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.
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…
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?
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.
Like I said - restitution.
Locking someone up doesn’t do anything for the victims or their families…
Also, just take a look at wrongful conviction rates - and that’s just the confirmed ones… How many do we miss?
Are we really willing to let so many innocent people be locked away or even killed? Debts can be repaid for a wrongful conviction, but a prison sentence cannot, and a death sentence- well, duh.
Again, like I’ve said - and I feel like a broken record with this - prison does not help anyone. If anything, it makes things worse. I mean, you’re really gonna try to tell me that locking a bunch of convicts together for years or decades at a time and then just dropping them back into society once they’re done is a good idea??? No.
Help. Support. Therapy. Proper monitoring and, if necessary, medication. THAT helps. Don’t look at the “what”, look at the “why”.
We need to STOP the cycle of institutionalization, and START reforming people into productive members of society.
Also, it’s way fuckin cheaper on the taxpayers, if that’s what you care about
I only care for the victims and I still didn’t get an answer. “Restitution”, what does that entail in detail? What’s your concrete plan of action to help the victims of violent crimes? How do you stop them from getting revenge? How do you handle them if they do take revenge? What happens with criminals who are repeat offenders? What about those were people know they plan an attack on someone?
People like you pretend to care for people but I never get an answer to these questions. Victims are blissfully ignored in your crusade to help and protect violent criminals. It’s just an interesting observation you can make all the time.
estitution (noun):
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the restoration of something lost or stolen to its proper owner.
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recompense for injury or loss.
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the restoration of something to its original state.
Didn’t think I had to spell it out for you…
Obviously in this circumstance it would be definition number 2.
What kind of recommendation do you suggest if someone eats your husbands brain for example, or rapes you? What if someone wants, as decompensation, that the other person suffers as much as they did? What if they want a sum of money the person can not pay? What if they want the person to go to prison for life?
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If this comment was on Reddit you’d be downvotes to hell.
That’s crazy, but it’s not
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
Rather him than you
Besides, if he likes me I’m less likely to be on the menu
You, however 👀
You definitely do already and just don’t know it.
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.
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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?
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Clearly you did not get the point. I should ask you the same question.
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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
Well then it’s a good thing you don’t make the rules
Same thing happened up here in Canada
And look at all the crime he’s committed. Oops, wait, he hasn’t.
They wouldn’t tell us if he did. All this situation has taught me is that if I wanna murder someone, eat part of them. I’ll get away with it with a slap on the wrist and some pills
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.
Technically cannibals would be one solution to a full planet.
Lol you ain’t wrong. Maybe we can air drop a bunch into a gated community somewhere 🤔
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.
One thing about humans is we are very good at making more.
By that logic, let the man keep eating brains. Let the man eat YOUR brain. You’re clearly not using it, and we can always just make another person to replace you, right?
Fine! But I get to try to kill him first. If he can beat me he can have my stupid fucking brain. Being alive sucks anyways. You’re doing me a favor. One less wage slave for the corporations OH NO!!!
Planets fucking full anyways
Piss off with this Malthusian bullshit, will you?
Never been stuck in traffic huh?
A problem easily avoided by using more space efficient modes of transportation, and also not particularly relevant to my objection that overpopulation is a Malthusian myth.
Which will never happen because you’d have to rip up cities and replan them.
But whatever I’m sure your gonna say it’s a “matter of resource distribution” not a space problem but I’ll just say this, we will never solve the distro problem because of greed.
Plus every new person born is gonna generate a shit ton of carbon. They’re gonna need a place to live. That’s space that used to be an ecosystem.
So idk maybe you want the planet to be turned into Courascant (one big planet sized city). Sure there’s space for trillions of humans if we stack em up high! Good luck feeding them.
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.
“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.
You clearly don’t understand any of the psychology behind this. Stop pretending you do.
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An indicator of a capable society would be permanently excluding the people who do such horrid things that it’s considered a niche. Another indicator would be not allowing such truly revolting people the ability to circumvent the minimum 20 years for premeditated murder plus whatever fucking cannibalism adds onto it by pleading insanity and having a board of professionals give a thumbs up.
He robbed someone of their life. Of their future. Not by accident or negligence but intentionally and planned. But hey, I hope someone defends the guy that scoops your brain out of your skull, eats it like a steak dinner, then goes free in a couple years because hey, he’s all better now :) Utterly absurd.
