Morbid: Episode 471: Joe Metheny

Morbid Network | Wondery Morbid Network | Wondery 6/26/23 - 1h 9m - PDF Transcript

You're listening to a morbid network podcast.

Mike Williams set off on a hunting trip into the swamps of North Florida where it was thought

he met a gruesome fate in the jaws of hungry alligators, except that's not what happened

at all.

And after the uncovering of a secret love triangle, the truth would finally be revealed.

Binge all episodes of Over My Dead Body Gone Hunting right now, ad-free on Wondery Plus.

Hey, weirdos, I'm Ash.

I'm Alina, and this is Morbid.

Morbid.

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

How are you?

How are you?

How are you?

What do you want to do with that?

I want to record Morbid today.

Okay, that's all we did yesterday.

That's what we'll do today.

We are on TikTok too much.

That's accurate.

I think everybody relates to that statement.

Or sentiment, if you will.

I think so.

I think TikTok is everybody's place.

Do you think that is low-key taking over our brains or something?

Yeah, for sure.

Absolutely.

My brain is fucking crazy anyway.

Somebody take that shit over.

Somebody take the wheel of my brain.

To like, TikTok, take the wheel.

TikTok, take the wheel.

Wow.

That one went somewhere.

I went into it far too confidently.

That's okay.

We love blind confidence.

Thanks, girly.

We love it.

Thanks for being such a supportive partner.

I try.

You do a good job.

I give it a shot, at least.

Good job.

It's the beginning of the week where we're wild, we're crazy, we're kooky.

I'm coming off a vacay, baby.

A vacay.

But not really.

I'm coming off of a long weekend.

I am coming off of a weekend of many kids' birthday parties.

Yeah, that sounds fucking terrible.

That's where I am right now.

I was at Universal this past weekend.

I was living my life.

It looked like fun.

It was great.

It was great.

All your kids' birthday parties.

You know, there were kids' birthday parties.

That answer's not.

It was that.

But the kids had fun and that's all that matters.

Hell yeah.

So there's that.

But I have a case today that's just really gross.

Oh.

This person is a very gross person.

They usually are.

They usually are.

This one just like, it's like, ooh, it just, there's a lot here.

And there's, and he's a liar.

He's one of those that lies a lot about what he did.

He's a liar.

Yeah, this guy is definitely a liar.

And he also, he lies so much that it was like an interesting to scrape together the facts

of his life because he is such a fucking liar.

So that's, that gets tough sometimes.

Yeah.

So Dave and I did our best to make sure that.

You always do.

We did our best here.

But I think this story is really sad.

It's another case of people targeting sex workers and people that they can say,

they think will not be missed.

That's nice.

You know, one of those terrible things.

So we are going to talk about the case of Joe Matheny.

I don't know if I know this one.

I've heard it pronounced metheny too, but I think it's metheny.

That's what I've heard more.

So I'm going to go with that one, but he's terrible.

So we're going to start you off on December 15th, 1996, the year that Ash was born.

Yeah.

And also the year Scream came out.

I wasn't here yet though.

You weren't here yet.

Well, no, you were.

It was December of 1996.

Yep.

You're right.

I was here.

Wow.

Wow, guys.

I didn't want to correct you on that.

But you were like the world world.

I felt compelled to.

You know what I was like?

In my head, I was like.

You were in fact here.

In my head, I was like, oh, December.

So like of that year, like I wasn't here yet.

But that's the very tail end.

So I was like.

Your smack dab in the middle.

But I was only like six months.

So I was, I was barely here.

You didn't know what was going on for sure.

For sure.

It's not about me at all.

But there we go.

Just 1996.

On that day, December 15th, Baltimore police discovered Baltimore, Maryland.

They discovered the body of 23 year old Kimberly Spicer.

She had been buried under a trailer on the property of a pallet factory in the city's

Southwest side.

Later that same day, police did arrest a suspect, Joseph Roy Matheny.

He was a man who actually lived and worked at the factory at the time.

He was living on the grounds where Spicer's body was discovered.

And it didn't take long when they arrested him to suddenly start connecting the dots

to other murders of women in the Baltimore, Baltimore area as well.

I was worried you were going to say that.

What's wild is this is only a fraction of the things that he confessed to.

Oh, right here.

He confessed to a myriad of awful, awful things.

And do you think all of his confessions are for real?

No.

Okay.

He's like a whole other set of gross that like he just came up with these things and

was like, I did them, claimed them.

Like they're fucked.

Yeah.

So let's talk about who Joe Matheny was.

So you can get an idea of what we're working with here.

Joseph Roy Matheny was born March 2nd, 1955 in Baltimore, Maryland.

He was one of six children.

He was born to parents, Audra Earl and Jean Matheny.

I love the name Audra.

It is a cool name.

It's just like a cute name.

Yeah.

Audra.

I think one of the girls in girls next door was named Audra.

Yeah, there was an Audra around there for sure.

Now, after he was arrested, Joe did claim, Joe Matheny claimed that he had been raised

in a very abusive home.

He had a terrible childhood.

He was very neglected, very abused by his parents.

And he said that he was like shuffled around to different homes, almost like a foster like

situation by his parents.

Now, according to his mother, she said that Joe was a very normal boy growing up.

He was smart.

He was nice.

He had a good childhood.

There wasn't anything of note.

If he was neglected, she said, and this was, this was her own words.

She said, if he was neglected, it was his own fault.

Huh.

Which I was like, that's, that's questionable.

That, that statement.

That's a weird way to word that.

It's a weird way to like, if he was neglected as a child, that was his own fault.

I feel like that's like, that's exact opposite of that.

But she claims none of her children were ever abused.

They were never placed in homes.

I could not find any records and neither could Dave to indicate that he was placed in any

kind of homes growing up.

I also, we couldn't find any reports that said that there was like any phone calls to

any social services or anything like that.

This was the fifties, of course, and like the early sixties.

So keep that in mind.

But from the sounds of it, he is, he is kind of exaggerating how bad his childhood was.

That's what, that's what the seems to be the collective thought.

One, if he has like a pattern of exaggeration, then it,

He lies about everything.

Exactly.

So that he very much exaggerates a lot about his life.

So, I mean, he even claims at one point that he has a son.

He doesn't.

What?

Yeah.

When he was young for a time, the family lived in West Virginia.

And this is where Joe's father worked as a laborer.

And he ended, he at first, he was the only income for the family, which especially of

the time period that is very common.

Yeah.

But unfortunately, when Joe was only six years old, his father died in a car accident.

Oh man.

Yeah.

And it was in Terra Alta, I believe, West Virginia.

Now, obviously the entire family, this is six children.

That's a lot of kids to provide for.

And like, obviously the emotional toll was outrageous.

They're all reeling after the loss of their father, who by all accounts, he, he claimed

mostly his mom with the abuse stuff.

I feel like he didn't really claim it.

Like he claimed it against all of them, but like it seemed like that.

He was just like a working hard kind of guy, like took care of his family.

The father.

Yeah.

So like they all were really devastated by it.

So while also dealing with this emotional toll and with grieving their father, Audra

Methany, the mom, had to now start working full time just to support all six of these

kids out of nowhere.

You know, like a very sudden switch and everything.

So see that's kind of to me, him being shuffled around to different homes.

Yeah.

Different people probably watched him while his mom provided for the family.

