Cannibal Apologises To Victim's Relatives

The 36-year-old man is committed to a psychiatric institution in Connecticut after he ate his victim's brain and eyes.

Sky.com

September 11, 2013

An axe murderer who ate his victim's brain and eyes has apologised in court, saying: "I couldn't be myself."

Tyree Lincoln Smith, a 36-year-old from Florida, has been committed to a high-security psychiatric hospital for 60 years.

In July, a Connecticut court had found him not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.

Smith apologised for killing Angel Gonzalez, whose mutilated body was found in a vacant apartment in Bridgeport in January 2012, a month after he was hacked to death.

"I'm really sorry for what I did, that I couldn't be myself," Smith said.

"It really had nothing to do with the other person."

The apology surprised relatives and friends of Mr Gonzalez who were in the courtroom, according to local newspaper the Connecticut Post.

"We waited two years to hear Tyree say he was sorry," said Talitha Frazier, who wore a T-shirt with Mr Gonzalez' photograph.

"What he said today caught me off-guard, but I feel he meant what he said."

The Bridgeport Superior Court judges were urged by a prosecutor and social worker to protect society from Smith.

"He poses a significant danger to himself and the community," psychiatric social worker Julie Jacobs testified.

State attorney John Smriga added: "I am concerned there is an expectation he would do this to other people if he was allowed to be free."

A psychiatrist testified that Smith heard voices that told him to eat Mr Gonzalez's brain to better understand human behaviour and eat his eyes to gain vision into the "spiritual realm".

‘Cannibal’ Who Killed, Partially Ate Homeless Man Found Insane

By Associated Press - Newsone.com

Jul 10, 2013

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — A three-judge panel has found a man not guilty by reason of insanity in the death of a homeless man he admitted to killing and partially eating.

The Connecticut Post reports the judges deliberated about an hour Tuesday before finding that prosecutors had proven 35-year-old Tyree Lincoln Smith of Lynn Haven, Fla., killed and cannibalized Angel Gonzalez in December 2011, but that Smith was legally insane at the time.

The judges will determine on Sept. 9 whether Smith should be committed to a mental hospital.

During the trial, prosecutors presented a videotaped statement to police in which Smith says he used a hatchet to kill Gonzalez, then took out the man’s eyes and part of his brain and ate them.

Smith was charged with murder in the death of Gonzalez, who was killed on the third floor of an abandoned Bridgeport home. His body was found more than a month later by an inspector for a mortgage company.

Smith came to the attention of authorities when his cousin contacted Bridgeport police about Gonzalez’s slaying. She told detectives that Smith had arrived at her house on Dec. 15, 2011, and said he wanted to “get blood on his hands” before going to the abandoned home, where he used to live, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

The next day, Smith returned to the cousin’s house with blood on his pants, hands and an ax, the affidavit said. Smith told his cousin that he killed Gonzalez with the ax, then collected parts of his victim and consumed them in a nearby cemetery, washing them down with sake, according to court documents.

Public defender Joseph Bruckmann handled the insanity defense.

Less than a month after the killing, Smith was treated and released from St. Vincent’s Medical Center’s Behavioral Health Services in Westport after being discovered in a pharmacy bleeding from his wrist, which police said he had slashed with a box cutter.

He was eventually discharged and returned to Florida, where he was arrested on Jan. 23, 2012.

Judges: Cannibal not guilty due to insanity

By Daniel Tepfer - StamfordAdvocate.com

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

BRIDGEPORT -- Bridgeport cannibal Tyree Lincoln Smith will likely serve out the rest of his life in a mental hospital after a three-judge panel found him not guilty of murder Tuesday by reason of insanity.

Following the trial of one of the city's most notorious -- and certainly most gruesome murder cases -- the Florida man who claimed he was ordered by voices to kill and eat a harmless homeless man was to be committed to a state mental hospital, pending further evaluation.

His next court hearing is Sept. 9, where psychiatrists will testify about whether he's safe to send back into the community -- a doubtful outcome for a man who's admitted to having an appetite for human flesh.

