Posted on 03/25/2007 9:32:35 PM PDT by Calpernia
For at least two days, neighbors at a city apartment complex noticed an acrid aroma, black smoke and leaping flames coming from two barbecue grills on the balcony of a second-floor apartment.
What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on in the unit where 27-year-old Timothy Wayne Shepherd lived? What was he burning at all hours, for days at a time? The answer turned their stomachs.
According to law enforcement officials, Shepherd dismembered, and then burned the body of his former girlfriend, Tynesha Stewart, a 19-year-old Texas A&M University student. Nothing remains of Stewart's body, Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said at a press conference Saturday.
"I just don't know what to think about it," said Louis Evans, whose balcony faces Shepherd's in the quiet tree-lined enclave in northern Houston. "I thought he was a nice normal person. I guess you never know what your neighbors are doing."
Authorities said Shepherd has confessed to strangling and dismembering Stewart, a college freshman who was home on spring break, because he was angry that she had started a new relationship.
Officials first thought Shepherd had disposed of her remains in a large commercial trash bin that had since been emptied, launching an intense debate in the area about whether the Sheriff's Department should conduct a massive and expensive search of area landfills for Stewart's remains.
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.
On March 16, neighbors said they first noticed the unusual activity - and the unpleasant odor - on Shepherd's balcony.
"The smell was awful," said Evans, who also became alarmed after seeing a blaze shoot out from the grills. "I was wondering: What is he burning? Not cooking, but burning. There is a difference."
At times, Evans said, the flames from the grills leapt dangerously close to the roof of the balcony. Evans says he called 911, but when firefighters arrived, the flames had calmed and Shepherd assured them everything was under control.
A leasing agent at the apartment complex also noticed the thick dark smoke and the intense flames and asked Shepherd what he was doing, Evans said. Another neighbor, 18-year-old James Hebert, told The Houston Chronicle that he often cooked out with Shepherd, and even left his grill at Shepherd's apartment. When he wasn't invited over, he asked his neighbor what was going on. Shepherd replied that he was cooking for a wedding, the newspaper said.
Dionne Whitaker, 31, who lives in the complex, said she saw Shepherd carry the grill and smoker to a garbage bin a day or so later, the newspaper said.
Human remains generally require extremely high temperatures to destroy, and authorities have not said how it is possible that Stewart's remains could be completely burned on a patio grill.
"This certainly turned out to be one of the most heinous crimes I've ever seen in my 38 years (in law enforcement)," Thomas, the sheriff, said Saturday.
Shepherd, who is charged with murder, is being held on $250,000 bond in the Harris County Jail. Telephone message left with his attorney, Chip Lewis, were not immediately returned. On Sunday, the door to Shepherd's apartment was covered with plywood boards.
Just found this from another article:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/4654876.html
Stewart is the niece of two professional football players who previously played for A&M. Her mother's brothers are Minnesota Vikings linebacker Jason Glenn and Dallas Cowboys defensive back Aaron Glenn. The uncles are Humble natives.
Very sad. How hot was that fire?
Perhaps his defense at trial will be:
"Because my middle name is "Wayne" I just could not help myself."
As far as I can see that would be the only defense that could get this Sick Scum Sucking SOB off.
I'm in no way blaming the victim since I don't know what their relationship was all about; however, I'm just wondering out loud if there was anyway she could have prevented this happening to her. I'm tending toward "probably not". It probably wouldn't have mattered if she were firm with or him or nice to him or whatever and probably no matter where she was--at home or at school he would have found a way to get to her and do her in. The only conclusion I can come up with is if she had carried a gun--maybe then she would have had a chance.
Cremation involves high temperature, typically between 1400 and 2100 Degrees Fahrenheit . That probably would have melted the barbecue grills. The body parts may have burned, but not as completely as in a crematorium.
I'm just reading some different sites on how to handle an obsessive/stalking ex--not one of them seems to mention arming yourself. Not surprised. Talk to a counselor, tell the police, yada yada yada. I don't think any of that would have helped this young lady.
STOP RIGHT THERE!
That's the problem with this world. We've become so insular and non-judgmental in our own lives that when somebody kills someone for breaking up with him, chops up her corpse and burns her remains in front of the whole neighborhood, someone living across from that person says "I just don't know what to think about it..."
:) I can understand being shocked, but heck, I would know what to think about it--it's fricking awful and horrific. He was a nice guy and all though. We sure have some messed up thinking in the U.S.
That quote is perhaps being taken a little out of context. More a case of not thinking before one spoke or picking words unwisely. I doubt very much it was intended to imply moral ambivalence to the murder.
Likely what was meant was "I don't know what to say."
"fried green tomatoes" anyone?
No doubt about it...lethal injections are very carbon neutral.
This girl died a terrible death. Her parents have no body to bury. The neighbors have to live with knowing that they witnessed, to some extent, the incineration of a a human body. I'm unable to find one iota of humor in this story. Not one of you would be cracking jokes if it were your family member suddenly ripped away. Pathetic.
"Her mother's brothers are Minnesota Vikings linebacker Jason Glenn and Dallas Cowboys defensive back Aaron Glenn. The uncles are Humble Natives."
....uh,
Isn't that a little bit RACIST....????
If he'd tossed in some hickory chips as well, he might have gotten away with it.
You are correct, let's hope he doesn't want to be cremated, could offset the offset.
...it coould have been WORSE....
~~~~~~~~
Massachusetts Sends the Problem to Montana: Bar-Jonah attacked another boy three weeks after his release and was arrested on assault charges but was freed without bail. A deal was made however, that required that Bar-Jonah leave Massachusetts and join his family in Montana along with a two-year probation. Bar-Jonah kept his word and moved to Montana.
Once in Montana, Bar-Jonah met with his probation officer and disclosed some of his past criminal record. A request was made to the Massachusetts probation office to send more records regarding Bar-Jonah’s history and psychiatric past but no additional records were sent.
Bar-Jonah managed to stay away from police until 1999 when he was arrested near an elementary school in Great Falls, MT, dressed as a policeman and carrying a stun gun and pepper spray. Authorities searched his home and found thousands of pictures of boys and a list with boys names from Massachusetts and Great Falls. Also found were encrypted writings, decoded by the FBI, that included statements such as 'little boy stew,' 'little boy pot pies' and 'lunch is served on the patio with roasted child.'
Authorities concluded that Bar-Jonah was responsible for the 1996 disappearance of 10-year-old Zacharry Ramsay who vanished on his way to school. It was believed that he kidnapped and murdered the child than cut up his body for stews and hamburgers that he served to unsuspecting neighbors at a cookout.
http://crime.about.com/od/murder/p/db_barjonah.htm
Um, it's a miscapitalization. They are natives of Humble, Texas.
John Wayne Gacy
Elmer Wayne Henley
Jimmy Wayne Jeffers
Robert Wayne Sawyer
and let's not forget John Wayne Bobbitt ;)
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