Joe, however, was smart, and he seemed to have some sort of inkling that this was a setup, so he refused to mention anything about a dead body or a missing girl.

In an article in the Baltimore Sun, Clint said that he tried to get the information out of him, but Joe wasn't taking the bait, eventually telling Clint, Your best bet is to forget anything you saw. It isn't clear what the authorities did with this information, but whatever it was, it didn't lead to an arrest. I think in these types of situations, the police have to hear the person confess to the killing.

Saying, forget about what you saw, just isn't enough. And since he wasn't arrested, Joe had more time to continue on with his sinister acts. You see, shortly after Kimberly's murder, Joe had an idea.

He wanted to open up a barbecue stand where he would sell pit beef amongst other meats, a delicacy native to Baltimore. But Joe didn't intend on selling just animal meat. He decided that he wanted to take the human meat he had saved in the freezer

and mix it up with the hamburger and pork. So, disturbingly, sometime after Kimberly's murder, Joe allegedly opened up a meat stand on the side of the road and he sold human hamburgers to the people of Baltimore. And according to Joe, he sold out of his barbecue pretty fast. People loved it. In his confession to police, he even stated that

The human body tastes very similar to pork. If you mix it together, no one can tell the difference. - Joe allegedly continued to sell his open-faced barbecue sandwiches, hamburgers, and roast beef concoctions on the side of the road for a few weeks, but he eventually ran out of the special ingredient.

and he decided he would need another victim to replenish his supply. According to Dr. Eric Hickey, a professor of forensic psychology, true cannibalistic killers are rare. Out of 2,000 serial killers, only five or 10 would be considered a cannibal. He continued to say in an interview with A&E that cannibalism is mostly about, once again, the control over a victim.

Cannibals tend to feel really insecure and can't have normal relationships. Eating their victims give them a sense of power because their victims can never leave." But in the meantime, Joe was on the hunt for another victim and he had his sights set on his 36-year-old friend, Rita Kemper. Rita had known Joe for a few months. They had frequented the same bars in town.

and she knew him as Tiny. From their interactions in public, Joe seemed harmless. A few weeks after the murder of Kimberly, Joe invited Rita to his trailer to do some drugs, and she decided to take him up on the offer.

On December 8th, 1996, Rita and Joe went back to Joe's trailer to drink and do drugs. Rita thought nothing of it because of the friendship she and Joe had formed over the past few months. But like with the stories of the other victims, it didn't take long for Joe to show his true intentions that evening.

Almost immediately after the two walked into his trailer, Joe demanded Rita take off her pants, but like the others, she refused. Seeing a different, more aggressive side of Joe was something she had never imagined, so Rita quickly ran out of the trailer to try to get away from him. But Joe was fast, and he quickly caught up with her and proceeded to grab her arm and drag her back into the trailer. Rita continued to fight and scream as Joe ripped the clothing from her body. She just wasn't going to let him hurt her without putting up a fight.

Joe would later say, I lured another bitch up to my trailer. I got her in there and I started to rip her clothes off and knock in the hell out of her. She was screaming, but there was no one around to hear her except me. And I just kept on laughing at her.

Rita would later describe the look in Joe's eyes as something she had never seen before. It was the look of pure evil. As he kept laughing at her and attempting to rape her, Rita continued to fight and eventually got loose from his grip. Seeing this as her only chance to escape death, Rita ran as fast as she could and jumped the barbed wire fence that surrounded the trailer. This time, Joe wasn't fast enough to catch her, possibly due to his size, and he watched from behind the fence as she continued to run farther and farther down the road until she disappeared.

