Well, looks like I went off half-cocked.*

HOUSTON — The acrid aroma billowing from the two barbecue grills on the balcony of Apartment 224 didn’t smell like barbecue. And the black smoke rising from the leaping flames didn’t look like a normal cookout.

What, neighbors at the Red Oak Place apartments wondered, was going on in the second floor apartment where 27-year-old Timothy Wayne Shepherd lived? What was he burning at all hours, for at least two days?

The answer turned their stomachs.

I’ll say.

Among the 100 items taken as evidence from Shepherd’s apartment were some 30 pieces of bone, several swabs of DNA samples, hair and several “charred items,” according to the affidavit.

Also taken as evidence were a garbage disposal, a sink plunger, a bath knob, a mop, two hammers, a vacuum cleaner, an empty ammonia bottle, cans of white paint and painting materials.

Shepherd’s attorney, Chip Lewis, said Thursday that he had not seen the inventory of what evidence was taken from Shepherd’s home during the search Monday.

When asked whether Shepherd ate any of Stewart’s remains, he said, “I have absolutely no reason to believe that.”

Well, Sheriff Thomas certainly has my apologies for jumping the gun.

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I’ve been slow about posting lately, because I’ve stayed under the weather. In such conditions, it’s hard for something to really work my ire up enough for a post, but Tommy Thomas has managed to do it. The Sheriff’s department is attempting to end the controversy over any failure to find the body parts of Tynesha Stewart with a story that’s really hard to, ah, chew on.

“We have determined through this investigation that the defendant dismembered Tynesha Stewart and . . . he burned the body parts,” Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas announced. “As a result of this, there are no remaining body parts . . . There will be no search. There is no need for a search.”

The announcement closed a heated debate in the Houston area over whether law-enforcement officials should launch a massive and expensive search of the area’s overflowing landfills in hopes of finding any of Stewart’s remains.

Somehow, I don’t think it closed it as much as Thomas would like to see it closed. I was suspicious enough when they announced that she was dismembered. Now they’re adding “and burned” and I find that a bit too much to be believed. This has all the earmarks of a crime of passion, and it’s really strange that someone would go to all that effort to dispose of the body, yet end up confessing to the crime. Normally, the reaction of a guilty person in these cases is to “wash their hands” figuratively and literally, as quickly as they can. Taking the time out to dismember and burn the body… that doesn’t fit. And where was it burned, eh? Seems like someone should have noticed 100+ lbs. of meat being charred, by the smell if nothing else. What smells is this whole story.

He said investigators were unable to release that information to the public or to Stewart’s family at the time because of the ongoing investigation.

What part of the investigation would require them to omit such a detail? All that was necessary was to say nothing until all the details were available. Therefore I believe this is nothing less than an ongoing series of lies to avoid the expense of digging her body out of the landfill. When they decided not to search for the body, the outcry was so great, they came up with the dismemberment story, and when that didn’t satisfy people, they added “and she was burned too!” Let me point out that you have to manage a dammed hot flame to destroy the bones too.

Officials first thought that Shepherd had disposed of the body in a large commercial trash bin that had since been emptied, but they now say Shepherd dismembered the body at his home and burned it in a grill on his patio.

Although human remains generally require extremely high temperatures to destroy, Thomas said nothing remains of Stewart. He would not discuss how the body could be entirely destroyed.

You know, what’s funny is I started this article and wrote all the above even before getting this far into the KHOU article. I mean, the smell of charred bullshit is just too damn obvious in this story. I can just see a neighbor leaning over the fence. “Hey dude! Watcha’ barbecuing there? Got a good sauce? Lemee tell ya, nothin’ beats the taste of hick’ry smoked!”

Yeah, right.

If Shepherd was smart enough and took enough time to dispose of the body in such a cold-blooded manner, why should he then be weak enough to confess when confronted by Quannell? “You got no body copper, how you gonna prove anything?” I don’t know if she had a car, but it seems to me that disposing of her and the car at the same time by driving them to a remote location and burning them both would be better — destroys the evidence, makes it look like a robbery, and with a body already on hand, there’d be less attention on the case. Missing persons always get the exposure, because we fear the worst and hope for the best, but murders? Another statistic and another case on the pile.

Thomas said Stewart’s family had requested privacy and would not respond to media inquiries.

Convenient. I wonder how he managed to buy their silence? Promising to make the maximum effort to get him the needle, by making him out to be a cold-blooded murderer, instead of merely stupid, jealous, and violent? In that case, I fully expect this entire “dismember and burn” scenario to rebutted during trial, or perhaps during the inevitable appeals, when it will be argued that the press coverage and statements by the sheriff prejudiced the potential juror pool. All of which goes to show how badly Sheriff Thomas is serving the public on several levels with this cock-and-bull story. Remember, it’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the cover-up.