Cannibal caught in Lynn Haven found not guilty

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.

Judges deliberated about an hour Tuesday before finding prosecutors had proved 35-year-old Tyree Lincoln Smith killed and cannibalized some of Angel Gonzalez’s body parts in December 2011, but that Smith was legally insane at the time, The Connecticut Post reports.

The judges will determine 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. He was arrested in January 2012 on a murder warrant at a home on Illinois Avenue in Lynn Haven.

According to police records, Smith went to his cousin’s home in Bridgeport on a December morning and told her he had to get blood on his hands. He returned the next day with blood on his hands, clothes and an ax, she said.

Smith told his cousin he had returned to his former house to sleep on the porch, and he was invited inside by Angel Gonzalez, a homeless man who was squatting at the house. He told his cousin he used the ax to kill Gonzalez and then took pieces of his body to his brother’s grave, where he ate them and washed them down with wine.

More than a month went by before a building inspector found Gonzalez’s body. Smith’s cousin came forward and he became the prime suspect.

Smith got on a bus to Florida on the day Gonzalez’s body was found. He stayed with a woman who later told police she had known him for years, and during his visit she noticed he was mentally unstable and was having trouble separating reality from the fantasy stories he had been reading. She told police he had been to a mental health treatment facility on the day he was arrested.