Man Serving Sentence for Missouri Homicide Dies in Prison

A man serving a life sentence for the death of a woman whose dismembered remains were found near his rural Pettis County home has died in prison.

The Missouri Department of Corrections said Monday that 67-year-old Joseph F. Arbeiter died Saturday at a Columbia hospital, apparently of natural causes.

Arbeiter was serving a life sentence without parole at Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron for the 2014 death of 35-year-old Mandy M. Black.

He was in jail after pleading guilty in a separate case to sexual assault and other charges after an attack on a neighbor when maintenance workers found human remains in the rural Pettis County trailer park where he lived. Investigators later found human remains in several shallow graves in a wooded area near the trailer.