The Misery Machine - Joe Metheny: The Baltimore Cannibal? [TRUE CRIME]

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Thank you all so much for your request - you asked, and we listened! This week, Yergy and Drewby take a trip south to Baltimore to review the case of Joe Metheny. Was Joe a brutal serial killer? Yes. Was he operating alone and being protected by people way more powerful than him? Find out. We also get to answer the question if he was actually serving up his victims in roast beef sandwiches to his coworkers. A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Levi's Adoption Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/d658a3a7 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://vocal.media/criminal/joe-metheny-the-man-of-drugs-and-prostitutes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Metheny https://murderpedia.org/male.M/m/metheny-joe.htm https://random-times.com/2020/04/15/joe-metheny-the-serial-killer-who-made-his-victims-into-hamburgers/ https://allthatsinteresting.com/joe-metheny https://didyouknowfacts.com/serial-killer-sold-human-bbq-burgers/ https://caselaw.findlaw.com/md-court-of-appeals/1035199.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/joe-metheny-dead-serial-killer-human-flesh-sandwiches-bbq-women-victims-maryland-dies-62-a7882141.html https://crimeviral.com/2020/04/meet-serial-killer-joe-metheny-who-sold-human-flesh-sandwiches/ https://www.grunge.com/287897/the-grizzly-crimes-of-joe-metheny/ https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1996-12-16-1996351053-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1996-12-21-1996356032-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1997-11-07-1997311100-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-2002-05-12-0205120371-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1998-04-24-1998114083-story.html    

Hi, we're the Missouri Machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And this week, we listen to your suggestions. We're doing the Joe Methany case. And through our deep dive, we found a lot of information that hasn't been put in any YouTube video or podcast episode about Joe Metheny. So we think you'll be learning a lot of new things today, especially his ties to organized crime. Yes, I was really surprised because it was nothing I had ever heard of before.

And if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. We asked you last week to get us to 4,000 subscribers. We are just shy of 4,100 subscribers. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much for the help. Sorry about the wind right now. It's kind of a wind tunnel in here, but it's pretty out. Yeah, it's a little crazy out.

We're in Lewiston right now. But without further ado, Joe Methany. Joseph Roy Methany was a neglected child. He grew up in Essex, Maryland, as one of six children, spending part of his childhood in West Virginia. His father, a severe alcoholic, died in a car accident when Joe was only six years old. He had often been sent to live with other families as a child while his parents did whatever they felt like. This is, of course, according only to Joe Methany himself.

His mother, Jean Methany, whom Joe said for a long time was actually dead, has said that although they were somewhat poor, she claimed to have given her children a normal family life and worked to support her children as a barmaid, a waitress, and a food, truck driver after Joe's father had died. She disputes Joe's claims of sending her children away to live with other families, insisting that they never went hungry and that they never had to rely on any sort of government assistance to get by. Nevertheless, Joe's early life will always be a point of debate, as only Joe himself and his mother have ever publicly weighed in on it.

His siblings have never given any interviews, and their names are not widely known. According to his mother, he was an above average student, always polite and was never rude. She said, quote, he was smart and had a good childhood. If he was neglected, it was his own fault. It was a pretty good home, end quote. Methany joined the Army shortly after his 18th birthday in 1973. He claimed he had served a tour in Vietnam with an artillery unit where he became addicted to heroin. However, his mother disputes this, claiming that he was only stationed in Germany during his service.

His tour of Vietnam could not be verified in public reports and direct U.S. involvement in Vietnam had ended in August of 1973, where the last American troops pulled out in 1975. It had been reported in the Baltimore Sun that Joe studied physics while in the Army for a year and a half, where he was a field artillery soldier and was honorably discharged. His mother said that Joe never contacted her after the military, staying, quote, he just kept drifting further and further away. I think the worst thing that ever happened to him was drugs. It's a sad, sad story, end quote.

After that, he worked at various jobs, including the Sparrow Point shipyards and for a liquor distributor. In 1988, he began working at Joe Stein and Sons, which was a pallet company. He lived in what are now vacant row houses under the Patapsco River Bridge in a community of homeless men that they called Tent City, and then later in a trailer on the pallet company's grounds. He had a young son in foster care. Co-workers describe a complex personality. In one respect, he is a gentle giant named Tiny, standing at more than six feet tall and weighing 230 pounds with a tear-drop tattoo. He loved to draw large cartoon characters and play video games.