Clearly you do not have any grasp on mental illness and what it can do to someone.
Consider yourself lucky, I guess.
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There’s a wide gulf of distance between someone with antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy who fully intends to murder another person and someone experiencing profound psychosis to the point that they don’t even know that their own actions are real. This guy was found not guilty by reason of insanity in the first place because he’s the latter and not the former. The latter can be safe in public, if adherent to medication regimens, therapy, and monitoring. The former must be housed away from the public for life.
I say that as a healthcare professional with experience with both people who have severe psychiatric disorders and also people who are in prison. The original court found this man actually did not have murderous intent and that makes all the difference.
Tell that to the victim
I think people like you are a hair from being as insane as the people they lock up.
Better look over your shoulder then, buddy. We’re everywhere
I think people like you are a hair from being as insane as the people they lock up.
Since I fully agree with what the commenter you’re replying to said, I’ll assume you’re lumping me into that group too.
Sure, call me insane. Call me crazy. Call me fucking nuts and say I need a straight jacket. Whatever floats your boat.
You’re not one of the people that can lock me up though and it’s pretty clear why. So just remember that “crazy” motherfuckers like me are driving next to you on the freeway, shopping behind you in the grocery store, living down the hall, etc. We could lose it at any point!
Fear of what you don’t understand and ignoring expert opinions are destroying society. Which side of that would you like to be on?
Plus, you’re talking to another human being, it’s just fucking disrespectful.
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Yeah this is one where I don’t think you should ever get out. Ain’t worth it.
If it’s dependent on him being compliant with meds and doesn’t have someone constantly ensuring he’s on them, it isn’t gonna end well. What happens when he just decides he’s fine and doesn’t need them anymore?
Then the group home that administers his medication reports it?
Are all group homes equally stringent? I’m not trying to be mean here, but to be honest, this guy being free freaks me out.
No. There are different levels of care, different staffing ratios, etc. He’d obviously been in a higher level of care
He ate a man’s brains and eye balls.
Eww gross.
He went to subway after eating the man’s body parts.
EWWWWW! GROSS!
We have crab juice or mountain dew
Taking the story at face value, imagine how horrible you’d feel knowing what you’d done. I really hope they are doing better now but fuck having those memories.
What nobody ever cares about are the victims. I would rather worry about how his victims poor family feels knowing he got away with it and is free, while their relative is dead and eaten
Well now I’m confused cuz I thought Lemmy didn’t want a vindictive criminal justice system? If he caused problems by being unwell and is now well after treatment, why should he continue to be punished by being held against his will?
I think your mistake is in thinking that Lemmy is a single person with a single train of thought.
This post coulda fooled me
Any stats on the recidivism rate for the mentally ill who are treated and cleared by the Psychiatric Security Review Board, versus convicts who serve conventional terms?
Recidivism for offenders that simply serve a prison sentence as opposed to getting actual treatment is much, much higher.
I’m not sure of the exact stats in this situation, but I know domestic abusers that simply go to prison are some ~230% (give or take a couple tens, I can’t remember off the top of my head) more likely to reoffend than those who are actually treated.
Again, idk the stats for this case, but you will find that those who are simply punished rather than treated have higher recidivism rates across the board.
The onion article writes itself
“Dude who ate someone’s brain is out in the streets after saying ‘I won’t do it again’ enough times”
i hope the guy is truly rehabilitated and is getting the ongoing treatment he needs.
but lets be honest, id rather he not live on my street
How do you casually ask to eat your therapist? 🙃
“You know… you don’t have to attend that lunchtime meeting with your boss…”
Everyone can change
Not in my experience it ain’t . Once an asshole always an asshole. That shits in your DNA. The most they do is go sociopathic and pretend they changed but they always crack.
If you have depression and tried to commit suicide, will you always end up depressed and try to end your life?
Or is there more to it all?
Mental illness is not that straightforward.
Even DNA isn’t that straightforward. Epigenetics is a whole subfield dedicated to studying how and why genes in your DNA are or are not expressed.
Dude ate a guy. Would you live next door to him?
Unequivocally, yes I would. I work with people who have severe psychiatric disorders pretty regularly. The difference between someone who is untreated vs. someone who is stable and adherent to their med regimen can be light years.