That's what it probably is.

It was probably that kind of thing because she worked as a waitress.

She was a delivery driver for like a food service.

She was a bartender.

She would take any job.

That poor woman.

It seemed like she was really like working her ass off to keep this family afloat.

Yeah.

And although they, you know, they all agree, they weren't able to afford anything, you

know, that we may take for granted.

Most of us like very, like even the smallest of luxuries.

Yeah.

She kept her family afloat during this time.

They were able to pay their bills.

Good.

And she was able to feed her children.

And that's like the most important thing.

So they weren't neglected in that way.

And she was quoted as saying, it was very hard on me.

I had to work to support the family and I did everything I could to keep my kids together.

Yeah.

And so not only did she lose her husband, which like, like I can't imagine.

Yeah.

Right there.

Then you have to leave all your kids who you're used to being home with.

Yeah.

And work your ass off.

Yeah.

And now they are going to be shuffled around to different people babysitting them or them

taking care of the little ones.

Right.

At least, you know, it sounds like she at least tried to support this family as best

she could.

Yeah.

That's a lot on your plate.

Most accounts, like neighbors, friends, all that, he had a very normal childhood.

They all say it.

They're like, this wasn't like a crazy family that everybody was like, ooh, what's going

on there?

Yeah.

He was a good student in reality.

Like he didn't struggle in school.

He stayed out of trouble.

Yeah.

Wasn't his troublemaker, didn't get in trouble with the police, didn't get in trouble with

teachers.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

None of that.

He was a relatively average kid.

Just nothing of note.

Nothing, nothing of note poorly and nothing of note like spectacularly.

Yeah.

In Joe's version of the story, though, he says that he made it only to eighth grade and then

he dropped out and he received his high school equivalency.

And that's not true.

That's not true.

He has a diploma.

Yeah.

He did.

He made it through school.

Like what?

And when he turned 18 in 1973, he joined the army and his mom is like, oh yeah, he did.

He joined the army and he was stationed in Germany.

But Joe says that he was sent straight to Vietnam in the final years of the war and then

he spent nearly two years studying physics and serving in the artillery unit.

And then it was during this time that he claims he, this is when he begins struggling with

a heroin addiction.

Okay.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Sometimes at the end of the week, you're like, I think I spent about 65 hours working this

week and maybe like two on myself, if that, and you're like, oh, that was a lot.

It leaves you feeling drained, tired, aggravated, irritated at other people, just low and bad.

Listen, it's easy to get caught up in what everybody else needs from you and never take

a moment to think about what you need from yourself.

But when we spend all of our time giving, giving, giving, it can leave us feeling stretched

thin and burned out, but you don't have to feel that way.

You can give therapy a try because therapy can give you the tools that you need to find

more balance in your life.

And I think personally that that's really what life is all about, balance.

You can keep supporting others, but not leave yourself behind.

That is honestly one of the biggest lessons that I personally learned in therapy is how

to balance your life.

You have to pour into your cup before you pour into somebody else's sometimes because

then you're going to feel happier, lighter, like you've done something for yourself.

And once you've done something for yourself, then do something for somebody else.

If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch

therapist anytime for no additional charge.

Find more balance with BetterHelp.

Visit betterhelp.com slash morbid today to get 10% off your first month.

That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash morbid.

Hi there, morbid listeners.

Hi, it's Ash.

And Alina.

Hi.

As you all know, on our show, we share a passion for all things spooky, the paranormal, and

of course, some mind-blowing true crime cases.

There's another podcast that we think you will all enjoy called Suspect, Five Shots

in the Dark.

This latest season looks at a case with two victims, one murdered in cold blood and one

imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit.

It follows Leon Benson's story, a man who spent more than half of his life, a total

of 24 years, in an Indiana state prison for the murder of Casey Shane, a man he never

met.

There was no physical evidence, no known motive, and no one coming forward with information.

He was sentenced to 60 years in prison, all because one person swore they saw something.

But what if she was wrong?

From Wondery and Campside Media comes season three of the hit podcast, Suspect.

You can listen to Suspect early and add free on Wondery Plus.

And Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

Now this is untrue, like the service.

He did not go to Vietnam by all accounts.

Nobody can say that.

But again, I don't know why he says this.

It's just like, you served.

That's impressive.

Absolutely.

Why are you trying to make it something it's not?

But either way, this was a lie.

And Joe's time in the military, though, like no matter what it was, definitely took a toll

on him and on his relationship with his family.

Yeah.

And I think that was really common.

Yeah.

And this was actually when he was done with the service, it was actually the beginning

of a 10 year period where he didn't speak to his mother.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Like his mother and him did not speak.

So that is interesting.

So that's that.

That's the thing.

There are things there that we don't know.

We don't know what happened there.

By all accounts, it wasn't a wildly outwardly abusive home, but no one ever knows what's

going on.

No.

Behind closed doors.

You look at any of these things and it's like you can find out horrible stories and

be like, what?

I just passed by that house.

It looks like a normal house.

Oh, yeah.

Like I don't hear anything.

I don't see anything.

Totally.

So who knows?

He lies a lot.

So I'm sure it's an amalgamation of lies and truths.

Yeah.

He sounds like pathological.

But during his trial later when he was arrested for his crimes, he actually told his attorney

and the investigators that both of his parents were dead.

But then a reporter tracked down his mom and she was alive.

What?

So yeah.

And he said after after he was arrested in 1996, his mom actually said he just kept

drifting further and further away from me, which could be a number of reasons, you know.

Now, it's unclear exactly when he returned to Baltimore, Maryland from West Virginia,

but he was arrested by Baltimore police in April 1988 for drug possession.

So he did struggle with addiction.

Okay.

He was found guilty for that.

He was fined $100.

The arrest for possession kind of shows the beginning of this very consistent struggle

with addiction and legal troubles that we see in his life from here on out.

He seems to be in a constant state of struggling with this.

In 1988, he began working for Joe Stein and Sons, which was a company that makes and sells

wooden pallets.

His employment history was never really consistent.

He was a truck driver at one point.

Like there was a lot of different things.

He would kind of disappear for long periods of times from this job.

But Stein and Sons, the owners of this pallet company, they liked him.

They had a soft spot for him.

They always were willing to hire him back every time he left.

There's always that one.

Have you ever worked somewhere where that's been the case and you're like, how does this

person get away with what they get away with?

And I come in late and I get reamed the fuck out.

But there's always that person that they just have a soft spot for.

That this was Joe.

And this is what's wild about him because when you read about him and what he's done

and things he said and his confessions, he's a fucking monster, a monster of the highest

order.

Was he able to just like turn something on?

Do you think like a charm?

I have no idea what his deal is.

And I can't even begin to speculate on it because I have no fucking clue because people

liked him.

Yeah.

He was a likable guy in his social relationships for the most part and in his like workplaces,

people liked him.

Like these people hired him back all the time.

They weren't thinking he was some awful guy and being like, oh, we're just because if

he was acting out there, then they would just be like, cool, like it's easy to be rid of

him.

If he just leaves, we can be like, we can't hire you back.

He just left.

Right.

But it's very strange, but he would show back up to Stein and Sons looking for work and

they would just hire him back.

And actually later, after he was arrested later, one of the co-workers there said he

was a joy, just kidding and carrying on.

He made the day pass by.

Wow.

