Serial killer who sold his victims as BBQ dies behind bars

The morbidly obese killer had begged for and received a death sentence in 1998, but it was later overturned on appeal and he was sentenced to two life sentences without parole. Photo / murderpedia

Joseph Roy Metheny, the admitted serial killer who chopped up his victims and sold them as BBQ from a roadside stand in Baltimore in the 1990s, has died. He was 62.

Metheny was found dead in his cell around 3pm on Saturday at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, prison officials confirmed. The death is under investigation.

The morbidly obese killer had begged for and received a death sentence in 1998, but it was later overturned on appeal and he was sentenced to two life sentences without parole.

In addition to the two women he was convicted of murdering, 23-year-old Kathy Spicer and 39-year-old Cathy Ann Magaziner, Metheny confessed to a sickening string of other murders he was never convicted of.

In a jailhouse confession, Metheny said his killing spree began after his wife became addicted to crack and ran away with their six-year-old son.

He was charged in the ax murder of two homeless men under a bridge, but the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

In July of 1994, he met Magaziner at a bar and lured her back to his home, a small trailer on an isolated pallet company storage lot in Baltimore.

Metheny worked at the the pallet company on a dead end road and had the keys to the gates.

He later told police that he had sex with her, and then strangled her with an extension cord and buried her in a shallow grave on the lot.

Her beheaded remains were found several years later on the property.

When investigators asked why he did it, Metheny responded: "Sense of power. I don't know. Vulnerable. I dreaded, just - I got a very - got a rush out of it, got a high out of it. Call it what you want. I had no real excuse why other than I like to do it. (Pause). I don't know how to describe it."

Though it was never proven in court, Metheny said in a jailhouse confession that he butchered the bodies of Magaziner and Spicer and sold the meat in a roadside stand, calling it his 'special meat'.

"I had real roast beef and pork sandwiches and why not they were very good," he wrote. "The human body tastes was very similar to pork. If you mix it together no one can tell the difference."

After he pleaded guilty to murdering Spicer and Magaziner, Metheny begged a jury for the death penalty.

"The words `I'm sorry' will never come out, for they would be a lie,' he said in court.
'I am more than willing to give up my life for what I have done, to have God judge me and send [me] to hell for eternity."

The twisted killer concluded his jailhouse confession with a warning for hungry travelers on unfamiliar roads.

"So the next time you're riding down the road and you happen to see an open pit beef stand that you've never seen before, make sure you think about this story before you take a bite of that sandwich," he wrote.

"Sometimes you never know who you may be eating. Ha! Ha!"