Anthony Joyner

As of March 2022, Joyner is still alive and serving his prison sentence at the State Correctional Institution – Phoenix in Skippack Township.

Joyner's trial began in April 1984 and lasted three weeks. During the proceedings, he confirmed his initial testimony and described details of the murders to jurors, but later retracted his confession, claiming that the investigators had pressured him into confessing.

Ultimately, Joyner was found guilty by jury verdict on five counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder, as well as six counts of rape and one count of burglary. As they were unable to reach a unanimous decision on whether he deserved to be sentenced to death, the court imposed a life sentence on him on May 6, 1984. While his sentence was read out, Joyner remained calm and emotionless.

As victims, Joyner would choose elderly female residents of the nursing home, aged between 83 and 92. On January 12, 1983, 92-year-old Margaret Eckard was found dead, and despite finding traces of blood around her nose, mouth, and genitals, the hospital staff concluded that she had died of natural causes. A month later, on February 12, 85-year-old Kathryn Maxwell's body was found in similar circumstances, followed by 86-year-old Elizabeth Monroe only a few days later. While examining the latter's body, medical personnel again found traces of blood and damage to her genitalia, but due to her advanced age and negligence on part of the staff, no autopsy was performed and the cause of death was ruled as a heart attack.

During the investigation, police obtained a warrant to exhume the bodies of Eckard, Maxwell, Amlie, and Monroe. Autopsies were conducted on all four, with the rulings being that Maxwell and Monroe had been raped and strangled and that Amlie had been drowned in her bathtub. As Eckard's body was too decomposed, the coroners were unable to determine her cause of death. After learning of the autopsy results, Joyner confessed to the four murders, as well as a sexual assault committed on a 69-year-old woman on a Philadelphia street in July 1982, which the victim survived. The rape victim was found soon after and positively identified Joyner as her rapist, verifying his account. According to Joyner himself, it was this incident that provoked him to commit further crimes against older women, as they were unable to offer serious resistance.

As he failed to receive higher education, Joyner resorted to doing low-skilled labor and made a living off odd jobs. In October 1981, he got a position as an assistant nutritionist in the kitchen of the Philadelphia's Kearsley Home, Christ Church Hospital, at the time the oldest operating institution of its kind in the country. While working there, Joyner was regarded well by both staff and patients, who all said that he had a friendly, talkative, and energetic demeanor, and showed great affection for the elderly patients.

On August 1, Joyner was apprehended by law enforcement, and in a subsequent interrogation, he unexpectedly confessed to killing both women and was subsequently charged with both murders. According to investigators, Joyner expressed remorse and claimed that he wanted to make a full confession because he had trouble sleeping, while his attorney claimed that he was mentally ill and that the police had tricked his client into signing a pre-written confession. Because a total of 18 suspicious deaths had occurred at the nursing home since Joyner was hired in October 1981, police began investigating him for possible involvement in other killings.

Anthony Joyner (born May 26, 1962) is an American serial killer and rapist who raped and murdered at least six elderly women at a nursing home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from January to July 1983, but is suspected in 18 total deaths that occurred there. Tried and convicted only for his confirmed murders, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Very little is known about Joyner's early life. Born on May 25, 1962, in Philadelphia, he was considered portly and physically weak as a teenager, but otherwise had no problems with communication or was not ostracized by his peers. Because of his physique, Joyner had little success with women and was not popular in the neighborhood, with some friends and acquaintances suspecting him of being homosexual, which he vehemently denied.