But he also had a temper and threatened co-workers and the patrons of a bar where he hung out and played pool. He drank heavily going through a bottle of Southern Comfort Whiskey each night in his rundown trailer, furnished with two chairs, a couch, a television set, and an electric heater. He surrounded the trailer with stacked pallets. While details of Methany's life are disputed, and many are hazy and missing. Most would look at these events so far and think it to be a sad and unfortunate life for someone to live. And maybe you would assume that Methanese life would end down some road of self-destruction. Unfortunately, the next chapter of Methany's story is a dark one that destroyed the lives of many people in absolutely grotesque fashion.

Joe Methany strangled 39-year-old sex worker Kathy Ann Magazineer to death in 1994. She was buried in a shallow grave on his job site, which was the pallet factory. Kathy's body was not found for two years. He also said that six months after killing her, he dug up her skeleton, took her head, engaged in a sexual act, I guess you could say, and then put the head in a box and threw it in the garbage. This is why it's hard to know details about murders like this because it comes down to what the killer wants to disclose, whether it's truthful or not. They tend to be the final say in history. This is going to become more important as we get further into some of these killings.

He was actually arrested and put on trial for murder in 1995 for allegedly killing two 33-year-old homeless men, Randy Piker and Randall Brewer, with of all things, an axe. The butchery took place under Baltimore's Hanover Street Bridge, a place known for being a hobo encampment, and a location where folks went to use illicit drugs. After being used to kill Brewer and Piker, the same axe was stolen and used by a man named Larry Amos to kill another homeless man, Everett W. Dowell. For my understanding, what happened is that Methany just threw the axe away and Amos found it, took it, and then went and killed somebody else with it. And this worked out in Methanese favor and some just absolute stroke of luck. So all bodies of the aforementioned were discovered on August 2nd, 1995, which was the same day Dawa was killed. Larry Amos was then arrested in charge with first-degree murder, but was eventually found guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter, and was released after serving one year, nine months of his eight-year sentence.

Because, you know, apparently you can just kill a homeless person back then and serve less than two years. on a manslaughter charge. One member of the jury was not convinced that Methany was guilty of the two murders of Piker and Brewer. And so the jury concluded finally in July of 1996 that there wasn't enough evidence to convict him and Methany was acquitted of all charges.

He later said that he did indeed commit those murders that he was originally tried for. In the middle of November of 1996, Methany killed 23-year-old Kimberly Lynn Spicer by stabbing her repeatedly with a knife. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of information out there regarding Spicer, and it pains us that we're forced to keep the statement of her demise so brief. However, she is the only victim in which we were able to find a picture of. December 8, 1996, Methany kidnapped and attempt to sexually assault his friend Rita Kemper.

They'd befriended each other as they had shared drugs, mostly cocaine. According to prosecutors, they were in Methany's trailers together when she refused to have sex with him. She ran out of the trailer and he chased her. Apparently also said to her, quote, I'm going to kill you and bury you in the woods with the other girls, end quote. Kemper escaped and hopped a chain link fence, ran down the road and flagged a truck to get help. Kemper had been quoted saying, quote, 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 that he wasn't going to let me out of there alive.

I wasn't letting this man take my life from me without a fight, end quote. When the police arrested him in December of 1996, it was expected that he was. would put up a fight. Instead, he provided a very detailed confession, preceded by a simple warning of, I am a very sick person. So we want to do kind of a content warning for language. I know some folks, you know, don't like naughty language, but this is a direct quote from Joe Methany, and we're going to leave it as is. Yeah, I mean, YouTube doesn't monetize our stuff anyways, because apparently when you cover missing people and true crime, you just shouldn't deserve YouTube average.

