Tyler

By KENNETH DEAN
Staff Writer
© Tyler Morning Telegraph

Sheriff officials say the man accused of murdering his girlfriend, mutilating her body and possibly participating in cannibalism is telling investigators that “God told me to do it.”

Smith County Sheriff Lt. Larry Wiginton told the Tyler Paper this morning that Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, is now saying he was instructed by God to kill 21-year-old Jana Shearer over the weekend and then mutilate her body and cook parts of her flesh.

“When he said God told him to do it, one of the investigators looked at him and just said, ‘What did you say?’” he said.

Sheriff J. B. Smith told the newspaper on Sunday that investigators found Shearer’s body with chunks of flesh cut out, one ear boiling in a pot of water on the stove and a plate of human flesh with a fork on the kitchen table in the brick home at 423 Princess Place in Tyler.

Officials said that McCuin killed the woman by beating her in the head with a blunt object after abducting her from her Whitehouse apartment, put her body in the back seat of his extended cab pickup, drove to his estranged wife’s home where he stabbed her boyfriend multi-ple times, ran from police, broke into a Tyler business and then finally went to his mother’s home where he asked her to come look what he had done.

McCuin’s mother and her husband fled from the scene and contacted police about the same time McCuin himself called the Smith County Sheriff’s office and told the dispatcher he had killed his girlfriend and was cooking parts of her.

He was arrested after a brief standoff at his mother’s home. He remains in the Smith County Jail on a $2 million bond.

Wiginton said investigators are still working the case and that they need help in locating where the actual murder took place.

“We believe it happened somewhere in the Antioch area of the county (northwest of Whitehouse), but we need help. If anyone has information or has seen something unusual that might be a part of this case we ask that they call us,” he said.

Wiginton said sheriff investigators and the district attorney have made pleas to have the arrest affidavit sealed in the case.

“It hasn’t been officially sealed yet, but it will be when we return it to the court,” he said.

Wiginton said that when questioned, McCuin claims he remembers going to several places, but when asked if he killed Ms. Shearer or stabbed his estranged wife’s boyfriend, McCuin says he suffered blackouts and doesn’t remember.

Updated Monday, Jan. 7, 2007 at 11:23 a.m. CDT

Christopher McCuin
(Courtesy Smith County Sheriff)