A man who killed and ate a man has been released back into public life after ten years.
Tyree Smith, from Bridgeport, Connecticut, killed a homeless man and then ate his brain and eyeballs according to officials.
The horrific case made headline news, with Smith found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity after a July 2013 trial.
In lieu of a stint behind bars, Smith was ordered committed to a state psychiatric hospital for 60 years.
But now, ten years after the grim incident, the state Psychiatric Security Review Board said Smith was ready to be transitioned back into the community.
Smith has been released from the facility, Connecticut’s most secure, as of writing.
He will be living in a Waterbury group home, and is not allowed 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, 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 ax.
Smith then allegedly told Rabb he killed a man and ate his brains in the Lakeview Cemetery while drinking sake, and grimly warned he intended to eat more people.
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 ax and an empty bottle of sake in a stream bed near the Boston Avenue cemetery.
The defense’s case rested on the testimony of Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Reena Kapoor, who testified that Smith had kept 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 that told him to kill people.
She then 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.”
Kapoor added that Smith went to Subway after eating the man’s body parts.
The report on Smith’s release said: “He denied experiencing cravings but stated that if they were to arise, he would reach out to his hospital and community supports and providers.”
Some of y’all really need to figure out the difference between punishment and rehabilitation…
And which one actually works.
Stop stroking your hate boners and start advocating for real solutions. You don’t fix pain with more pain. All that does is exacerbate the cycle.
It’s not about pain, at least not for me. If he was in the most comfortable psych hospital in the world, where they fluffed his pillows and shined his shoes, if he ate better and slept better than I do, that would be fine. But releasing him?
I mean, he’s going to a group home. He’s likely going to be carefully managed for the rest of his life. This is more of a reduced level of monitoring.
I hope that’s true, but I’ve known group homes that are… somewhat lax. The state of mental health care (and funding) in this country does not inspire hope regarding his monitoring.
I suppose we just have to hope that he’s not lying about not having urges. As someone with mental illness, I’ve lied my socks off to avoid the psych ward before.
The problem is we don’t care enough to have psych facilities like that. Which is why we have an entire wing of the emergency department at my hospital dedicated to holding people who are doing nothing but waiting for a bed at one of the trash facilities we actually do bother to provide. No real treatment in the emergency department except meds, but also not safe enough to send them home. Scary that there’s somebody now who needs the bed in that facility more than this guy does.
I’ll say I’m proud of this country the day we provide good, comfortable lifelong treatment facilities for people like this, alongside quality rest homes for our elderly. We have the resources to do it, and the fact that we don’t is an absolute indictment of our society.
it’s a complicated issue, and we need to get society on board with the idea of treating mental health (to both a sufficient and humane degree) in addition to physical health. moving away from the institutionalization model was intended to ensure people weren’t just locked away to rot at the state hospital under the “supervision” of indifferent or hostile caretakers.
without community support and with the move toward profit-driven healthcare, people aren’t going to get what they need. now our institutions are just literal prisons instead of asylums.
but anyway, i know you know most of this already (the shortcomings of the profit-driven model), as someone working in healthcare.
The problem is our justice system only focuses on the punishment part. Rehabilitation is either non-existent for most inmates or completely inadequate. The likelihood of this man being mentally stable enough to be safely reintegrated into public life is extremely small.
maybe not… a high profile case like this may well have attracted the attention of more competent psychiatrists, or motivated his care team/state to seek it out. it also seems possible to me that his psychosis was very treatable with the right meds, but that he had not been able to access that care previously.
so yeah. mental health care is health care, and in this case it’s important not only to the well-being of Mr. Smith but to his community as well. i agree with you that, for the american “justice” system, most cases are treated as it punishment is the correct response.
The US justice system unfortunately runs on emotion and punishment rather than rehabilitation, thanks in no small part to the whole privatized prison system. The average American would rather see someone suffer than get the help they need. This is a particularly strong mindset ironically among the conservative religious, but there are plenty of liberals who think that way too. This country needs reform on so many systems…
He ended someone’s life. That alone should remove him from society forever.
Now his entire release hinges on him being compliant with his meds to not end someone else’s life.
So if your brakes stop working and you run someone over tomorrow, you should be removed from society forever?
Accidentally spread COVID to your grandma and she died? Life in prison for you!
Had a stillbirth? Goodbye society, put the wench behind bars.
Obviously that’s the dumbest take I’ve ever heard. How do people have so little empathy they can’t even imagine what a mental issue like that could even be like. These people are sick and not in control.
If we have highly educated people who can accurately take measures to cure these people, I’m 100% supporting this. More yet, if the US cared only a tiny bit more about healthcare, cases like this would easily be avoided.
People who voted for those not giving a fuck killed the man, maybe you, the voter should be jailed too, according to your rethoric?