"We have to look at the big picture," Smith's lawyer, Joseph Bruckmann, urged the judges. "We can't overlook that he ate part of the man's brain and his eyeballs in a cemetery."

The verdict was greeted with a gasp from Talitha Frazier, sister-in-law of the victim, Angel "Tun Tun" Gonzalez.

"Justice has been served!" Frazier loudly proclaimed. "I don't care where he serves the rest of his life as long as it's behind locked doors."

Just moments before, Frazier had gotten into a yelling match in the courtroom with a man who would only identify himself as a relative of Smith's.

"Tyree, Tyree! I'm your blood, I'm your blood!" the unidentified man shouted.

"I ain't saying he didn't do it, I know he did -- but I'm his blood," he said before walking away.

Smith, a damp stain on the front of his prison-issued sweatshirt, said he had nothing to say as he was led shackled from the courtroom by judicial marshals.

The three Superior Court judges, John Kavanewsky, John Blawie and Maria Kahn, deliberated about an hour before determining that State's Attorney John Smriga had proved the 35-year-old Smith killed Gonzalez on Dec. 15, 2011, and cannibalized the victim's body.

But they found Bruckmann had proved his client was insane at the time.

Smith is expected to be transported to the Whiting Forensic Institute in Middletown, at least until his next court hearing.

"The defendant was unable, as a result of a mental disease, a psychosis attended by command hallucinations, to control his conduct within the requirements of the law," Kavanewsky said from the bench.

"There have been two tragedies in this case," said Bruckmann, who with Lindsay Colvin, represented Smith during the three-day trial. "The first was the senseless death of Mr. Gonzalez, and the second is that Tyree Smith has been a tortured soul for many years. He's been tortured by voices for decades and now that he is properly medicated he is horrified he caused Mr. Gonzalez's death."

Smith grew up in Bridgeport and Ansonia and later lived in California before moving to Lynn Haven, Florida.

During the trial, Smith's cousin, Nicole Rabb, testified that in December 2011 Smith had showed up at her door talking about Greek gods and ruminating about needing to go out and get blood.

When she saw him the next evening she noticed what appeared to be specks of blood on his pants and that he was carrying chopsticks and a bloody hatchet.

Rabb said she kicked Smith out of her Seaview Avenue apartment after he told her he had killed a man with a hatchet and then eaten some of his body parts in the Lakeview Cemetery, washing them down with sake, a Japanese alcoholic beverage made from fermented rice.

A month later police found Gonzalez's mutilated body in a vacant apartment on Brooks Street, the same apartment where Smith had lived as a child.

Police recovered the bloody hatchet and an empty bottle of sake in a stream bed off Boston Avenue.

The defense's case rested mainly on the testimony of Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Reena Kapoor. She testified that Smith retained his lust for human flesh after his arrest -- even offering to eat her.

Kapoor claimed that Smith had suffered from psychotic incidents since childhood and heard voices that told him to kill people.

She said the voices ordered Smith to eat the victim's brain so they would get a better understanding of human behavior, and the eyes so that they could see into the "spirit realm."

She said after Smith ate the body parts he went to the Subway sandwich shop on Main Street because he was apparently still hungry.

Accused cannibal considered eating psychiatrist

By Daniel Tepfer - Ctpost.com

Monday, July 8, 2013

BRIDGEPORT -- Distressed after losing his job at Starbucks in December 2010, accused cannibal Tyree Lincoln Smith asked his brother-in-law to get him a gun.

"He was hearing voices that were instructing him to kill certain people: a pedophile priest, a cop in Bridgeport he thought was involved in drugs," Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Reena Kapoor testified Monday.

Kapoor testified that Smith's behavior so frightened his family they reported the incident to officials in California, where he was living, and officials took his young son away from Smith. Kapoor's testimony is the crux of the defense case to prove Smith was insane when he killed and cannibalized Angel "Tun Tun" Gonzalez.

The police officer and priest were not identified.