He would later say,

Joe knew that it was only a matter of time until the police showed up at the trailer, so he made his way to the main gate and he waited for them. A few minutes later, the police cruiser did show up and they ordered Joe to get on the ground at gunpoint. And he didn't put up a fight. He knew this was the end for him. He had finally been caught. Immediately, Joe was taken to the police station and booked for his crime against Rita.

and when he sat down with the detectives, he said, "I'm a very sick person." Detective Homer Pennington would later say that Joe was very alert and cooperative in the investigation, and he quickly told the police everything he had ever done. Over the next few days, Joe would take the police to his trailer and show them where all the bodies were buried,

And he would tell them, I had them going crazy over at the company digging up the remains of those two bitches there. Because I had their remains buried in seven different holes. The only thing I feel bad about in any of this is I didn't get to the two motherfuckers I was really after. And that's my ex-old lady and the bastard she got hooked up with. The police were quickly able to locate and dig up the body of Kathy Magasiner. And although most of her skull was missing...

They were able to look at her dental records and make a positive identification. Through a large-scale effort, the police dug seven holes on the property and recovered the remains of his victims. Back at the police station, Joe told detectives about the night he started his killing spree and he told them all about the homeless camp massacre, the night he killed five people in one day.

with five murders within seven hours. That was a very busy night for me. - He admitted that he had been the one to kill the two homeless men, the same murder he was acquitted for. He also admitted that he killed the two homeless prostitutes and the fishermen who quote, "happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." Police would later search the river where Joe told them he dumped the bodies, but the remains were never found.

During the interrogation, Joe also confessed to killing three more prostitutes that he picked up on Washington Boulevard in Baltimore. Apparently, like with his other confirmed victims, he had lured, abused, and murdered these women, then dumped their bodies in the nearby Patapsco River. Another search was conducted for the bodies, but they were never found, and Joe was not convicted of any of these crimes.

As the confession continued, Joe told detectives that he had cut up different body parts of his victims and stored them in his freezer to consume later. He even admitted to cooking and eating parts of their bodies while alone in his trailer. He even stated, "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."

Throughout the confession, Joe remained calm and never expressed remorse for what he had done. He told the authorities that his murder spree had been born out of a thirst for revenge, but when he started to kill people, he thoroughly enjoyed it. 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.

This deep rage within Joe had been triggered when he found out his wife was prostituting for drug money and neglecting their son. When he found out that his son was taken by social services, he snapped and simply couldn't control the rage.

The police weren't sure what to think about the man sitting in the interrogation room because of his demeanor. Throughout his extensive interviews, Joe opened up to them, very honestly, about his alleged first murder, which he claimed took place all the way back in 1976. But without any specific details, the police were never able to confirm this to be true. The only hard evidence that they had was from the murders he had committed in the 90s, and without any hard evidence, it's really hard to verify a story or seek prosecution.

Throughout the interrogation, Joe went back and forth with his story, frequently changing some of the significant details of his crimes. According to the short story, Joe the Cannibal, Steen writes, "...it was not clear whether what he said was truthful or just a product of his imagination. His lawyers attributed this to his years of drug and alcohol abuse. They also stated that he had a lot of issues stemming from his difficult childhood."

As Joe's body count during his confession grew, police were hesitant to believe that he had committed as many murders as he said he did, until he mentioned a name. The name was Toni Linen Gracia, a 28-year-old woman who had been found murdered a year or so earlier, in 1995. Her remains had been discovered just off of Interstate 95 as it ran through Baltimore, and like Matheny's other victims, she had been abused, strangled, and discarded like trash.

As at the time there were no leads in her case, it had gone completely cold until Joe mentioned her in his interrogation. This also piqued the interest of the police because there had been no mention of the woman's name in any news outlet in town. So there was no way Joe could have known about her.

Some officials at the time fully believed that Joe was telling the truth, and as he continued to talk and brag about his murder spree, the police began to notice a pattern. Joe liked to target young, white women who struggled with drugs and prostitution, who typically had been found on or lured from the Washington Boulevard area in Baltimore. This type of woman might go unnoticed by friends and family long enough after their disappearance for Joe to cover his tracks and continue with his sadistic rampage.

In an interview with the Baltimore Sun in 1997, Tony's father, John Ingrassia, said, People close to Joe were also asking the same question. How could Joe, aka Tiny, do something so cruel to so many people?