What are “real” solutions, in your opinion? What do you feel should be done for the victims and their loved ones and family?
Nothing can really be done for them. Locking him up won’t do anything for them, either. One could argue for some form of restitution, but then you’d have to ask if they even want anything from the guy.
The real solutions are adequate mental healthcare and access to medication, as well as routine monitoring and check-ins. All following an extensive inpatient treatment and rehabilitation program… So, basically what they’ve done here. Fighting pain with more pain doesn’t do anyone good. It’s entirely reactionary. Locking someone up for life does not help anyone.
Helping the person get the treatment they so desperately need does.
I am not talking abou the perpetrators, though. I wanted to know what should be done to care for the victims of violent crimes.
I don’t want to live near a city that a fucking psychotic brain eating killer is free to walk the streets! That’s absolute madness
Evidently you don’t understand the prevalence and severity of mental health issues, cause this could happen anywhere…
Unfortunately our healthcare system is so fucked up, and society is full of people like you that would rather hurt people than help them, that this sort of thing is only exacerbated.
Stop being part of the problem. Be part of the solution.
The dude ate someone’s fucking brain, you live next to him if you’re fine with that
In this issue I refuse to be liberal. If your mental illness causes you to kill and eat people, you don’t get to rejoin society. If I was the mentally ill cannibal, I would never want to be out. Same thing happened up here in Canada, we have cannibals and terrorists running around free cause they’re “rehabilitated” and the rest of us? Fuck us and our safety
Same thing happened up here in Canada
And look at all the crime he’s committed. Oops, wait, he hasn’t.
Naw this dude is damaged goods. What happens when they cut his meds or if he stops taking it? Other peoples brains gonna be looking very tasty in that group home.
No, this a death penalty thing and that’s a mercy. You kill a guy and eat his brains there’s no coming back, just kill the bastard cheaply and use the resources to rehabilitate someone that can readjust like a drug user.
Planets fucking full anyways to keep a cannibal alive tbh. Make room for good people.
Planets fucking full anyways
Piss off with this Malthusian bullshit, will you?
So, resolve a murder with more murder… Yeah, that’s a real great solution
That’s kinda how we dealt with shit for millenia. One thing about humans is we are very good at making more.
Too bad the guy who got his brain ate can’t be rehabilitated.
I feel like there’s a lot of steps between rehabilitating a chronic shoplifter and a guy who killed and consumed a guy’s brain. Even if someone is rehabilitated should they escape punishment? Should we not punish people for what they do to others?
Sometimes the lessons that stay with you longest are learned through pain. Sometimes you need to feel hurt to understand it.
If the guy was truly determined by actual professionals (aka: not you) to be fit to return to society, then what’s the issue?
What gain does anyone get from unnecessarily punishing him longer? It’s just a waste of time and resources to inflict pain on an individual because people can’t accept that someone can change.
Punishment does very little in the way of teaching a lesson. Do some actual research.
Edit: furthermore, this was an incident of mental illness and a severe psychological break. You can’t punish that out of someone. That makes no sense. This man needed serious help, got it, and has been compliant with his treatment.
He wasn’t punished. He was “found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity” and placed in a state psychiatric hospital. That’s not punishment, that is treatment and care. That’s also why he is being released - they have determined that he is stable enough to be back in society. (I have my doubts that he will remain stable without being in a psychiatric hospital but I guess we’ll all see.)
“What gain does someone get from unnecessarily punishing him longer?” Safety. If you have someone who commits a premeditated murder (insane or not). Then granting them the opportunity to do it again is a serious risk.
Additionally, schizophrenia doesn’t just completely go away. Most cases are episodic, the fact that he is fine now does not mean he’s “cured”. You at the very minimum need to be able to force continuous treatment until his death.
The fact that punishing people serves little utility, doesn’t mean that you should release murderers. The fact that protecting society by imprisoning people, “punishes” the people does not mean that you shouldn’t protect society by imprisoning people.
While I trust professionals in many things, I’m not sure how much experience they have dealing with cannibals who harbor murderous intent. Can you honestly say to me that what little money and resources it takes to keep this single man locked up is worth the possibility of him doing it a second time? What’s a second life worth? Ten years?
I think people like you are a hair from being as insane as the people they lock up. Not all crimes should be forgiven and cold blooded murder is at the top of that list. Sure, he should be allowed to earn more freedoms but released back into society?
Absolutely fucking not.
Your comment was good and all but really I just want to tell you I love your profile picture. Don’t see enough ODST love out there. The Superintendent was such a great idea
Ten years is the price of someone else’s entire life? There should be no system in which robbing someone of their future so deliberately should be washed away.
He wanted to eat someone. You don’t have to murder to get access to a corpse. Cold blooded murder should not be seen as ‘correctable’. A man lost his entire life. He loses only ten years. Fuck that.