The 35-year-old Smith is before a three-judge panel in state Superior Court, charged with murder in the Dec. 15, 2011, slaying of Gonzalez, a homeless man staying in a vacant apartment on Brooks Street. Police said Smith hacked up Gonzalez with an ax, then cannibalized the body, which was discovered 39 days later.

During Monday's testimony, Smith, a large wet stain on the front of his shirt, sat staring straight ahead at the defense table while his lawyer, public defender Joseph Bruckmann, questioned the psychiatrist.

Kapoor testified that losing his son added further stress to Smith and he spent the next several months in and out of psychiatric care in California, where she said one therapist described Smith as "the most severely mentally ill person he had ever treated."

During this time, she said Smith was writing a book he titled "The Book of Michael."

"The book is nonsensical. You can't discern any kind of meaning from it," she testified.

But even after his arrest for killing Gonzalez, Kapoor said Smith had only two concerns: "When he will get a chance to work on the book again." And eating people.

"I want to eat others because I have already crossed that line," Kapoor said Smith told prison treatment providers in April 2012. "I found out later that he even considered eating me."

Born in Bridgeport, Smith moved with his family to Ansonia when he was 12. He attended public school there, where Kapoor described him as an above average student until 11th grade, when his grades fell and Smith dropped out. She said during that time he was once found outside in the middle of winter dressed only in his underwear.

After a short stay at the Yale Psychiatric Institute, Smith was sent by his mother to live with an uncle in Sacramento, Calif. While there, he fathered two sons with different women and worked at several coffee shops and as a manager of a videogame store.

In July 2011 he moved to Lynn Haven, Fla., where he lived with a girlfriend. But things got worse.

"He said he was hearing ... voices and they were telling him to kill people," Kapoor testified.

She is to return to the witness stand Tuesday morning.

A portrait of Tyree Smith, man accused of cannibalism

By Brittany Lyte and Tom Cleary - Ctpost.com

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Tyree Smith needed material.

The book he was writing was about his life. It was about the things that happened to him and the things he imagined happened to him. Smith couldn't always tell the difference. The voices he heard and the thoughts he had were so vivid he couldn't always separate them from reality.

So, before sitting down to labor over the several hundred-page manuscript so grisly he feared it could land him in jail, he tried to clear his head. Typically, this involved drinking generously from a bottle of sake and going outside for a walk.

When Smith walked, his bearded face was blank, like he was looking through the palm trees and the single-story homes and the sand-swept road at something only he could see. Often he was barefoot.

This struck Smith's neighbors in Lynn Haven, Fla., as a little strange.

One neighbor, Cynthia Martin, called him "Black Jesus," in a local paper, the Panama City News Herald.

"Always walking," recalled Sandra Turner Cassaday, a widowed home health care aide who lives across the street from the apartment where Smith stayed during his several months stay in this quiet, coastal community. "He was always by himself. I always thought of him as a loner."

Smith was aloof, his neighbors say. But never aggressive. Never violent. So it shocked them when a SWAT team showed up Jan. 24 at the apartment where he was staying and took him into custody.

Smith, who was standing outside the apartment, barefooted and smoking a cigarette, calmly allowed the heavily armed officers to take him down.

His neighbors would later learn he had confessed to committing a gruesome homicide in Bridgeport.

Police said Smith hacked a homeless man, Angel "Tun Tun" Gonzalez, to death with an ax, removed an eyeball and a portion of his brain and then carried it with him to Lakeview Cemetery on Dec. 15, 2011. Standing over his cousin's grave, Smith ate Gonzalez's organs, washing it down with sake.

A building inspector would find the Gonzalez's mutilated, decomposing body in a burnt-out Brooks Street apartment building 39 days later.

Smith, a 35-year-old former Ansonia and Bridgeport resident, has lived a transient life. At one point he lived with his cousins in the Brooks Street house where police said his ravaged victim was found. He moved from Ansonia to California after high school and then to Florida, before eventually ending up homeless in Bridgeport early this year.

He is a single father, an unpublished writer and a former model who at times lived a life of normalcy. He had also sought help at several mental health facilities.

