Herbert Mike Merritt was already pissed when he showed up at Friends Sports Bar & Grill in Halls, Tennessee. He’d had a fight with his girlfriend that day, and patrons say he was spoiling for a fight. He hugged fellow patron Douglas Statzer when he arrived…
By his demeanor quickly soured when Statzer reminded Merritt that he’d been banned from the bar. It seems the customer known as Mad Max had been booted for brandishing a knife on a previous occasion.
Susie Jacobs, an off-duty bar employee, told Merritt to leave. But he was dead set on getting a beer and refused to go. So fellow patron Anthony Ford came to her aid. That’s when Merritt pulled out a gun, shot Ford six times, and then stabbed him.
Then he turned to the bartender again, demanding a beer. Statzer gave him one.
Merritt soon went to the parking lot and retrieved a shotgun, then returned to the bar. By this time, the place was surrounded by a SWAT team.
An employee outside the bar used a phone to call Merritt, asking that he drag Ford’s body to the door so the wounded man could receive medical help. But Merritt said it was already too late. He’d carved out Ford’s heart and was now eating it.
Alas, Merritt didn’t have a particularly keen grasp of anatomy. He’d been eating Ford’s lung, not his heart. But when he was arrested after the stand-off, his lawyer tried to claim mental insanity, arguing that Merritt is psychotic and failed to take his medicine that day.
At trial, prosecutors countered by asserting that Merritt’s mental claims were bullshit; he’d only faked illness as a ruse to get access to drugs. A jury apparently agreed. Merritt was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
He won’t be eligible for parole for 51 years. And since he’s already 49, in this case life in all likelihood actually means life.