ever knew. But anyways, quote, to start out, this is this full confession, by the way, this goes on for a bit. 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. So this is the big thing you hear about him. This was a big man, 450 pounds. But at the time of his arrest, and we looked through old newspapers for this, they had him listed as 230 pounds. Also, the pictures you have of him back then. He looks like he's roughly 230. He only looks over 400 pounds after he went to prison. And we can put some comparison shots up, but there's a big difference here between prison Joe Metheny and pre-prison Joe Metheny. Yeah, a lot of reports of this will have true crime

podcasters trying to put out there that this is this big 400, 500 pound man chasing after people. That's not actually what happens. That's not what happened. This was just a very large man doing awful things. So I continue with the quote. I've been locked up for almost eight 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 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-bine jurors that told me so in a couple different cases. 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 didn't get a date on when he did this confession, but based on what he's saying, I think we can assume it was years later, right? So he was arrested at age 41, and this is when he's 48, so. It's been a few years. It's been a while. And we'll get into, for a while, he maintained his innocence, so to speak. We'll get into that later. 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 at the wrong place at the wrong time. I weighed their bodies down and put them in that river. I showed the police where I put them about three years later, but they couldn't find them, so they could not charge me for them. 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. It all started back in July of 1994. 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 me was not my problem. She took my six-year-old son with her.

She was a crack addict and a worthless piece of shit. I would have paid to get her out of my life. All she had to do was take my son over to my mother's house and she could have everything else and be gone. I found out about six months later she had moved onto the other side of the town with some asshole that had her out selling her ass for drugs. They got busted for drugs and they took my son away from them for child neglect and child abuse. I had no chance of going to social services and trying to get my son back due to my past criminal record. So I took it upon myself with the hatred I had for these two who lost my son to go looking for. them. I had found out from someone that they were going under that bridge and getting high with some

homeless motherfuckers who lived under the bridge. I went under there looking for them. They were not there, but the two homeless motherfuckers that got high with them were down there. They were passed out on some old stinking mattress, and that's where they were when I left them, except they were dead from being chopped up. That same night, I learned the first crack whore down under that bridge. I got her high and was trying to get information out of her about my old lady's whereabouts. She acted like she didn't know, so I beat the hell out of her and raped her ass and killed her. I put her in some bushes and then went and lured the second bitch down there. I did the same to her as the last one.

Because I was about to throw her in the bushes with the other one, I noticed an old black man down by the river fishing looking back up at me. I grabbed a steel pipe that was lying by and ran down on him and laid his head wide open. So I put the two girls and him in the river and weighed them down with rocks. That was a very busy night for me. Five murders in about seven hours. I washed up in that river and cleaned up the crime scene as much as I could

and then left. Two and a half weeks later, I was arrested in charge with the murders of the two men I chopped up. I spent close to 18 months in Baltimore City jail waiting to go to trial. The trial lasted one week and it was thrown out because the court had a lack of evidence. I was free again. I went back and talked my old boss into giving my job back to me at the pallet company. There was a little trailer on the property so I told my boss to let me stay there and I could keep an eye on the place. He agreed to this and gave me the keys to the front gate in the main building. The company was on a dead end road and was very isolated. It was perfect for what I wanted to do. I alert two more crackhors up there to my trailer. I killed and butcher their bodies up. I cut the meat up and put them in some Tupperware bowls and then put it in a freezer. I buried the remains in several shallow graves and a little

woods behind the company. Over the next couple weeks on the weekends, I opened up a little open pit beef stand. I had real roast beef and pork sandwiches, and why not, they were very good. The human body tastes very similar to pork. If you mix it together, no one can tell the difference. 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 I started to rip her clothes off and knocked 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. I turned around for a split second and that was my mistake, for 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 month. 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. Well, I knew the cops were on the way, but I didn't run. I gathered up her clothes, grabbed the keys to the gate, and I went out and opened it. As soon as I stepped out of 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. And side note, that can be disputed, and we'll get into that later. They took me down and booked me. She had told them that I said I was going to kill her like the rest, which was true.

They had me sitting in a little room down at homicide drilling me and damn near kissing my ass, trying to find out what I had done. They pulled me out of city jail every day for one month, take me back and forth between the company and the bridge. I had them going crazy over 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 murder the two motherfuckers I was really after.

and that's my ex-old lady and the bastard she got hooked up with. 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.

