Another bizarre crime involving body parts and the potential for cannibalism occurred earlier this year in Tyler, Texas. Instead of finding a down-home outdoor Texas barbecue when sheriff's deputies responded to a 911 call at a home in this East Texas municipality on Saturday, January 5, 2008, they made a gruesome gastronomic discovery that was cooking on the stovetop inside. According to the police, Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, killed his girlfriend, Jana Shearer, 21, cooked parts of her body on the stove inside his mother's home, and called 911 to inform them of what he had done. Deputies were aghast when they found human ears boiling in a pot, and a piece of flesh stuck to the end of a fork in a plate on the kitchen table. They also found the rest of the woman's body in another part of the home. Based on the information that McCuin provided to the authorities during the 911 call, investigators had reason to believe that he may have eaten—or at least attempted to eat—portions of Shearer's body. However, whether he had actually consumed parts of her body was not clear at the time, according to the authorities.
"We cannot prove that he did," said Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith. "He was either going to, had been, or led us to think that he was doing it."
McCuin, of course, was arrested on the spot. Although he had at first gone willingly with the arresting deputies, he had to be placed in additional restraints because he allegedly kicked out the back window of the police cruiser that was transporting him to jail. He was later charged with capital murder, and his bail was set at $2 million. He was also placed in solitary confinement.
McCuin's criminal record included driving while intoxicated, and showed that he "had a history of violence," according to Smith. Specifically, he had been charged with assault with a deadly weapon. He also had an outstanding felony warrant at the time of his arrest.
As they tried to make some sense out of what had happened, investigators piecing the events of the case together believe that it all began less than a day earlier, late Friday evening, January 4, 2008, when McCuin allegedly took Jana Shearer from her home and killed her. Witnesses at the scene told deputies that Jana had left with him.
"There was no struggle but (a witness) could see the girl left with no shoes, no purse and no cell phone," Smith said.
It was then believed that McCuin drove to his estranged wife's home and stabbed her boyfriend, causing injuries that placed the boyfriend in the intensive care unit at a local hospital. McCuin narrowly escaped sheriff's deputies as they arrived at that scene, and managed to elude them after a short chase.
"We didn't know at the time that he had murdered anyone," Smith said. "We thought it was a disturbance or an assault."
Jana Shearer was described as a beautiful young woman whose love of life knew no bounds. Almost 6-feet tall with long blonde hair and green eyes, Jana looked like a "skinny Barbie" doll, according to a friend and neighbor. A 2002 graduate of John Tyler High School, Jana had been on the drill team. At the time of her death, she worked as a sales clerk at Wet Seal, a specialty retail clothing and accessories store. She liked to wear 4-inch heels.
"She was so beautiful," said the friend. "She never left home without her makeup bag, and she didn't have it with her that night."
"It didn't matter where she was going, she always had makeup on and her hair done," another friend said. "She could be going to a gas station, but would still be wearing stilettos."
Police believe that McCuin may have had Shearer's body in the back seat of his extended cab pickup truck when he fled the scene of his estranged wife's home. The next time McCuin was seen was when he arrived at the brick home in the 400 block of Princess Lane that he shared with his mother—several hours later, on Saturday morning. Shortly after arriving home, he summoned his mother to the garage to show her "what he had done," according to Smith. McCuin also called Jana's mother and told her that he had killed her daughter.
Authorities said that Jana had died of blunt trauma to the head.
Smith said that McCuin's mother and her boyfriend had seen Shearer's remains. Terrified, they fled the home and found a police officer to whom they reported what they had witnessed. In the meantime, McCuin had already been talking to a 911 dispatcher and describing the body parts that he was boiling.
McCuin is in jail awaiting trial for Jana Shearer's murder. Perhaps some sense will be made out of this seemingly senseless crime as the case progresses toward adjudication—whether it be finalized by trial or plea-bargain. For now, according to statements McCuin made to investigators, it was God that had made him do it.