Joseph Roy Metheny, a convicted serial killer who claimed to have chopped up his victims and sold them as barbeque, has died. He was 62.
Prison officials confirmed Metheny was found dead in his cell Aug. 5 in Cumberland, Maryland, reports the Daily Mail. The death is under investigation.
Metheny’s is probably the most bizarre serial killer story to come out of Baltimore since the 1970 movie “Multiple Maniacs” by John Waters — a fictional tale about a fat drag queen who goes on a murder spree and ends up getting raped by a giant lobster, according to Criterion.
Metheny, who appears in photos to be proudly obese at a self-described 450 pounds, begged to receive the death penalty and was granted his wish in 1998.
“The words ‘I’m sorry’ will never come out, for they would be a lie,” he told the jury. “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.”
However, unfortunately for him, the sentence was later reduced to two life sentences without parole.
Metheny was convicted of murdering 23-year-old Kathy Spicer and 39-year-old Cathy Ann Magaziner. In a written statement, he also confessed to other homicides which remain unproven, as quoted by the website Murderpedia:
I killed seven people, three men, and four women. Two men I chopped up with an axe under a bridge in South Baltimore. I was found not guilty for them cause they couldn’t prove I did it. Under that same bridge I also killed two women and one man who was fishing, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I weighed their bodies down and put them in that river. I showed the police where I put them about 3 years later, but they couldn’t find them. So they could not charge me for them.
In his lengthy confession, he goes on to explain that he became a murderer after his wife got addicted to crack and ran away with their 6-year-old son. Unable to get custody of his son due to his criminal record, he began randomly taking revenge on “homeless motherf*****s” and “crackwhores.”
In July of 1994, he met Magaziner at a bar and they ended up back at his home, which was a small trailer on a pallet company storage lot in Baltimore, where he was employed.
According to what he told police, he had sex with her, strangled her with an extension cord, and then buried her on the lot. His story was confirmed when her beheaded remains were found on the property.
Metheny further bragged about what he did to the bodies of Magaziner and Spicer:
I killed and butchered their bodies up. I cut the meat up and put it in some Tupperware bowls then put it in a freezer. … Over the next couple weeks on the weekends I opened up a little open-pit beef stand. I had real roast beef and pork sandwiches and why not they were very good. The human body tastes was very similar to pork. If you mix it together no one can tell the difference. Everything was going pretty good until I ran out of my special meat.
Metheny’s confession ends with a touch of morbid humor. “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!”