Baltimore’s own Joe Metheny was only convicted of two murders (only…), but claimed to have killed many more. So we’re going to go ahead and call him a serial killer for our purposes.

Joe says he was neglected and often pawned off on other family members. His mother denies it. Joe also says he served in Vietnam, but no one could ever dig up paperwork to prove or disprove it. He was in the army, to be sure — it’s just they couldn’t say for certain if he was in ‘Nam or not, which seems like a very un-army thing, but 🤷‍♂️.

Joe said…a lot of things. He claimed to have killed a lot more people than he was convicted of. He claimed to make hamburgers out of dead bodies. But there’s no proof of some of it.

But we do know that in one instance, he killed a woman, buried her, then six months later decided it would be a good idea to dig her up and relocate her head. OK, Joe.

At one point, a victim escaped his clutches. Joe, realizing that she would turn him in, decided it was time to relocate another body of his, just to be safe. He asked a friend to help him in this endeavor, and to the friend’s credit, dude immediately broke the Bro Code and testified against Joe.

Joe confessed to multiple murders, but there was only enough evidence to indict and convict him on two of them. I imagine that is less about Joe being a criminal mastermind and more about dumb luck.

The state of Maryland sentenced him to death since one of the murders had been committed as part of a robbery. But a later court found that the robbery was incidental, not motivational, and so his death sentence was commuted to life in prison. Which is exactly what he served, as Joe Metheny died in custody in 2017. Good riddance. 

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