So he's one of those guys that you're literally like, you made my day pass by quicker.

Like you look forward to working with him.

Which is like on the other side of the planet to what he says and does.

On his other side of him.

But that's the thing.

It's like, I always think of that Ted Bundy thing where he's acting totally like regular

in court.

And then it's just like.

And then you see the switch.

You see the eyes go like animalistic.

These people that do these kind of things.

They can switch it.

And that's how they find their victims.

It's so scary.

Because they charm their victims into like an unsafe situation or a situation where

they can get them.

It's true.

Also, because he was constantly struggling with addiction and his work history was in

flux all the time.

So was his housing status.

You never knew where he was going to stay.

Right.

He never could keep something for a long period of time.

He would sleep on friends' couches a lot, stay at a lot of shelters, a lot of like encampments,

like anywhere he could.

And he did have a lot of people who would take him in because of his personality.

And he was usually, and this was around the Baltimore area.

And at the time of his arrest, he was actually living in that small trailer on the Stein

and Son's property, the one where Kimberly Spicer was found.

Oh, wow.

So he was living on the property of where he was working because they were allowing him

to.

And that's what he did.

Yeah.

And apparently it was so like, it was the situation he was in where he, quote, ran an extension

cord from the Stein's main building to power his stereo, television, and air conditioner.

So that's what like dire straits his situation was in.

Wow.

Now, while the owners of Stein and Son's may have felt comfortable enough to let him literally

live on the property, they did start to grow a little more apprehensive of this decision

as we went into the mid 1990s.

So they were letting him live there for a while, like on and off, like whenever he needed

to.

Once we had those mid 1990s, they were starting to be like, I don't know.

This is when they started noticing a lot of changes in his personality because this

was immediately following his release after a year in jail because he was constantly in

legal trouble for, you know, drug possession, stealing, like all that stuff.

And he had come back to work because they had allowed him to come back to work after

a year in jail.

And coworkers seem to think that he, he made a very hard switch in that year in jail.

He was drinking a lot.

He was using drugs more often.

He was, um, he was engaging the work of sex workers a lot more often, like just seeming

to be on this like, like really different path than he was before, like a spiral before.

I think it seemed like he was always trying to get to a better place, but now it seemed

like he was just fully diving fully into this.

Yeah.

And there were other like bizarre changes like that he would do, like he made a 15 foot

high barricade around his trailer made of old pallets.

That's weird.

Yeah.

And also like, that's not your property.

You can't do that.

What are you doing?

And it wasn't just coworkers that were, you know, initially kind of like enamored by his

personality and how kind he was, which is very strange.

He made a lot of friends outside of work, like very easily, socially, he was very much able

to make people like him.

According to Connie Snow, who worked at the Southside Bar in Baltimore, where Methany

often picked up women and actually picked up at least one victim of his.

She said he was so mannerly saying thank you and please all the time.

And he was a regular there and he would often just be going there to, you know, have a drink,

play some pool, hang out with people.

And Connie Snow's sister actually ended up being murdered by Methany in 1996.

Whoa.

To show you how much he can manipulate and how easily she thought he was kind, polite,

never had any reason to worry about him and her sister ended up being murdered by him.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

That's horrific.

It's awful.

So like much of Joe Methany's personal history and his confession that would later come,

like I said earlier, it's really hard to tell the facts from his lies.

It sounds like it.

By his own confession, his criminal history began in 1976 where he said he unintentionally

killed a man during a bar fight in Baltimore.

Okay.

This killing was followed by the murder of, he said, two sex workers in 1988 and 1989.

Now you can find some stories that connect a little bit with these dates and the places,

the names you can't really connect to.

He didn't know the names, so it's hard to connect them to him.

I don't know if they were trying to connect them with actual cases, but that's what he

claimed later.

Okay.

And I know they did go back once his confession came and tried to identify these cases that

he was claiming and try to land them up with real cases.

But the first documented murder committed by Joe Methany happened February 22nd, 1994.

This is when he killed 28-year-old Tony Lynn in Gracia.

So he prayed on Tony Lynn because she had been struggling with drug addiction herself

and she hadn't been seen by her family since November of the previous year.

Oh man.

But according to her father, John, she had been trying to get clean in the months leading

up to her death.

Like she was really trying hard, like she was doing her best.

And days after her death, police would, days after he came across her, excuse me, police

would find Tony Lynn's body dumped by the side of Interstate 95 in Baltimore.

When they examined her, unfortunately, she had been sexually assaulted, stabbed and

strangled.

Oh my God.

And then he had just dumped her along the Interstate.

That's so fucked up.

And this is how he saw his victims.

It was just like trash.

Just dumpy where I can.

Yeah.

It's so sad.

He waited about four months until he killed again.

This time it was early July of 1994.

And he killed 39-year-old Catherine Magaziner.

Like Tony Lynn, Kathy had struggled with drug addiction throughout a lot of her adult life.

She had had a couple of arrests on her record and it was mostly for sex work.

This was in South Baltimore mainly.

And according to Joe Matheny on the evening of July 2nd or 3rd, he met Catherine or Kathy,

as people knew her, on Baltimore's south side and convinced her to come back to his

trailer on the Stein lot.

They made a transaction.

Once there, he said that they engaged in sex while she was partially clothed.

But during his confession, he said that he wouldn't say whether the sex was consensual

or not.

So that tells me it was not.

And he also wouldn't say if it was transactional, nothing about that.

So to me, that says it wasn't.

If you see his behavior later with other victims, he's wildly aggressive.

Wildly aggressive.

He does not like being told no.

And I could absolutely see this not being even a transactional thing, which is awful.

But he said about an hour after they'd gotten to the trailer together, he said that he had

attacked Catherine, choking her with his hands until she passed out.

Once she had lost consciousness, he wrapped an extension cord around her neck and strangled

her to death.

Oh, my God.

He then dragged her body to a wooded area only about 40 feet away from the trailer and

buried her in a shallow grave.

That's so sad.

And remember, this is a trailer on his work property.

Yeah, it's not even his.

And then he just buried a victim's body 40 feet from this trailer.

And then eventually underneath the trailer.

Now when he came back into the trailer, he went through her purse.

He took whatever money he could find out of her purse.

And then he gathered up her clothes and the purse and he took them to different areas

of the woods and buried them in a small hole, like several small holes.

And then he covered those with dirt and just left.

Now this is like really gross and rough, what he does next, because he returned to her body

several months later and exhumed her.

And he told investigators, quote, I dug it up and took the head out.

I just took the head and threw it in a box in the trash.

What?

And you notice that he's referring to it as it.

Yeah, that's not her.

Like disgusting.

Yeah.

And that's true.

He took her head off and put it in a box and threw it in the trash.

Months later.

Yeah.

How fucked up is that?

And like, why?

What do you want?

What?

You need to do that.

Also, I just looked up a picture of him.

He is this scary-

He's foul.

He's looking motherfucker.

Yeah, he's foul.

And there's one like mugshot.

A very big guy, too.

He is over six feet tall and I think he was like 450 pounds at one point.

He's a very, like, he's an intimidating guy.

Very intimidating.

And one of his pictures in prison is like this.

Is it the one with his tongue out?

Yes, it's so scary.

It's really foul.

Like, I can't imagine coming across this man when he was like violent.

Yeah, it's, he's really horrifying.

