TYNESHA STEWART DISAPPEARANCE
Authorities call off search for A&M student's body
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle
Timothy Wayne Shepherd enters court
Friday, wearing a yellow jumpsuit to show
he has been placed on suicide watch.
BILLY SMITH II: CHRONICLEHarris County Sheriff' Tommy Thomas announced Saturday night there will be no search for the body of Tynesha Stewart, the 19-year-old Texas A&M student who was murdered March 15.
``There are no remaining body parts,'' Thomas said at a press conference. ``We have determined through this investigation that the defendant dismembered the victim and burned her body parts. There is no body to be found. Based on that information, there will be no search. The family is aware of this and they understand.''
Thomas, who called on local media to give the Stewart family privacy, said Timothy Wayne Shepherd burned Stewart's body in a barbecue grill on his patio at his apartment in the 17700 block of Red Oak in northwest Harris County.
When investigators examined Shepherd's apartment, the bathroom had been scoured almost completely clean with ammonia. The only evidence found were two specks of blood, detectives said.
Stewart was last seen March 15, and was reported missing March 19. The next day the Harris County Sheriff's Office homicide division launched its investigation.
Shepherd was interviewed for 10 hours on Wednesday, March 21. After being released, he contacted community activist Quanell X, who persuaded Shepherd to tell him what happened to Stewart. He then led authorities to the garbage bin where he claimed to have placed Stewart's body.
That same day, Shepherd was charged with murder and early the following morning, investigators say, he confessed to strangling Stewart. On Thursday, the sheriff's office announced it would not conduct a search in a landfill for Stewart's body, but seemed to reverse itself on Friday when it said it would do one.
Later on Friday, investigators said Shepherd may have dismembered her body. And on Saturday, the sheriff announced there would be no search, because all the parts had been burned.
Shepherd's neighbors said Saturday that last week he was barbecuing at all hours of the day, for days at a time, at his apartment, No. 224.
James Hebert, 18, often played video games and barbecued with his ``nice'' next-door neighbor. In fact, they cooked out together so frequently Hebert kept his grill at Shepherd's place.
But starting on March 15 , he noticed Shepherd was cooking - on his own grill and on Hebert's pit - ``non-stop`` for two days.
This time, however, Shepherd hadn't invited him over, nor did he share. When he asked for some of what he was cooking, Shepherd refused, saying he was cooking for a wedding.
On March 16 around 7:45 p.m., Hebert and his roommate, Cithara Gomez, became alarmed when they looked over and saw dark-colored smoke billowing from Shepherd's patio.
Concerned the building might be on fire, they called 9-1-1.
When a firefighter and Harris County deputy arrived at the apartment, Shepherd quickly told them he had everything under control.
``He (Shepherd) came to the door real quick,'' said Hebert, who saw Stewart at Shepherd's apartment the day before she was killed. ``His face was real sweaty.''
Hebert, who gave a statement to homicide detectives Saturday, said that over the weekend, he noticed his grill, and Shepherd's smoker, had disappeared from Shepherd's patio.
Dionne Whitaker, 31, whose patio is directly across from Shepherd's patio, said Saturday she saw Shepherd carry the grill and the smoker to the garbage bin on March 17 or March 18.
Whitaker said she assumed Shepherd was throwing them away because he ``burnt them up'' when whatever he was cooking late last week started ``blazing,'' with fire nearly reaching the roof of his patio, she said.
Whitaker, who was interviewed by investigators, said Saturday that when she learned Shepherd may have been burning body parts, she was deeply disturbed.
``I wanted to vomit,'' she said.
Whitaker's husband, Louis Evans, who also gave a statement to detectives, was alarmed the first time he saw the pit ablaze. But when it happened a few more times, he became suspicious.
``At first I thought he was careless,'' Evan said. ``You'd be careless once. But you wouldn't do it again. He could have set the building on fire. There is other people's property ... I didn't know what was going on.''
The sheriff said the five-day investigation of the murder, followed by days of blistering criticism of the department for its initial decision not to conduct a search in a landfill for Stewart's body, was ``one of the toughest things I've ever been through.''
Tim Miller, the director of Texas Equusearch, which had hoped to begin assisting in a search of an Atoscocita-area landfill next week, said he was deeply saddened they would not be able to return Stewart's body to her family.
``We did everything we could,'' he said. ``It just wasn't meant to be.''