This is why this is a popular case. Like, this probably never would have gotten national notoriety or been somewhat popular among true crime channels. But it's because he's supposed, supposedly served up the bodies in this open pit beef stand, but we can't even confirm that this beef stand even existed. There's no history of it. The pallet company, all that information's there. There's nothing, not even in the papers, ever mentioned anything about Joe Methany operating any sort of open pit beef stand. Because you would think if he was operating some

sort of beef stands, he would at least have a license for this. Maybe not. Maybe he was like, you know, just doing it. Nobody cares. because hell he was just selling it to his co-workers and a few locals. But if he was truly doing this, you'd think he'd get charges with food tampering. Plus, he's, well, I mean, when you're getting life sentences for murder, I think they just forego charging you unless they're sentences. That's usually how it works with other cases. But we listened to a lot of stuff on him over the past week and a half, two weeks.

I have not heard anyone mention Joe Methany's ties to organized crime. They completely gloss over that fact. And it's such a disservice because this is a big part of this case of why he was able to operate. And if it wasn't for certain events that happened behind the scenes with this organized crime thing that happened, which we'll get into, Joe Methany may have never, ever, ever been caught. So many accounts, including Methany's own confession, which we just reviewed in full, state that upon Kemper flagging down help, he was arrested. However, other accounts, especially the ones in the Baltimore Sun, which were published more than once, tell a different story that we should note. It has been alleged that Methany asked a friend and coworker named Clinton Ashbrook to help him bury the body of Spicer, which he had been hiding at his work site since killing her a month earlier. The Baltimore Sun reported the work site as Joseph Stein and Son.

The friend who was named in the Baltimore Sun as Clinton Ashbrook reported to an FBI agent named James Fitzsimmons on a descendant. December 15, 1996, and Methany was arrested in charge with her murder the same day. The Baltimore son also confirmed that the owner of the business, 61-year-old Joseph Stein, was arrested as an accessory after the fact for allegedly disposing of evidence. Allegedly, both him and Methany were arrested coming out of a Christmas party at Martin's East in Baltimore. So Martin's East is like a ballroom event center. So I'm sure you heard me mention reported it to an FBI agent.

Well, why would he report it to? an FBI agent. Why weren't the cops good enough? How did he get a hold of an FBI agent? Well, because there was an FBI sting going on in Joseph Stein and Son. So Joseph Stein and Son wasn't just a pallet company. No, it was much more than this. It was actually a cover for a huge organized crime operation where they were bribing insiders at companies like Solo. The plastic, yeah, the plastic cup to cook their own books, deliver goods to them and they were shortchanged pallets. And the The insiders just would never write off the loss, so company headquarters never knew. And this went on for years, absolutely unknown.

I mean, Joseph Stein, known by many as Reds or Jack Stein, he was a career criminal. And he and his son were robbing pharmacies, robbing drug stores, liquor stores. They were second storymen. In Joe Jr's early life, he remembers having his father teaching him. how to be a cat burglar and things like that. He would drug him with barbiturates to make him not nervous and then put him through windows. Yeah. And at a young age, he learned not only just to, oh, grab cash, grab pills, but he taught him like,

hey, if you see money orders, if you see a gun, if you see this, like cigarettes, anything that his father could sell in the streets, get it. And his father kept going back to prison, going back to prison. And Joe himself, Joe Jr. went back to prison like a couple times. He just finally had enough of it. And on his last stint in prison, he got out and he started working for his father's pallet company. Now, at first, his father talked like he was turning his life around. He's running an honest business.

But then as he started working with his father more and more, he realized that this was just another one of his schemes, just on a much grander level. This was going on with the Ashbrooks, who the Steins often married into. So Clinton Ashbrook, who Joe Methany asked to dispose the body of Spicer, he was high up in the company as well, as well as his brother, I believe, a brother or cousin, William. William Ashbrook. There's tons of Ashbrooks and Steins in this, like Drewby just said, they all intermarried. Actually, both Jack Stein, the senior and Joe Jr. were both married to Ashbrooks. Yes, yes, they both were. Patricia Stein, Joe Sr.'s wife, I believe was Patricia.