If you look at him up, it's like he's just really a gross person, especially when you

know what he's done.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's, and you were asking like, was that true?

When investigators exhumed her remains two years later, the skull had been taken away

from the body and he had left only the mandible.

So he'd removed the head from the mandible up and the mandible is like the bottom half

of your jaw.

The bottom jaw.

Yeah.

So he took like the top of her teeth up.

So I mean, it's easy.

I guess when it's skeletal that these things are, it's like easy to take that part off,

you know, both like, oh, it's very bizarre.

I just hate it.

So now at this point, he was kind of developing a victim type, obviously, but his next act

deviated from this because in the summer of 1995, he was living in kind of like a large

informal on-house community and it was under the Hanover Street Bridge.

This is along the banks of the Patapsco River in Maryland.

Court documents, they call it, quote, a lawless community where knives, axes, and other weapons

were kept.

That's terrifying.

Yeah.

Among the men living in that camp were two 33-year-old men named Randall Brewer and Randy

Piker.

And apparently there was some kind of dispute between Joe Matheny and these two men.

And on the evening of August 2nd, he bludgeoned them both to death with a woodcutter's axe.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

And then he piled the two bodies on an old mattress in one of the darker parts of camp

and just covered them with an old blanket, some trash, whatever he could find.

He is terrifying.

Yeah.

His, it seems like his temper is outrageous.

And just like his temper seems to like grow and grow the more he does this.

And then it just explodes.

Wow.

Yeah.

Obviously he did not hide these victims bodies very well because they were discovered a few

days later and he was arrested and he was tried in a court for the murders.

But in July, 1996, a jury acquitted him of the charges because, quote, the evidence was

not only insufficient, it indicated he was not the actual suspect.

And after looking at the evidence, I guess the jury felt the crimes were actually committed

by another man who lived in that encampment named Cowboy.

Okay.

And detectives actually found the weapon used in the murder in position and it was in possession

of another man who lived there named Larry Amos.

And they said he had actually stolen that axe from someone and used it to kill another

man.

Larry.

Dowell.

Yeah.

Larry killed somebody with it.

Yes.

And then had that axe in his possession.

It was lawless.

They meant lawless.

They really meant it.

Like, damn.

So that axe being in possession of Cowboy there doesn't really mean anything because

it looks like this axe is just traveling to other people to do awful shit with.

So I don't know.

But they weren't able to connect him definitively to it, which kind of doesn't shock me considering

like no one saw it.

And it could be.

I mean, it could be anybody.

And that axe is traveling around to everybody.

And that clearly like people are willing to kill in that community.

Yeah.

So it's like, wow.

Who knows if he did it or not.

But it looks like I think he did because of what he's done and he claimed to have later.

And not that he's not.

He's a liar.

So who knows.

But like, considering what else he is proven to have done, I'm not shocked by it.

Wow.

But he claimed.

It's just a weird case.

He's a weird guy, a gross monstrous guy.

And it's just a weird case.

It's supposed to have been hard to put together.

It was.

I could see that.

We were trying to figure out like, I want to tell you what was reported.

Right.

And but I want to make sure you know that like some of this is not real.

So like some of this and you're going to hear a very spectacular claim that has no actual

evidence to back it up.

But it's the thing that is really like what everybody looks at for this case.

When you hear it, you might be like, oh, okay, like I might know what this is.

I think I know where we're headed because I saw some pictures that were really untasteful.

Yeah.

But when he was arrested for good in late 1996, he claimed that he had murdered those

men and he said that he did it because he wanted to steal $300 that one of them was

rumored to have had at the time.

Now when he was arrested, he also confessed to drowning another man from that same area

near the river.

But investigators were never able to find a body or connect him to it.

But he waited only four more months after his acquittal before he killed again.

Now on the evening of November 11th, 1996, 23 year old Kimberly Spicer got into an argument

with her mother.

And I guess Kimberly had struggled with drug addiction as well.

And I think her brother, and this is really sad, her brother had actually passed away

of a heroin overdose only the previous week.

Oh, oh my God.

And I think that her mother and her were in an argument or a dispute of some kind while

talking about that, probably talking about her addiction and her struggles.

And maybe that was like a source of contention.

So they fought and then, but her mother said, we would argue a lot.

Like it was a little contentious at that time because of what was happening.

And she said, but, and she would leave the house, like storm out of the house, but she

would always come back.

Yeah.

And so it wasn't this like wild thing that she stormed out of the house and she did.

She said she would always leave, but she would always come back.

And her mom, Kathy Price said that.

And that night she left the house and went to the south side bar.

That's where she ran into Joe Mcthaney.

Now according to Joe Mcthaney's confession, I want to make sure that you know this, he

convinced him to go back to his trailer on the Stein's lot for transactional sex.

And when they got there, he stabbed her 26 times in the face and neck with a black handled

knife.

Oh my God.

And then he said he wrapped her body in a red tarp and hit it so he could figure out

what to do.

And did he say what, like why all of a sudden he just decided to stab her that many times?

He doesn't really provide a lot of information about why he does these things.

At one point he says he really, he just likes killing people.

It sounds like it.

Yeah.

Does he say whether or not he's like under the influence at any, during any of these

things?

Every once in a while, he will, I don't think he really uses that as a, as a reason to be

quite.

Yeah, I think it's just like incidental.

If he was.

Wow.

Now, two weeks later, Mothaney Luard, 37 year old Rita Kemper, back to his trailer on the

night of December 8th.

When they got there, he tried to have sex with her and she refused him.

She said, absolutely not.

And she had come there just to like hang out.

She was like, no.

And they apparently had met before Rita Kemper and him, like they had moved in the same kind

of social circles a little bit.

So they knew of each other.

Like he knew her.

And that's probably why she felt comfortable going back to his home.

Yeah, exactly.

So she just thought, okay, I kind of know this guy.

So like that's fine.

Now, but that night she said, and she said like he was like a normal guy, like I've never

seen him lose his temper.

I saw him the way that everybody else saw him, which is like this funny guy and like

he's just a jovial guy.

So scary that somebody can present that way and then be this.

And she actually said his nickname in the group of friends was tiny because he's such

like a big guy.

Wow.

And so she referred to him as tiny when she talked to him, talked about him.

And when she testified to a jury later, which by the way, she gets out of this, Kemper told

the jury that that night she just saw a totally different guy.

She said, you could see evil in him.

Whatever tiny wanted to do that night, he was going to do, oh my God.

Now according to Rita Kemper, she genuinely thought, she said, I believed he was trying

to kill me.

I believe that.

Probably was.

And she said that he was screaming at her, scream all you want.

I'm going to kill you and bury you in the woods with the other girls.

That's what he was saying.

Can you imagine being in that position?

No.

And she said.

And surviving.

Exactly.

And she testified saying that after they got to the trailer, he slapped her in the face

twice, demanded that she take her pants off, was basically going to rape her.

And somehow he was distracted for just even a second by something.

And she managed to open the door and run out the door.

But he chased her.

Oh my God.

And imagine this guy running after you.

It reminds me of like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, like how leather face like runs full speed

and it scares the shit out of me because he's like this big guy.

It's the same kind of thing.

He chased her, caught her and started choking her and dragged her back inside the trailer.

Then he ripped her pants off and was about to sexually assault her, but she was able

to get out of his grasp and escaped out an open window and just ran for help.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

She is incredible.