Kimberly Spicer's older sister, Connie, had even worked as a bartender at one of the bars that Joe frequented. In an interview, she said, quote, During his eventual trial,

Joe's defense attorney, Margaret Mead, would say that he was polite, respectful, and an intelligent man who felt deep remorse for what he had done. In order to give him a better chance, she wanted him to plead insanity because of the years of alcohol and drug abuse that had altered the chemical wiring in his brain. She emphasized that the drug abuse and difficult childhood had molded him into a violent person.

a condition that was especially exacerbated when he drank and took drugs. She also argued that when he was sober, he was an entirely different person. Margaret tried to spin a tale of neglect and abuse to get the jury to feel sorry for Joe, but when the media attention amplified around the murders, Joe quickly became a monster in the eyes of the public.

His own mother even chimed in with her own thoughts about Margaret's defense, saying "He was smart and had a good childhood. If he was neglected, it was his own fault. It was a pretty good home." The owner of the pallet factory where Joe worked, Joe Edward Stein Sr., was arrested for being an accessory to murder. The police argued that he knew where the bodies were on the property,

and that at one point, he had even helped Joe get rid of them. But Margaret argued that Stein had no idea what was going on during the late night hours at the factory, and the charges were later dropped. Joe Stein's son, Joe Stein III, would later make a statement about Joe saying, quote, he would joke about anything. He would say he was so low on the totem pole that he was the dirt holding the pole up.

He could come up with solutions to problems. He's unloading a trailer, and he would have a problem stacking the pallets, and he would be the one who could figure out how to do it. He was a pretty smart guy. He had a temper every once in a while, but I never thought he would go that far with anything. In November of 1997, Joe went on trial for the attempted sexual assault, kidnapping, and attempted murder of Rita Kemper.

In a statement, Rita described the night in December the previous year, telling the court that Joe was "a man you could see evil in. Whatever Tiny wanted to do that night, he was going to do. He told me I could scream as loud as I wanted to. I knew he was not going to let me out of there alive." Rita had known that night that in order for her to survive, she had to put up a fight.

A fight which wouldn't be easy due to his size alone. According to an article in the Baltimore Sun, she recalled the friendship that the two had before the incident and how they would often drink and use cocaine together. She also insisted that the relationship between the two of them was never sexual. Ultimately, Joe was sentenced to 50 years in prison for the attempted rape and kidnapping of Rita Kemper.

The jury at the time had no idea that Joe was also being charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Kimberly Spicer and Kathy Magaziner. Although, the jury did not know that Joe was also being charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Kimberly Spicer and Kathy Magaziner.

Although one juror later admitted that it seemed like there was more to the case than an attempted murder, rape, and kidnapping, they based their decision to drop the attempted murder charge simply on the facts presented at trial. One juror shockingly even stated that it was hard to be sympathetic towards Rita Kemper, the victim of attempted sexual assault and murder, because she admitted to using cocaine with Joe on multiple occasions.

Another juror, Louis Dawkins, said that if Joe had really wanted to kill Rita, he would have never let her get away. After the trial, he spoke with the Baltimore Sun and stated,

After hearing that Joe was sentenced to 55 years in prison for what he did to her, Rita said she was going to make the most of her second chance at life. She told the Baltimore Sun in 1997 that she was no longer using drugs and had turned her life around completely, saying, "...it is the grace of God."

In April of 1998, Joe was on trial again, but this time for the murder of Kimberly Lynn Spicer. Kimberly's mother, Kathy Price, was at the trial, and in an emotional statement, she stated, "...God is upholding me now. I know Kimberly is in heaven. Kimberly had her problems, but she was a battler, always struggling with her problems and hoping to turn the corner."

I guess that's the kind of person he preyed on. The state attorney for Maryland, Patricia C. Jessamy, wanted the death penalty for Joe for the murder of Kimberly. The prosecution argued that Kimberly trusted Joe and, according to her sister Connie, even felt sorry for him.