Smith's Facebook page tells a story of a man conflicted. At times it reflects an average person, but then he drifts into the surreal. In between comments about the San Francisco 49ers firing their head coach, Smith says, "So what yall doing tonight? I'm drinking sake and -- ahem -- eating a cornish hen. Its cold. Need the animal fat."

He talks about his son, who lives in Sacramento, and exchanges "I love yous," with his mother.

But his most unsettling post came toward the end of his time on Facebook, a period he declared over on Jan. 15, 2011, before briefly popping back into the social media world on July 3, to inform family and friends he had moved to Lynn Haven. It was then that he unleashed a diatribe about his fantasies.

"Devouring your flesh. Smelling your bodies burn in a heap," he wrote. "I hate the day they created you filthy humans. There. Thats whats been on my mind since a child. Happy?"

That comment came on Jan. 12. Eleven months later, police said, he followed through, fulfilling his dream.

Who is Tyree Smith?

Tyree Lincoln Smith was born to Cheryl Rabb and Adolph Smith on Jan. 11, 1977.

His mother was 18 at the time of his birth. His father was 21. They would later marry less than a month before Smith's seventh birthday.

Smith grew up at Riverside Apartments, a three-story public housing project on Olson Drive, and attended Ansonia High School, where he dated Roshonda Young. Young had a wide, toothy smile and danced on the drill team.

Smith completed three years of public high school in the city before withdrawing on Sept. 8, 1994. He enrolled in Job Corps, a vocational training program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor that helps young people learn a trade while earning a high school diploma.

Then he moved to California, where his cousin, Nicole Rabb, said he worked as a model. He fathered a son there in the late 1990s.

In 2007, Smith was charged with assaulting his girlfriend by police in Yolo County, Calif. He was convicted but put on probation and served no prison time.

It's unclear whether Smith sought mental health treatment during his years in California. However, a September 2010 posting on his Facebook page reveals he has received psychiatric help: "Omw (On my way) to the shrinks now. Cya guys," he posted.

Smith spent the last couple of years engrossed in his writing. In January 2011, he posted extensively about his frustrations with the writing process: "I've tried really hard to write this book. First i lose 150 pages worth of work, now somehow my flashdrive to back it up is missing. It has about 300 pages worth of work on it. I really do hope i misplaced it, which i cant see due to the fact i do not move anything on my desk. I am not going to accuse my son as i somehow always do when something turns up missing."

Eight hours later, Smith posted that he found the missing flashdrive. "Ok, i drink ALOT," he wrote. "But theres no way in hell this flashdrive was sitting in litterally in front of me like this. All i had to do is raise my head. It was even eye level too. Ok, im done being paranoid. Thanks again. I should stop playing so many wargames."

'Something about him'

In July 2011, Smith moved to Lynn Haven. While there, he was in the company of Michelle Renee Matisons. He stayed with her on and off through Jan. 24, when he was taken into custody by a SWAT team.

Matisons, a 41-year-old women's studies scholar, met Smith in California and once lived two doors down from him in a 12-unit apartment building in downtown Sacramento. Back then, Matisons was an assistant professor at California State University in Sacramento. While there, she co-authored a book on feminism, wrote several academic articles and was a vocal critic of the pay scale for state university faculty, frequently quoted by local media.

In 2010, Matisons moved to Lynn Haven, a predominately white, middle-income city just north of Panama City. The 10-square-mile city is mostly residential, with two golf courses and a yacht club. It's the kind of place where people go out for the day and leave the front door unlocked.

Smith stayed there with Matisons for about seven months, according to a neighbor.

Sometime in late November or early December, Louis Farias, who lives in the same apartment complex as Matisons, encountered Smith in front of the building, gazing up at the sky. He was barefoot and carrying a bottle of wine. It was 10 a.m.

Farias complained about the incident to the landlord.

"There was just something about him, behavior like that, he made me uncomfortable," Farias said.

'This is your blood'

On Dec. 15, Smith was in Bridgeport. After traveling to the city by bus, he had shown up at his cousin Nicole Rabb's Seaview Avenue apartment.

