The Ohio Restaurant That's Serving Up Serial Killers' Last Meals

How does one engage with true crime in a conscientious way? By turning horrific, life-destroying acts of violence into easily digestible content in the form of podcasts, documentaries, and prestige miniseries. Are we reducing abject suffering to cheap entertainment fodder or merely providing important social and historical context in a manner that lets a little light in? However you answer that question, it'll likely inform how you feel about The Last Meal, a restaurant in Galion, Ohio which serves the last meals requested by infamous murderers and serial killers before their executions.

You may, for example, order the "John Wayne Gacy," which includes fried chicken and shrimp along with french fries and fresh strawberries. If you're after something slightly less filling, you might order the "Aileen Wuornos," which consists of a cheeseburger with onions and a coffee. Or, if you have a sweet tooth, you can enjoy the "Timothy McVeigh," which is two pints of mint chocolate chip ice cream. It's a lot, in other words, even before we get to a drink menu with names like "The Black Dahlia" and "Helter Seltzer" (referring to Charles Manson, although he wasn't executed).

If this all sounds terribly shock-jock, like a true crime take on Las Vegas' controversial Heart Attack Grill, it wasn't the founders' intention. The restaurant is owned and operated by Nate Thompson and Raychel Eastes, who also run the nearby Ohio Museum of Horror. (They intend to open a second The Last Meal near their Michigan Museum of Horror in the town of Monroe.) Thompson told People that "we want to, almost like a documentary ... get you as close to understanding the last moments or the last meals of these people." Thompson insists that he's not trying to be disrespectful: "We're trying to be as tasteful as possible with an idea that will definitely ruffle people's feathers."

One might argue that there is no tasteful way to execute this idea (so to speak), and there may be some truth to that. But as ghoulish as the concept sounds, Thompson's logic makes some sense. Chances are you've given some thought as to what you would eat for your last meal if you knew you were going to die, taking into account everything you've ever eaten — buffalo chicken wings from your favorite pub, say, or your mother's meatloaf enhanced with onion soup mix. Very few of us know exactly when we're going to die. These people did, and their choice of food signified the culmination of a life, however sordid or evil. There's something inherently fascinating about that, even as these criminals partook in a luxury denied to their victims.