Ashbrook made name. Mind you, there's also a Joe the third. Yeah, but we couldn't confirm his existence. We just saw him mention a few times, and it didn't seem to be Joe Jr's son. And we'll get into why it couldn't be Joe Jr.'s son. Well, no, I've heard that it actually was Jack's son. He made a Joe the third to replace Joe Jr.

So it was Joe's half-brother and then named him Joe the third. This is so psychotic These people are crazy So Joe became He rejoined the business And Joe decided that he wanted to repent For everything he did So he went to the FBI

And became an undercover informant And He wore a wire sometimes He wore a wire He took evidence and brought it to them They were going very slowly on this They wanted to make sure They could bust as many people as possible

However, Joe Methany was what made them have to move fast on this. So not only was Methany a forklift operator, he was also the night watchman, but he was also Jack's enforcer. He did a lot of things for Jack, also Joe Sr. So Jack, Joe Sr., I'll use those names interchangeably. The same person. The old man who ran the business. So the sting operation came to a halt when the information about Methany being a serial killer came to light. And this was from Clinton running and telling Joe Jr., hey, can you believe what he's doing?

And so Joe took it to the FBI and convinced Clinton to basically rat him out to the FBI, and Clinton still did time. A lot of them still did time. A lot of them still did time. Basically all but Joe Jr. did time. So if Joe Jr. never came forward, methony may have never been caught. this is the only thing that happened. Yes, there's that Kemper story. I don't think the Kemper story is 100% accurate. I'm not sure it is either.

I think she may have ran off but never actually got help. Yeah, I don't know exactly what happened with that. There's no article. There's no anything. No record of him being arrested at his trailer for the Kemper murder. My guess is because one, she was naked. Two was on drugs. And three, probably was like a sex worker.

you generally just don't go to the cops. I think she basically decided it was one she was going to take on the chin, much like a lot of folks in situations like that. People in sex work or homeless people. Just like don't bother to go to the cops. Yeah, because your life isn't worth anything to them. You know, we should stress the most, if not all, of Joe Methany's victims were homeless or we're sex workers or we're addicts.

So, you know, these are the people that get cold case. These are the people that police don't care about or don't want to devote resources into. So when that's your main target of victim, it's going to go a long time before you're really caught. Even when you're sloppy like Joe Methany. Now, on top of this, you're being protected by organized crime. You are living and conducting your serial killings. on the grounds, it's not public property. You have resources, many resources.

Like he was able to bury them allegedly around the property. I think that was confirmed, though. Yeah, Spicer was under the trailer. Yeah, Spicer was under the trailer. And that's the other thing. Kemper has never mentioned in the papers. It's always Spicer, arrested for the killing of Spicer. I've seen this two or three times.

He was at Martin's East, at some company party with Joe Sr. and the cops got them both out the door. Joe Sr. not only arrested for tampering of a body, he was also arrested for a legal possession of a firearm. He had a 25 caliber pistol, I believe in his office. And for those that aren't familiar with 25 caliber, not the very most common type of round invented by John Browning of Browning gun manufacturer fame. Very cute little gun.

In 1905, I believe, sometime in the 195, I believe, sometime in the 1900s, it's smaller than a 22. You'll see that these guns, sometimes are called pocket guns or vest pocket guns. Some people call them derringers, but that's not actually what a derringer is, but it's still a very small gun. That is the kind of gun that we're talking about. I've never fired one. I have.

Yeah. They're very cute. They're very cute. I like them a lot. They have a lot of little kick because you can't hold them very well, but. Yeah, you can't really get a good grip on them, which I don't know. I've never really seen the purpose of them. I'd still fire one if I had the chance, but...

I think the purpose is back in the day, that's why they're called vest pocket guns. Gentlemen would hide them in their little breast pocket. Yeah, in their breast pocket or women would keep them in, like, their purse or their bag or something like that. I would definitely carry one. I just think they're cute. I like them. If you've ever read a lot of noir or any of those, like, detective crime stuff from a very long time ago,

you see them a lot. I think that's when it was more common. Now there's just... Everyone just not a lot of use that. Yeah. And I think back then... Then, I mean, I don't know what gun legislation was like then, but I think having something very concealable was more attractive for people back then. But nevertheless, the caliber never caught on.

