Joseph Kallinger, a cobbler by trade, led a life steeped in madness and crime. As an adopted child he grew up under the constant abuse from his parents. It is no surprise that when he became a father he was abusive too. On January 23, 1972 he branded his oldest daughter for running away. He was arrested for child abuse and found incompetent to stand trial. By mid-1974 he was constantly hearing voices from a floating head that followed him around. God also spoke to him and told him to kill young boys and sever their penises. Eager to comply, Joe enlisted his 13-year-old son, Michael, and proceeded to torture and murder a nine-year-old Puerto Rican youth. Their next victim was one of his own children, Joe Jr., who had previously accused him of abuse. For such a transgression the hapless youngster was found drowned in an abandoned building.
On Jan. 8, 1975, Kallinger and Mike gained entrance to a house in Leonia, N.J., by posing as salesmen. For the next several hours, they beat, robbed and terrorized the eight people inside. One of the eight, a 21-year-old nurse named Maria Fasching, who had stopped at the house to aid an elderly neighbor and friend, was taken to the basement, tied up, sexually assaulted, and killed. A bloodstained shirt left by one of the intruders was traced by a laundry mark to Kallinger, who lived with his family in a cramped apartment above his shoe repair shop in Philadelphia.
Michael, a juvenile, was placed on probation until his twenty-fifth birthday. He is now free and is believed to have changed his name. After his capture Joseph was pronounced paranoid and schizophrenic by psychiatrists. During his New Jersey trial, he sometimes moaned and babbled incoherently. Nevertheless, the jury concluded that he had known right from wrong and convicted him of murder.
Joe was given 40 years in jail in Pennsylvania for a series of robberies followed by a life sentence in New Jersey for the murder of Maria Fasching. In jail Joe has expressed repeatedly his desire to kill every person on earth. Once he slashed a fellow inmate's throat and poured lighter fluid on himself, torched up, and tried to fry an egg on his head. After that he was moved to the Farview State Hospital for the criminally insane where he would talk to God whom he said he'll become after death. In recent years, Kallinger has expressed remorse, refused to eat and attempted suicide. On March 26, 1996 the cobbler-turned-killer who terrorized New Jersey suburbs two decades ago died of a seizure. He was 59 years old. Now we can only wonder if indeed he his assuming the responsibilities of the Man above.