Man kills, cooks his ex-girlfriend
TYLER, Texas (AP) - January 7, 2008 Deputies responding to the 911 call found a gruesome scene: a
human ear boiling in a pot on a stovetop and a hunk of flesh on a
fork sitting atop a plate on the kitchen table.
Authorities believe the man arrested in the death of his
21-year-old girlfriend cooked parts of her body and may have tried
to eat them - actions they said he described to them in the
emergency call that led them to the grisly discovery.
Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, was scheduled to be arraigned Monday
on a capital murder charge in the death of Jana Shearer. He was in
solitary confinement at a jail on a $2 million bond Sunday night
and did not have an attorney, officials said.
Authorities say it is unclear whether McCuin consumed any part
of the woman's body.
"We cannot prove that he did," Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith
said Sunday. "He was either going to, had been or led us to think
that he was doing it."
McCuin is also the suspect in early Saturday's stabbing of a man
described as his estranged wife's boyfriend, Smith said.
McCuin has a criminal record that includes driving while
intoxicated and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon charges.
When he was arrested, McCuin had an outstanding felony retaliation
warrant.
Smith said McCuin was known to authorities and had "a history
of violence," including assaulting his estranged wife, his
girlfriend and his sister.
Officials believe the horrific chain of events began when
Shearer was taken by McCuin from her home late Friday and killed.
Smith said McCuin then drove to his estranged wife's home, where
he stabbed his wife's boyfriend, William Veasley, 42. Veasley was
in intensive care Sunday night.
McCuin was still in that home when deputies arrived, but he
jumped into his car and escaped after a short chase, Smith said.
"We did not know at the time that he had murdered anyone," Smith
said. "We thought it was a disturbance or an assault."
McCuin wasn't seen again until Saturday morning, when he arrived
at the home he shared with his mother and called her into the
garage so she could "come see what he had done," Smith said.
His mother and her boyfriend saw the remains of Shearer,
authorities said. McCuin's mother and her boyfriend fled the home
and flagged down a police officer. McCuin dialed 911 after they
left and told an emergency dispatcher he had killed Shearer and was
boiling her body parts, Smith said.
When deputies arrived, McCuin barricaded himself in the home for
a short time before coming out. After he emerged, a tactical team
entered and found Shearer's body, Sgt. Gary Middleton said. They
also found the grisly scene in the kitchen.
After McCuin was arrested and placed in the back of a patrol
car, he kicked out the vehicle's side window, then was put in
additional restraints, Middleton said.
Shearer appeared to have died from blunt trauma to her head,
Smith said.
Detectives were trying to determine where the killing happened.
They think McCuin drove his truck to his mother's home with the
dead woman in the back seat of his extended-cab pickup, Smith said.
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Associated Press writer Jeff Carlton in Dallas contributed to
this report.