Rabb said Smith appeared out of sorts. He was drinking from a bottle of sake and talking about a book he was writing about murder and rape and Greek gods. Inside the black bookbag over his shoulder was a small ax.

He told his cousin he needed to get blood on his hands.

The arrest warrant describes what police believe happened next.

That night, Smith curled up outside the abandoned, boarded-up Brooks Street apartment building where he used to live. He was awakened by Angel "Tun Tun" Gonzalez, a homeless drunk who invited him in from the cold.

Gonzalez was popular in the neighborhood. Like Smith, he had also once lived in the Brooks Street building before it was boarded up.

Once inside the apartment, Smith heard a voice: "This is your blood."

Police said Smith hacked Gonzalez to death with his ax and cannibalized the body.

Sitting down at the dinner table with Rabb the next night, Smith announced, "I got my blood."

Describing the killing in detail to his cousin, Smith said the rush he felt while hacking Gonzalez and consuming pieces of his body was unlike anything he had ever experienced before, the arrest warrant said. He told Rabb he has a sexual lust for blood.

Rabb kicked Smith out of her apartment.

The next day, Smith's mother, Cheryl Smith, called police. She asked officers to check on the welfare of her son at 216 Brooks St. after Rabb told her what Smith had recounted about the crime. Officers went to the building but found it boarded up and were unable to get inside.

Police said Cheryl Smith later told officers she had spoken with her son the day after he told his cousin he killed Gonzalez. She said she had told Smith he needed help and to go to the hospital, according to court records. Cheryl Smith also told police her son had gone to Bridgeport Hospital, but had left there after not being treated, police said.

Smith did check into St. Vincent's Medical Center and was discharged Jan. 9. Two days later, he went to a CVS Pharmacy in Fairfield to fill several prescriptions. He was discovered in an aisle bleeding heavily from his left wrist, which police said he slashed with a box cutter before collapsing on the floor. Smith was treated and released from St. Vincent's Medical Center's Behavioral Health Services in Westport.

Neither St. Vincent's nor the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, which oversees Greater Bridgeport Community Mental Health, would confirm whether Smith sought treatment there.

Later in the month, Smith returned to Lynn Haven. He told Matisons he was homeless and she invited him back to her apartment, fearing for his health as the weather grew colder.

Using Matisons' computer, Smith continued working on his manuscript.

On Jan. 23, Cassaday, the neighbor, looked outside and saw Smith by the road. He was skipping, laughing and holding hands with Matisons.

"I was excited for him," Cassaday said. "Because, you know, I didn't know much about him except he was a bit strange and a little different, but you know everybody marches to the beat of a different drum. I told my son, `I'm really glad he had somebody.' It's awful to think somebody has to go through life alone. It was nice to see he had somebody to share his life with."

At about 7 p.m. the next day, Smith was taken into custody by police.

Farias, the neighbor, says he watched it all unfold. He had been approached earlier that day by U.S. Marshals who were staking out Smith's home. He went down to the federal courthouse in Panama City and was asked to verify whether Smith was who police believed he was. When Farias returned to his apartment, he went to check his mail and wound up face to face with Smith.

Farias called the marshals' office. Forty-five minutes later, a task force team swarmed the quiet complex.

Smith was taken to Bay County Jail, made a brief appearance in court and was then flown back to Bridgeport alongside Detectives Keith Bryant and Harold Dimbo.

At a loss

Since news of the allegations against Smith spread, Matisons has rarely been seen outside her apartment. Calls for comment by reporters were not returned, and a neighbor said Matisons' father has been seen staying with her.

Farias, who lived next to Matisons in Lynn Haven, said she blamed Smith's mental issues for his alleged crime.

"He was under some kind of care, she mentioned that day when he was arrested, he had gone into town to the wellness center to try and get back on his medications," Farias said. "She blamed it on the state, that they dropped the ball and let him back on the street."