Rita Kemper.

Now, it's it's pretty unclear whether she immediately went to police to report this

assault or whether like it was investigated sometime later, like it's a little unclear

about that.

Okay.

Police clearly escalating violence against sex workers and people he considered vulnerable

in the Baltimore area was clearly like at a, at the height, at this point, like at a

teetering point.

And this is when it was going to come to an end because an anonymous employee at Stein

and Sons called police and said that Joe Matheny, quote, approached him and told him that he

killed a girl and needed help burying the body.

Dude.

So they acted on this tip and investigators searched the area around Joe Matheny's trailer

on December 15th and that is when they discovered the body of Kimberly Spicer buried under the

trailer because remember Kimberly Spicer was the one where he had hid her, quote, unquote,

until he could figure out what to do.

Right.

And it's just like, it's like unthinkable, like truly unthinkable.

And it was Catherine who was buried 40 feet away from the trailer.

Right.

And now he's gone and asked another coworker to help him bury Kimberly Spicer's body

somewhere, but no, she was found.

So they were able to go into the trailer as well at this point because they had due cause.

They said search warrant, search warrant.

And so they were able to get some evidence of a potential crime scene inside as well.

So the detective in charge of the case, Homer Pennington, said, quote, furniture had been

removed from the suspect's trailer and attempts had been made to clean up blood stains.

I bet.

And they believe that this was definitely the murder site.

So after they had discovered Kimberly Spicer's body, that was obviously grounds for an arrest

warrant and they arrested him outs and they arrested Joe Matheny and also Joseph Stein,

the owner of the Stein and Sons company on suspicion of murder because they were seen

leaving a company Christmas party together that evening.

Oh, well, and it's on his property too, so you're fucked.

So Joe Matheny was charged with first degree murder and was held without bail.

And Stein was charged with being a necessary after the fact of homicide.

And he was suspected of helping dispose of evidence even.

The charges against Stein would eventually be dropped pretty shortly after.

Investigators learned that he was completely unaware of the murders.

Any illegal activities that had taken place on that property.

He didn't know about.

And he wasn't.

He did not destroy anything up according to the investigation.

They found nothing.

All right.

No evidence that he had any idea.

Well, that's good that he was literally just trying to help this guy out by letting him

live there.

And he had no idea.

Yeah.

Days later, though, after a search of the property, they found a 25 caliber handgun and

Stein was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of a handgun.

So apparently he's a felon dating back to 1985 because he was charged and convicted

of arson in 1985.

So although there's no evidence of him being like a continuous felon of like just constantly

committing crimes since then, he did do some arson once he had a 25 caliber handgun on

his property and you're not supposed to be in possession of a handgun as a felon.

So that's a problem.

So that was interesting.

But once Joe Matheny was charged with murder, he was just ready to confess and he seemed

very eager to tell all his stories.

All the violent crimes he'd supposedly committed over, you know, two decades at this point.

He provided detectives with details on the murder of Kimberly Spicer.

And he also confessed to the murders of Catherine Magazine and Tony Lynn and Gracia and would

later lead investigators to Catherine's body less than 50 feet from where they had discovered

Kimberly Spicer, which must have been also a little wild for investigators knowing that

they were within 40 feet of another murder victim's body when they found Kimberly Spicer

and had no idea.

No idea.

Now, and he led them there like eagerly led them.

There's pictures.

Yeah.

By the time the interview had concluded, Joe Matheny had confessed to a total of between

seven and 10 murders he fluctuated, including Kim Spicer, Catherine Magazine, Tony Lynn

and Gracia, Randall Brewer, Randy Piker, and a third man he claimed to have drowned

at that encampment that he was staying at.

And also the man outside the bar in 1976 and three sex workers he claimed to have picked

up on Washington Boulevard in 1988 and 1989.

He would pull some of those off sometimes, put them back on, admit to this many, admit

to that many, throw these ones on, so it really fluctuated the amount of people, but they

were really only able to find him at that time that he had definitely committed murder

against Kimberly Spicer, Catherine Magazine, and Tony Lynn and Gracia.

In addition to those three murder charges, he was also charged with the kidnapping and

assault of Rita Kemper a few weeks earlier.

And during his interview, detectives asked him whether he had intended to kill Kemper.

And he said, yeah, I don't know really what I was going to do because she got away.

What?

That is so haunting.

Like, just like, yeah, I was going to kill that human being.

But I didn't know what I was going to do.

She got away.

So I guess I could.

Okay.

I guess I couldn't.

Again, the announcement came as a shock to everyone who knew him.

Like, no one was ready to hear that he was this awful monster.

It's so scary to think that people can turn it on and off so easily.

Yeah.

Another bartender named Lisa Reynolds, who worked at a bar or worked at a bar called

the Bordeaux Wine Bar and Restaurant.

It was a restaurant bar that Methany went to often to also drink, play pool, all that

stuff.

Yeah.

She told reporters, everybody liked him.

He was very friendly.

And even the lawyer who defended him on the axe murder charge, like the one of the two

guys in the encampment, was like shocked by his confessions, was like, I don't know if

I believe them.

Like they don't line up.

He said, I found him to be very honest and direct.

He has a sophisticated sense of humor, and he always was very, very respectful of me.

He was never rude or violent.

That's so insane.

Yeah.

Joseph Stein's daughter, Lisa, however, had other feelings about him and said, I suspected

he was guilty, but I wanted to believe he didn't do it.

It's interesting that it seems like some guys are like, he was such a good guy.

There are women that said it.

Yeah.

Because there's Lisa and Connie, the two bartenders, who were like, he was great.

Right.

But it is interesting that the daughter was like, yeah, I saw another side of him.

Yeah.

Well, she's just like, I suspect he probably did it, but she's also like, I hope he didn't.

Yeah.

Because that sucks.

Right.

After his arrest and the confessions, he agreed to lead police to Catherine Magazine's grave,

like I said before.

And although he was cooperating with the locations, like he was like, yes, I will lead you to

these bodies, he was no help with identifying these women.

In his first confession, he admitted to strangling a sex worker to death and burying her body

near the trailer.

That's what he said.

But when they asked her name, he said, haven't got a clue.

And that was Catherine.

That's so sad.

Yeah.

Now, do you think maybe because, I mean, because of like his constant drug use, maybe he didn't.

No, I think he just didn't care.

You think that that's what it was?

Yeah.

I don't think this can be like, I don't even think it's like cloudy, like whatever.

I think he literally just didn't care.

They didn't even learn.

Yeah.

Because the way he's like, I haven't got a clue.

Why would I give a shit about that?

Like it was said like that, like very like, why would I have her name?

Like just brushed it off.

Like Luvon.

He's just gross.

Yeah.

Because this is such a strange case and was such a strange case at the time, they needed

some help with the recovery and identification process because he's not giving them anything.

And unfortunately, he has picked a couple of victims that didn't have direct ties with

their families at the moment.

So it was hard to identify.

So Baltimore investigators called in the assistance of William Rodriguez, who was one

of a very small number of board certified forensic anthropologists in the county or

in the country.

Excuse me.

Such a cool job.

And Rodriguez is such an important job.

Yeah.

Rodriguez had also worked as a medical examiner for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology

and had worked on some really high profile cases where he assisted in identifying like

victims of mass casualty cases.

