Houston – For at least two days, neighbors at an apartment complex noticed an acrid aroma, black smoke and leaping flames coming from two barbecue grills on the balcony of a second-floor apartment.
What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on in the unit where 27-year-old Timothy Wayne Shepherd lived? What was he burning at all hours, for days at a time? The answer turned their stomachs.
According to law enforcement officials, Shepherd dismembered, then burned the body of his ex-girlfriend, Tynesha Stewart, a 19-year-old Texas A&M University student. Nothing remains of Stewart’s body, Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas said at a news conference Saturday.
“I just don’t know what to think about it,” said Louis Evans, whose balcony faces Shepherd’s in the quiet, tree-lined enclave in northwest Harris County. “I thought he was a nice, normal person. I guess you never know what your neighbors are doing.”
Authorities said Shepherd has confessed to strangling and dismembering Stewart, who was home on spring break, because he was angry that she had started a new relationship.
Stewart was last seen March 15 and was reported missing March 19. On March 16, neighbors said they first noticed the unusual activity – and the unpleasant odor – on Shepherd’s balcony.
“The smell was awful,” said Evans, who also became alarmed after seeing a blaze shoot out from the grills. “I was wondering: What is he burning? Not cooking, but burning. There is a difference.”
Shepherd, who is charged with murder, is being held on $250,000 bail in the Harris County Jail. Telephone messages left with his attorney, Chip Lewis, were not immediately returned. On Sunday, the door to Shepherd’s apartment was covered with plywood boards.