Police did seize two medications -- Trazodone and Cephalexin -- from Matisons' Lynn Haven apartment. Matisons told police Smith had gone to Life Management, a local mental health facility, and was taking medication he brought with him from Bridgeport.

Farias said things got "bizarre," during his conversation with Matisons after police left. She even told Farinas that Smith was a computer hacker affiliated with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and his arrest was part of a conspiracy.

"It was off-the-wall stuff," he said.

Smith has appeared at Bridgeport Superior Court twice since his arrest. None of his family members has attended the court proceedings. Except for Rabb, Smith's cousin, his family members and friends have not responded to calls, emails and visits from reporters seeking comment.

He sits now in the Garner Correctional Institute in Newtown, medicated and on suicide watch. A mental evaluation will be completed before any trial begins, per a judge's order.

A pre-trial court appearance is set for March 5 in Bridgeport.

When news broke of Smith's arrest, Roshonda Young, Smith's high school girlfriend, posted on Facebook that she was in shock over the charges. She wrote that when she found Smith on the social networking site, he was not the same person she knew in high school.

"At a loss for words," she wrote. "I tried to be there and encourage him ... i keep askin myself what could i have possibly said to change the outcome of his actions?! I knew hell we knew something wasnt right just didnt think he would commit such a horrible crime. My high school sweetheart an axe murderer and canibal??!!"

She later posted, "... i just keep tellin myself that i shoulda been there more for him cause i knew he was disturbed and isolated just didnt want him to feel like he didnt have nobody. I told him i would always have love for him cause he felt unloved mistreated by all and alone."

Staff Writer Dan Tepfer contributed to this report.

'Cannibal killer developed taste for blood after eating rare steak': Man faces court accused of hacking homeless man to death before eating his eye and brain

Tyree Lincoln Smith, 35, arraigned on murder charge for December 15 killing of Angel Gonzalez

DailyMail.com

February 2, 2012

A Florida man charged with hacking a homeless Connecticut man to death with an axe and eating his eye and part of his brain was ordered today to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Tyree Lincoln Smith, 35, stared blankly as he stood with his hands chained behind his back during his arraignment in Bridgeport Superior Court on a murder charge for the December killing of Andre Gonzalez.

Police in Bridgeport said Smith was covered in blood when he told his cousin about the murder, after developing a lust for blood he needed to satiate after eating a rare steak.

Superior Court Judge Earl Richards set Smith's bond at $1million at the urging of prosecutors, who described the crime as 'extremely heinous'.

It was his first court appearance since he was returned to Connecticut on Tuesday following his arrest last week in Lynn Haven, Florida, six miles northeast of Panama City.

The Connecticut Post reports that Judge Richards ordered the evaluation at the urging of Smith's lawyer, Public Defender Joseph Bruckmann, and ordered him to remain in custody in lieu of $1million bond.

The judge also ordered Smith placed on a suicide watch at the Bridgeport Correctional Center at Bruckmann's urging.

The next hearing was scheduled for February 14.

Smith, a Floridian who grew up in Ansonia, Connecticut, is charged in the December 15 killing of Angel Gonzalez, whose decomposed body was found on the third floor of an abandoned home in Bridgeport on January 23.

Police said the body significantly wounded and blood was spattered on a nearby wall.

According to the Post, police noticed one of the victim's eyeballs and a piece of his brain was missing when they found the body, but initially attributed that to rats.

Prosecutor Donal Collimore urged the judge to set a high bond, describing the crime as 'extremely heinous'.

Talitcha Frazier, a sister-in-law of the victim, said she remembered seeing Smith asking for change on the street.

'I think at the time I told him to get a job. I had no idea then that he had killed my brother-in-law,' Ms Frasier said on the courthouse steps after the hearing.

Smith came to the attention of authorities when his cousin in Connecticut, Nicole Rabb, contacted Bridgeport police about Gonzalez's slaying.

Ms Rabb told detectives that Smith had arrived at her house December 15 and said he had developed a lust for blood after eating a rare steak and wanted to 'get blood on his hands'.

