Tyree Smith, from Bridgeport Connecticut, killed a homeless man on December 15, 2011, and ate his brain and eyeballs. He has just been released into the community, ten years after being committed to a state psychiatric hospital, the Whiting Forensic Hospital, supposedly for sixty years.

Smith apologised for the murder at the trial, and the three-judge panel decided he was not guilty of murder by reason of insanity, during his sentencing in July 2013.

In lieu of prison, Smith was committed to a state psychiatric hospital for sixty years. After just ten years, the state Psychiatric Security Review Board said Smith was ready to be transitioned back into the community and he has been released from the facility, Connecticut’s most secure.

He will be living in a Waterbury group home, under orders not to associate with anyone involved in criminal activity. The board stated in its report:

Tyree Smith is an individual with a psychiatric illness requiring care, custody and treatment. Since his last hearing, Tyree Smith has continued to demonstrate clinical stability. Mr. Smith is medication compliant, actively engaged in all recommended forms of treatment, and has been symptom-free for many years.

During the trial, Smith’s cousin Nicole Rabb claimed he arrived at her Connecticut home in December 2011, ranting about Greek gods and talking about needing to go out and get blood.

Police described in the arrest warrant what they believed happened.

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 neighbourhood. 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 saying, “This is your blood.”
Police said Smith hacked Gonzalez to death with his axe and cannibalised the body.

When Smith’s cousin saw him the next evening, she noticed what appeared to be specks of blood on his pants, and found that he was carrying chopsticks and a bloody axe. Smith allegedly told Rabb he killed a man and ate his brains in the Lakeview Cemetery while drinking sake, and warned her he intended to eat more people. Smith said the rush he felt while hacking Gonzalez and consuming pieces of his body was unlike anything he had ever experienced before, according to the arrest warrant. He told Rabb he has a sexual lust for blood.

A month later, police found Angel Gonzalez’s mutilated body in the vacant apartment on Brooks Street in Bridgeport where Smith had lived as a child. Police later recovered the bloody axe and an empty bottle of sake in a streambed near the Boston Avenue cemetery.

In a videotaped statement to police, Smith said he used a hatchet to kill Gonzalez, then took out the man’s eyes and part of his brain and ate them, washed down with sake (rice wine).

Smith’s defence team relied on the testimony of Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Reena Kapoor, who indicated that Smith had retained his lust for human flesh after his arrest, even offering to eat her. Kapoor claimed Smith suffered from psychotic incidents since childhood, and heard voices.

The voices ordered Smith to eat the victim’s brain so they would get a better understanding of human behaviour, and the eyes so that they could see into the ‘spirit realm’

Kapoor added that Smith went to Subway after eating the man’s body parts.

The report on Smith’s release said there was no evidence of “internal preoccupation or paranoia” and that “he denied experiencing cravings but stated that if they were to arise, he would reach out to his hospital and community supports and providers.”

A year before the murder, Smith wrote on Facebook,

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

Of course, spouting abuse on Facebook doesn’t mean that the writer will eat people’s brains. Well, not always.