During the attempted sexual assault with a beer bottle in his trailer, Kimberly had decided that she was not going to comply and would definitely not allow Joe to torture her. Her decision was a bold one, a decision to fight to the death, and unfortunately, she lost the battle. After three weeks of testimony, the jury determined that Joe Matheny was guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death for the murder of Kimberly Spicer. After the trial was over, Kimberly's mother, Kathy, was happy that Joe was found guilty but still had one question left for him to answer.

Why? Why did he kill her daughter? In an interview with the Baltimore Sun, an emotional Kathy hung her head with tears in her eyes and said she would probably never find the answer to that question. Sometimes, she said, a person is just evil. To help her cope with the tragedy, Kathy read Kimberly's Bible that she kept and studied when life got tough and she needed guidance. Kimberly had underlined and highlighted a passage from the Bible.

It read: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Kimberly's father, on the other hand, not only blamed Joe Matheny for the murder of his daughter, but also blamed the drugs, saying that eventually, drugs are going to bring everyone in this country down. Then, in August of 1998, Joe was once again on trial, but this time for the murder of Kathy Ann Magaziner. Since he already had a death sentence, Joe simply pleaded guilty to her murder and robbery. The state was allowed to use his confession in court, and the jury heard all of the gory details of Kathy's murder, dismemberment, and

and burial. The prosecution was once again going for the death penalty in this case, but the judge sentenced him to life in prison instead. According to the case, State of Maryland v. Joe Roy Matheny, it could not be proven that Joe intentionally set out to rob Kathy of her possessions. Joe would also be charged for the murder of the young woman found on Interstate 95, Toni Lynn Ingrassia.

But there wasn't enough evidence that he did it, so the charges would eventually be dropped. Tony's father, John, was not happy with this outcome. As it turns out, sadly, the mystery surrounding his daughter's death would never be solved. In the year 2000, Joe's case was sent to the Court of Appeals in an attempt to overturn his death sentence handed down for the murder of Kimberly Spicer.

Ultimately, the death sentence was indeed overturned, and he would only receive life in prison for her murder. So why was the sentence overturned? Well, the judge reviewing the case found no evidence to support the fact that Joe had intended to rob Kimberly before murdering her, so apparently that small detail spared him his life.

They also claimed that there was no physical evidence to support that Kimberly was sexually assaulted However, when the medical examiner examined her body after it was removed from the shallow grave, they found a beer bottle inside of her vagina Joe's lawyers argued, there's no evidence whatsoever that he tried to put that bottle inside of her before her death If the bottle had been placed inside of Kimberly's body after death, then it would be considered necrophilia

And in the state of Maryland, the act of necrophilia is not a crime that a person can be punished for. Therefore, the judge ruled that Joe was not guilty in the robbery and sexually assault of Kimberly Spicer. His death sentence was commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. As the presiding judge passed down the ruling to Joe, he held up a picture of Kimberly and praised her family for their courage to sit and listen to the gruesome details of the crime. Speaking to Kimberly's family, the judge said,

You've listened to the testimony that no human being should ever have to endure. As the father of two daughters, I can't imagine your pain.

According to the Baltimore Sun, Joe stared blankly at the judge as he waited for him to read his ruling and had no reaction to hearing his sentence. The same can't be said for all parties involved, though. When it was determined that Joe would not receive the death penalty for the murder of Kimberly, her parents were upset but hopeful. Afterwards, they stated that they could still rest easy knowing that one day he would have to face the judgment of God for his crimes. Joe was then sent to the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland to serve out his two consecutive life sentences.

plus 50 years for the attempted sexual assault of Rita Kemper. Joe had begged the jury to uphold the death sentence, saying, "...the words I'm sorry will never come out, for they would be a lie. I am more than willing to give up my life for what I have done, to have God judge me and send me to hell for eternity."

but joe would never be put to death by the state of maryland and instead he would spend almost two decades behind bars for his crimes the prison staff like everyone else that seemed to know joe in the past all stated that he was a very polite person and well behaved while in prison joe wrote a full confession and described in detail the crimes he had committed to get himself there he wrote to start out i will tell you about myself at the present moment which is locked up

I am 48 years old, I weigh about 450 pounds, and it's not all fat. I've been locked up for almost 8 years now, but when one has been sentenced to a couple of life without parole sentences, time doesn't matter anymore. I have no problem with being locked up, for no one put me here but myself, and I deserve to be right where I'm at, because I had 12 law-abiding jurors that told me so, in a couple different cases. Haha! I was only convicted of two murders and one kidnapping for the one that got away. I got 50 years for her.