And it's still made to this day, but again, not popular at all. So at the very end of this, solo, they pulled out of their Baltimore location after finding out about this after the fact. As for Joe Sr., he did a lot of time. but he was released from prison on an undisclosed date. I could not find that. I found his obituary. He apparently died at home. So I don't know.

You do white collar crime. You don't do a whole lot of time, especially if you're a career criminal like this guy. I believe they finally pegged him on arson. Oh, yes. Thank you for reminding me this. They got conspiracy to commit arson because he would set fire to rival company vehicles. and he was about to do it to two vehicles of another company.

So this man had arson, a bunch of white collar crime. He also has a rap sheet for assault, for robbery, robbery of a pharmacy, robbery of a liquor store, petty theft, all of these things. Concealing evidence of a murder. Because he helped clean up the trailer. Yes, he did. He allegedly helped clean up the trailer. I think he was convicted of that. And a legal possession of a firearm.

He is all these things. And I believe nowadays, if your rap sheets that long, you just... I'm sure that, like, if they had more time, if the whole Methany thing didn't happen, they could have gotten him on, like, racketeering and tax evasion to you, and he'd been away forever. And he would have gotten the Al Capone treatment. He died an old man. Joe Jr., the hero of this story. If it wasn't for Joe Jr., many other people probably would have died at the hands of methany.

unfortunately, he really didn't get anything out of this. No, he got a poor man's witness protection. They gave him basically $65,000 to get out of the area. They didn't really even go that far. Yeah, so they were offering to change his name, but he didn't want to because his wife wanted to keep in contact with her family. And if you go into witness protection, like, that's done. You're cut off.

So he tried to find work around town. He was hoping that because he saved all of these companies, so much money that they would give him work, but because of his name and who his father was, nobody would give him a job. And he was struggling. He was really struggling. There was an interview he gave in the Baltimore son.

It's titled Sins of the Father, how him and his wife are struggling. She had some medical bills that he wasn't sure he could pay and that he always said he was one paycheck away from being homeless. He basically did all this. And yes, it was the right thing to do was the moral thing to do. but this idea that he was living large off this FBI money, totally not true. And I tried to track him down.

He basically doesn't exist. So I'm assuming that eventually he was erased and finally put into proper witness protection and hopefully is having a good life right now. I'm assuming he's still alive as his father just died within the past eight or nine years, if I recall. So that's what happened with Joe Jr. The Ashbrooks, they all did time, even the ones that cooperated with the FBI. I think William got another poor man's witness protection type thing.

I think they offered up $25,000, one, to send him to rehab and to cover his rent while he was there. Yeah. But then he did time when he got back. It's very unclear. Yeah. Clinton, the one who gave up the body, did some time. Yeah. It's all very strange, especially where there's so many.

the ash brooks. Yeah, and you would think like here I'm talking about this like old school mob racketeering. You're probably like, oh, this happened in the 50s. No, no, this happened around the turn of the century. Like this was in the 90s. This was in the 90s, almost 2000s. I think the last article I saw published to this was like 2000s, mid 2000s. Whenever I read this, I keep thinking we're an old-timey mob land. Like, that's just what I picture in my head. It's, it's, It's New York in the Al Capone era. No, it's not. This is Maher.

You were alive during this time. More than likely you were alive during this time. And it was strange. There's just so little information. I think it's strange that literally nobody has covered this. Yeah, no one has covered this part. Everybody just goes off the confession where Kemper jumps the fence and he is arrested. No one's ever talked about this.

And there's like, oh, Methany's a serial killer cannibal. And he served his victims to unsuspecting people. You know, I don't think he did. I don't either. And people are just saying this because it gets people to listen to their podcast or view their channel. I don't think he did anything like that. And yeah, I know we have some thumbnails of Joe Methany and some ground beef and stuff like that. But did it really happen?

I don't think it did it. No, I don't think it happened at all. But the scarier thing is, is that Joe Methany probably would have prayed on sex workers and the homeless and addicts for the bulk of his life. if it was not for Joe Jr. And, you know, I think that's such a huge portion of this case that needs to be covered. And again, the only reason people care about this is because the cannibal thing, they don't care. And this would have never been popular because the victims were homeless people and sex workers. Yeah.