One of these was the 1994 crash of US Air Flight 427 that went down near Pittsburgh.

Those kind of things where mass casualty events happen like that and people have to be identified.

I can't imagine the daunting task of that.

He also worked on the case of a crash of two Blackhawk helicopters during the Iraq war

in 1994.

So he was an expert and he was also an expert on decomposition and the effects of the natural

environment on decomposing human remains like the body farm.

This was a perfect case for him to be put on because Catherine's remains had been buried

and reburied in the woods for two years because he had exhumed her.

So this put the investigators at a disadvantage when it came to determining what damage was

done by methane and what damage was done by the environment and natural causes.

Days after the remains were exhumed, Rodriguez was able to identify Catherine through dental

records matched to whatever remaining teeth were in the lower mandible that he left.

He's a rock star.

And thank goodness that that lower mandible had teeth left on and that it was left there

because it helped identify her.

Now, Joe Methany's confessions provided investigators with very detailed accounts of the violent

sexual assault and murders that he committed on these women.

But as they investigated some more of the claims, they started to wonder how much of

this is truth and how much of this is exaggerated.

They were able to say he is violent.

He's a violent monster.

Clearly.

He's a violent sexual offender.

He's a violent murderer.

But then there were other things, like this is where it's going to get kind of wild.

At one point, he told investigators that he'd partially cannibalized some of the victims

and had even served some of these victims' remains to patrons of a food stand that he

had.

He said, quote, I cut the meat up and put it in some Tupperware bowls, then put it in

the freezer.

I opened up a little open pit beef stand.

I had real roast beef and pork sandwiches.

They were very good.

The human body taste was very similar to pork if you mix it together.

No one can tell the difference.

Jesus Christ.

Of course, everyone seized onto this part in the press because who wouldn't?

Why wouldn't that shock literally everyone?

But it should be noted here that there is no evidence of him having a sandwich stand of

any kind.

Maybe he did.

Yeah, because he wouldn't go through the process of getting a permit and everything.

But I could find nothing that said nobody who said they went to that stand, nobody who

saw that stand, no business having to do with that stand, nothing.

Who knows?

Right.

He absolutely could have.

Is that any sense capable of it?

But I think this is one of those things that he said to shock people.

Because all of the victims that were found were intact aside from the mandible being

left, right?

That's what it seems like.

He could be trying to say these are the other victims that you can't find the bodies of.

And then you would also think that if he was living at least in that trailer at the time,

they would find evidence of that.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

But I think it's him lying, because the other thing is, other than that trailer, it doesn't

sound like he had a set up home.

So where was he really doing?

Exactly.

Where would he have been able to do that?

Exactly.

So I think it's just him lying.

What a fucked up thing to really fucked up lie.

And I think he said he would have kept going until Rita Kemper got away.

Like he would have kept going after her.

And he said, and this is like really gross.

He said, everything was going pretty good until I ran out of my special meat.

So I lured another bitch up to my trailer.

I got her in there and started to rip her clothes off and knocking 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.

And he's talking about Rita Kemper.

And she said he was screaming in her face, scream all you want.

Oh my God.

So that is true.

That's like a nightmare.

Now this is how he described her getting away, by the way.

He said, I turned around for a split second and that was my mistake.

She ran out the door before I could get to her.

There was an eight foot chain link fence with barbed wire on top of it around the front

of the company.

There was a stack of wooden pallets next to the fence about 10 feet high.

That bitch scaled those pallets like a monkey and jumped the fence and ran down to the main

road where some guy in a pickup truck picked her up and took her to a nearby gas station

where they called the cops.

Holy shit.

She's killed a 10 foot pallet.

Yeah.

Good for her.

And he said, well, I knew the cops were on the way, but I didn't run.

I gathered her up her clothes and grabbed the keys to the gate and went out and opened

it.

As soon as I stepped out the gate, a cop car pulled up and the cop jumped out and pulled

his gun on me and told me to get on the ground.

And that's where it all came to an end.

But that's not how that happened.

Right.

I was like, wait, I think I missed that part.

Exactly.

That's not how it happened, but that was part of his confession.

She was also like, hey, the cops, they can talk to each other and check each other's

call logs.

They know how it happened.

And he supposedly ended his confession with this very crass ending.

He said, well, that's my story, horrible, but true.

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.

Ha ha.

Jesus.

Yep.

Now, within days of his arrest, his defense attorney, Margaret Mead, told reporters, I

don't know if what the state is calling a confession is really a confession, which makes sense

for a defense attorney to say, but also like, yeah, probably not.

She said that Methany was depressed, confused, and under a lot of medication when he made

that confession.

And as far as she knew, any crimes committed were done, quote, under the influence of heroin,

cocaine, or alcohol.

It doesn't mean he didn't murder people.

I'm like, you still can't murder people like that doesn't fix that.

It's always against the law.

Yeah.

What's wild to me about this is she said that then in relation, so she said that in relation

to the confessions about the murders of Catherine, Tony, and Kimberly, she said, I have no

reason not to believe him.

That's what she told the later reporters.

So she said the confession is bullshit, but I have no reason to not believe it.

I don't know if the state, what the state is calling a confession is really a confession.

And then she said, he's depressed, confused, under a lot of medication, we can't really

believe him.

Don't listen to what he says.

But I don't have any reason.

But then she says, I have no reason not to believe him.

And then she said, I've always found him to be forthright and honest.

You just fucked yourself, ma'am.

Like what?

Like you literally what?

I feel like the defenses that we're talking about lately, like some of them, I'm just

like, you wrote that down.

Yeah.

Like what?

Then I'm like, was that meant to just confuse people?

Maybe it was a tactic.

Maybe it's just like a tactic to confuse people.

But I'm like, I don't know if you should confuse people.

Like that's just going to have a mistrial.

That's not going to win your case.

But she also insisted that methanian system.

He adamantly denies that Joseph Stein had any knowledge or participated in any of these

crimes.

Okay.

So he's saying like he had nothing to do.

That's also his bro.

So.

Well, and he, he constantly allowed him to work there, allowed him to stay there.

So of course he's going to, I don't know if it doesn't sound like there's any evidence

to connect Joseph Stein to any of these crimes.

So I'll say that.

It sounds like he was legally cleared.

Yeah.

Now, after working to verify all the claims that he started making in his confession,

investigators were pretty confident, at least about his confessions to the murders of Catherine

Kimberly and Tony Lynn.

So on January 30th, Joe Matheny was indicted for the three killings and a trial date was

set for March of, in, for, in March of 1997.

But by the time the arrangement came in March, the detectives have been unable to find any

evidence conclusively linking him to the murder of Tony Lynn and Gracia.

Really?

So they had forced the district attorney Patricia Jessamy to drop the charges and the third

murder because they didn't have sufficient evidence, even though he confessed to it.

And he, that was, he did not lead them to that body?

No, he did not.

Oh, okay, okay.

Yeah.

Now, despite confessing to the killings, he did plead not guilty to the murders of Catherine

and Kimberly and a trial date for that was set for July 8th, 1997.

Okay.

So now we're only going to be able to get them on the two.

That's sad.

So in a press conference following that arraignment, Jessamy, the district attorney, indicated

that she intended to seek the death penalty.

This would be the first time it was invoked in Maryland since 1993.

Wow.

