‘Sometimes you never know who you may be eating… Ha! Ha!’: Morbidly obese serial killer who served BBQ plates with human meat dies in prison

A self-admitted serial killer who said he chopped his victims up and sold them as BBQ at a roadside food truck in Maryland, died in prison on Saturday.

The Express reports that authorities found Joseph Roy Metheny, 61, deceased in his cell at the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland, at around 3 p.m. on Saturday. Authorities are currently investigating his death; it’s still unclear if his morbid obesity caused his demise.

By Metheny’s own admission, he killed a string of people from 1976 to 1995, mostly prostitutes and transients. Although he was only convicted of two women’s murders (23-year-old Kathy Spicer and 39-year-old Cathy Ann Magaziner), he said he served the meat of numerous victims as BBQ at a food truck he operated in Baltimore.

Posted by Murder Museum on Monday, August 7, 2017

“I cut the meat up and put it in some Tupperware bowls then put it in a freezer. I buried the remains in several shallow graves in a little woods behind the company. 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.”

Metheny later explained that he killed and many times also raped his victims for the “power” of it. In the case of Cathy Magaziner, Metheny lured to his trailer home in 1994, where he raped her, strangled her with an extension cord, beheaded her, and buried her. When questioned about his motives, Metheny told authorities he got a “high” from killing.

“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. I don’t know how to describe it.”

Metheny also went into detail on how he kept his business running as he unflinchingly described how he obtained his “meat,” and how it ultimately led to his capture.

“Everything was going pretty good until I ran out of my special meat.” “So I lured another bitch up to my trailer. I got her in there and started to rip her clothes off and knocking the hell out of her. She was screaming, but there was no one around to hear her except me. And I just kept on laughing at her,” Metheny said.

“I turned around for a split second, and that was my mistake, for she ran out the door before I could get to her. There was an 8-foot chain link fence with barbwire on top of it around the front of the company. There was a stack of wooden pallets next to the fence about 10 feet high. That bitch scaled those pallets like a monkey and jumped the fence, and ran down to the main road where some guy in a pickup truck picked her up and took her to a nearby gas station where they called the cops.”

Instead of running, Metheny stayed at his trailer and waited for police. The victim who got away, Rita Kemper, told detectives about his brutal attack, and instead of denying it, Metheny decided to put an end to his years of murders. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996, but it was later reduced to a life sentence.

Metheny, however, pleaded for the death penalty. During his trial he told the jury that he would gladly die for his sins and “have God” judge him. He also admitted that he felt no shame or remorse for his actions and to say so would be a lie.

“The words `I’m sorry’ will never come out, for they would be a lie. ‘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.”

Later, he made twisted jokes about BBQ stands while writing “jailhouse confessions.”

“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.”

[Feature Photo: Handout]