So, okay. So three days after Methany's arrest, he led police to the shallow grave where he buried the body of Kathy Ann Magazine, or who had to be identified by dental records. Young white women who were also heroin and cocaine-addicted sex workers were methany's victims of choice, the bulk of which were brutally sexually abused. The bodies of other prostitutes, Methany had claimed to have killed alongside Washington Boulevard and Baltimore were never found, and charges were dropped in these cases due to lack of evidence, including that of 28-year-old Tony Lynn and Gracia, who had been strangled and stabbed to death. Her remains were left near I-95, and it took three years to find her body. She had been beheaded as well. Yeah.

And I'm not sure if he took responsibility for that one or not, but they just couldn't pin it on him. He claims he killed seven people, but the FBI estimates that there was 10 people. But again, these claims they can be exaggerated. Methanee's attorney, Margaret A. Mead claimed that he was remorseful and that addiction to drugs and alcohol over the years changed him and turned him into the monster. I remember reading articles of pretrial. They were saying they were seeking the... insanity plea. And I remember one article, which we have linked in the show notes and the YouTube description, the first line is Joe Roy Methany doesn't want to hurt anyone anymore. It was roughly that.

Like, they were really trying to ham this up. Yeah, it was like, Joe Methany wants to stop killing. He's just a sick man with an addiction. An addiction makes him a killer. Just that was the angle they were trying to go for. And it clearly didn't work. Have I been drunk and wanted to go kill somebody? Yeah. So, you know, yeah, but this is different. This is cocaine and heroin, which back then not enough people really had a strong understanding. I don't know about you because I was younger during that time. Back then, you thought if somebody was doing cocaine, that they were just this monster that, you know, was unpredictable. Now you know so many recreational coke uses. I'll be, I'll be honest. Like when I was 19-20, I dabbled a few times. I've never wanted to kill anybody. Barack Obama did. Never touched heroin. Never will. But, you know, No, I've had a line or two ends. I've never wanted to kill anybody. You know, it's not this like magical murder powder that when inserted into your nose, you must go and kill sex workers and the homeless. I literally just stayed up all night, smoking cigarettes and sewing.

Yeah, yeah, so I sewed and watched some cartoons. In 1997, Methany went to trial for the kidnapping and attempted sexual assault of Rita Kemper and was given a 50-year sentence, but was acquitted of attempted murder. just strange. I think they, I think at this point, it's like we already've got you on the death penalty or a life sentence at the time it was death penalty. Why spend the resources to get him on attempted murder? Like, what does that, what does that change? He was handed down the death sentence in 1998 for Spicer's murder. The second witness, Barbara McWilliams, filled in some other blanks about what Spicer did after leaving her mother's house that November afternoon. So, according to her testimony, McWilliams was sitting with a friend at Uncle Walt's bar

on the 2,300 block of Washington Boulevard, which is where, unfortunately, methony did a lot of his hunting, if you will. So that evening, she was approached by a nervous Auburn-haired woman, Spicer, who asked repeatedly if she could go home with her. McWilliams had never met this woman and turned her down, so outside of the bar, illuminated by a lamp over the door,

she caught sight of a man, she knew that she found unfailingly polite. And that was Joe Methany. So a little later, McWilliam said that she and her friend gave Methany and Spicer a ride to Joe Stein and Sons Palette Factory in southwest Baltimore, where Matthewity lived as a $7 an hour forklift driver. And that is where this leaves off. During his sentence hearing, Joe Methany stated that he killed because he enjoyed it and that he got a rush and high from it. He said, quote, I have no real excuse why other than I like to do it, end quote. This sentence was later reduced to life without the possibility of parole. So I have the. this slight theory that he might have been a dry intention to himself to cover for his boss

based on things that Joe Jr. has stated. So Joe Jr. said that his father, lifelong, if somebody rats you out, if somebody crosses you, goes to the cops, you kill them. And at the time when Joe was doing his sting operation on his dad, his dad was talking about how he suspected there was an informant in the mix and he was going to have them kill. and I guess he had connections in prison and things like that. So no matter where you were, Joe Sr. was going to try to kill you. So I think Methany, being a somewhat reasonably intelligent person, knew that he had two options. He could die in prison for implicating his boss, whom he never even said one word about,