The first murder I was sentenced to life without parole. The second one they gave me the death penalty. I sat on Maryland's death row for three years and then they overturned my sentence and gave me another life without parole and sent me down here for the rest of my life. I killed seven people, three men and four women. Two men I chopped up with an axe under a bridge in South Baltimore. I was found not guilty for them because they couldn't prove I did it. Under that same bridge, I also killed two women and one man who was fishing who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On Saturday, August 5th, 2017, 62-year-old Joe Matheny was found dead in his prison cell at around 3 p.m.,

A prison guard was making his rounds that afternoon when he noticed that Joe was unresponsive in his cell and shortly after the discovery of his body, he was pronounced dead. The cause of death was never released to the public and it still remains a mystery. There has been speculation that he died by suicide because he didn't want to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Other sources say he could have possibly been killed by another inmate. There is also speculation that he died from a health complication related to his size and prior history of drug and alcohol abuse. But I guess we will never know. An investigation was conducted by the prison and they later released a statement saying that there was no foul play involved. But that still left some people unconvinced.

But regardless of the manner of death, Joe Matheny will go down in history as one of Maryland's most vile serial killers. Today, the fascination surrounding his case makes people question his confession. In the short story, Joe the Cannibal, forensic psychologist Paula Orange states that Joe was obviously a pathological liar and it's hard to tell what was the truth and what wasn't.

If he lied about his childhood and his tour in Vietnam, it's safe to assume that he didn't mix human flesh with meat and sell it for profit. Paulus states, quote, It sounds so bizarre and therefore newsworthy to an attention-starved man like Joe Matheny. What we can take at face value is his savagery, the bloodlust of power he felt once he began murdering people, end quote.

However, regardless of the validity of his claims, the bizarre story of murder and cannibalism would earn Joe Matheny the trademark nickname, Joe the Cannibal. And after hearing this sordid tale of murder and cannibalism, you yourself might start to question where you eat, because you never really know what kind of person out there is making your food, or what they're putting in it.

Hey everybody, it's Colin here. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Murder in America. We cannot thank you all enough for being out there and joining us week by week through all these horrific crimes. Now the Joe Matheny case has always really interested me and we're actually working on producing a full-length documentary on those crimes that we're going to film in Baltimore in the next month or so. So if you want to see that when it comes out, just go subscribe to my YouTube channel, The Paranormal Files. It'll be on there very soon. And let me tell you, it's going to be an

awesome documentary with some really cool insight into the case. But I want to shout out all of our new patrons this week. Harrison, Amanda Von Bichon, Abigail C, Matthew Vasquez, Evan Smith, Lexi Thader, Hannah Norman, Carla, Madison Dinas, Rebecca Trace, Elizabeth Flores, Maxwell Nelson, Jacob Raffone, Chloe Osti,

Thank you.

Damaris Ramos, Maddie Carpenter, Ryan Franklin, Linda Figueroa, and Ariana Lopez. Oh my God, I'm so sorry if I slaughtered your names, but thank you to all of our patrons. If you want to sign up to become a patron, just head to patreon.com and search Murder in America. We post the ad-free versions of every episode on our Patreon as soon as the episode goes live on all streaming platforms. If you want to see the photos from all of our cases that we cover, just head over and follow us on Instagram at murderinamerica.com.

And yeah, everybody, this is a crazy case. We have a really, really big case coming up next week. And yeah, thank you for listening, and we'll see you on the next one.