According to Margaret Mead, the, the defense attorney, she said the district attorney's

office had originally offered a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility

of parole in exchange for a plea of guilty.

But Margaret Mead said that was not a reasonable plea.

Guilty?

Yeah.

She, she was not going to allow him to plead guilty.

Okay.

She's like, yeah, let's just go up against the death penalty instead.

Let's try that.

Okay.

So July 8th was not his trial because his attorney petitioned for a change of venue.

They said, quote, I think with the facts of this case, it would be better off if this

weren't another jurisdiction, but don't worry because while he was awaiting that trial,

he went on trial for the kidnapping and assault of Rita Kemper in November of 1997.

The prosecution for this case went about it by showing the jury that Methany was a violent,

unpredictable predator who lost it when Rita Kemper refused his very aggressive advances.

And they claimed he was had every intent on killing her and they were 100% right in

my opinion.

Absa fucking Lutely.

But his defense just said, and I quote, prosecutors were taking a simple dispute between Methany

and Kemper and having it blown up to include attempted murder, kidnapping and attempted

rape.

I'm sorry, but are you kidding me?

A simple motherfucking dispute ends in me scaling a 10 foot pallet and then hopping over a

barbed wire fence.

Also?

Nothing simple about that.

He later confesses to it.

He didn't confess to it at this point, but he got confessed to it later, like he definitely

did this.

Of course he did.

It's exactly how Rita Kemper said it happened.

It's how she said it happened and up until the point where he says the cop showed up.

Yeah.

It's exactly how he said it.

On November 17th, after a very short deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty in

the attempted murder of Kemper, but found him guilty of the assault kidnapping and sexual

assault charges.

And he did get 50 years in prison for this.

Good.

This is before he even goes on trial for murder.

So he's already in there.

He's already in there for 50 years.

Holy shit.

I'm very interested as to why they didn't find him guilty on the attempted murder.

I think maybe they just couldn't get attempted murder.

I feel like it's a tough one.

It's a hard one to prove.

This may have led to how they found Methany on Sunday, March 22nd in his jail cell.

This sentence.

Prison guards found him unconscious and bleeding heavily from a wound to his neck.

He was transported to the University of Maryland Medical Center for treatment and he lived.

I saw that.

But after multiple delays, he finally did go on trial for this Kimberly Spicer murder

on April 23rd, 1997 in a bench trial in the Baltimore Circuit Court.

Also, like, wait a minute.

You're self-loathing guilty.

Yeah.

Like, we already know you are.

Yeah, exactly.

The prosecution's case was pretty much the same kind of thing.

Methany was a violent predator who, when refused by any women, just took what he wanted

aggressively.

However, he could.

We see that.

And they used the confession as some of the most damning evidence against him and it was

played in full for the court.

That must have been horrible to hear.

On the tape, he can be heard saying, I killed her.

I'm a very sick person.

I need help.

Okay.

Yeah.

And after that, prosecutors called Detective Homer Pennington to the stand and he testified

that Methany was alert and cooperative at the time of the interview and gave interviewers

every reason to believe he was being truthful about the murders of Catherine and Kimberly.

Yeah.

Now, after the kidnapping and attempted rape and murder trial of Rita Kemper, his defense

team probably knew this wasn't going to go their way.

Props.

So they went about it by just kind of mitigating any further and previous damages that they

could.

Mead told the court that there were, quote, mitigating factors in Methany's history,

like his drug addiction and being raised in a supposedly abusive household.

And this led him down a path, you know, of addiction and violence and the hard relationships

with women basically going on that whole train.

It's like she got plenty of people grow up in horrible, horrible households.

Plenty of people struggle with addiction and don't murder people.

Exactly.

After three weeks of the trial, Judge Clifton Gordy found Methany guilty of the first degree

murder of Kimberly Spicer because he forewent a jury trial.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

And although the district attorney's office did want that death penalty, Judge Gordy said

that they, quote, had failed to establish that Methany robbed Spicer or sexually assaulted

her while she was alive.

Either of these things would have made him eligible for the death penalty.

What a wild world we live in.

Yeah, it's wild to me that, like, murder doesn't constitute the death penalty alone.

You have to be sexually assaulted while you're still alive.

That's why the death penalty is a wild thing.

It is weird.

It's a wild thing.

I didn't realize that was part of it.

It's a weird.

At least in Maryland, I guess.

Weird scenario.

Yeah.

Now that the Kimberly Spicer trial was done and he had been found guilty and got life,

the trial for Catherine Magazine was upon them and the death penalty was again going

to be sought for this one.

So on September 25th, Joe Methany actually chose to rescind his not guilty plea and entered

a guilty plea to the murder of Catherine.

This time, he opted for a jury for the sentencing phase, which is interesting, throwing everybody

around.

Yeah.

During the sentencing hearing, the prosecution said that Joe Methany had committed a capital

offense, which constituted capital punishment.

They said he murdered Catherine, stole her clothing and purse and had later buried, had

buried it on the steinlot and they provided evidence.

They played his initial confession where he not only admitted to murdering Catherine,

but also said he took her belongings and later desecrated her body, all which was done for

quote, a sense of power and because he got a rush out of it.

And he did say this himself during his confession.

He said his murder rampages started as revenge, he said, but ended up as quote, a passion

for the taste and overwhelming sense of power that one gets from taking another's life.

Wow.

After four days of testimony, the jury deliberated for just two hours and then sentenced Joe

Methany to death along with a concurrent sentence of 10 years for the robbery, which if they

were going by the requirements laid out to them by Judge Gordy, they were, I guess, right

with this sentencing.

Beginning before the judge at sentencing, he told the jury, quote, the words I'm sorry

will never come out for they would be a lie.

I'm more than willing to give up my life for what I've done to have God judge me and send

me to hell for what I've done.

So he literally said, you will never hear me say I'm sorry, because that would just

be a lie.

I'm not sorry.

Wow.

In a press conference after the hearing, his defense team told reporters that his statement

to the jury, quote, belies his feelings of guilt and self-hatred, but he got what he

wanted.

Okay.

Good try.

Good try with that one.

So in 2000, Joe Methany's death sentence came under mandatory review by the Court of

Appeals.

That Constitution thing.

And although the justices agreed with the conviction, they said the prosecution had failed to present

sufficient evidence to support the claim of robbery as an aggravating circumstance deserving

a death sentence.

That's also happening a lot lately in our cases.

Yeah, it is.

It's a factor, but it's not an aggravating factor.

Yeah, it's true.

That is.

That's funny.

Now, the issue wasn't whether he had killed and robbed Catherine.

Like the justices were like, yes, we agree with all that.

It was if he robbed her all.

But whether he had murdered the woman in the commission of a robbery, which would make that

legible for death penalty.

And they reviewed the case and the court determined that he had taken magazineers' belongings

after killing her, but it was done primarily to get rid of evidence and to take what little

cash she had as an afterthought.

It wasn't the primary thing.

Or like we were just saying, an aggravating circumstance.

Now in the final report, Justice James Smith said, Methany was charged with robbery only

because the body and the clothing were found in different locations.

Another person who had killed their victim, but buried the victim in her clothes, would

not qualify for the death penalty.

So as a result, all his convictions were upheld, but the death sentence was vacated, and this

case was sent back to the lower court for resendencing, which he did end up getting

sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

So he was quickly transported to Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland.