According to an arrest warrant affidavit, he left the woman's East End apartment with a small axe before going to the abandoned home, where he used to live.

The next day, Smith returned to the cousin's house with blood on his pants, hands and the axe, the affidavit said. Police say he told his cousin he had 'gotten his blood'.

Ms Rabb said Smith told her that he was sleeping on a porch at the abandoned home when he was awakened by another man and invited inside. Then Smith described beating the man's face and head with the axe and collecting one of his eyes and some of his brain matter, which he consumed over a male cousin's grave at the Lakeview cemetery, the affidavit said.

'Tyree told [Rabb] the blows to [Angel Gonzalez's] head were so severe that he was able to remove an eye from the man's head along with pieces of brain matter and a piece of his skull,' the warrant reads, according to the Hartford Courant.

'At the cemetery he said he ate the eyeball, which tasted like an oyster, and the brain matter,' it continues.

As the Post reports, Ms Rabb told detectives she called Smith's mother, who suggested to police on December 16 that they check the abandoned home and that her son had 'mental issues', the affidavit said.

Smith had left Connecticut for Florida on Friday on a Greyhound bus, the cousin told detectives.

Lynn Haven police say federal, state and local law enforcement officers took him into custody last week at a woman's apartment without incident.

She told authorities she was unaware of his alleged actions.

Tyree Smith, Accused Axe Murderer And Cannibal, Allegedly Said Victim's Eye 'Tasted Like Oyster'

HuffingtonPost.com

January 25, 2012

A Connecticut murder suspect was arrested Tuesday night in Florida after allegedly killing a man with an axe and eating portions of the victim.

According to police in Bridgeport, Conn., 35-year-old Tyree Lincoln Smith was arrested in Lynn Haven, Fla., on a murder warrant issued by the Constitution State. The suspect was taken into custody without incident by local law enforcement and the U.S. Marshal Violent Crime Fugitive Task Force, police said.

The murder suspect, whose last known address is in Bridgeport, was being sought for the murder of 43-year-old Angel "Tun Tun" Gonzalez. The victim's decomposed body was discovered on a mattress inside an abandoned apartment building on Jan. 20. The medical examiner's office determined Gonzalez died as a result of blunt force trauma to the head.

According to the arrest warrant, Smith confessed to his cousin, Nicole Rabb, that he had killed Gonzalez with a hatchet in mid-December. He allegedly said he was sleeping on a porch of an abandoned apartment building when Gonzalez, a man he apparently did not know, woke him up and invited him in out of the cold. After entering the building, Smith allegedly attacked Gonzalez with an axe, police said.

Tyree allegedly told his cousin that the blows to Gonzalez's head were "so severe that he was able to remove an eye from the man's head along with pieces of brain matter and a piece of his skull," the arrest warrant reads.

Afterward, Smith allegedly took the organs to Lakeview Cemetery, where a relative of his is buried.

"At the cemetery he said he ate the eyeball, which tasted like an oyster, and the brain matter," according to the warrant.

During his alleged confession, Smith reportedly spoke of Greek gods and referred to Rabb as "Athena." In Greek mythology, Athena is the goddess of wisdom, war, the arts, industry, justice and skill.

On Jan. 20, after Smith made his alleged confession, he boarded a Greyhound Bus for Florida and arrived in Panana City on Jan. 23. While Smith was on his journey to Florida, Rabb learned of the discovery of Gonzalez's body and contacted police.

On Tuesday night, police located Smith at a Lynn Haven apartment. At the time of his arrest, Smith was in the company of a woman who police say was "unaware of Smith's actions," and authorities reported that she has fully cooperated with their efforts.

Gonzalez's step-daughter, 25-year-old Odalys Vazquez, told the Connecticut Post she wants justice for her step-father's murder.

"Here it is that my dad was trying to help this guy, telling him to come inside from the cold," Vazquez said. "If my father was helping him stay warm, what kind of person is it who does this -- who repays him by swinging an axe at him and hitting him so hard it blows his brains out?"

Smith is being held on $1 million bond pending extradition to Connecticut.