Part of the reason we fear people with psychiatric disorders so much is because we, as a society, fail these people. We have no reliable system for remanding them to get help, if we see signs they are decompensating. The only system we provide is one that only starts to function when they’ve reached crisis level.
That’s not their fault; it’s ours. They deserve better. A better system could have prevented this crime.
“We as a society fail these people”
How do we fail people that would die off without continuous support?
There is a difference between pointing out that certain policies have better outcomes and ascribing moral fault to a society for the actions of an insane fringe.
You are expressing a very modern and ahistorical paradigm of what makes a human being valuable. Deep history shows us fossilized remains of people with injuries like broken femurs or no teeth that would have been absolutely fatal without continuous support. Disabled people are valuable simply because they are human every bit as much as able-bodied people are, and historically we have dedicated resources to caring for the disabled among us.
It is a very modern idea that labor is the only value a human being possesses, and that those who cannot care for themselves are worthless. What use is anything that we do, if we can’t even be bothered to care for people who cannot care for themselves? What kind of monsters does that pretend we are? And make no mistake, we all start and most of us will end our lives not being able to care for ourselves.
Personally, I view caring for the helpless as a fundamental function of humanity. And yes, we as a society fail at that function, primarily because we fail to recognize it in the first place.
People who voluntarily cause societal harm are not the same as people who suffer temporary (and relatively minor) injuries.
And no those people were not pandered to and taken care of, they were evicted from society or even killed.
“Personally I view caring for the helpless as a fundamental function of humanity”- And you would be wrong. The only fundamental function of humanity is to continue existence.
You are inserting a moral imperative to “save the helpless”. Where the “helpless” are a handful of people who attack and in this case, eat others, and of course their existence is societies fault.
Like I already said there is a difference between making a prescriptive claim that we should do something out of practicality, and a moral claim that society is responsible for the actions of the fringe.
“It’s a very modern idea”- Imagine accusing someone of ahistoricism, and then immediately make false historical statements. Infanticide and senicide have historically been quite common, it is only in modern society where we have enough labor surplus that we are willing to condemn convenient deaths. Of course this is all irrelevant since at no point was I talking about people with injuries, but rather the case of violent perpetrators actively harming others.
I almost want to ask your opinion on abortion, since you are making a deontological right-to-life argument but are directly copying left-wing arguments and phraseology1 and left-wingers are vehemently pro-choice, not that there is any logical rule that they should be.
- Yes, you all talk the same way, make the same statements; you’re not intellectuals, you are parrots.
Tell me you know nothing about mental health without saying it
Kinda wild to compare this situation to just people you don’t like at work.
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Dude should have never been released simply because we can’t ever be sure he’ll take his medication or adhere to treatment in the future. At some point, the safety of an individual and the public takes priority over turning them loose on the streets.
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Fucking bizzare! Who the fuck is down voting this post ?
I was tempted to. I always hate these posts. If he’s healthy and doing well and observed, I’m glad he’s out. Hopefully he benefits society.
I hope ten years worth of data lets some researcher figure out what went wrong or helps doctors find some way to help people like this.
well, the particular manifestation of his psychosis isn’t common (eating people), but psychotic disorders aren’t super uncommon and they still aren’t as well understood as we might like. unfortunately, not everyone responds well to treatment - it can take some effort to figure out which meds are effective and for some minority of patients, nothing really helps at all.
in this case, it sounds like he responded very well and perhaps (haven’t read more than what’s posted above) had not been treated before. at the very least, treated insufficiently well, clearly. it doesn’t hurt that he was forced to receive treatment and supervision for a long period of time, and given his high profile case, maybe got the best psychiatric care available to him. i’m happy he was able to get some help.
I feel like threads like this also make a good case that people really, REALLY, don’t understand psychosis. Dude doesn’t just hear a whisper in his brain and star murdering. Those voices build and build and build until you literally can’t hear yourself think. Then you break, your mind isn’t your own, the voices have entirely drowned you out and you’re tired because they haven’t let you sleep in days and you’ve been off doing who the hell knows because you aren’t even in control anymore.
It’s a shame there is no spirit realm, he killed these men in vain… so senseless.
Seems like a good call.