Sweet.

He later, during more confessions, would claim he had a six-year-old son with a girlfriend.

And one day while he was at work, as a truck driver, she took him.

And he never found them.

And he later said this girlfriend ran off with another man, took their six-year-old

son with them, eventually the six-year-old son ended up in social service custody because

of neglect and abuse.

And he went off to find them and kill them, like the man and his girlfriend and anyone

who got in his way.

So this was his way of being like, this is why I did this, revenge.

And in his confession, he said he killed three men and four women on his way to this revenge.

He said, two men, I chopped up with an ax under a bridge in South Baltimore.

This is because he said they were two men who did drugs with his old lady.

And they wouldn't give him any information about her, so he killed them.

He said, quote, I was found not guilty for them because they couldn't prove I did it.

He then said, under that same bridge, I killed two women and one man who was fishing and

just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I weighed down their bodies and put them in the river.

I showed the police where I put them about three years later, but they couldn't find

them, so they couldn't charge me for them.

He claimed he was it was a very busy night for him that night, five murders in seven

hours.

Exactly.

That's just it up face like, no, I was like, I don't think so.

I found no record of this man ever having a child, by the way.

Yeah.

No record.

He can't find it.

It sounds like he's just trying to be like, I am such a doting father and that's why this

all happened.

He did not have a child.

Yeah.

Joe Matheny does not have a child.

Not one he knew about.

That's for sure.

Now on the afternoon of Sunday, August 5th, 2017, guards at the Western Correctional

Institution in Cumberland discovered Joe Matheny, unresponsive in his cell around 3 p.m.

He was pronounced dead a short time later and an investigation was launched to determine

the cause and circumstances of his death.

But to this day, there appears to be no cause of death that has been released to the public.

No one knows what happened there.

Nobody knows.

We do not.

It's interesting.

So that is the wild and horrifying and disgusting and confusing story of Joe Matheny.

That was a particularly brutal one.

Yeah.

It's just upsetting.

And it's so sad that one of the victim's mothers was like, she always came back.

That's the thing, like she did leave when we would have an argument, but always.

That's so sad.

Yeah.

She was probably just waiting for her daughter to come back and then she finds out what exactly

would happen to her.

It's like, oh my God.

Yeah.

So.

Wow.

And that was a really rough case.

It's just a case that makes you feel really gross afterwards.

Yeah.

It's just bizarre.

And the fact, so whenever these people go after people who they deem to be unworthy

of being missed, you know, that's when it really is like, ugh.

It's such an unsettling case, too, because as much as he is a liar, I do wonder.

Well, you just don't know.

That's the thing.

That's the problem is you don't know the bounds of his lies.

And especially where he.

Like Albert Fish.

Yeah.

Well, and especially where he lived in that community for so long and like, yeah, you

know, like.

There's truths in there.

Yeah.

Like it's not all lies, but he definitely is exaggerating a lot of it.

I don't believe there's any human meat burgers anywhere.

No, I don't think so either.

You know, I don't think that's a thing.

That's so gross.

I think it was him trying to be like extra gross.

Well, and I think that and him to further terrify people because every time you go to

a fucking meat counter, think of me.

It's like his little way of being like, I'm the boogeyman, you know, like, no, I don't

even believe in him.

But I hope he's there.

I hope you're somewhere terrible.

Yeah.

That's for sure.

Somewhere gross.

Yeah.

Or somewhere really clean, because I think that would stress you out more.

Yeah.

You know, just in like a weird, like, white cubicle.

Yeah.

Just that's it.

And just drive you crazy.

Whoa.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Terrible story.

That was interesting.

I commend you for being able to put that together.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

With the help of Dave.

Oh, and Dave, I commend Dave always.

That's my best friend.

That's my best friend.

That's my best friend.

He's a real bad bitch.

He is.

It's true.

Dave's like the baddest bitch.

He is the baddest bitch.

You hear that, Dave?

Well, guys, you guys are also the baddest bitches and we love you.

We hope you keep listening.

We hope you keep it weird.

If I have to tell you not to keep it this weird, you should get your priorities and check,

baby.

Don't be a duck.

Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Morbid early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the Amazon Music app today or you can listen ad-free with Wondery Plus and

Apple Podcasts.

Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.

On December 15, 1996, Baltimore police discovered the body of twenty-three-year-old Kimberly Spicer buried under a trailer on the property of a pallet factory in the city’s southwest side. Later that day, police arrested Joseph Methainy, a man who lived and worked at the factory where Spicer’s body was discovered. It didn’t take long for police to solidly connect Methainy to the murders of two additional Baltimore women as well. In his wild confessions he claimed massive victim numbers and even cannibalism. 




Thanks to Dave White for research assistance!




References

Associated Press. 1997. "Man's trial in slaying of 2 women is postponed; change of venue sought." Baltimore Sun, July 8: 4B.




—. 1996. "Accused killer called fun-loving." Daily Times, December 20: 2.




—. 1997. "Mount Airy scientits finds where the bones are buried." Star-Democrat, February 5: 13.




—. 1998. "Officials: Methainy attempted suicide ." Star-Democrat, March 24: 6.




—. 1996. "'Practical joker' held in 3 slayings." The Capital, December 20: 14.




—. 1997. "Suspected serial killer indicted." The Daily Times, January 29: 2.




Hermann, Peter. 1996. "Suspect charged in 2 more slayings." Baltimore Sun, December 19: 25.




—. 1996. "Suspect gives police details of 4 slayings." Baltimore Sun, December 21: 1A.




—. 1996. "Suspect in slaying says he killed 2 others Police searches yield." Baltimore Sun, December 18.




Higham, Scott. 1998. "Methainy found guilty of killing woman." Baltimore Sun, May 15: 8B.




Hopper, Dale. 1997. "Murder suspect convicted of kidnapping, assault." Star-Democrat, November 18: 3.




Investigation Discovery. 2016. Serial killer Joe 'The Cannibal' Methainy, served human burgers at his BBQ stand, dead in cell. December 19. Accessed February 27, 2023. https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/serial-killer/joe-the-cannibal-Methainy-the-serial-killer-with-a-penchant-for-human-flesh-burgers.




Irwin, Richard. 1996. "2 men charged in woman's stabbing death." Baltimore Sun, December 16: 2B.




Jacobson, Joan. 2000. "Court voids death verdict." Baltimore Sun, July 25: 11.




—. 1998. "Killer given death penalty." Baltimore Sun, November 14: 1.




—. 1998. "Methainy sentencing testimony begins." Baltimore Sun, November 10: 27.




James, Michael. 1997. "As police sift claims, families seek solace." Baltimore Sun, January 13: 1.




Methainy v. State of Maryland. 2000. 149 (Court of Appeals of Maryland, July 24).




Pekkanen, Sarah. 1998. "Suspect's confession to killing played in court." Baltimore Sun, May 1: 1B.




Penn, Ivan. 1997. "Slaying suspect on trial in attempted murder." Baltimore Sun, November 6: 11B.




—. 1997. "Woman describes night of attack." Baltimore Sun, November 7: 7B.




Prudente, Tim. 2017. "Convicted murderer dead in his cell." Baltimore Sun, August 8: A2.




Shatzkin, Kate. 1997. "Death penalty to be sought in slayings of 2." Baltimore Sun, March 21.




See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.