or he could spend the rest of his days in prison and just have it be what it is. And so I think he just tried to draw the attention to himself in hopes that his boss didn't go down for this either. Actually, an article I read, he went crazy saying that Joe Sr. had nothing to do with it. That methony said, yeah. Yeah. So I think he was just very loyal to Joe Sr. I mean, gave him a job, gave him a place to live, gave him a playground to work in and protected him. So I'm assuming he was just returning the favor. Like, why would he cross this person if he already knew he was going to go down no matter what? If he had turned in Joe Sr., it wouldn't have reduced a sentence. I think there's something to that.

So in August of 1998, Methany pled guilty to the murder and robbery of Kathy Ann Magazine, or which he received a second life sentence. And finally, on August 5th of 2017, Joe Methany was found unresponsive at about 3 p.m. by a prison guard in his cell at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, which is actually the same institution Brandon Thong Savant is currently at,

which is a Lewis de Native we did a story on about a year and a half ago. Yeah, we'll cover that again in the future, I think. Do a more concrete retelling of that story? Yep. He was pronounced dead shortly after. Methany was 62 years old and had completed

around 20 years of his two life sentences. And he looks like Steve Titpig Hurley. He does. Well, I think he looked like Steve Hurley early on. So some of the pictures that I found were he was in a squad car, he looked just like him. Well, if you look like what Tit Pig looks like in his very, very old age, even then it kind of looks like prison Joe Metheny. Maybe not as much in the face anymore, but I think the resemblance is always going to be there. Should I take a picture of the two of them and put them side by side for you too? You absolutely. Okay, I can do that. I can do that.

I'll get some titpig sound clips. Like the snort. For those of you that don't know, Mr. Hurley is an adult film actor of male erotica. And a meme. And a meme. Quite often adjacent to the Catalina adult memes that have been on the internet and some subculture of the internet for quite some time. And kind of adjacent with Billy Harrington, who we also covered. Who we've also covered.

So, yeah, that was it. Like, when covering this, I know when a lot of people requested this. I'm very happy a lot of people requested this. I am too. It was so cool to see everyone. Yeah, Joe Methany. Yeah, I really enjoyed that. But also, like, getting into this further, because I expected, because what I knew about

it, this guy, butchered people and served them, I didn't know just how much most true crime content was getting this wrong. And I'm happy to have done the deal. deep diving and can set the record straight on Joe Methany and exactly what happened. Big channels got major parts wrong. Major things wrong. Like, absolutely not even close. Screwing up what happened between victims.

Some people didn't even have victims names. And I understand that some of these victims don't, but not knowing who Spicer was. Like, uh, anyways. I'm glad that, to my knowledge, we are the only YouTube channel with this information. we may be the only podcast with this information. I haven't gone through a ton of podcasts to say that for certain. That's a little bit harder to sift through. But out of all the YouTube channels,

with only one with this information, I'm happy to hopefully change the narrative on Joe Metheny going forward and being able to tell the story of what happened to Joe Stein Sr. Because that is a very interesting organized crime case that ties into this. Yeah, we have linked all of the Baltimore Sun articles that we found in the show notes. There's probably even more out there, except they throw you under a paywall eventually. So we had to be going on both of our computers to, like, get all of the info.

Second browser, incognito window will get you around it. I tried using Outline.com, but they seem to have a protection against that. More and more new sites now are catching wise to Outline.com. So that didn't really work. But all of it's there. You can read it. If you just have a couple browsers and an incognito window, you should be able to read all of those articles. Very interesting read.

I highly recommend the one titled Sins of the Fathers. It's about Joe Jr.'s. struggle, his upbringing, his dealing with the FBI, and now where his life stood at the end of that article. And I hope that Joe Jr., I hope his life got a lot better than what it was, because after doing all that and basically giving up on what could have been a comfortable life of crime, he deserves to at least have a happy life. So if you like this video, you like the episode, please hit like and subscribe. is the best way you can support our channel, which doesn't cost you anything, and it ensures that you never miss any of our new episodes.

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